Right Opposition

There is a surprising but welcomed story in the papers this morning. Some people in Haiti are beginning to rebuild their homes without waiting on government help. The government is opposing their efforts.

The Associated Press says the Haitian government opposes the self-starting re-builders. The Culture and Communications Minister said the rebuilding “wouldn’t be tolerated.” She said, “the governemnt wants to develop and implement a comprehensive reconstruction plan that might feature building codes…”

The people of Haiti are not waiting. They are collecting pieces of wood and tin and rebuilding their own homes instead of waiting.

That is just like government. Oppose people who are hard working and force them to accept layers of government bureaucracy. These hard working people who desire to be self-sufficient should be encouraged. That is a nugget of freedom that shouldn’t be ignored.

The island nation has been suffering under ineffective and corrupt governments for generations. The recent earthquake with the staggering loss of life has brought the Haitian troubles squarely into the view of the entire world. There has been a massive outpouring of support, led by the United States, which so far has proven woefully inadequate to relieve the suffering there. The aid is necessary and ought to continue but it shows that the government is simply unable to respond fast enough to such disasters. That is a lesson we learned after Katrina.

The leftist green movement continues to suffer from its own dishonesty.

The much hailed Copenhagen Summit, which failed to achieve any of its lofty goals, was acting on bad science. Word comes today  that the head of the UK’s climate change watchdog group knew before the summit that data on glacial melting was just wrong. You can read about it at the The Times website.

Science is supposed to be about facts. But what we are seeing is a deliberate attempt to craft science as a propaganda tool. What a mistake. Science, which has generally been widely accepted on both the left and right, is proving itself unreliable. We are left to wonder how much, if any, of the left’s agenda is also based on fantasy.

Meanwhile an investigation into the first Climategate fiasco has determined that the scientist broke the law by refusing to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests. The statute of limitations has passed so no one will face criminal charges. The story  is in The Mail.