2017 Apr 28^th

Today the local paper treats us to the views of Michael Barone. Mr. Barone opens with this sentence, “Capital vs. countryside, that’s the new political divide...” Well, not really all that new. In 1936, toward the end of the depression I was growing up in rural northeastern Pennsylvania where there were very few jobs. The available paychecks came from Roosevelt’s WPA. Without those checks, many of the kids I played with would have been very hungry, yet they and their parents all hated Roosevelt. The bikes of the kids I played with all had Wendell Willkie signs on them. Rural Pennsylvania in 1936 was Republican country; Philadelphia was not.

It is worse now; everyone has seen the county maps showing mases of red counties except for the small blue patches locating the cities. A fair number of these rural counties have fewer than a thousand voters. About half the voters in this country live in fewer than 150 counties out of the over 3,000 total counties.

Barone has an important point to make from all this and it begins with his pummeling of the “elites.” He speaks of the “parasitic fringe” of central government. Barone’s unhappiness with “the elites” is a tad hypocritical given his background, He is the 72-year-old son of a Detroit Surgeon, he attended Cranbrook School, a private secondary school and then on to Harvard for his B.A., followed closely by a Law degree from Yale. Now Barone trashes the elites.

Barone takes his cudgel to global warming supporters. He calls global warming a religion and claims the elites believe “deniers” must be punished. You will see no citations in support of these assertions. Global warming occurs because of the action of greenhouse gasses. These are water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane. These gas molecules vibrate when they are hit by photons of energy and can release that stored energy back into the environment. Some of this is fine; without it the atmosphere would fall below freezing every night; too much and we roast. This is elementary chemistry but Barone may have skipped his Harvard science class… along with a fair number of politicians.

Then he says, “The science is settled…That’s exactly what the church told Galileo.” Well, not quite. The church told Galileo that his heliocentric theory was contrary to scripture, not that the science was settled. Big difference there and one that someone with a Harvard education should understand.

Barone goes on to shame those colleges that bar speakers of particular persuasions. I agree; that is not acceptable. On the other hand, if a speaker does not want to devote time for questions, we are talking about propaganda, not education. Barone cites “speech codes” but curiously we see no mention of schools where such speakers are never invited in the first place. Liberty University, that bastion of far right political and religious thought simply discontinued its Democratic club, “Their values don’t agree with our mission.” That’s one way to control dissent. I should add that there is some disagreement about this; Liberty University claims this group cannot claim they are affiliated with Liberty University. Why is that?