Every true conservative, or at least every Republican conservative, knows that our freedoms are under continuing threat from the Obama administration, which has already seized control of the health care and energy sectors, and is circling the education sector with the threat of a core curriculum. Worry not. Our Republican guardians are on the alert. At least in Wisconsin.
To avoid having voters strong-armed by presidential executive actions into taking all sorts of steps to prevent the climate change he argues is about to unleash droughts (or is it floods, or is it both), Republican members of an obscure state commission charged with managing hundreds of thousands of acres of forest land have ordered workers not to discuss the issue of climate change while at work. The state treasurer says chat “by the water cooler,” in the manner in which Wisconsin teams’ victories and losses (in the case of the NCAA finals it is a loss) are fine, but anything beyond that is simply inappropriate. To protect your freedom to burn coal and drive big SUVs, Republicans in Wisconsin feel they must impinge on your freedom of speech lest you come to an agreement that the climate is indeed changing. So far, not a word of indignation from libertarian Rand Paul, defender of all sorts of freedoms nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, which sports as its very First Amendment a guarantee that surely covers a workers’ right to have his say, even if at greater length than his views on some basketball game. And not necessarily only when a water cooler is handy.
