House of Eratosthenes

Some damn dirty foreigner is telling our politcians what to do, and to resign if they don’t do what he says. Well, this time, I’m on the damn dirty foreigner’s side. And it’s not because I agree with the damn dirty foreigner’s position, which I do. It’s because the damn dirty foreigner didn’t bring up the matter of U.S. politicians doing what damn dirty foreigners say. The objects of his excoriation, on the other hand, are the ones who brought it up. Yeah that’s right. They started it, and he finished it.

Lord Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, has sent an open letter to Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe, which says in part…

It is inappropriate for elected Senators such as yourselves to suggest that any person should refrain from exercising that right [to free speech], as you have done in your letter of October 27 to the CEO of ExxonMobil. That great corporation has exercised its right of free speech – and with good reason – in openly providing support for scientists and groups that dare to question how much the increased concentration of CO2 in the air may warm the world. You must honour the Constitution, withdraw your letter and apologize to ExxonMobil, or resign as Senators.

You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to “senior elected and appointed government officials” who disagree with your opinion. You are elected officials yourselves. If you do not believe in the right of persons within the United States to exercise their fundamental right under the world’s greatest Constitution to petition their elected representatives for the redress of their grievances, then you have no place on Capitol Hill. You must go.

No question about it, Lord Monckton is a “Must-Tard.” Which is this blog’s terminology for persons who seem incapable of stating their position on anything, without using words like “must,” “ought,” “should,” “gotta.” In other words, folks who want short-circuit the cogitative process, by leap-frogging forward to the thing that needs to be done. Often, because they can’t state, to others or to themselves, how and why they think it should be done. And usually, such persons are from Europe.

But Lord Monckton is a must-tard who is not only able to articulate why it is the thing must be done…but he makes a water-tight case. Upholding the Constitution, after all, is a duty sworn by all members of Congress when they begin or renew their services. Surely it makes very little sense, to have a Congress curtailed from prohibiting speech, but able to bully whoever it wants when it comes to funding certain positions.

What was the original letter sent by the Senators to the CEO of Exxon-Mobil? James Taranto wrote it up recently; the full text is here. Excerpt below:

We are convinced that ExxonMobil’s longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy.

Obviously, other factors complicate our foreign policy. However, we are persuaded that the climate change denial strategy carried out by and for ExxonMobil has helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind, and has thus damaged the stature of our nation internationally. It is our hope that under your leadership, ExxonMobil would end its dangerous support of the “deniers.” Likewise, we look to you to guide ExxonMobil to capitalize on its significant resources and prominent industry position to assist this country in taking its appropriate leadership role in promoting the technological innovation necessary to address climate change and in fashioning a truly global solution to what is undeniably a global problem.

And I believe that explains my earlier comments. Where in tarnation does Lord Monckton get off telling us what to do? Where, indeed. The Senators started it; he finished it. From out of a relative vaccuum, emerged this dictum that it is a priority of paramount importance, or of relatively high importance, that research by private interests in the United States, should only be carried out if the damn dirty foreigners would approve of it.

And along comes a damn dirty foreigner who disagrees with the dictum. Maybe the dictum is still right; maybe the damn dirty foreigner is wrong; but if that is the case, an unworkable contradiction has been knotted together, and it seems to possess a certain Gordian quality to it such that it can only be undone by sword. We’re beholden to the damn dirty foreigners, only when the damn dirty foreigners agree we’re beholden to them, but we should ignore what the damn dirty foreigners have to say when they remind us of our own Constitution? How in the world would that work?

I hate to say it, but the Constitution is a decidedly second priority here. No, I really think so. The Constitution is a bunch of rules that tell us what we should and should not do. Science, on the other hand, is what we know — and, like the Constitution, science has its neck stretched across a chopping block as well. Look what you’ve got going on here; just look at it. We have two members of our upper legislative house releasing an open letter. The letter says hey — scientists are to agree with us, or else they are not to be funded. In fact, they aren’t scientists at all, they are “a small cadre of global climate change skeptics.”

Now, elsewhere, as water pipes freeze and then as sidewalks get so hot you can fry bacon on ’em…all around the year…we’re going to hear from several outlets “scientists are (more or less) unanimous about the man-made influences on global climate change.” Unanimous means all. All the scientists agree — is that before, or after, the inquisition has come along to silence the “small cadre”?

Rockefeller and Snowe make reference to an “echo chamber” of skepticism, and to a “climate change denial confederacy.” There is a campaign to muscle, to bully, to intimidate, to coerce, to silence anybody who doesn’t toe the line on global warming, especially if they’re scientists. We know this campaign exists. We know it for a fact. Rockefeller and Snowe, are just the ones who’ve had the balls to make their threats public, under the auspices of enabling “the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy.”

Those two are open with their threats. God only knows how many thugs are not.

Is this what we’re supposed to call “science”? It isn’t what I call science.

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Uphold First Amendment Or ResignTuesday, December 19th, 2006

Uphold First Amendment Or Resign
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006