WTH is the Left Waging War on Things That Work? Noah Rothman Explains
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
The dictators of the nanny state are waging war on things that work. Daily appliances that make life manageable (your gas stoves, your AC, your lawn equipment) are increasingly under assault, with dubious climate/equity rationales. But the effects on climate are negligible, and the myriad electric substitutions don’t just have environmental costs of their own, many simply don’t work. So what is really going on? Instead of protecting the consumer as these bans claim to do, this new technocratic bullying is imposing a lifestyle brand – electric cars, electric stoves, heat pumps, etc. If you don’t like it… well, you *will* like it. The progressive Puritans will make sure of that.
Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review, a former MSNBC commentator, and a former associate editor for Commentary Magazine. He is the author of The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives' War on Fun.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell is talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name knows what it's all about. |
| 0:35.2 | Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. |
| 0:36.4 | I'm Mark Dyson. |
| 0:37.3 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:38.3 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:40.3 | Mark, what now? |
| 0:41.3 | Well, Danny, we're talking today about the war on things that works. |
| 0:46.3 | So the left, in the name of climate change, in the name of saving the planet, is forcing us to give up everything in our arsenal of conveniences. |
| 0:57.0 | They want to get rid of our gas-powered cars. They want us to get rid of our gas-powered |
| 1:00.6 | stoves. They want us to get rid of our gas-powered lawnmowers. They want to make refrigerators |
| 1:05.2 | more expensive. They want to make air conditioning more expensive. They want to make heat more expensive, all in the name of saving |
| 1:12.3 | the planet. And all the while not doing that themselves, we should add. Because of course, |
| 1:17.7 | hypocrisy is the sine qua non of being an environmental political lecturer in these times. So I told Mark |
| 1:25.8 | I wanted to start out because I have this, I have this tiny |
| 1:28.5 | sort of parallel rant. Those of you who know, we know I live in Fairfax County and Virginia. |
| 1:34.8 | And Fairfax County is obviously dominated and has been for many years by Democrats, but it's not |
| 1:40.6 | insane. It's still Virginia. And so, you know, we only have to separate our recyclables and our trash. |
| 1:46.4 | We don't have to, as some do in some parts of our country and overseas, have four separate kinds of rubbish. |
| 1:53.7 | Paper, glass, plastic, this, that, the other thing, you know. |
| 1:57.4 | So I got a flyer from Fairfax County informing, not me to be fair, but informing all of us, |
... |
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