Strange Medicine

What does Uncle Friar, the Town Crier say? Oh yes . . .
Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

Sorry, I’m a little nervous . . . but I do get warmed up as I get going.

The learned scholars stood outside the entrance to the council chambers and waited to be summoned within to deliver their findings. Their silent posturing conveyed to all passersby that a consensus between these three intellectuals was far from achieved, and so it made for an unusual amount of drama concerning a study that most community members considered a waste of time. After all, for most people there were far more pressing issues in the daily struggles of life than fretting over matters beyond their immediate control.

Clearly though, this was not the case for the three who stood waiting, pondering as if the fate of the entire world rested on the verdicts they would render. Suddenly, their attention shifted as Nawkaw, the youngest member of the esteemed council, appeared in the doorway to the council chamber. Nawkaw motioned with a simple nod of his head for the three to join the debate within.

Almost immediately upon entering, and entirely in violation of protocol, Bemidii loudly proclaimed, “There is no mistaking the evidence! The great sheets of ice are breaking apart and melting, and we will be doomed as a people unless we repent and change our ways at once!”

Nawkaw was about to rebuke the display, which showed both a lack of decorum and a lack of respect for the chamber, but the elder statesman inside abruptly raised his hand, silently commanding to let the outburst pass without notice.

Then, Waabaan—an Ojibwe chieftain—lowered his hand and turned his gaze to the newly arrived guests.

“Thank you for joining us this evening,” Chief Waabaan said, making a gentle directing motion with his hand toward the fire in the center of the council lodge. “Won’t you please sit by the fire and warm yourselves.”

Bemidii, Chas-chunk-a, and Migisi took their seats within the wigwam and sat silently, awaiting their turn to receive the smoking pipe of “goodwill” that was being passed to the members sitting around the fire. After an appropriate period of silence and reflection, Nawkaw again nodded, this time for Migisi to speak.

Migisi said, “I too have studied the ice mountains. And while great rocks of ice break away and tumble to the ground, I do not see anything different than what has occurred since the time I was a child. I do not share Bemidii’s belief that our people are doomed.”

Bemidii again violated the code of behavior and shouted, “And what do you think you know? You are just a silly old woman, always counseling for calm and reason! I say again, the ice is melting and will create great floods. We are doomed unless you, as council leaders, take immediate control over the affairs of our people and demand that they comply with the new ways in which we decide they must live!”

Chas-chunk-a calmly interjected, saying “My dear friend, while I agree with your reasoning that the ice is turning to water, by what right do you claim to control the affairs of other men and women? Are we not free, living beings? Do you also propose to control the affairs of the animal world and demand they change their ways? What strange medicine do you practice that allows you to proclaim, with absolute certainty, that compliance with your new ways will have any impact on the melting ice? Shall we surrender our freedom to you and your theories?”

Bemidii remained impassioned and mocked his friend. “I cannot believe you sit and do nothing while your reason confirms my belief that the ice is melting! What kind of strange madness do you practice?”

Bemidii’s continued outbursts and insults against those who did not share his beliefs caused the council deliberation to rapidly degenerate into a bedlam that lasted awhile. The chief sat remarkably still throughout the discourse, occasionally glancing at Nawkaw and signaling with his eyes that it was acceptable for the mayhem to continue.

Finally, during a temporary lull in the debate, Migisi looked across the fire and spoke to Chief Waabaan. “As my mother before me, always I have admired your wisdom and your respect for the rights of others, especially the weakest amongst us. But your voice has been strangely silent while this debate rages within. Please, may I ask to know your thoughts?”

Chief Waabaan slowly raised his smoking pipe to his lips and took a long, relaxing, puff. He then lifted his gaze to the top opening in the wigwam and slowly exhaled before redirecting his fixation to the center fire. He spoke to no one in particular—which was his customary manner—but everyone felt as if they were receiving personal guidance. The chief conveyed his thoughts little-by-little.

“What Bemidii says is true—that we must not dirty that which belongs to our neighbor. But we do not deposit our body waste, and we do not direct the smoke from our fires into our neighbor’s wigwam. If the heat and smoke from our fires are causing the ice mountains to melt, then why does our Great Father provide us with fallen trees for our fires, why does He send forth great flashes of light and thunder to ignite the prairies and the forests, and why does He cause rock mountains in distant lands to the west to flow red with fire from their bellies?”

Chief Waabaan paused to let the logic of his questions register before continuing. “I have often studied the ways of our Great Father, and I have reasoned that it is the nature of His mind to constantly move in an unhurried, back-and-forth rhythm. The depth of winter brings forth the warmth of summer, before winter returns again. The trees glide effortlessly between barrenness when snow covers the ground, and colorful brilliance in the moon of the falling leaves. The waters rush in and rush out without fail.

