When the FBI transferred me to Los Angeles in 1970, I saw every nook and cranny of LA County, including some neighborhoods recently ravaged by fire. On a muddy hillside there was a scorched foundation, and a hand painted sign lamenting, “We’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain.” For as long as there has been recorded history, the hills surrounding LA burn annually, and this year is no exception.

California also has mudslides, sandstorms, and worst of all, earthquakes. Four days into my new assignment I was bounced out of bed by a 7.1 shake on the Richter scale. The dishes and glasses in our rented efficiency marched out of the cabinets and onto the floor.

Having grown up in South Florida, I was beginning to long for the good old days of 150 mile per hour hurricanes.

Today, fires, drought, and hurricanes are useful political fodder. Mudslides and earthquakes have not been politicized yet, but it won’t be long before they are.

In the Sixties, the Hard-Left used Civil Rights and the Anti-War Movement to further their march to totalitarianism. Now they use the environment. Everyone who studies history knows the Hard-Left cannot move their agenda forward without riding on somebody else’s movement. Or, they do it at the end of a rifle. Their endgame is harsh collectivism, with members of the Hard-Left firmly in control of people’s lives.

We need to understand that the Hard-Left is a relentless parasite and should be treated as a parasite. Instead, we politely tolerate this deadly ideology as if we have an obligation to do so. Have we become so brainwashed as to be unable to fight back?

We have suffered so much from the Hard-Left. Count the many ways they have forced us to alter our lives, not for the better. For example, while the French are safely enjoying nearly 80% of their energy from nuclear power plants, the Hard-Left in this country has shut down our development of nuclear power, forcing dependency on foreign oil. Today they are using the courts to halt new construction of coal fired power plants, because of the alleged “carbon footprint” of proposed new facilities. They won’t let us drill for oil nor will they let us build new refineries. Why do we put up with this oppression when in our hearts we know that they are wrong?

Costing good citizens more money at the pump and causing our government to kowtow to foreign powers and ideologies as an established foreign policy is a terrible price to pay for our tepidness, our collective political correctness. We need to be strong and demand a higher standard beyond mere anxiousness caused by questionable scientific theory as the single basis for the establishment of laws, rules, and regulations related to the environment. We need to take a hard line, or prepare to forfeit our rights and liberty.

Too often feel-good regulations and laws have disastrous, unintended consequences. Consider the elimination of DDT in 1972. Before 1972 DDT was a cheap and effective means of eradicating mosquitoes and other harmful bugs that carry deadly and debilitating diseases, infecting animals and humans.

But, in 1972 we were happily riding on a tide of emotional junk science. About that time, environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote a book entitled Silent Spring which became overnight “fact.” Carson’s book made two unscientific, untrue claims. First, DDT was accused of being a carcinogen that caused cancer in humans. Second, DDT was accused of weakening bird’s eggs, especially song-birds eggs, so that when the mother bird sat on the eggs to hatch them, the eggs cracked and the baby birds died. Later scientific testing would prove that these two claims were patently false.

But the environmentalist wackos aided by the Hard-Left used Carson’s book and other hysterical ramblings to further their political goals. And, by using simple repetition of flagrant lies posing as science they cemented into out national conscience the lie that DDT was very bad and should be banned. School children today are still taught the evils of DDT as well as the “victory” experienced by environmentalists when they successfully achieved its ban. All they really accomplished was the needless death of millions of children.

Remarkably, there is a recently built middle school in Virginia named after Rachel Carson. There she is celebrated as the Mother of Environmentalism. She is a hero to school children everywhere. Rachel Carson was dead wrong and her out of control emotions and errors have cost many lives. Millions more live in agony because she thought she knew better than anybody else. Carson is a classic example of what we are dealing with today when it comes to Global Warming hysteria: Know it all-ism.

Ironically the individual most responsible for DDT’s eventual ban was a Republican agency chief by the name of William Ruckelshaus, who served the Nixon Administration. He was a member of the Audubon Society and apparently believed the DDT threat to birds, but his order to ban DDT had to be an emotional or political response, since no serious science existed at that time to justify his decision.

The second irony is that upwards of 40% of the bird population in some areas have been killed by mosquitoes carrying the deadly West Nile Virus. That’s just in this country.

We used DDT for many years before 1972, nearly wiping out mosquitoes in the U.S. But since the DDT ban, millions of children and adults around the world have been needlessly killed or injured due to mosquitoes borne illnesses, including Malaria. Those deadly diseases – and the bugs that carry them - are now headed our way.

According to USA Today, when you travel to Puerto Rico the tourist bureau strongly recommends tourists not venture outdoors “from dusk to dawn” because of the spread of Dengue Fever, a disease for which there is no known vaccine. Dengue Fever, like Malaria is deadly and is spread by mosquitoes. Puerto Rico is a favorite stop-over for cruise lines that sail the Caribbean. Puerto Rican citizens routinely travel to and from the United States. USA Today also reports that Dengue Fever is cutting down populations worldwide, rivaling Malaria which also continues to infect millions.

Millions around the world can be saved, but only if we lift the ban on DDT. Sadly, the hysteria about DDT, spread by hyperventilating lefties and ignorant do-gooders, lives on.

Before we allow ourselves to be bullied by the likes of Al Gore and other members of the Hard-Left into more sweeping changes that can also negatively impact on the lives of millions, we should demand and receive the cold hard facts, citing the ban on DDT as some of our best evidence.

And, we don’t need a lawyer’s closing argument, we need facts. But the Hard-left behaves as if the trial is already over. Their case is weak and they know it, so they are now bullying us into accepting science-lite, the primary “proof,” being repetition. But words written and spoken by aggressive, loud mouthed manipulators are never fact. Nevertheless the Global Warmists are moving their agenda forward, day by day.

Weak people on both sides of the political aisle are beginning to cave-in to the power of simple repetition. Instead they should take the time to examine the facts. We must help our weary leaders fight back with all their might, because history tells us once conventional wisdom is established and becomes law, it is nearly impossible to alter it, let alone reverse it. If they won’t fight for our liberty we must get new leaders.

The next time somebody proclaims, “It’s for the children” or for the Polar Bears, you’d better listen carefully because you are about to be conned. It’s not about the children. It is about the Hard-Left’s relentless power grab, and they will continue to tug at heart strings to achieve a Communitarian Utopia, run by mouthy know-it-alls and obnoxious pushy types who think they know better than you about how you should live your lives.