Is Soft American Toilet Paper Really Worse for “Global Warming” Than Gas Guzzlers?
Ned Barnett
It is characteristic of the Far Left that, when they gain some measure of ascendency – as they have in 2006 and 2008, a gift from RINO Republicans who wouldn’t mend their ways – these Lefties over-reach. Instead of implementing the fairly reasonable elements of their agendas, they insist on having it all. That is their fatal flaw, and why – in the end (if you’ll pardon the pun) – they will destroy their own cause. Now, thankfully, they’ve done it again.
The movement to limit American’s freedom by taking away our toilet paper began, as far as rational Americans know, when Environmental Scientist Sheryl Crow, Ph.D. (who is also a well-known singer and former Lance Armstrong shoulder-candy), writing for the Huffington Post Environmental Journal, put forth the dual recommendations that toilet paper be washed and re-used, and that Americans make do with one square per sitting, “except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 or 3 could be required.”
Dr. Crow was so roundly and publicly laughed at – even by mainstream environmentalists – that she quickly recanted, at least in public, her proposal to save the rain forests by limiting Americans’ freedom to use toilet paper as we see fit, a right clearly enshrined in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Surely, if there was ever a power intended to be delegated to the people is the right to use toilet paper as we see fit.
However, following the last election, the environmental extremists are no longer worried about being laughed at, and they have taken a step even bolder than those advocated by the apparently repentant Dr. Crow. Now, extreme environmentalists are calling extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply toilet paper made from “virgin forests” causes more damage to the environment than gas-guzzlers, fast food or McMansions” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america). Led by Greenpeace, the environmental movement wants to force Americans to used recycled toilet paper, even as they acknowledge that Americans perceive recycled toilet paper as being so low in quality that “it’s like cardboard and impossible to use.”
Others go a step further. Like Dr. Crow, they advocate using the reusable toilet wipe, according to conservative Australian journalist Andrew Bolt.
However, in addition to attacking Americans’ inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness (and what, after all, makes us happier than sufficient quantities of soft, absorbent toilet paper), the Greenies have also made a major factual error, one that anyone who’s driven through the Deep South’s extensive slash-pine forests knows at first hand. Toilet paper – in fact, virtually all of the paper used by Free Americans – comes from farms. The trees are crops, raised to be harvested for paper pulp, then immediately re-planted to prepare for the next harvest in 15 or 20 years. I know this at first hand.
I moved to Georgia at 15 when my father’s business relocated executive operations from Illinois to Georgia; as President, he could have lived anywhere, but he chose to live in Atlanta, a half-day drive or a one-hour flight from the company’s manufacturing plant in rural Jeff Davis County. The company’s chairman and major investor owned 16,000 acres in Jeff Davis County, all of it planted in slash pines and periodically harvested by the pulp companies, which then immediately replanted.
Because of sound forestry management that dictated crop rotation, most of those 16,000 acres looked to be mature pine forests. The local wildlife was undisturbed by the harvesting – which was done in small patches rather than in huge swaths – and the area looked to be a virgin forest. However, that was an illusion – before the its owner decided that it was more profitable to convert his vast holdings to slash-pine forests, the land had been planted in cotton, then in peanuts and other South Georgia crops. Virgin forests in that part of the Deep South had been cut down two centuries before to make room for the agriculture needed to support the area’s residents and the South’s economy.
There is essentially no negative environmental impact to harvesting such crop trees, just as there essentially no negative environmental impact to harvesting other, more seasonable crops such as corn (for ethanol, which does enough damage all by itself). But most people don’t know this, and those who care more for the Virgin Rain Forests and those who fear the myth of “Global Warming” more than they think they value a soft wipe may be tempted to join in this new crusade. However, one roll of brownish one-ply recycled toilet paper will convince all but the most butt-numb
Ned Barnett is a Las Vegas-based political commentator and campaign strategist. During the most recent election, he was frequently featured in American Thinker and on Neil Cavuto’s Fox Business Network program. He’s been quoted by Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, and has given more than 100 media interviews during the past two Presidential elections. He can be reached at ned@barnettmarcom.com.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
That Pesky First Amendment – What Religious Freedom Really Means
By Ned Barnett
This is the first in a series of commentaries on the Bill of Rights, and what those Rights really mean …
Here’s the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – the first of our Bill of Rights. It’s one sentence long, and provides us with six of our core freedoms; some would argue, the six most important freedoms, since they come first.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That doesn’t seem very hard to understand, does it? Allowing for the evolution of language over 220 or so years, it seems pretty clear. However, to really understand it, you have to understand the history of the founding of the United States, and the dark forces that drove loyal Englishmen to rebellion against the Crown, a capital offense then and now.