“I can see, with my own eyes, the gentle rhythm that occurs within this mysterious mind. And so I reason that someday the ice mountains will again move away and return to where they came, in the land to the north, because the stories passed down from our fathers tell us the ice mountains were not always here. And as night follows day, and day follows night, so I also reason that after resting for many seasons in faraway lands, they will again return to our lands.”

Everybody sitting around the fire gently nodded in concurrence with the quiet wisdom of Chief Waabaan.

After a period of personal reflection, and his passion subdued, Bemidii said tepidly, “Your words speak of things that have come before, and of things that may come again for those not yet born. Please accept my apology for my brash behavior in the presence of these wise men. But my concern is for those who live now. What shall we do if the great floods come while we live?”

Chief Waabaan slowly lifted his gaze from the fire and made direct eye contact with Bemidii. “We shall do as our fathers before us did, and as our brethren in the animal world must do—we adapt.”

§

The siren songs from global warming proponents would have you believe that the ice fields are rapidly melting and that an environmental disaster of epic proportions is about to be unleashed as ocean water levels rise and vast flooding spreads across the globe. And the supposed cause of all this prophetic misery is none other than the substance you exhale: carbon dioxide.

But the siren song is not a new one, as evidenced by Bemidii and Chas-chunk-a. While this short-story may be contemporary in nature, this work of fiction was set in the time period of . . . well, about twelve thousand years ago, in an area now known as northern Wisconsin. In that time, almost all of Canada and most of the northern United States were covered by glaciers.

Bemidii and Chas-chunk-a were predictive, because the “ice mountains” were indeed melting, a process that had started about nine thousand years earlier and which was completed about two thousand years after their deaths. And what of the great flooding that Bemidii had warned about? Yes, there was a great environmental disaster such as the world had never seen. The largest of these environmental disaster areas is known as “Gitchigoomie,” the Ojibwe name for Lake Superior.

What? You never thought of Lake Superior as an environmental disaster? Well, it is, as are the lakes Michigan, Huron, Ontario, and Eerie, if you follow the line of thinking from today’s global warming alarmists. And these Great Lakes are only a part of the environmental disaster suffered in these lands. Still today, more than ten thousand years after the glaciers melted, the citizens of northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and most of the province of Ontario live in a glacial melt environmental disaster area containing thousands of fresh water lakes. What a tragedy, indeed, for these folks who must cope with this environmental catastrophe on a daily basis.

The glacial melting that occurred more than ten thousand years ago is but a fraction of a second ago in the earth’s geological clock. It will be thousands of years hence before we know if the current glacial melt is a continuation of that which started about twenty-one thousand years ago, long before man had any industrial impact on the environment (what an inconvenient truth for those who want to blame man’s activities for global warming). Likewise, it will be that long before we know whether the pendulum Chief Waabaan spoke of is about to swing in the other direction.

But I devote time not to write about global warming, but to write instead about the loss of my property and my liberty. Nothing I can write here would persuade global warming enthusiasts of the silliness of their logic, for they are drunk with a religion that defies reason. Neither can an exposé of e-mail scandals, scientific cover-ups, or the hypocrisy of “do as I say, not as I do” politicians (who jet about in personal luxury) do anything to add to the debate; for if the global warming proponents say the earth is flat, then science be damned—the earth is flat.

The question is not whether global warming is real or whether global warming is man-made; that question is irrelevant in my opinion, for the mind of God will do as He will with His creation. The real question should be: “Is it a good thing to pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the ground that grows our food?”

Nobody, regardless of political persuasion, can realistically answer this question in the affirmative. What makes the issue a conservative versus liberal matter is that the liberal uses the scaremongering of global warming as justification to confiscate property and control the lives of other people. The conservative, on the other hand, rejects any attempt by the statists to confiscate personal property and personal liberty—for tyranny is always on the march, regardless of the disguise it uses. And so political battle lines are drawn, as they always are, between those who favor liberty and those who favor authoritarian government control.

If you believe, irrespective of your politics, that it is not a good thing to pollute the air, water, and ground, then do as Chief Waabaan counseled—adapt. Change your lifestyle, change your living habits, and reduce in totality your personal impact on the earth. But those who are the biggest proponents of forcing me to adapt to their ideas of utopia are the biggest polluters amongst us; they fly about in personal jets, luxuriate in the finest hotels and restaurants, and are chauffeured around town as they travel about from one global conference to another, scheming about ways to separate me from my property and my liberty.

If you also believe it is not a good thing to pollute the environment, and you are a proponent of cap-and-tax legislation, then how will sending trillions of dollars of hard-earned taxpayer money to politicians in Washington reduce environmental pollution one damn bit? Or, as Chas-chunk-a more politely asked, “What strange medicine do you practice that allows you to proclaim, with absolute certainty, that compliance with your new ways will have any impact on the melting ice? Shall we surrender our freedom to you and your theories?”