Dependence => Downfall of Western Civilization

It's not terrorism that will bring down Western Civilization it is dependence. Dependence on government to figure out problems for us.

The United Nations says that "the world needs to produce more food," but every day tons of food ends up in trash cans. Heck, today at lunch if you would have combined all the leftovers from our table alone you could make a meal out of it. It's a problem of distribution and waste... there is plenty of food out there but there are too many obstacles to get the food to those who need it. On a local level, a restaurant can not give away extra food at the end of the night to a homeless shelter because of the liability involved, groceries past the suggested "use by" date (but still healthy to eat) are trashed rather than donated to those who instead rely on food stamps and church hand outs, and the left over food on your plate ends up in your dog bowl at best and down the disposal at worst... and no one is going to stick it in Tupperware and mail it to Zimbabwe. So rather than listen to the United Nations point out a problem that has existed for generations, we need to remove government intervention... less export controls, reduction of subsidies, and less laws that only get in the way. Just think about how much money was spent on this 3 day conference that could have gone to pay for rice or grain for those starving?

Ironically, there are those living here in the United States who can afford to buy things but choose not to... instead they choose to Freecycle. What started as an effort to reduce the overall amounts of waste generated each year demonstrates how much is out there for the taking in these economically trying times. However, the United Nations wants to put more international restrictions and limitations on what is already a mess of federal regulations relating to alternative energy. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said, "I think that there is an urgent need to establish a greater degree of international consensus and agreed policy guidelines on bio-fuel production, which take full account of food security, income and energy needs at all levels of our countries." This basically translates to: "lets waste a bunch of time discussing rules and writing treaties that countries will not sign, or will sign but break later when its to their benefit."

People must take these problems into their own hands and find solutions before world government entities get involved. While the U.S. government can not get their act together on issues such as energy policy and climate change, the NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has already suggested that the alliance to get involved with these non security issues, an idea that is sure to cause more problems rather than lead to solutions.. Scheffer said, "Even 10 years from today, no other group of nations will cooperate more closely among each other... No other group of nations will have the institutional toolkit that is essential to facilitate such cooperation — and the best tool is NATO." Once again, buttressing the fact that the United Nations is pretty much useless in its present state.

But not to worry.... the economy can fall apart without government intervention as well! The airline industry is continuing to have problems due to the high oil prices, and most recently there have been announcements that airlines are reducing the number of flights and the number of routes they fly. On the upside this will put the airlines in a good position to modernize their fleets in the years to come! General Motors is also taking advantage of these turbulent times to close down some of its plants and get rid of some overpaid union workers! It would probably have been in GM's best interest economically to close down some of these plants years ago, but the public would not have taken too kindly to it... we all remember that Michael Moore got his start at the expense of GM's last plant closing!

With every cloud comes a silver lining... and necessity breeds invention. Without these high oil prices there would not be the push for alternative energy... then again, if the government had kept out of it years ago... there might not be high gas prices in the first place! Ron Paul laid this out a while back... ironically he could have said it yesterday... its pretty timeless.