So you thought an old-fashioned backyard cookout on the weekend was one last bastion of Americana untouched by the ravages of the bureaucratic machine? Well, turns out you thought wrong.
Apparently even your backyard barbecue is an evil the government should regulate. Image: 14gasgrillssaf.blogspot.com
It was recently uncovered that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just made it rain $15,000 of your hard-earned money on a student study out of the University of California-Riverside, to expose and ultimately regulate the evils your grease drippings pose to your health and the environment. (Nice to know they have your best interest at heart).
The study recommends use of a special drip tray between the food and the heat source, along with a “catalytic air filter” to reduce particulate emissions, turning your beloved propane grill into the culinary equivalent of a Toyota Prius, and adding another layer of bureaucratic meddling to a beloved and time-honored American tradition. You just can’t make this stuff up!
Unsurprisingly, the pushback was immediate as the discovery of the study has met with widespread ridicule and suspicion. Missouri State Senator Eric Schmitt earned himself national recognition on Tuesday by launching what’s being called the Pork Steak Rebellion, encouraging citizens across Missouri and the nation to fire up their propane grills in protest of the out-of-control agency’s incursion into America’s backyards. Perfectly timed with the first days of spring, the movement has picked up steam aided by local and national news stations, and a significant buzz on social media.
I jumped on the bandwagon too, but I like charcoal better. Take that, EPA!
So what, if anything, should be the takeaway from this ridiculous federally-funded study and subsequent media-fueled uproar? Surely the fact that some happiness-hating university students in California want to regulate our social behavior is not a newsworthy development. But that this, of all studies, was smiled upon by the EPA enough to loosen Uncle Sugar’s purse-strings, serves to provide us with a rare but important look into the true motives of the agency, and the underlying philosophy that drives it.
Deep down, the EPA is a fundamentally un-American, indeed anti-American construct. Under the auspices of “protecting the environment,” it invariably serves as a vehicle for increased government involvement in the lives of everyday citizens. It does not actually protect the environment so much as it uses the environment, as an excuse to incrementally, but steadily, seize the nation’s means of production.
Environmentalists, like the Soviets, ultimately want government control over all means of energy production, but differ (ever so slightly) on their tactics. Image: DCGazette.com
“The environment” turns out to be an extremely effective excuse for the consolidation of central power, because while it deeply affects all of us, its condition is subject to so many variables as to render human influence impossible to objectively quantify. Add in the variable of political corruption in the scientific community, and you are left with the perverted use of science to invite the government into every aspect of life and culture, in an embarrassingly unscientific way. And we haven’t even begun to mention the use of the environment by the United Nations via Agenda 21 to threaten national sovereignty and private property.
Throughout the last half-century, we have been subjected to calls for immediate action on the part of all levels of government and the international community to curb everything from the threat of “global cooling” to “global warming,” to just plain old “climate change,” and to regulate everything from cow flatulence to car exhaust, to wood burning stoves to now your leisure time out back. The only constant in any of these alarmist threats and oppressive regulations is that, no matter what the climate is allegedly doing, it’s always your fault.
In William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies,” a group of school children get stranded on an island and within a matter of days are burning the forest down and killing each other. The moral to the story is that we need a governing authority to set rules and regulations because we are fundamentally primitive, wicked beings. Image: IMDB.com
They sell this thinly-veiled statist and globalist agenda by perpetuating the lie that You, as an individual, are fundamentally an evil blight on the planet. You consume, you waste, you destroy everything you encounter, and given half a chance, will destroy even your friends and neighbors in a full-on Lord of the Flies-esque tribal war. Therefore, being the wicked and immature curmudgeon that you are, you need a merciful overseer to set certain controls on your wanton consumption, to avert the disaster that you will cause if left to your own devices.
And in the most basic sense, the barbecue grill is the quintessential symbol of Americans being left to their own devices.
The backyard barbecue is a great equalizer in western society, a universal symbol of friendship and fellowship. It brings us together as a community across cultural, ethnic and geographic boundaries. It returns us to our simpler, more primitive roots by bringing us intimately closer to the food we eat. Grilling outside represents to us a pure, if brief, moment of unmitigated freedom in which we don’t need to feel guilty about being exactly who and what we are. So it’s no wonder the state, which depends on you feeling miserable about yourself for its living, wants an invite to the party.
So naturally, I would like to encourage you to use this occasion, to pledge noncompliance with the regulatory monstrosity that is the EPA and fire up your grill a little more often this spring. Whether you are actively participating in the “Pork Steak Rebellion,” or if you are just barbecuing for the love of food, fellowship and sunshine, this story represents an opportunity for you to not only love who you are and what you are doing, but feel righteous in your primitive, carnivorous ways. Cheers y’all!
