The blogosphere has been all atwitter over charges and counter-charges about Al Gore's energy consuption. I won't try to get to the bottom of the issue because I don't care about the former veep's level of personal virtue. I will say that if he doesn't turn out the lights and do other easy things to conserve energy, then shame on him.
What interests me about the whole matter is how it resembles the "chickenhawk" issue. In the lead up to the Iraq invasion, I wrote in Liberty, "the point is . . . that those politicians and pundits and intellectuals who think the U.S. should attack dozens, if not hundreds, of countries, yet failed to serve when they had the chance, are hypocrites. Their failure to serve indicates a lack of seriousness about their values, and members of the political class attack each other on this basis all of the time."
Hypocrisy is the cheapest, and probably most common of political attacks. The fact is that a person's prior military service has no bearing on the quality of his or her arguments for war, although it makes a fun fact to know and tell. Likewise, Mr. Gore's personal virtue, or lack thereof, have no bearing on the seriousness of the global warming issue; even though his political enemies get great pleasure from pointing out his failings.
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I know and accept that one's arguments for or against war can be intellectually honest without them having served in the military.
However, when you look at the people arguing for the Iraq/Iran war, so many are not only non-military, but come from families that have no record of military service. Not to mention the fact that so many are small, wimpy, pussy-men like John Podheredtz who would get his ass kicked throughly by your twelve year old daughter.
Lets see the about the warmongers....there's the very wimpny (and SHORT) Dick Cheney who got FIVE deferments.
Then there's that runt George Bush.
JPod, Doug Fieth, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, Ken Adelman, Sean Hannity, Neil Boortz, Charles Krauthammer (Does he not look like the Joker in the Batman movie now?), Fred Barnes, Jay Nordlinger, George Will, and a host of other
SHORT, SCRAWNY, BALD, GEEKY, UGLY men..........
who are willing to send Tyrese from Detroit and Ted from Oklahoma to go fight wars for their favorite country, all the while pushing for more Juan's to be admitted to the US so they can go fight it too.
Son, so much of global warming is based on trust and numbers (the mathematical models, the number of real scientists who actually believe) that there is no way to independently verify, or in many cases even understand, the arguments.
We take it on faith, and look at the character of those preaching at us to see if they live the life and walk the walk they preach to us.
Al Gore preaches self-denial and sacrifice for generations to come in order to save mankind.
Yet while he preaches to us to live small he continues to live large -- like so many other Southern TV preachers.
I am a skeptic on global warming, It is being preached noww like it is the Apocalypse and the second coming of Christ.
When I see its Chief High Priest, Al Gore, laying up his treasure on earth while he preaches to us to lay up our treasure in heaven, I just naturally become even more skeptical.
You are right. Given the tenuous scientific basis for the projections and given the hypocritical behavior of the High Priesthood of Warming, I just naturally see Al and his followers as preaching just another bogus
Southern TV faith.
Call it "chickenhawks" if you will. I look at it as common sense. If you are trying to convince me that the world is coming to an end in three days and I must throw away all my possessions, wrap myself in sackcloth and become a mendicant, you damn well better hope I don't see the size of your Swiss bank account and the number of 10 year bonds you have.
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