More Conservative Nonsense

The lies, mistakes and misjudgments of the hapless and increasingly impotent Bush administration have forced conservatives to try to salvage their “movement” by retreating to the radical fringes of their constituency. Unfortunately, they’ve also retreated to the fringes of logic, reason and common sense. Consider the three glaringly idiotic positions taken by various conservatives during the past week.

1) Requiring young girls to take an HPV vaccine will encourage promiscuity.

And tetanus shots will encourage children to impale themselves on rusty metal objects.

Please. This claim is so hollow and pathetic it draws into question the intelligence, integrity and motivation of anyone who utters it. And yet conservative groups in several states are trying to block legislation requiring the vaccines for girls.

Social conservatives are terrified of their own urges and seek to limit the behavior of others in order to feel safe from dangerous territory like human sexuality—often at the expense of long-term health. How sad and tyrannical. Reasonable people need to ensure that the superstitions of social conservatives don’t infect our laws and keep our children from important medical advances, like the HPV vaccine.

2) Criticizing, restricting or rejecting the Iraq troop surge harms the morale of our troops.

Again, utter nonsense. And yet conservatives on the talk-show circuit are making the claim over and over.

What is more comforting to soldiers – the knowledge that the nation is going to get them out of a lethal, untenable and relentless civil war, or the knowledge that the nation is keeping them there and committing more lives and resources to a hopeless situation?

Debate, oversight and the reversal of the worst foreign policy mistake in our nation’s history serves to comfort our troops, and further demonstrates to enemies and others the principles and values of our democratic system. On the other hand, an unfettered Imperial President whose ego drives him to compound his mistakes at the expense of our military hurts morale and emboldens our enemies.

3) Global warming scientists are just bureaucrats and can't predict the future.

Conservative Michael Crichton appeared on Charlie Rose last week and made a series of bold, knowing, professorial pronouncements about Global Warming. But rather than offer any data of substance to back his position, he spent his time criticizing and belittling the recently released IPCC report, a consensus document stating that global warming was real, grave and caused by human activity (see my 2/6 post).

According to Crichton, his information providers are skilled and correct while the sixteen hundred international scientists who contributed to the IPCC report were all “bureaucrats,” and thus worthy of dismissal.

Like so many conservatives, Crichton gives blanket condemnation to an entire group of people whose position he disagrees with. Rather than attack the substance of their conclusions, he attacks their character and belittles them with labels, all to sell his own book. But like other climate change Denialists, Crichton has done nothing to change the fundamentals of what we know about global warming.

Reading from standard conservative talking points, he also claimed that predicting the future is impossible, and thus any projections made by climatologists should be dismissed. Which is also utter nonsense. Climate models, like all complex, technology-based mathematical models, are getting more accurate and robust with every passing day. To completely dismiss their conclusions would be pure folly. And few of them are predicting anything less than dire.

But even if they turn out to be inaccurate, wouldn’t it be better to err on the side of safety and prevention than on the side of doing nothing? Thus far, Crichton and his ilk are just a lot of dangerous hot air.

- JT Compton