Demonizing your opponents

Class warfare


The following article is well worth the read. In making his analogy of class warfare and demonizing your opponents, the author tells some good stories about the morality of it.

Listening to the declarations of class warfare by congressmen who demonize wealth and the wealthy, I am reminded of these stories of THE MORAL HYPOCRISY DISPLAYED BY THOSE WHO DEMAND WITHOUT RESPECT. They require more and more, yet they blame these subjects for any setbacks caused by said subjects' imperfections or unwillingness to bend to the will of those who scorn them……

As our tax code has become increasingly progressive and thus ever more dependent on the wealthy to support the government, we have become more sensitive to the economic decline from the corrections of normal business cycles. But the financial contraction we are currently experiencing is both more rare and more difficult to correct, so it is even more sensitive to the contraction. This partially explains why stimulative policies that appeared to work during cyclical corrections are failing now.

The ruling class has become MORE DEPENDENT ON THE WEALTHY AND YET HOLDS THEM IN THE SAME CONTEMPT IN WHICH THE STAGECOACH RIDERS HELD THE FRENCH PROSTITUTE AND THE APACHE PASSENGER. There is SOMETHING MORALLY REPUGNANT ABOUT EXPECTING RESCUE AND SALVATION FROM THE SAME PEOPLE YOU DEMONIZE.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/the_immorality_of_class_warfar.html




The State of Environmentalism

Copenhagen was not a political breakdown. IT WAS AN INTELLECTUAL BREAKDOWN SO ASTONISHING THAT FUTURE GENERATIONS WILL MARVEL AT OUR BLIND CREDULITY. Copenhagen was a classic case of the emperor with no clothes.

Mercifully, nobody will pay attention to the climate conference at Cancun next week, where a much-reduced group of delegates will go through the motions. THE DELUSIONAL DREAM OF GLOBAL ACTION TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS DEAD. BARACK OBAMA’S CAP-AND-TRADE SCHEME IS DEAD. CHICAGO’S CARBON-TRADING MARKET IS DEAD. The European Union’s supposed reduction in carbon emissions has been exposed as a giant fraud. (The EU is actually responsible for 40 per cent more CO2 today than it was in 1990, if you count the goods and services it consumed as opposed to the ones that it produced.) Public interest in climate change has plunged, and the media have radically reduced their climate coverage.

THE BIGGEST LOSER IS THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT. For years, its activists neglected almost everything but climate change. They behaved as if they’d cornered the market on wisdom, truth and certainty, and THEY DEMONIZED ANYONE WHO DARED TO DISAGREE. They got a fabulous free ride from politicians and the media, who parroted their claims like Sunday-school children reciting Scripture. No interest group in modern times has been so free from skepticism, scrutiny or simple accountability as the environmental establishment.

It seems the free ride has disappeared.  After spending 30 years demonizing their opponents, the environmental movement is finding itself in trouble.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/can-environmentalism-be-saved-from-itself/article1815408/