Campaigning for president in Iowa, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke thinks farmers need to do their “fair share” to combat global warming, handing over some of their crops to save the Earth.

Kid you not.  According to Breitbart News:

Democrat 2020 presidential candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke proposed Friday in Iowa that the U.S. “allow” farmers to give up their “fair share” of crops to fight climate change.

O’Rourke stood aloft as he proclaimed his message at a rally in Marshalltown, Iowa Friday:

If we allow farmers to earn a profit in what they grow, if we allow them to contribute their fair share in combatting Climate Change by growing cover crops, allowing the technologies that invest in precision tilling and farming, capturing more of that carbon out of the air is another way in which they can make a profit.  Keep those farms together, pass them on to the next generation, and allow them to provide us our food and national security, our independence from the rest of the world, our ability to provide for the rest of the world.

Where does he get the idea that farmers’ land and crops are “his” land and crops, to be used by the state as he deems fit?  That’s called a tax hike in ordinary terms, and state expropriation if you look at it closely enough.  Hugo Chávez used to think Venezuelan farmers’ land and crops were “his” land and crops once upon a time, too, and we all know how well that worked out.

Just as idiotically, where does Beto get the idea that crops just float in out of nowhere, usable as payment and currency, and aren’t the result of back-breaking labor from farmers and their workers?  Forcing farmers and their laborers to work land in exchange for no payment other than the supposed satisfaction of saving the Earth is, in normal terms, known as “slavery.”  Decent people pay their help.

The whole thing shows the extent to which O’Rourke would go to enact his green agenda.  It seems the new socialist mantra is that so long as you can virtue-signal, you can help yourself to anything from those who work for it.

It also shows that he sees global warming as an instrument for increasing state power, even as he puts it in new dulcet terms such as “allowing” farmers to “contribute” their fair share.  What he means is what socialists always mean: taking other people’s stuff by force.

And like any socialist (I’m gonna call him one with a proposal like that), he always favors what he favors conditioned on himself being the one on top, doing all the “redistributing.”  How’d he like some Iowa farmers to “redistribute” some of his belongings in the name of saving the Earth?  It’s the same logic.

It’s vapid.  It’s impractical.  And it has potential for destroying the entire farm structure of the U.S., given that farmer after farmer in such as scenario will “go Galt.”

What it shows is that Beto hasn’t a clue as to what makes economies run.  The ignorant boob’s lust is solely for power over others.  Call it socialism with a boyish and syrupy face.

Image credit: Crockodile via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.