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The REAL Enemy Isn’t BinLaden

09-01-02 –Rochester, NY—

I’m on vacation, as I pre-write this, so instead of doing this at my keyboard and desk, I’m writing this on my Palm 505, as we sit around the campfire… a Guinness Stout to one hand, trees sighing overhead, and some pork chops in the smoker, about three hours along. It’s just about dusk, and there’s a train going by on the double track about 3 miles distant. I often do jot general ideas down into my palm into my Palm, but not often do I do it in so nice a setting. Bithead is relaxing, to say the least.

But now that I have the time to reflect, I’m reflecting on the events of the trip here.

In the last few articles, I’ve taken some time to point out just who and what our biggest enemy is. But in all of those, I’ve perhaps neglected one of the biggest:

Liberal idiocy, which as usual, is disguised as ‘caring and sharing’, and anyone opposing them of course, is ‘greed’. There is perhaps no place where the standard liberal arguments take on more of a quality of utter stupidity, than with regards to the subject of transportation in America. I ran into this in all it’s glory, at a gas station on the way up here to my little vacation spot.

To put this story into perspective allow me to show you my rig: I drive a 1995 Chevy Astro conversion, with a 4.3L V6, which usually gets around 23-24 mpg on the highway, after I did some minor mods to it. (even stock, Chevy reports the unit gets around 21 mpg on the highway.)

It’s rather comfortable, having powered velour seats, wood paneling, a TV/VCR combo, which feeds up to four sets of headphones for the kids, two AM/FM/ Cassette Stereo units, one which feeds the afore- mentioned kid headphones. Makes longer hauls much easier on the driver, I can tell you. It’ll seat 7, for short trips, four for longer runs. It has a seat in the back that with the touch of a power button, folds into a bed. Curtains in the windows. Twin A/C units, twin heaters. Direct and indirect lighting, as well as reading lights at every passenger position. For those of you who know about such things, this van is set on an S-10 frame. It’s a really great over-the-road road rig, and already has well over 100,000 miles on it, 30k of it this year so far, with two additional long-haul trips planned before camping season ends in October. OK, that’s the truck.

Trailing along behind is one of the smallest pop-up trailers on the road… around an 8 foot box, weighing, when fully loaded, around 1500lbs. Sleeps five people, if they’re really friendly. This is not a 10,000lb 5th wheel…

So, keep these specs in mind as we proceed here. The importance of them will become apparent.

I left town with less than a full tank, so at around 150 miles out, upon finding some fuel priced $1.27/gal vs the $1.55 I usually pay, I decided it’d be worthwhile to fill the rest of the 27 gallon tank, which when topped usually takes around 32 gallons total. Must be a monster amount of a feed pipe on this thing. It’s one nice thing about having a good sized tank; when you find it cheap, you can load up, and roll past the $1.55/gal places.

Anyway, I pulled in, and proceeded to load up, when a rather nice looking blonde in a Camry Solaria came in for a little liquid motion. She squirted around 5 dollars worth into her car, and then looked at the amount the van had taken on. Her eyes bugged a little, as she motioned toward my pump, and her face got a little red.

“Don’t you know how much gas those SUV’s waste?” Once I stopped laughing, I pointed out that strictly speaking mine was not an SUV. I further pointed out that the car she was driving had only a slighly smaller engine than the one in my van… her 3100cc vs my 4300cc, and that in fact her car according to the EPA, only gets around 25mpg on the road and averages around 19mpg.

(OK truth to tell, I was a little off, as it turns out, the site http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.htm lists it as 19 and 27.. Not bad, for off the top of my head, and still not as good as my much larger Astro.)

How, I asked her, can she drive such an inefficient mode of transportation? Of course, she went ballistic, and then lacking something better to say, apparently, she pulled out the same defense all liberals do when the tripe they’ve been force-fed is challenged by someone with actual facts: She call me a liar. I’ve come to understand you’re hitting a truth they can’t argue with when they do that. I suppose there are a few who will see themselves here.

