Salon.com War and Global Warming

[Channman 2]

www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2007/10/10/britney/index1.htm

I was scanning acticles on the internet and came accross Salon.com. Camille Paglia responds to several questions, the questions posted here are located on page two "The paranoid withdrawal fantasy", from Phillip J. Hubbell of Omaha, Neb. and a Global Warming question from a guy named Hanson.

I left the "Lesbian bathroom sex: A report from the front lines!" discussion alone. That might be a topic of interest for someone else.

Q: Frankly, I have greater respect for Osama bin Laden than for any of the Democratic senators. Finding myself between al-Qaida and the DNC/Moveon.org/Daily Kos in a war zone, I would be hard-placed to know which way to shoot.

Phillip J. Hubbell
Omaha, Neb.

A: Surely you don't really mean what you say. Surely this bloody scenario is a rhetorical sally, meant to shock and amuse.

The senators of my party, with a few stellar exceptions like Dianne Feinstein, may be a pack of vain, spineless, poll-puking, strutting peacocks, but they are not mass murderers. They did not coolly plan an amoral strike on American landmarks and cause the unspeakable suffering, death and incineration of nearly 3,000 people, U.S. citizens as well as foreign nationals.

As for the Democratic Party's governing committee or the combative, impudent left-liberal activist groups, they are just as committed to their altruistic vision of a future America as are conservatives, who base their values on tradition and faith. Both sides deserve respect.

However, I must confess my own exasperation with the Democratic leadership, who spout tiresome platitudes but achieve little and who stampede off on puerile publicity stunts that alienate potential voters across party lines. The latest example is the near-delusional campaign to turn popular radio host Rush Limbaugh, who has unwaveringly supported the military for nearly 20 years, into an anti-military antichrist. If Democrats are serious about ideology-based government regulation of talk radio, then the party is fast abandoning its fundamental principles, central to which should be constitutionally protected free speech.

To return to your war zone hypothetical, I doubt that the sociopaths of al-Qaida would be moved to mercy by your extermination of (probably pacifist and fumblingly unarmed) fellow Americans. Wouldn't you be next in the terrorists' line of fire?

This kind of partisan rancor and mutual recrimination are the sad legacy of two self-destructive administrations in a row. Bill Clinton's lies about his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky paralyzed the government and tainted his legacy, while George Bush's poor judgment and managerial ineptitude have mired us in an endless, brutal war with little chance for a happy ending.

I find it hard to believe that my fellow Democrats want to backtrack and relive every tedious scandal from the Clinton era. But that's what we'll get if Hillary is the nominee -- a long, sulfurous night of the walking dead, with chattering skeletons tumbling out of every closet. I've been discouraged by the clumsy missteps of the Edwards campaign, but I'm still hopeful about Barack Obama, who had the guts and good sense to publicly oppose the Iraq war from the start and whose ascent promises a clean, invigorating break from the sordid past.

Q: I too grew up in upstate New York. I am an environmental groundwater geologist (who almost majored in fine arts). Your take on the Al Gore/global warming pseudo-catastrophe was right on target. Anyone can read up on Holocene geology and see that climate changes are caused by polar wandering and magnetic reversals. It is entertaining, yet sad to read bloviage from Leonardo DiCaprio, who is so self-centered that he thinks the earth's history and climate is a function of his short personal stay on this planet. Still he, Al Gore, Prince Charles and so on, ad nauseam, continue with their jet-set lifestyles. What hypocrisy!

Hanson

A: Thank you for your input on the mass hysteria over global warming. The simplest facts about geology seem to be missing from the mental equipment of many highly educated people these days. There is far too much credulity placed in fancy-pants, speculative computer modeling about future climate change. Furthermore, hand-wringing media reports about hotter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are rarely balanced by acknowledgment of the recent cold waves in South Africa and Australia, the most severe in 30 years.

Where are the intellectuals in this massive attack of groupthink? Inert, passive and cowardly, the lot of them. True intellectuals would be alarmed and repelled by the heavy fog of dogma that now hangs over the debate about climate change. More skeptical voices need to be heard. Why are liberals abandoning this issue to the right wing, which is successfully using it to contrast conservative rationality with liberal emotionalism? The environmental movement, whose roots are in nature-worshipping Romanticism, is vitally important to humanity, but it can only be undermined by rampant propaganda and half-truths.

[quade 4]

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I was scanning acticles on the internet and came accross Salon.com. Camille Paglia responds to several questions . . .

Because, ya know, she's such an expert on terrorism and weather?

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[AWL71 0]

Shes as much an expert as you are. Her points must be invalid since they don't gel with yours.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

[quade 4]

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Shes as much an expert as you are. Her points must be invalid since they don't gel with yours.

I don't have a blog and I don't purport to be an expert on the subject. That said, I listen to the people that I believe are experts rather than pundits.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Channman 2]

In response to gelling of viewpoints. I found her answers to the two question very interesting, not what I was exspecting from a Liberal.