In England, in 1534, King Henry VIII decided that he wanted to annul the marriage his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and take a new wife, Anne Boleyn. Pope Clement VII refused, and – not to be denied the freedom to marry the alluring Anne Boleyn – Henry broke from the Catholic Church and created the Church of England, with himself as Supreme Head. He further decreed that the new Church of England would be an arm of government, and would be supported by English taxpayers. This is what is meant by “establishment of religion” – the creation of a church denomination by the government, as an arm of the government, with the Chief of State as the religion’s supreme leader, and with the church supported by taxes levied on all citizens, whether they embraced the church’s beliefs of not.
When the framers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights wrote “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …” they were referring to one key and specific point.
They meant that Congress could not create a national, tax-supported religious denomination that would be part of the government.
However, they did NOT mean that Congress or other governmental agencies could not recognize a religion, let alone that they had to keep religion out of the public square.
In fact, religion had been enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, which said that the Rights of Man came – not from man, but from God – and because they came from God, they were inalienable and no government of men could take them away. This is what was meant by the clause, “ … or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” George Washington recognize this by having himself sworn in using a bible and taking an oath – rather than an affirmation – and by writing and issuing a Presidential prayer for the country. He and his fellow Founding Fathers often called upon God’s blessing in their actions taken in founding the United States of America. They recognized and honored their debt to God, and created laws that drew as their source document the Ten Commandments.
Clearly, the framers of the Constitution – 52 of 55 of whom were members in good standing of what had been the established orthodox churches of the colonies before the revolution – had no intention of keeping God out of the public square, or their new government.
However, a myth has grown up that there is a “separation clause” in the Constitution, one that separates belief in God from a purely secular government. There is no such “separation clause” in the Constitution – only the mandate that Congress should not create a tax-supported religious denomination as part of the overall government of the United States. It is a far cry from forbidding the creation of a formal “Church of the United States” and taxing each citizen to support that religion and having the phrase “In God We Trust” on American currency, or the Ten Commandments on a courthouse wall.
This myth becomes untenable when you consider:
• Moses and the Ten Commandments are carved in relief on the eastern pediment to the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington
• The two huge oaken doors that give access to the Supreme Court Building have two tablets with the Roman numerals I through V and VI through X, symbolizing the Ten Commandments, engraved on each lower portion of each door
• There are many other representations of the Ten Commandments in the Supreme Court building as part of the official and permanent decoration of the building – all of which can be seen on the Supreme Court’s own official website
• Since 1789, every session of Congress has begun with a prayer provided by a Chaplain who is an employee of Congress, and whose salary is paid by the taxpayers
In the United States – at least as intended by the Founding Fathers – Americans have two religions freedoms. One protects us individually and collectively from actions like those of King Henry, who created a new state-run religion supported by state-levied taxes. The other permits us individually the free exercise of religion, whatever that religion may be. There is no mention of a non-existent “separation of church and state,” as is so often claimed by the ACLU and by the mass media, and no hint in the actions of the Founding Fathers of an intent to keep religion separated from the public square. Instead, from the First President, George Washington, and the first Congress, in 1789, belief in God has played an intimate role in Government.
It has only been since the advent of an “activist” court dominated by Liberals and their secular ideology, beginning with the Warren Court, that such an idea has grown up. This ignorance and profound reinterpretation of the Founders’ intent flourishes in a society that doesn’t understand its own history and the contents of its own founding documents; that same ignorance cannot be sustained in the bright light of truth.
Whatever your belief – or lack of belief – know and understand your Rights and your Religious Freedom.
