NPR’s Assault on Reason
8 05 2008Terry Gross’s interview with Al Gore about his new book, The Assault on Reason, included discussion of climate change, Senator Clinton’s proposed gas tax “vacation”, McCain’s endorsement by John Hagee and John Hagee’s thoughts on Katrina, among other things.
I listen to NPR almost daily for a variety of reasons despite the fact that my political views are conservative (not to be confused with Republican); I find it to be a beneficial activity. Tuesday’s interview of Al Gore by Terry Gross, however, was a gratuitous exercise in mutual obsequiousness and smug condescension toward “the rest of us” that left me wanting to take a shower.
I am solidly in support of environmentalism as a basic form of good stewardship. I have a catalog here somewhere featuring composting toilets and, as a teen, refused to drive a car because of our national reliance on oil, if those serve as any indicators. I find it fascinating, though, that people who operate with the understanding that the earth is billions of years old and has a history peppered with ice ages, heavy volcanic activity and other cataclysmic events are so quick to insist that, despite these manifold changes and events over a staggering length of time, we humans have managed to bring about permanent climate change over the course of a century or two. Global Warming science is not cut and dried. There is a great deal of dissent and, despite what the Left would have us believe, the majority of dissenters are not on the payroll of oil companies.
That said, if our country had followed through on the promises made during the so-called Oil Crisis of the late 1970s, we could be completely free of our reliance on foreign oil by now. Many films have been made on the subject of alternative energy technology and its suppression in the U.S. but of all of them, I would encourage you to watch Who Killed the Electric Car?, which is available through Netflix.
The irony of Al Gore’s book addressing the lack of reason in social and political discourse in the Age of Media leaves me speechless (truly). As to Senators McCain, Clinton and Obama, I have little comment about them as I plan to vote for none of them. John Hagee? He’s preaching what he believes - if other people believe him, that is between him and them and, ultimately, each of them and the Lord. And of Terry Gross? Maybe one day she will visit an Orthodox monastery and find the Faith - wouldn’t it be breathtaking?
