Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy
Alan Caruba
Merril Press, August 2006, 143 pages, $15.00, ISBN 0936783486
Available on Amazon.com
Alan Caruba has an insightful mind and has been a brilliant journalist for more than 40 years. Cutting quickly to the chase with an unusual capacity for efficient wordsmithing, in his new book he unveils the operational forces that control a myriad of today’s political issues. His 143-page paperback collection of 50 short essays on eco-lunacy, Islam, education, immigration, and other topics should be carried with you everywhere.
When you need a breath of fresh air, common sense, and logic–with an unabashed conservative point of view–pick any essay and read it.
Often, I write lengthy reviews because I know full well my readers are not likely to buy the book I am describing, yet I still want them to get the essence of the wisdom conveyed by the authors. This lengthy review is the exception. Every word I use to describe it, and every quote I extract from it, is intended to drive you to your phone or mailbox to order this wonderful, easy-to-read $15 paperback.
I will send you a crisp $20 bill if, after you read it, you choose not to retain it and send it to me, as I plan to give it to all my friends for Christmas.
The following is an extensive sampling of what you will find in page after page of this wonderful book.
THE WISDOM OF ALAN CARUBA
Environmentalists
“Why, then, do environmentalists target agriculture and ranching, so necessary to feed a huge worldwide population? Why have the Greens succeeded in banning many of the pesticides that protect crops against the many insects that attack them or herbicides that protect crops against weeds that can destroy them? Why would Greens want DDT banned when there is no proof it poses a health threat and indeed could protect the millions who die every year from malaria for the lack of it?
“Why is the use of nuclear power for the generation of electricity opposed by the Greens? Why is the construction of much-needed new refineries opposed? Why is the extraction of oil from a tiny section of Alaska opposed?
“The answer to these questions is that both the environmental and the animal rights movements are essentially opposed to the existence of the human population of Earth. Whatever may contribute to diminishing that population is encouraged. Whatever may contribute to ending famine or the diseases that kill people is discouraged.”
“Indeed the story of the environmental movement is about the steady degradation of the American economy and other nations around the world. It is an attack on capitalism designed to thwart production of beneficial chemicals and pharmaceuticals, transportation, and every other element of the economy.”
“ALF and ELF are terrorists, no less than al Qaeda or any other organization that uses violence. In 2003, the groups claimed responsibility for 75 actions, striking against fur farms, logging operations, Forest Service facilities, slaughterhouses, and other targets throughout northwestern states. With few arrests, they are becoming more and more emboldened.”
Energy Illusions
“At the moment fuel cells are actually energy losers since it costs more to free the hydrogen than is earned by running hydrogen through fuel cells. I have often thought that this hydrogen economy seems intuitively flawed; using energy to make hydrogen to then be used as an energy source. Intuitively, it feels like the Escher painting with the water flowing uphill.”
“Other than the idiotic notion of wind powered electricity which would require covering every square mile of the US with giant windmills to generate only a small percentage of what coal-operated utilities currently produce, Greens have never found any source of energy they really like. Some groups are actively trying to remove dams used to produce hydroelectricity, and what is cleaner than water power?”
“The greatest waste of energy is to fail to use those resources within our own national borders. This is a deliberate effort to deny Americans access to their own energy, and it is what environmentalism and Democrats are all about.”
Education Destruction
“There was a time when local school boards were in charge of local schools. Those days are long gone. Today the teachers’ unions control all aspects of education in America and they dominate the Department of Education. They are considered a keystone of the Democratic Party and acknowledged by all as extremely liberal.
“As such, they have worked hard to deconstruct the former system of education that produced well-educated students up to the 1950s, and replaced it with a system that now produces children deliberately rendered ignorant of the basic skills, of history, of civics, of geography, et cetera. Add to this the massive infusion of lies about the Earth’s environment throughout the entire curriculum.”
“Would it be that we could ‘tweak’ the entire education system in America and make it work again? The reality, however, is that the thing is broken. It doesn’t work.
“Year after year, children pass through it from kindergarten to twelfth grade, too frequently emerging into the world full of the leftist and environmental nonsense of no value to anyone but the puppet masters who have crafted programs designed to make them docile, easily manipulated little citizens of the world.”
Immigration Problems
No one understands the immigration problem better or more objectively than Caruba. While being a strong supporter of our Latino population, he accurately criticizes the Bush administration for echoing so many of the United Nations-generated globalist policies that ignore the unrecognized threat of our 1,700-mile open border to allow a significant build-up of Muslim terrorists in our midst:
“There are a lot of reasons advanced to explain why the Bush administration will do nothing to stop the flow of illegals across our southern border, the vast bulk of whom are Mexicans, but the one I had not heard until [recently] was that Mexico would collapse without the money sent back by the Mexicans, legal and illegal, among us. When you look at the economic data, it is the one explanation that begins to make sense.”
Understanding Islam
We are all besieged by editorial after editorial trying to explain the problems in the Arab world. After you read Caruba’s “Can Islam Reform Itself?” you will quickly understand the problem and will need to read little more:
“Those candidates who have berated President Bush for having lied us into the war in Iraq miss the essential reason for our liberation of the nation. We are projecting our power to threaten any nation that harbors the jihadists. It is a matter of national survival.”
“The notion that millions of Muslims are bent on killing us for being infidels is beyond our imagination. The fact that this is preached in thousands of mosques is ever more bizarre and frightening.”
You are going to love this book–you have my word on it!
Jay Lehr, Ph.D. ([email protected]) is science director for The Heartland Institute.
