Even though I’ve attempted to make the case that The Frankfurt School and their followers have done more to destroy the United States than almost any other group, there are other “liberals” who have done their fair share with little to no “direct” help from the Frankfurters. In this column and next week’s, I’ll introduce you to some well intentioned, (and some NOT so well intentioned) “progressives” who have, in one way or another, influenced our society (and still do) in profound and ultimately destructive ways. Unfortunately, ALL of these people are still highly regarded, inexplicably, in the halls of liberaldom.
Here are a few:
Betty Friedan – Ms. Friedan made her mark by masquerading as a typical American housewife — she was not – and in 1963, her best-selling book, The Feminine Mystique launched the modern feminist movement in the United States. She presented herself as the typical stay-at-home mom of that era, however, was anything but. Betty Goldstein (her maiden name) was a political activist and professional propagandist for the Communist left for a quarter of a century before the publication of her book.
Her famous description of America’s suburban family household as “a comfortable concentration camp” had more to do with her Marxist hatred for America than with any of her actual experience as a housewife or mother, which she failed at in both circumstances. To her dying day Ms. Friedan refused to allow scholars access to her “unpublished” work, and always threatens legal action should anyone try. Her complete papers have been locked away at Radcliffe College for decades.
Al Gore – What can you say about Al Gore? What a sad creature – the man who would be king. Actually hailed by many on the Left as a prophet (aye-yigh-yigh), Gore recently won the Noble Peace Prize for his “docu-drama” An Inconvenient Truth about global warming (By the way, the murdering/terrorist Yasser Arafat also won a Noble Prize, so you do the math).
An Inconvenient Truth has been heralded as the touchstone of environmentalism for the new century. What it is, in actuality, is a collection of fallacies, junk-science, half-truths and outright lies, all based on the shakiest of computer modeling data, and all in an effort to get people to think that the world is coming to an end — sound familiar?
One day, before the announcement that he was a co-winner of the Prize, a British High Court judge ruled that Gore’s film contained eleven significant errors. While there is not enough time to go into them all, one of them is most striking. Gore claims that CO2 levels in the atmosphere drives temperature change. However, the geologic record shows that, in fact, temperature drives CO2 levels, and always has. Most CO2 is locked up in the oceans (not in the rear ends of cows) and as the Earth warms, for instance, CO2 is released into the atmosphere. But, this process takes from 200 to 800 years to occur. Conversely, if the Earth cools, CO2 is drawn back into the oceans.
Generally, the current level of CO2 is about 3%. And MAN-MADE contributions to that 3%, happens to also be 3%. So, all of this hysteria is over man’s contribution of 3% of 3% of the atmosphere. That’s only .0009 caused by man. “Hey,.. that’s teeny weenie, kinda like Al Gore’s brain.” Sorry, I couldn’t help it.
Yes, climate change is a complicated issue. And “climate” is what scientists call a chaotic system. You and I might liken the attempt to forecast a chaotic system by using the phrase “Garbage in … garbage out.” If you read the scientific literature, (and I have) that’s exactly what you find.
The real “back-story” is that Gore and his buddies at the U.N. have collaborated in this effort to create a “more equitable world” – which, by the way, is a political goal, not a scientific pursuit. Problem is, their idea of a more equitable world is to reduce the vitality of the industrialized nations to something that looks a lot like the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, and to elevate all other countries to something that also looks like the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia.
Gore has steadfastly refused to debate the merits of what he claims to be the facts – because they’re not.
W.E.B. Du Bois — William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868 – 1963) was an African-American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author, editor, and co-founder of the NAACP. He was the first black American to receive a post graduate Ph.D. at Harvard. In his early career Du Bois wrote about the African-American’s struggle to come to terms with the African and with the American, their race and their nation.
Unfortunately, his career and attitude toward reconciliation soon turned decidedly negative. He began to embrace segregation, African repatriation, and what might begin to seem like a theme here – International Communism. As with other “progressives,” Du Bois trekked to the USSR and returned to proclaim it a “paradise on Earth,” earning himself the Lenin Peace Prize (interesting title) later in his career. Red China even celebrated a national holiday in his honor. Even the gruesome murder of the most notable Communist black American, Lovet Fort-Whiteman, in a Stalinist gulag in 1939 wasn’t enough to shake his “faith” in Communism. And in 1961 (Du Bios lived to be 95 years old) he formerly joined the American Communist Party and declared that, “In the end Communism will triumph. I want to help bring that day.”
And it looks like his admirers (and there are many) are still working diligently to see that that day arrives.
Next week: Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, Paul Ehrlich, Rigoberta Menchú, Peter Singer and Senator Ted Kennedy will all “grace” these pages.
Image: Flickr; author: Steve Jurvetson; reviewer: Arniep; Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
