Antici . . .
...pation
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.--Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
History is not a straight line; it’s a spiral, moving through the same ground over and again with the only details changing. Some passes ‘round the spiral, the issues are overtly dead, bloody serious and other times around the details are smaller, less pressing, seeming even inconsequential; unless they effect you directly. But the form holds. If the pattern in question is one that ends in loss of liberty, the severity of the particulars of the moment matters not: the end will be the same. Restriction. Darkness. Horror. Death. Regeneration. Repeat.
Yes, Regeneration is in there. It always is. Until that last time when it isn’t. But it takes a toll; in lives, in Time, in possibilities, in losses irretrievable.
What Santayana was warning Humanity about when he said “he who fails to remember History repeats itXXX,” was our willingness to delude ourselves that “it will be different this time.” We—especially we open and optimistic Americans—are loath to see the pattern coming ‘round again. We are reluctant to accept that, along with gravity, taxes and coffee getting too cold too fast, simple human failings can so quickly turn to Evil and the life we have so carefully built over generations can be shattered in the space of decades or just years.
Awakening in time to act is key. It’s also rare.
Jeffrey Warren of St. Helena i the Napa Valley is awakening. I wonder where he stood on the issues of smoking bans, PC language or any of the other myriad ways in which the gentle push of engineered social pressure has been shaping his neighbors?
Under the auspices of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, “Public hearings” are being held to determine the fate of the family hearth....in the interest of basic fairness, we’d at least like the decision-makers to employ the rudiments of the scientific method, rather than riding the winds of energy dependence and global warming hysteria, before coming to a final decision.
The scientific method follows a rigid methodology. Ask a question. Do background research. Construct a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis. And then, communicate the results.
So what is the question? Are the fires in our homes bad because they add to global warming? Release carbon dioxide into the air? Pollute the atmosphere with soot and particulate matter? All of the above?
Where is the research? The Chronicle reported that “government studies” indicate that 33 percent of all “particulate matter” comes from your fireplace and mine. With all the industry and all the cars in the Bay Area, does anyone actually believe that?
Hm. I wonder how loudly he calls for Algore to climb down off his ridiculous scissor lift and actually check his numbers. He did miss the most important party of the scientific process: the hypothesis, complete with sustaining experimentally derived facts, must be consistently reproducible.
Mr. Warren describes his personal attachment to his fireplace:
a fire crackling in the fireplace is about a different kind of energy — psychic energy. Families gather around the fire.
...During the energy crisis in California, our family closed the parlor doors and gathered in one tiny room around the fire. ...Five of us read, played chess, did homework and paid bills, in a chilly room heated only by our tiny hearth.
Never was our family closer. The fire was more than a source of heat.It was a mystical, magical magnet of love, warmth and togetherness.
He’s completely right, there. Even my dog likes our fireplace. She tells us, “pretty good idea you meunkees came up with here,” as she lies watching the flames.
As I watch with her, I think about how many humans before me sat and looked into the fire; just feeling the comfort of safety and warmth or thinking great thoughts and imagining possibilities. Everything from the wheel, the cart, planting a seed and sticking around to nurture it to the Magna Carta and The Constitution were considered by the light of a hearth fire.
I think Mr. Warren has been doing some considering by the light of his fire.
We worry that the real issue here isn’t about health, global warming or energy savings, but about control.
Were it not about control, the dialogue would be about baffles and filters to eliminate soot, not about outright bans.
We’re not asking the real questions. So how can we test the hypothesis?
Nailed it in one, Mr Warren.
So what’s the next step—the next phase on this go-round of the spiral? I think Mr. Warren and voices like his are saying “Wait a minute here! You’re taking things away from people that they want and need! Without even proving that it’s good for anyone!” They will be met with voices louder and yet more shrill crying out for The Common Good and, yes, The Chiiildren.
His rational argument on behalf of actual science will be over-shouted and his very real emotional attachment to hearth [and home] will be characterized—dare I say character assassinated—with condemnations of selfishness and elitism. If everyone cannot have a fireplace, why should he?!? If his fire makes one poor distressed soul cough from miles away, how can he be so unfeeeeling?!?
Hey—if someone who wants a country with actual, meaningful borders can be called a “racist” without challenge, why would any other self-defensive protestation go unimpugned?
And if we leave those slurs unchallenged, well… We might as well hang it up, get in line and shuffle along.
Warren’s essay is excellent and eloquent, and you’ve added to its eloquence. People and fires - hearthfires and campfires - and dogs, go back a long way. Those fires, way back, were a place for family to sit together after a long day, to tell stories about ancestors, heroes and kings - and by doing that, preserve their culture and pass it on.
People like you and Warren recognize that the household fireplace is more than just a place to burn kindling. It’s an American symbol, one that ought to be right up there with motherhood, apple pie, and Thanksgiving turkey. Other countries should see that, too, but that may be asking too much.
Maybe - just maybe - folks in Phoenix could be persuaded to “cool it” except for the few days in the year when it gets cold enough, but for the rest of us {cue martial heroic music}, I say
“Give us our fireplaces or give us death!”
Not that there’s any giving involved, just an absence of taking.
Posted by ZZMike on 11/28/07 at 01:58 PMThanks, Mike.
Posted by Claire on 11/28/07 at 07:37 PM
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