Today, especially in the Mountain States and some of the Great Plains, there is massive alarm being broadcast by a wide range of people. One of the fears is that of mining: controversial for more than half a century: gold, rare earths, coal, even sand and gravel.
The other is much newer: a fear of data centers. Data centers are demanded, we are told, by the explosive growth of so-called AI. By the massive expansion of the internet.
Mining, we are told, destroys the land. It consumes massive amounts of water. millions of gallons of Diesel fuel are burned in the equipment. It destroys wildlife habitat, pollutes the waters of the US, drives away tourists, and more.
Data centers are equally bad. They consume gigawatts of electrical power, their demand driving up prices for electricity and even denying people adequate power for their homes. To produce that power requires mining and burning of coal, or drilling for and burning natural gas, all producing air pollution. They also consume millions of gallons of water for cooling. They occupy square miles of land.
There are many other evils associated with these operations. Thousands of postings, tens of thousands of words, are being written weekly in opposition to these things.
All of them, we are told, are the result of greedy corporations, lusting after the almighty (or not) dollar: they are the Robber Barons of the 19th Century, reborn and just as conniving, despicable, and corrupting. Virtually all of the postings also demand that government, and voters, do something to get rid of them: to prevent new ones and even close existing ones.
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The Price of Liberty 
Really? Should the States imitate the rest of the world?
This meme recently showed up. You may have seen something similar.
Humm. Does this make sense? For years, we have seen the so-called Progressives (Tranzis and Regressives in our opinion) use this sort of tactic frequently. “The United States,” we are told, “must learn from the rest of the (Western/European-based) world, and jettison old-fashioned, out-dated, and so-called conservative ideals and concepts.”
Now it appears that the easily-labelled and frequently-derided extreme-right-wing conservatives are imitating their political enemies. As common as that is, it still comes across as odd. And dangerous for their own cause.
From the point of view of lovers of liberty (like us here at TPOL), none of the nations listed in the image seem to be very good role models. For anything, including how they run immigration or migration. The graphic does not point out that many of these nations also are very authoritarian. Some would also punish anyone daring to migrate from their wonderful, blessed motherland.
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