The Smart Grid by Gråulf

The power to my neighborhood was shut off for four hours yesterday, so the city could install equipment for the smart grid in local transformers. The smart grid is a computerized system that allows households to check their minute-to-minute power usage on the web, and will theoretically enable us to voluntarily reduce our energy usage. This so-called smart grid will cost about 25 million dollars, and is a one-dollar computer chip short of enabling the city to selectively turn off appliances in individual homes. Actually, the chip may already be installed in the system, because it is obvious where the greenies are going with this.

This part of Colorado sits atop giant coal deposits, and we have a perfectly adequate little coal-fired power plant just outside of town, that can supply all the power we need for decades. The plant is a bit out of date, and while it filters out any visible pollutants and sulfur, it needs to be updated to burn cleaner than it does. However, the local environmentalists have refused public service the permits to update the plant, because their goal is to shut it down completely. The city voted five years ago to mandate that twenty percent of our energy has to come from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. The mandate resulted in a sizable increase in our electric bills, but public service is still well short of achieving the mandated goal of twenty percent. There are days when it comes close, but then there are other days when less than one percent of the cities power comes from alternative sources.

No one asked me if I wanted the smart grid that was installed in my neighborhood yesterday, or if I want the city to be able to reach into my home to turn off my refrigerator when it suits them. That decision was made by the ideologs on the city’s environmental committee, who happened to be appointed rather than elected.

And that brings me to three words I hear more and more often, and that gives me the willies whenever they come up:

One is Collectivism, which means the subjugation of the individual to a group – whether to race, class, or state does not matter. Collectivists believe that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for what is called “the common good”. Never mind the individual rights spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and the Amendments to the Constitution of the U.S.

Another is Multiculturism. The modern version of multiculturism originated in Canada, to appease the French Canadians, and became the official national policy of Canada in 1971, followed by Australia in 1973. It was quickly adopted as official policy by most of the member states of the European Union. This theory of benignly co-existing cultures does not work when it includes Muslims who are hostile to their adopted society, and support terrorists. It does not work in the U.S. either, where we are being overwhelmed by millions of illegal aliens from Mexico, who refuse to assimilate into American culture.

The third term is Progressive, which is often used in place of liberal by people who don’t understand the difference. Cultural Liberalism was founded on the concept of natural rights and civil liberties, and the belief that the major purpose of government is to protect those rights. Progressives, on the other hand, tend to support interventionist economics, such as the government taking control of banks and auto companies; they advocate income redistribution, like tax refunds to people who don't pay taxes; they support organized labor and trade unions; and they tend to be more concerned with environmental issues than mainstream liberals. Does that sound familiar?

Gråulf.