She then flamed me about the amount of space being wasted, and did I really need to have all that space, did I have to drive something so large. I reminded her it was in fact a mini-van, and would she like to look inside and point out to me what space got wasted, between my wife, my two boys, the dog and our luggage. She declined, spouting some more crap which I didn’t even bother listening to. She then fumed off, ripping a little environmentally friendly rubber as she went out into the street in front of an oncoming tractor trailer, who had tolock up all 24 wheels to miss making environmentally friendly liberal/riceball pancakes out of it all.

I filled the remainder of the tank, got some coffee, and continued on my way, fully expecting to see her again along the road. I never did. As I drove up to the campsite, perhaps 300 miles distant, I began to wonder a bit at the encounter at the pump. It seems to me that many encounters in various political discussion venues are rather like this one. The liberal attacker being gleefully ignorant of the real world, and calling anyone who disagrees with them (all together now) a liar.

How does all of this tie in with the stated topic? Well, rather simply, really. I submit to you that the biggest enemy of America today is not Bin Laden or any of his bloodthirsty idiots. Our biggest enemy is the willful, nay, GLEEFUL idiocy of the left, of which I was treated to a glowing example that afternoon.

Examples are many of this brand of idiocy are many, and while I won’t get into a lot of them for the moment, I can hardly get by without mentioning a few of the more recent examples.

Since this is a union weekend, let’s take the biggest government teachers union, the NEA, who is going to start this week to teach our kids. What are they teaching? The NEA says “Do not suggest that any group is responsible. Do not repeat the speculations of others, including newscasters” If the examples of the last few years are true, ala OKC, the only time anyone should get blamed, say the liberals, is when right wing talk show hosts can get stuck for blowing up a building. And lest you think the NEA doesn’t carry any weight in this, consider the case of the New York city schools, where a teacher was suspended merely for telling her class that all of the individuals who attacked this country on Sept. 11 were Arabs. Can you beat it?

Consider the recent ‘redemption’ efforts of Johnny Walker Lindh, whom I wrote about recently. Consider the conclusions drawn; he simply acted upon what he was taught. What are the kids learning here, do you suppose? The lefists control over our educational system is nothiung short of a moral disarmament of the nation. For any military force to be able to protect us, there must FIRST be a citizenry that believes in their heart and soul that we are worth defending,

And the American left is exporting their nonsense, too. In listening to my short wave up here, I am hearing reports of the world summit in Johannesburg, where the free world is told among other things that the flush toilet is a major problem, culturally. Some of the other gems coming out of that are typical leftist; it’s the rest of the world’s fault that South Africa is so poor. Of course the fact that the place has sunken into poverty in the time that the socialist African National Congress has been in power, there., isn’t the reason, huh?

So, the Africans hate us, to the point of attack, because of the flush toilet.

Then of course there’s the wacko “Lettuce Lady” a PETA member, trying to get the world to become vegetarian. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020831/od_uk_nm/oukoe_environment_summit_lettuce_1

Of course the idiot GREENS have their say:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020825/sc_nm/environment_summit_dc_25

In all of these cases, the US, and it’s capitalism, the only real salvation of any of these malcontents, is being blamed by those pushing for socialism. And those who don’t know any better, both here and abroad, parrot the nonsense. The conclusion of all of these connections is fairly well obvious. I submit to you that the biggest
enemy America has today, is the willful idiocy of the left, both nationally, and internationally.

The sad fact is, that people like the bleached blond I ran into at the pump have the power to vote, even if they’re not sure how to work a ballot, as in Florida.

Worse, she’s following the left’s dictates, more or less exactly. The proponents of the left clearly haven’t done much actual THINKING on these subjects they so willingly spout on, opting instead to let others do their thinking for them.

We see this kind of BS all the time in Congress, this “Blame America First” nonsense, with exactly the same basis of arguments as we see in the public venues. Problem is, such people have the power of government behind their idiocy, and thus the power to destroy America from within. I can’t think of anything that would be more destructive to us than this. No matter how destructive any external attacker might be, it pales in comparison to the kind of damage that the left can do and I fact is doing to us, to us from within. I don’t fear Saddam, I don’t fear BinLaden, nearly as greatly as I fear the American leftists protecting him, and challenging America’s right to protect herself.

It’s been noted that the destruction of America is the one goal that American leftists share with Bin Laden and Saddam. Will we let them? We’re now around a year away from 9/11/01, and it’s lessons. The question is, have we learned them?