Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park and State of Fear

The second email, which I sent Kelley Ross in December 2009, was shorter and goes unanswered, perhaps because it came from the same email I used with the first one. What really set me off was reading his home page on how the Left, in their “post-modern” worldview have drifted into a “post-Copernican” ideology. His anger may have to do with him not being published since he says: “The peer-review system of publication, while helping to maintain scholarly standards, also serves to screen out innovation and dissent and to promote doctrinal uniformity and a self-referential scholasticism — the stigmata of academia becoming a rent-seeking bureaucracy.”

When I first read his introduction, I assumed that he had meant that most Liberals had adopted the post-modern concept of cultural relativism to the point where they didn’t even believe the world being round to be a scientific fact. As crazy as that sounds, Richard Dawkins had attacked similiarly irrational beliefs in The Selfish Gene. Re-reading this now, I think he might have been writing metaphorically, insinuating that post-modernism as philosophically “post-Copernican,” but on the other hand, he continues on by claiming that the Left sees science as “an instrument of Euro-centric oppression.” The only euro-centrism I’m aware of his the fact that he believes one snowy winter in Britain disproves global warming, but taking obscure post-modern academic eccentricies and attributing them to the entire Democratic voting bloc is pretty much his bread and butter.

Letter 2: Western Academics Take Up Totalitarianism

Western academics and intellectuals have truly and heartily taken up the cause of totalitarianism, fallen from the dead hands of fascism and communism, with the same goals, through the same methods, namely, laws about speech, thought crimes, disarmament of civilians, political control of private property and private relationships, denigration of religion, political propaganda through state schools, the militarization of police, the destruction of the rule of law through discretionary powers given to executive officials and bureaucrats, the subversion of trial by jury, etc. etc. There are also new twists, like the distortion of civil rights law into a means of abolishing civil rights.

Although Anglo-American philosophy tended to worship at the feet of science, the drift of academia to the left has led to characteristically totalitarian political attacks on science itself.The “post-modern” move may even be called the “post-Copernican”move, where the “de-centering” of meaning and objectivity (giving new meaning to the word “obscurantism”), returns the “marginalized” literary critic or theorist to the Ptolemaic center of the universe, whence modern science, now demystified and unmasked as an instrument of Euro-centric oppression, had proudly thought to have dislodged an arrogant humanity. Where the arrogance has settled now is all too plain to those familiar with American academic life.

How many people on the Left do you know really believe this? Lefties believing in a “post-Copernican” world where science is a “Euro-centric” invention of oppression is not an idea that has received any amount of traction by any stretch of the imagination. This has got to be the ultimate straw-man argument, especially since you don’t even believe the science of global warming.

Question: what is science? What makes evolution science and climatology pseudo-science? Do you think every individual, whether holding a degree in science or not, gets to choose what the word means? Because if you talked to, you know, a real scientist, instead of trying to pretend you’re an expert in all fields, you would learn that global warming is accepted throughout the entire scientific community, not just a few liberal tree-hugging environmentalists. Yet your global warming web page tries to blame most of it on Al Gore. In fact, there is no credited scientific organization on the entire planet that challenges the science, not even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which not too long ago gave Michael Chricton their yearly award in “Journalism”!

You don’t even attempt to hide the fact that you start with the politics and work backwards from there. Your anger towards the Left is evident in the way you accuse *them*, not the scientific community(!), of “inventing something else” if it wasn’t global warming. What a totally outrageous and unethical accusation to make without any amount of proof. The financial pressure to maintain the status quo hardly needs an explanation, but do you really believe that people on the Left hate their country or the rich or whatever so much they just somehow convinced everyone except a few “true science-followers” like yourself into this Green conspiracy? The money trail from oil companies to anti-climate change astroturf organizations is clear enough for anyone with a computer to see yet there is not one financial link that can be found connecting clean energy to climate scientists. A conspiracy like this would have to be over 100 times larger than the “9/11 Truther” conspiracy with billions if not trillions of dollars needed in bribes, and yet not a single connection between the liberal politics and the climate science can be found.

Your webpage on climate change is especially lame, and this is coming from someone who thinks you have the best website ever created (in terms of sheer volume and display, not correct answers, although I applaud your work on the so-called “Fall of Rome” and the Eastern Roman Empire). Some 10 or 15 loose, incomprehensible, and extremely unscientific pages worth of content on “Unstoppable Global Warming” (one-third of which concentrates on a *science fiction author*) does not compare to the thousands upon thousands of pages of peer-reviewed research from actual scientists in countries throughout the world working on many independent lines of evidence. You might as well try to disprove evolution by writing about the volcano theories of L. Ron Hubbard on a cocktail napkin, which, come to think of it, isn’t far from how supply-side economics was invented.