This is the first in a series of commentaries on the Bill of Rights, and what those Rights really mean …
Here’s the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – the first of our Bill of Rights. It’s one sentence long, and provides us with six of our core freedoms; some would argue, the six most important freedoms, since they come first.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That doesn’t seem very hard to understand, does it? Allowing for the evolution of language over 220 or so years, it seems pretty clear. However, to really understand it, you have to understand the history of the founding of the United States, and the dark forces that drove loyal Englishmen to rebellion against the Crown, a capital offense then and now.
In England, in 1534, King Henry VIII decided that he wanted to annul the marriage his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and take a new wife, Anne Boleyn. Pope Clement VII refused, and – not to be denied the freedom to marry the alluring Anne Boleyn – Henry broke from the Catholic Church and created the Church of England, with himself as Supreme Head. He further decreed that the new Church of England would be an arm of government, and would be supported by English taxpayers. This is what is meant by “establishment of religion” – the creation of a church denomination by the government, as an arm of the government, with the Chief of State as the religion’s supreme leader, and with the church supported by taxes levied on all citizens, whether they embraced the church’s beliefs of not.
When the framers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights wrote “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …” they were referring to one key and specific point.
They meant that Congress could not create a national, tax-supported religious denomination that would be part of the government.
However, they did NOT mean that Congress or other governmental agencies could not recognize a religion, let alone that they had to keep religion out of the public square.
In fact, religion had been enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, which said that the Rights of Man came – not from man, but from God – and because they came from God, they were inalienable and no government of men could take them away. This is what was meant by the clause, “ … or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” George Washington recognize this by having himself sworn in using a bible and taking an oath – rather than an affirmation – and by writing and issuing a Presidential prayer for the country. He and his fellow Founding Fathers often called upon God’s blessing in their actions taken in founding the United States of America. They recognized and honored their debt to God, and created laws that drew as their source document the Ten Commandments.
Clearly, the framers of the Constitution – 52 of 55 of whom were members in good standing of what had been the established orthodox churches of the colonies before the revolution – had no intention of keeping God out of the public square, or their new government.
However, a myth has grown up that there is a “separation clause” in the Constitution, one that separates belief in God from a purely secular government. There is no such “separation clause” in the Constitution – only the mandate that Congress should not create a tax-supported religious denomination as part of the overall government of the United States. It is a far cry from forbidding the creation of a formal “Church of the United States” and taxing each citizen to support that religion and having the phrase “In God We Trust” on American currency, or the Ten Commandments on a courthouse wall.
This myth becomes untenable when you consider:
• Moses and the Ten Commandments are carved in relief on the eastern pediment to the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington
• The two huge oaken doors that give access to the Supreme Court Building have two tablets with the Roman numerals I through V and VI through X, symbolizing the Ten Commandments, engraved on each lower portion of each door
• There are many other representations of the Ten Commandments in the Supreme Court building as part of the official and permanent decoration of the building – all of which can be seen on the Supreme Court’s own official website
• Since 1789, every session of Congress has begun with a prayer provided by a Chaplain who is an employee of Congress, and whose salary is paid by the taxpayers
In the United States – at least as intended by the Founding Fathers – Americans have two religions freedoms. One protects us individually and collectively from actions like those of King Henry, who created a new state-run religion supported by state-levied taxes. The other permits us individually the free exercise of religion, whatever that religion may be. There is no mention of a non-existent “separation of church and state,” as is so often claimed by the ACLU and by the mass media, and no hint in the actions of the Founding Fathers of an intent to keep religion separated from the public square. Instead, from the First President, George Washington, and the first Congress, in 1789, belief in God has played an intimate role in Government.
It has only been since the advent of an “activist” court dominated by Liberals and their secular ideology, beginning with the Warren Court, that such an idea has grown up. This ignorance and profound reinterpretation of the Founders’ intent flourishes in a society that doesn’t understand its own history and the contents of its own founding documents; that same ignorance cannot be sustained in the bright light of truth.
Whatever your belief – or lack of belief – know and understand your Rights and your Religious Freedom.
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