The political left is increasingly revealing their authoritarian nature – and nowhere is it more evident than in the debate over climate change. They originally defined the issue as “global warming,” but during a period when the earth’s temperature was not cooperating with their theory, they took up the euphemism of “climate change.”
Changing the term did not reflect a change in their thinking. It is still about whether the earth is warming, whether it is materially caused by mankind and whether we can do anything about it without harkening back to the pre-industrial age.
Because the left occupies the authoritarian side of the political philosophy continuum, they require acceptance rather than debate. As a matter of fact, they will do just about anything – including trashing our constitutional rights – to literally eliminate alternative thinking.
This is not new. In authoritarian theology — and the elite class that imposes it — determines by edict the things that we common folk are commanded to believe and obey – and unfortunately, too many do. When authoritarians are not successful at convincing people with intellectual dialogue, they create a culture that punishes people who resist the prescribed dogma.
This happens quite often in anachronistic religious circles. Muslim extremists have used indoctrination to “persuade” — and when that fails, they use jihad to kill the infidels. The Roman Catholic Inquisition was yet another example where wrongheaded thinking (the earth is the center of the universe, the earth is flat and the creation rather than the evolution of mankind) was imposed on the people by brutal and even deadly force. Truth is not sought, but declared by an establishment, the power and wealth of which depends on oppressing free thought.
Wrongheaded thinking most often falls in the face of enlightenment – but not when powerful institutions, such as religions and governments, have a vested interest in propagating flawed theories. Truth is less important than believing what you are required to believe – or at least pretending to do so.
I saw this very vividly when meeting with educators in Lithuania shortly after that Baltic nation declared independence. The challenge was to shift the education paradigm from the rote Russian method of believing what you are told to a more western liberal arts model in which children are encouraged to weigh information and form their own conclusions. To accomplish that goal, it was necessary to replace thousands of teachers who could not give up their rote teaching approach.
In modern times, dogmatic authoritarianism was seen in the pseudo-science of eugenics promoted by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and imposed — with global tragic outcomes — by Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany. It is seen to this day in the iconic “education” camps of the communist regimes in China, Russia and North Korea.
As the radical left has gained more footing in the Democratic Party – and has won the allegiance of the elitist news media – we have seen the vigorous scientific debate over global warming fall victim to authoritarian indoctrination. Though the proponents of the progressive global warming theories claim to follow the science, it is noteworthy that the public debate has been led by the political class – people like former Vice President Al Gore – not the scientists.
Under the false flag of scientific absolutism, the left is decreasingly unwilling to debate their theory of climate change, but to politically impose it by oppressing alternative opinion. This community of doomsday-ers is bonded as much by the glue of power and money as the reliance on ALL scientific data. Professional prominence and profit in the scientific community are too dependent on producing results that fit the political narrative – and scientists and researchers are shunned and ostracized if they do not.
Those in the public who care to take the time to research the subject will discover that there are significantly varying viewpoints on the question of climate change. Scientists with long resumes and impressive professional histories take exception to the popular politicized views. Some see recent years as the final days of a long-established cyclical warming period. The research of others suggests that man has had very little impact on the so-called greenhouse effect. And quite a few claim that there is little that man can do to change the situation without lowering our standard of living to that of a third-world country.
Many scientists believe that the predicted Draconian outcomes are overstated, to say the least. They point to all those previous predictions made years ago. The projected dire outcomes did not only NOT happen, but it was not even close. If you need convincing, check out the claims in Gore’s original treatise, “An Inconvenient Truth.” – a book acclaimed by big government authoritarian liberals and their crony government-paid scientists.
In recent years, the political left has unsheathed its favorite weapon of conquest – brutal oppression. Just recently, California’s outgoing Governor Jerry Brown has compared those who dare to hold opinions different from left-wing orthodoxy as modern-day Nazis. In other words, if you even express uncertainty about the claims of the global warming activists, you are the same as people who were hell-bent to build the 1000-year Reich on a genocidal campaign against the declared enemies of a malignant theoretical Arian state – Jews, Catholics, Africans and the disabled. You are the same as a regime that murdered millions of people. This demonizing of the perceived apostates was seen when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared that anyone who does not believe in the left’s global warming script is unwelcomed in his state.
There have been several proposals by left-wingers to actually criminalize expressing alternative views on global warming. Ponder that! If you hold a different opinion from the government, you are to be viewed as a criminal.
Credentialed scientists who argue against the “accepted” opinions are banned from jobs in academia, denied research grants and barred from the scientific conferences and symposiums. Regardless of the quality of their research, it is rejected for publication in scientific journals. Those with serious arguments and data questioning the prevailing political theory are not given media attention – and if they are, it is usually to be ridiculed.
This censorship and these attacks on scientific inquiry and free speech has empowered pathetically ignorant environmental activists, like the newly-minted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez, who want to end all use of fossil fuel in the near future – and has no idea the disaster that would be for America and the world. The only potentially good news is that, with proposals so profoundly stupid, she hopefully will be totally ignored by the members of Congress – including the Democrats. But she will still be the darling of the media as another example of celebrity without substance.
As I have confessed in the past, I am a bit of an agnostic on climate change, global warming or whatever you wish to call it. I can see the research-based theories on both sides – but neither has risen to the level of scientific truism regardless of the claims of the politicians on the left.
If the assault on global warming deniers – or agnostics, like me – sound a lot like what we saw in Nazi Germany, and in China and North Korea today, you are not mistaken. The most fundamental of all freedoms is the inalienable right to express ourselves – ESPECIALLY when opinions may be unpopular now or controversial.
Eventually, the truth of global warming will be established one way or the other, but in the meantime, the greatest danger to our civic well-being is from a left-wing political inquisition – and it will not be limited to climate change.
So, there ‘tis.