I know it’s hard for an ideologue like yourself to change your mind, but I implore you to go to the library and read up on Climate Change again, only take out random books instead of starting with Ann Coulter. If it wasn’t for your politics, would you really be accusing the Left of inventing what your side calls “the greatest hoax in the history of mankind”? Can you really be on the side that says scientists, not fossil fuel industries, are deluding the entire world and at the same time say the same colluding body of scientists/climate alarmists are in epistemological disagreement with one another? Don’t you find it just a little disconcerting that the top guys fighting Climate Change science today is an English Lord with a Classics degree and a Creationist Senator who belongs to a Fundamentalist Christian mafia organization linked to the C-Street sex scandals? If you really think science can be bought so easily, then you should at least admit to being somewhat “anti-science” yourself, at least as far as the current official stance is in relation to the truth, but you should also ask why the Right can’t just buy their own climate scientists. Was it a mistake of history that the entire world body of climate science ended up on the Left despite the Left’s “post-Copernician” hatred towards their profession?

The theory that massive amounts of carbon inserted into theatmosphere causes global warming is over 100 years old. Congress waswarned about this from James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute forSpace Studies over 20 years ago. They have been proven by the hottest decade on record, the melting icecaps, the forest fires in California,the desertification of Australia, etc., etc., etc., all of which either follows or surpasses the worse-case scenerios predicted by the much-despised IPCC. Stephen Hawking, who some consider to be the smartest physicist in the world, ranks climate change along side the proliferation of nuclear weapons as one of the greatest threats to the future of the world. And once again, every accredited science organization on the planet says you are wrong and we are right. If you are going to present yourself as unbiased, you have to admit to some kind of even-handed criteria to which you would take the other side. What exactly would our side need to present to you for you to consider other alternatives to this world-wide conspiracy theory?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/

Kelley Ross, retired philosophy professor

One site I’ve mention before is Friesian.com. In terms of content, it’s one of the best websites created: tons of great stuff for history and philosophy lovers. Unfortunately, as mention in a previous post, the site’s creator, Kelley Ross, is also deeply emeshed in Republican politics. He considers himself to be a Libertarian, but has become more and more of a Neo-Con as time has passed.

The following is the first of several emails I wrote him, starting back in 2007. My main complaints were with his page on Ayn Rand, which said: “With exquisite irony, just as the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Empire fell in the years 1989-1991, American 60’s radicals, who were essentially Communist sympathizers, were completing their takeover of American higher education and other “circles,” as the Soviets used to say, of the American intelligentsia,” and “Early in 2003, the Left, with their useful idiot supporters in Hollywood and anti-American (i.e. anti-capitalist) forces around the world, committed themselves to protecting the neo-Nazi dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.” On another webpage about climate change, he claimed that: “There are many who may sincerely believe this scenario, but with far too many activists it is a smoke-screen for an “agenda” (as they like to say) for something very different: for a virtuous eco-poverty (as in Cuba) and a government that will make the “hard choices” of forcing people into that poverty (as in Cuba).”

I’ve added his reply and my reply to it in the comments section below. I’m not particularly happy with the letter now since the arguments come off as stale and sloppy, not to mention the fact that the way I move from appeasingly polite to aggressively accusatory and back again makes me come off as a tad bipolar. I also no longer consider myself to be a “left-leaning Libertarian.” But I wanted to post the other emails I sent so I figured I should go ahead and start with the first one:

Letter 1: Climate scientists are “whores” and “We will be their peons”

I wanted to write you to let you know that I think your website is my absolute favorite in terms in history and philosophy, but my least favorite in the realm of politics. I especially loved Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren’t and Other Reflections. It has greatly helped in putting to rest with certain people the often-heard fantasy that Rome “fell” for ethical reasons. I was especially impressed by the level of professionalism you used in the piece in criticizing Christianity on your website without ever attacking it, something I have found lacking in books such as God Against the Gods by Jonathan Kirshe.

The same is not true for your politics. Your accusations in this department rate up there with Ann Coulter. American 60’s radicals were essentially Communist sympathizers? You know, I didn’t live back then (I’m 29), but I’m pretty sure Woodstock wasn’t about overthrowing the government and replacing it with a worker’s Utopia. The real objective in environemntalism is not to protect the future generations from man-made disasters but to curb economic growth and ensure people are living in poverty? What, no super death ray? You know, I could try to make a similar argument that the Right actually wants the world to end so that all non-Christians can hurry up and burn in fiery hell forever and point to the Left Behind series as proof, but that would be pejorative. Then there’s the accusation that the Left committed themselves to protect the “neo-Nazi” Saddam Hussein. This is a truly ironic accusation from the Right considering the shameful support Saddam got for 20 years previous to the Gulf War in order to shift trade away from the Soviet Union. Even after the Gulf War, the rebellions against Saddam received no support from the U.S. because everyone knew the choas that would result in a Post-Saddam Iraq, and sure enough it did. But its funny that those who now accuse the Peace Movement of being Saddam sympathisizers had no complaints when the atrocities were actually happening.

