By: Henry Lamb
Gulag Bound

Where’s the exterminator?

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Termites don’t care whether there’s a hurricane or tornado raging outside. They just keep chomping away at the foundation of their host structure. Homeowners care. When a hurricane, tornado or storms threaten, homeowners do whatever they can to prevent their home from blowing away. Rarely are they even aware that the termites are chomping away, night and day, rain or shine – until it’s too late to save the structure.

Advocates for Agenda 21 and sustainable development operate a lot like termites. It doesn’t matter to them whether hurricanes, tornados, debt ceilings or deficits are in the news. They try to operate well below the headlines – and just keep chomping away at private property rights, individuals’ freedoms, free markets and the foundational pillars of the host governing system. They chomp away at city council meetings, at county commission meetings, at “visioning sessions” and anywhere else they can get their teeth into an unsuspecting official who still thinks Agenda 21 is just a conspiracy theory and that the word “sustainable” means “acceptable” to the green lobby.

flickr photo, Tasja

When a visioning process blossoms into a comprehensive land-use plan for the county that is adopted by local elected officials, no one puts the spotlight on the provision that requires all landowners to get permission from the government for any proposed land-use change. In Los Angeles County, no one put the spotlight on the provision that subjected property owners to eviction and forfeiture of their property when they failed to bring their property up to the new codes contained in the plan.

Advocates of Agenda 21’s sustainable development did not want people who live outside the Urban Boundary Zones in Richland County, S.C., to know that the value of their property fell to nearly zero when their county plan denied all development possibilities.

broken CFL bulbs are considered toxic hazard

Severely poisonous CFL bulb

Advocates of Agenda 21’s sustainable development often believe that capitalism is obsolete, that government must manage the marketplace. Congress was dominated by people who share this belief when they voted in 2007 to ban the incandescent light bulb, forcing people to buy a light bulb that cost five times as much, and was made in China.

These folks applaud actions by the Environmental Protection Administration that seek to force car manufacturers to increase their mileage efficiency to more than 56 miles per gallon. Like termites chomping at the foundation of a structure, government continues to take bits and pieces of freedom from its citizens. Unless someone calls the exterminator, the great structure freedom built will inevitably collapse.

Cars, the invention that gave man a new understanding of freedom, are rapidly becoming the instrument through which government can deprive man of freedom. It is now possible for government to control your car’s operation through an “On Star”-type device developed to allow government to tax drivers not only by the gallons purchased, but by the number of miles driven. Moreover, these devices can vary the tax rate, to charge more for traveling into a congested area or for driving during rush hours. The Obama administration wants to implement this technology.

Government control of your automobile is an enormous bite out of your freedom. Where is the exterminator?

Electric meter refitted as smart-meter; Wikimedia: Zuzu photo

It gets worse. California’s Pacific Gas & Electric has already installed nearly 8 million, of 10 million planned, “Smart Meters.” This device was originally intended to read your meter and transmit consumption data back to the company, thus eliminating the need for an army of meter readers. But, then someone got the idea of using the device to control the flow of electricity into a structure, should there be a shortage of electricity. What a great device. If it can transmit consumption data to the utility’s office, why should it not also report what appliances used the electricity, and the hours of the day the appliances were in use?

These devices have the potential to run a home – or to shut a home completely down. Under the control of government, these devices can essentially eliminate the last vestige of freedom.

These are only a few ways the progressive termites are eating away at the foundations of freedom in America. Where is the exterminator?

Every person who is old enough to vote is a potential exterminator of the elected officials who support or allow measures that erode freedom. Throughout the next 18 months, tens of thousands of officials and candidates will confront a ballot box. Unless the potential exterminators use their unique power to banish the termites eating away at America’s freedoms, the house that freedom built will surely fall.