In his classic novel, 1984, George Orwell writes of the "Two Minute Hate": a periodic event in which members of the Party are gathered
together before a video screen featuring images of Emmanuel Goldstein
and his followers: the enemies of the State. Participants are worked up
into a frenzy of hatred and vitriol directed against people who, later
in the story, turn out to be completely fictional.
So worked up
do the participants become during the Two Minute Hate that they even
attack the telescreen in front of them. The object of this political
ritual is to solidify the support of each individual to the Party by
uniting them in hatred against its enemies.
For the increasingly strident Tolerance Police, the rhetorical equivalent of the Two Minute Hate is becoming a daily event.
The
most recent object of their hate is State Rep. Jim Gooch,
who landed himself on the national news by holding hearings at the
state capitol questioning one of the left's new dogmas: global warming.
The telescreen is turned on, images of Gooch, ensconced in his chair as
head of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee appear before the audience (courtesy of the
KET), and then they start into their jeering and cursing, eventually
working themselves up to such a fever pitch you wonder whether they'll
hurt themselves.
It is becoming a frequent, and increasingly alarming sight.
Now
I too am against the rape of the environment, particularly as it
manifests itself in things like mountaintop removal. Besides being bad
stewardship of the land, it's just plain wrong.
To say that
global warming is happening, or that global warming is the result of
human activities--or that it can be corrected by human actions whether
it was caused by them or not--are not unreasonable positions, whatever
you think about their accuracy. What is unreasonable is the level of
personal acrimony and ad hominem vitriol that are increasingly being employed by those who believe these things.
In a recent Louisville Courier-Journal
editorial Gooch was term a "a global warming denier." Ooh. Did you
catch the rhetorical allusion there? Sounds very similar to "Holocaust
denier" to me. So now people who have legitimate beefs with the
mistake-riddled rhetoric of Al Gore are akin to David Duke.
Got it.
"Jake" over at Page One Kentucky, an increasingly intemperate voice of
the political left in Kentucky, insists, "Rep. Jim Gooch needs to
resign immediately." Why? Because this "embarrassment," this
"uneducated...fool," this, ...this "idiot" disagrees with "Jake" on a
controversial environmental issue.
Check.
Then there are the gals over at "Kentucky Women: Power, Passion, and
Politics" (with an emphasis on the "Passion"), who recently announced, "Speaker Jody Richards, it's time for Rep. Jim Gooch
to be removed off this committee!" A suggestion in response to which
Speaker Richards kindly patted them on the head and told them he didn't
think he ought to do that, and didn't they have some cookies to go bake
or something?
Okay, he really didn't say that last part, but it would have been fun to see their reaction if he had.
And besides, you don't "remove" someone "off" something, you just
"remove" them--one possible reason the word 'Grammar' does not appear
in their title along with the words 'Power', 'Politics', and
'Passion'. And why should we be such sticklers about a linguistic
trifle?
Let's cut to Larry Dale Keeling. Larry, are you there? Go ahead Larry:
Introducing the main speaker at an interim legislative committee
meeting Wednesday, Chairman Jim Gooch mistakenly pronounced what should
have been a silent 's.'
As a result, Viscount ("v-kount," according to Random House Webster's College Dictionary) Christopher Walker Monckton became a "vizz (rhymes with fizz)-count."
Although
Rep. Mike Cherry, D-Princeton, got it right when he later addressed
Monckton, several other lawmakers on the panel repeated the "vizzcount"
mistake often during the course of a lengthy meeting.
Thanks for that report Larry. The Herald-Leader's Larry Dale Keeling will be back next week with a report on he, personally, pronounces the words 'Versailles' and 'Athens'.
In the Two Minute Hate there is no time for reasoned discourse or for
the presentation of evidence for your position, which is why none of
Gooch's critics even bothered to offer any in any of their criticisms
of him.
The sole exception was Randall Patrick, the editorials editor of the
Winchester Sun. He at least made the attempt, although not a very
spirited one. "Maybe the reason the chairman didn't invite any
scientists," said Patrick, "is because it's hard to find one who doesn't believe global
warming is happening at an alarming rate and is caused in large measure
by the burning of carbon fuels."
C'mon, Randall, how hard did you look? Ever heard of Reid Bryson, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography and of
Environmental Studies, Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research,
The Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (Founding
Director), the University of Wisconsin, Madison? Huh?
Apparently not. It just so happens he's widely regarded as the father
of climatology. Here's what he says, despite his nonexistence:
All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the
early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out
of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide
into the air.
Or
how about Carleton University science professor Tim Patterson, who says
that global warming will not bring about the downfall of life on the
planet, and that much of recent research indicates that “changes in the
brightness of the sun” are almost certainly the predominant cause of
global warming since the end of the “Little Ice Age” in the late 19th
century?
He must be imaginary too.
And what about Timothy Ball, professor of climatology at the University
of Winnipeg and Chairman of the National Resources Stewardship Project
in Canada, a group that argues that "CO2 is very unlikely to
be a substantial driver of climate change and is not a
pollutant," and that "global climate change is primarily a natural
phenomenon..."?
Want more? Go visit the NRSP's website for a long list.
And why should Patrick mention scientists who he could easily have
googled on the Internet when he could simply repeat discredited claims
by Al Gore about "an article in Science magazine in 2004 found that
out of 928 randomly selected peer-reviewed articles that have been
published in scientific journals over a 10-year period, not one doubted
that human beings are the cause of climate change"?
Is Patrick aware that an English social scientist reviewed the
methodology used in that study and found that the author did not
actually read all 928 studies, but only the abstracts? In reality,
only about 50 of those studies said it was a crisis, and some actually
disagreed, the remainder saying it was unknown.
Does that prove the global warming is not a problem or that humans
aren't contributing to it? No, of course not. But it does prove that
there is a legitimate debate in the scientific community about it and
that people who disagree with the scare talk on global warming are not ipso facto a bunch of crazies.
But it's hard for people to know this, so loud is the screaming and hollering during the Two Minute Hate.