But that’s indicative of the Right, who still blame the Islamic Revolution on Carter for not maintaining relations with the tyrannical Shaw without even considering that part of the Iranian resentment may have come from Eisenhower and the British deposing a democratically-elected Prime Minister in order to reverse the nationalization of the Iranian Oil company now known as BP. Yes, and why shouldn’t the Iranians come up and hug us after we helped associate our Western values with corruption and Soviet-style secret police? At least Eisenhower figured out at the end how the military industrial complex were parasitically fermenting this kind of ideology and gave a speech warning us to that effect before he left office. This same war profiteering can be seen today with Halliburton and Lockheed Martin, the latter of whom pays for commercials on CNN assuring us “We never forget who we’re working for.” (My question is, if the company has no private consumers and only sells weapons to to the government, who are they advertising to?) And, although I do consider myself a left-leaning Libertarian, I would also like to point out that it was the Libertarians who were against fighting the original Nazis in WW2, since (just as today) they are against all non-defensive wars, especially wars of aggression, which includes this adventure into Iraq that the far Right still indignantly defends despite being wrong on every prediction that was made.

I was especially dismayed about your page on Unstoppable Global Warming. True, Albert Einstein isn’t going to be called a bastard because of his skepticism of quantum mechanics, but then again, nothing is at stake in that argument. When you set aside the verdict of the majority of climate scientists and are willing to risk disasterous reprecussions on the earth because global warming skepticism better fits your economic philosophy, you are taking on a huge responsibility, one that a single web page on the subject doesn’t remedy. And if you’re going to take offense to that, you may want to rethink calling Noam Chomsky a lunatic since he is well-read and whether you agree or disagree with him, his arguments do make more sense than Ann Coulter’s suggestion that we invade all Islamic countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity (I noticed her book is on your bibliography). And I would like to see proof that “unlimited government and command economics” means more “money and power” for Gore and his friends, especially since you seem skeptical that Bush, Cheney, and Rice would have any invested interest in the subject despite the fact that they came to the election directly off the rig.

You site three studies that do not agree very well saying that carbon dioxide is unrelated to temperature, but the graph at RealClimate.org shows a 90% correlation, and I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take the word of a climate scientist over that of a philosopher.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/22/231145/76

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6096084.stm

My question is, shouldn’t a “conservative” take the safest route? Risking mass extinctions and global famine for the sake of oil expansion doesn’t seem like the “conservative” approach to me. Even if the chances for this happening were at 10% instead of 90%, are nuclear power and alternative fuels really so poor a substitute that we shouldn’t even bother investing in them for the future? Are we really going to try and pretend that the oil companies work in some free market economy completely independent of the government and foreign policy? As seen in the second article I have linked there, Tony Blair backs a study done that global warming will cause 40% of earth’s species to become extinct, cause the global economy to shrink 20%, and will cause water shortages for 1 in 6 people. Shouldn’t that mean something to someone interested in “conserving” the way things are now? Even Bush has left his previous stance of “needing more research” and has made the “liberal talking point” that we are addicted to oil and need to get off it, something much akin to a drug dealer telling a customer to cut down. So who exactly can you say is “on your side” now other than Micheal Chriton? You also say that the ones who would most be hurt by any due changes are the non-Industrialized countries, yet the fact that they are the ones getting a free ride are exactly what has helped drum up so much support against Kyoto.

Cutting oil dependence would also ensure that no American money is used in terrorist plots against us, but even that doesn’t phase the morally indignant Right. Instead, scare tactics are used to associate the Drug War with the War on Terrorism. The Right was horrified that border guards who illegally shot a Mexian marijuana smuggler then tried to cover up their crime by filing false reports would actually be punished as if what they did was a crime, but they could care less that the government, still expounding a “Zero Tolerance” policy, is actively protecting the explosion of poppy growth in Afghanistan that would never have been allowed under the Taliban. By continuing the War on Drugs, they ensure the crop will yield maximum profit for our allies, which goes to show that if anything, buying smack helps the War on Terrorism.

But what really gets me is the contempt you have for the people who take up the cause, with these green and “watermelon” rats that say “Global Warming Scaremongering,” as if the answer to the question is doesn’t even deserve contemplation. *Of course* climate scientists from many different countries and backgrounds are all participating in a global conspiracy to limit America’s economic growth. Everyone knows they’re really just neo-Communists working to put everyone back on the farm. We shouldn’t even “fear” that it might happen since it goes against the economics of Thomas Jefferson. I want to let you know that Jefferson is one of my personal heroes, but I think if he was alive today, he would say worrying about the planetary catastrophe takes precedence over worrying about the American economy. For that matter, he’d probably say that gun nuts should just chill out because he included the freedom to bear arms so that the U.S. government wouldn’t get too uppity, not because he thought gun collectors deserved the right to shoot machine guns with armor piercing bullets. And his statements would probably make him as hated by the Religious Right now as he was in his own time.

I’m sorry so much of this e-mail is negative, but its always easier to talk about what you disagree with than what you agree with. Once again, I’d like to point out that no one has put up another site that even comes close to rivaling yours in impeccable content. I also included a link below to my web site on the historical Jesus, which I thought you might find interesting.

Jeff Querner

http://www.lost-history.com