Government officials calling for suppression of dissent is not new. We've seen it happen over and over again in totalitarian states and theocracies throughout the world.
Where is the outrage?
However, it appears we've turned some sort of horrific corner here in the U.S. since Senators John D. Rockefeller IV (D-Moron-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-Idiot-VT) feel confident enough to send an open letter to ExxonMobil demanding the company end its support for climate change skeptics.
The entire letter is a disgusting attempt to suppress any debate on the issue. The letter's penultimate paragraph is particularly repulsive:
"In light of the adverse impacts still resulting from your corporations activities, we must request that ExxonMobil end any further financial assistance or other support to groups or individuals whose public advocacy has contributed to the small, but unfortunately effective, climate change denial myth. Further, we believe ExxonMobil should take additional steps to improve the public debate, and consequently the reputation of the United States. We would recommend that ExxonMobil publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it. Second, ExxonMobil should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history. Finally, we believe that there would be a benefit to the United States if one of the world's largest carbon emitters headquartered here devoted at least some of the money it has invested in climate change denial pseudo-science to global remediation efforts. We believe this would be especially important in the developing world, where the disastrous effects of global climate change are likely to have their most immediate and calamitous impacts."Full text of the letter can be found at the Wall Street Journal site:
http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009337
Regardless of where one stands on the climate change debate, we should all be disturbed by the fact that this is not the ranting of some half-baked, anarchist street protester, but rather a calculated, written and explicit threat against private citizens by two United States senators.
The Wall Street Journal has an op-ed that condemns the Senators' letter but which, in my opinion, lacks any tone of real outrage.
WSJ editorial at:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009338
More to the point is a press release from the Ayn Rand Institute condemning the letter for what it is: an egregious attack on free speech. The Institute rightly denounces the Rockefeller/Snowe letter in no uncertain terms.
"Observe that the senators do not offer a single fact intended to convince ExxonMobil of the truth of their position. Their message is not 'agree with us because,' but 'agree with us or else.' That is a message appropriate to a dictator, not to the representatives of a free nation.
"Defenders of free speech must stand up against this vicious attempt to intimidate ExxonMobil into embracing the global warming cause, and declare that the government has no business telling Americans what they should think or say."
Full text of the ARI press release:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13691&news_iv_ctrl=1221
Coercion has no place in a scientific debate. Increasingly, climate change advocates who are unable to advance their viewpoints rationally are resorting to intimidation and threats of reprisals against anyone who doesn't agree with them.
Censorship of this sort is a more dangerous and immediate threat than any imagined climate catastrophe.
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