Jane Fonda hawking anti-American slogans in a “march” on Washington against the war in Iraq indicates everything seems to be coming around again now that Congress has gone Democrat. NPR is positively giddy with snappy diatribes against George Bush and full coverage of the ludicrous Scooter Libby trial; the point of which is lost on most everyone except those who cling with clammy hands to anything that discredits US Iraq policy. You can see why powerful ’50s and ’60s political writer Drew Pearson named his influential column the “Washington Merry-GO-Round.”
In this climate — not to make a pun — global warming has graduated from anti-capitalist zeitgeist to accepted fact. The usual suspects — The New York Times, Washington Post, national network television, CNN and old reliable NPR — couch any weather event in terms of man-made global warming. Of course, those who question the doomsday prognostications are labeled global warming “deniers,” who need to be sent off to gulags where they can be “re-educated” and made to see the truth. However, the truth is that manipulating computer models to prove whatever you want is not science, and science is still at odds on climate change.
Man-made climate change, rather than accepting that the planet goes through cycles quite naturally, is an offshoot of the old environmental movement where disillusioned Marxists sought refuge after the collapse of socialism in the 1990s. From their new redoubt, conservation became class warfare and scientific data useful only when it suited the cause. At the heart of the new deep environmental movement is the holy writ that a growing population spells doom for Mother Earth, as spelled out in the sacred text of the enviros: The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich. Like many mystical religious works, not any of the predictions in the book have come true. Thus true believers resort to a policy of inerrancy in direct proportion to the inaccuracy of the text. If confronted with inconvenient facts that explode their cherished beliefs, the faithful simply hold their breath until you go away. Just read America Alone by Mark Steyn to see how Europe is committing demographic suicide by adhering to the false prophecy of population doomsdaying: Very soon now, Europe will be predominantly Islamic.
This brings me to a proposal floating around the North Carolina Legislative Building — driven by inaccurate population statistics —to spend $1 billion to purchase land in the state to create “open spaces.” Right here in a nutshell you have the pieces that make up the lunacy of current environmental thinking. First of all, the plan assumes we are becoming over-populated, and therefore, developing land at an alarming rate. The television report I saw said — breathlessly — that builders are destroying 277 acres a day in North Carolina, as if tomorrow there wouldn’t be a tree or blade of grass left. Typically, the reporter simply regurgitated the press release from some environmental group without putting the claim in context for viewers.
I had to have help with this, but I was able to ascertain that that there are approximately 30 million acres in this state. At 277 acres a day, and assuming that less than 10 percent of the land mass is already built on, we can be comforted that little green men visiting us is a greater probability than the over-development of the Old North State. Yet this ludicrous sort of folderol is occupying the agenda of our legislators while our roads are becoming impassable and the state’s other infrastructure is close to collapsing. Better we fix some bridges and finish some overpasses before we waste a billion on more open spaces.
Notes from La-La Land
In a Jan. 19 letter to Duke University alumni, parents and friends (read donors) school president Richard Brodhead said he “called on the district attorney to turn the case over to an independent party to restore faith in the legal process, and we invited Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann to return to Duke to continue their studies.” Now, after a wave of nausea at this vain gesture, I would like to call on Mr. Brodhead to step aside too, and resign as president of Duke. He abandoned his own students to the politically correct mob that sets the agenda at Duke without so much as a backward glance. When he found out the boys may be innocent, an assumption he should have made in the beginning, he started running for high ground to save his own hide. His first reactions are sadly typical of college management across the country. If one of them would stand up to the radical scholars when they use innuendo to prevent colleagues from gaining tenure because they don’t toe the politically correct party line — a commonplace at elite universities — or capitulate to the mob of class warriors on or near campus who seek to stain anyone, students included, that do not fit the profile of the victimized, maybe universities would return to traditional scholarship and actually teach students something.
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Speaking of the now disgraced Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, I can’t help but notice the similarity of what befell the Duke lacrosse players and recently retired CIA officer Brian Kelley, who had his life ruined by the incompetence and zealotry of FBI managers, most notably counterintelligence agent David Szady — also retired and working in a private industry. Szady, who is scheduled as a speaker for a NC Technology Agency conference in Charlotte in February, is a sleazy sort. He never apologized or acted like he was in the wrong after hounding and disgracing Kelley, thinking he was the mole that turned out to be the notorious Robert Hanssen. Kelley, who appeared as a speaker at the first Raleigh Spy Conference in 2003 — is writing a book about his ordeal with the FBI now wending its way through the censors at CIA, FBI and other agencies. (A current new book, Enemies by Bill Getz, has a chapter on the Kelley case and the connection to Chapel Hill suspected spy Felix Bloch. Go to www.crownpublishing.com for more.) Meanwhile, I suspect Nifong will respond like Szady and never show remorse or apologize. Their sort never do.
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Did you catch that several Polish priests and a bishop confessed to spying for the Soviet Union before the Berlin Wall came tumbling down? I cite Chris Andrew’s book The Sword and the Shield written with former KGB Col. Vasili Mitrokhin that uses formerly classified information revealing that the KGB fully penetrated the World Council of Churches and used the group to recruit priests for major espionage activities. Think about that when you send money to the National Council of Churches, the US affiliate organization.
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It hits me sometimes that while we were living in a world of plenty after World War II, the British remained on wartime rations until the early 1960s. Last month, Great Britain made its last payment in its war debt to the US. Now that’s a nation to admire, but no: The British once ran an empire — and a quite good one at that — so they are airbrushed from US history books or dismissed as “imperialists.” Oh, I forgot, we also owe them our language, our form of government, the concept of common law and the principle of freedom. Thank you, Great Britain, not all of us have forgotten.