Idiot politicians of the week

To err is human. To really screw things up, you need a computer. If you invented the internet, you can be a complete idiot. Former Vice President Al Gore giving the commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University told the graduating class there were two "special generations", the Founding generation and the generation that defeated Fascism. We can argue about the latter. After all, they did vote for Franklin Roosevelt four times. But to say that there are only two "special generations" is to miss much of United States history. Certainly the generations that defeated slavery or fought at Belleau Wood or charged San Juan Hill might have some say in the matter. The generations that originally settled this continent with few resources while facing hostile natives certainly deserve some mention. The succeeding generations that spread across the continent building a new and proud nation out of the wilderness could each lay claim to being special, too.

Perhaps Gore hung around the Oval office too much when Bill Clinton desperately searched for some sort of legacy, a pathetic baby-boomer self-indulgent attempt at self-justification when all that was ever achieved by Clinton was tawdry self-gratification. It might explain Gore's holier-than-thou crusade.

Gore describes climate change as the greatest threat to civilization in the history of our planet. He excludes, of course, the black plague, the threat of thermonuclear war, the Hun invasion of Europe, and today's threat of thermonuclear terrorism.

But we're looking for a reason to make the next generation special. Gore claims they can be special if they successfully fight global warming. Let's compare the threat of Fascism with the threat of global warming. The total cost in human life of World War II is estimated at 56,125,262. Communism is estimated to have killed 100,000,000people. Global warming has resulted in one Nobel prize for Al Gore and a bunch of puffed-up self-styled intellectuals coming up with questionable policy recommendations that will have little effect except to the global economy.

Objectionable, even horrible, to be sure, but not on a par with Fascism.

Speaking of the war against fascism, this week we mourn the loss of Irena Sendler. Daniel Hannan wrote in the Telegraph:

A Polish Catholic, she spirited some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, displaying casual and extraordinary courage. She kept a list of the children she had saved, hoping one day to reunite them with their parents – although, in the event, almost all lost their families in Treblinka. In 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured. Her legs and feet were broken, but she refused to give up her list. She was sentenced to death, but rescued, whereupon – almost unbelievably – she went back to work.

Here, though, is the sentence that leapt off the page at me: “Last year she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, eventually won by Al Gore.” Al Gore!

I'm sure Irena Sendler never gave her carbon footprint a second thought. Ironically, neither does the former Vice President. But Sendler's example and her courage reminds us that when it comes to the idiot politicians of the week, we can safely award the prize to the Nobel Peace Prize committee that chose to cast her great works aside in favor of honoring a self-righteous hypocritical scold who happened to make a terrible movie. It would take a committee of complete idiots to not honor great physical and moral courage in the service of humanity and instead honor the former vice president just to make a symbolic gesture against the inhumanity of the internal combustion engine.