Manure eating conservatives

There’s a saying I’ve heard from Dennis Prager on talk radio: conservatives think liberals are wrong, but liberals think conservatives are evil. I’ve always found this to be a bit simplistic and exaggerated. Surely my Cambridge neighbors don’t think I’m evil because I disagree with them on the role of the government. But then I happened upon Mitchell E. Nelin’s letter in the Chronicle, who accuses conservatives of sympathizing with slavery, being ignorant, fearful of education and “thriving on a diet of manure.” Good grief, Mitchell, we’re not that bad. I don’t know a single conservative in Cambridge who approves of slavery, and I for one do not eat manure. Is this your idea of tolerance, dialogue and bipartisanship? Speaking of education, I seem to recall that both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. were Republicans, and it was the southern Democrats—not Republicans—who voted en masse against the Civil Rights Act. Educate thyself.

letter to the Chronicle

There’s a saying I’ve heard from Dennis Prager on talk radio: conservatives think liberals are wrong, but liberals think conservatives are evil. I’ve always found this to be a bit simplistic and exaggerated. Surely my Cambridge neighbors don’t think I’m evil because I disagree with them on the role of the government. But then I happened upon Mitchell E. Nelin’s letter in the Chronicle, who accuses conservatives of sympathizing with slavery, being ignorant, fearful of education and “thriving on a diet of manure.” Good grief, Mitchell, we’re not that bad. I don’t know a single conservative in Cambridge who approves of slavery, and I for one do not eat manure. Is this your idea of tolerance, dialogue and bipartisanship? Speaking of education, I seem to recall that both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. were Republicans, and it was the southern Democrats—not Republicans—who voted en masse against the Civil Rights Act. Educate thyself.

The Right to Be Heard

Professor Nadle argues in “Will Obama be a n0-go to racism conference” (4/13/09) that the U.S. should attend the upcoming U.N. racism conference, even though it promises to be another hate-fest with human rights paragons like Libya, Cuba and Algeria issuing statements criticizing the human rights records of Israel and America—alone among nations. Although she admits that some of the statements from the 2001 conference in Durban were “ugly” and “anti-Semitic,” she claims it is wrong to limit “people's right to speak their feelings and be heard.”

I believe in free speech as well—for instance, the right of Geert Wilders to show his film criticizing Islam, and in freedom of the press—the right for Danish newspapers to publish cartoons.

No one is trying to limit anyone’s right to speak at the conference; the anti-Semitic carnival will go on whether or not the United States attends.

But if we offer anti-Semites the microphone, no corresponding right exists to “be heard.” Colin Powell did the right thing to walk out of the 2001 conference and President Obama is doing the right thing to stay home.

Spewing CO2

Scott Paul’s letter “Think of Carbon Law’s World Impact" (4/1/09) confuses two related but distinct issues: air pollution and climate change. He states that, “Air pollution causes 750,000 premature deaths in China, while 25% of the particulate matter over Los Angeles originates in China, which has become the world's largest carbon emitter.” Some particulate matter (soot and ash from burning coal, for example) contains carbon, but a carbon footprint is a measure of greenhouse gas emissions, specifically carbon dioxide, not of solid particles. CO2 is essential for plant life and non-toxic to humans, and has not caused a single premature death. If breathing carbon dioxide causes cancer, we’re all doomed.



The only danger presented by CO2, which led to the Supreme Court decision—mistaken in my opinion—to classify it as an air pollutant, are future dangers, the potential to harm future generations by its unproven contribution to rising global temperature. Spending money to reduce particulate air pollution makes sense, but obsessing over a harmless ubiquitous form of carbon in CO2 is, in the memorable phrase of the Journal editors, a form of climate neurosis.