Politician Foot in Mouth Disease -- James Inhofe plays armchair psychologist on the men who advised the Department of Defense on climate change issues.
“There is no one in more pursuit of publicity than a retired military officer,” he said of the report’s authors. “I look back wistfully at the days of the Cold War. Now you have people who are mentally imbalanced, with the ability to deploy a nuclear weapon. For anyone to say that any type of global warming is anywhere close to the threat that we have with crazy people running around with nuclear weapons, it shows how desperate they are to get the public to buy this.”
They ridiculed Jesus when he put forth the radical notion that the rich had an obligation to help the poor. They ridiculed Galileo when he proved that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. People thought that the hippies were crazy, dreaming their lives away; however, they were much more reality-based on Vietnam than all the suits who made a living doing nothing but studying that situation. And now this.
And for Inhofe to call Putin "mentally imbalanced" is tantamount to calling for war. That is because of the nature of war is to dehumanize the other person and imply that the "other side" is somehow less than human. Putin's actions are nationalistic and opportunistic; however, Inhole's armchair psychology on Putin's state of mind is no more credible than Dr. Bill Frist's armchair medicine was in the Schavio case. One can criticize Putin's actions without making references to his state of mind.
The Republican Party purports to be for the return to Judeo-Christian values. But what they forget is that when we were put on this earth, we were appointed to be stewards of this planet, to be fruitful and multiply, and to care for God's creation. This is why one of Jesus' favorite themes was the theme of stewardship. The faithful steward was to be given even more, while the unfaithful one was to lose even what little they had been given. If we are not faithful stewards of this creation, then there is nowhere else to go, no matter how frantically the Russians try to colonize the Moon by 2030 or the Mars Project tries to get a manned colony there by 2024.
Bill O'Reilly likes to say that he is a "traditionalist" and that he is the chief opponent of the "secular progressives." But let's see what the real traditionalists had to say about conservation.
You write that Madison was at the forefront of conservation. How so?
This was the greatest surprise in writing the book. Madison is not just the father of the Constitution; he’s also the forgotten father of American environmentalism. He tried to rally Americans to stop destroying the forest and the soil. He said for America to survive, Americans had to protect their environment. He did not romanticize nature as later generations did. He looked at this in a practical way, saying nature was a fragile ecological system, and if man wanted to live off nature, in the long term something had to change.
What would the founding fathers think of how Americans care for natural resources today?
I suspect they would find the recent turn toward vegetable gardening and local produce good. Jefferson believed in the independent farmer, with small-scale, self-sufficient farms. I don’t know if he would have said in the 20th century, Let’s go for full industrial agriculture. Jefferson and Madison hated cities, so they probably would have liked the idea of rooftop farming and urban gardening as ways for people to connect with the soil.
How is the early emphasis on gardening felt today?
I think Americans still have a strong connection to the land. It resonates with the idea of freedom. Compare this to England: English gardens are cute, with roses and little herbaceous borders. Here it’s more about size and ownership: This is my plot of land. It means I belong to this country.
But I suppose Inhofe would call them publicity hounds as well.
With his rant, he places himself in the same league as Sophocles' Creon, who raved at Teiresias:
Old man, ye all shoot your shafts at me, as archers at the butts;-Ye must needs practise on me with seer-craft also;-aye, the seer-tribe hath long trafficked in me, and made me their merchandise. Gain your gains, drive your trade, if ye list, in the silver-gold of Sardis and the gold of India; but ye shall not hide that man in the grave,-no, though the eagles of Zeus should bear the carrion morsels to their Master's throne-no, not for dread of that defilement will I suffer his burial:-for well I know that no mortal can defile the gods.-But, aged Teiresias, the wisest fall with shameful fall, when they clothe shameful thoughts in fair words, for lucre's sake.
Back in those days, elders like Teiresias gave out wisdom that even kings were foolish to ignore; in Greek mythology, he was regarded as one of the wisest men to ever live. Creon refused to heed the will of the gods, which required the proper burial of all bodies, even the worst foes. Antigone, the heroine of the story, sacrificed her life because she chose to do the will of heaven and gave her blood relation a proper burial rather than that of Creon, who ordered nobody to touch the corpse under pain of death.
It is just as foolish for politicians like Inhofe to ignore the warnings of science today. The rest of us would do well to heed the warnings of the Chorus, who gave the moral of the story at the end of Antigone:
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness; and reverence towards the gods must be inviolate. Great words of prideful men are ever punished with great blows, and, in old age, teach the chastened to be wise.
And Inhofe and Creon have another thing in common -- the tendency to dehumanize people that they don't like. Creon dehumanized his enemy by denying him a proper burial. Inhofe dehumanizes Putin by speculating on his state of mind even though he has no medical qualifications or training whatsoever. And last time we checked, Inhofe was not telepathic and he did not have ESP.