The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Newsweek's Brain Freeze

8.10.07 @ 12:01AM

SELFISH CHARITY
Re: Jeremy Lott's The War on Charity:

The idea that charitable giving is based on selfish motives, as these professors suggest, is absurd on its face. Although I am unaware of any studies on the question, I would wager $1,000 that the overwhelming number of charitable donations are done in quiet discretion, if not anonymity. The giver may indeed feel good about himself, but that is more indicative of conscience than libido.

That said, there is a selfish form of "charity," and it's the left-wing kind -- in which do-gooders spend Other People's Money rather than their own.
-- Doug Roll
Jacksonville, Texas

NEWSWEAKLING
Re: Paul Chesser's Newsweek: Alarmed by Deniers:

Nice article on climate change. Rush was quoting from it today, so I went on The American Spectator and read it. I am one of the skeptics. I want an answer to what happened to the glaciers that were here in New Jersey 30,000 or so years ago....It must have warmed up quite a bit!
-- George Mills
Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey

I thought I was the only one that noticed until I read your article on global warming in The American Spectator online. I get free issues of Newsweek and was shocked when I saw the cover. This is supposed to be a news magazine? It might as well be the New Republic. The cover was so obviously biased as to be laughable. I immediately threw it in the trash and will cancel my free subscription. Paying $0.00 is just too much for this garbage to be delivered to my house.
-- Jeff Schneider

It is about time people start looking special interests and ideology behind the Global Warming chicken littles. Follow the money! Who is funding it, who is pushing it and what do they have to gain? What is their ultimate goal? If governments can control energy use by citizens and business, government controls people and all business. This is communism by another means of propaganda. Since we don't fall for the class warfare rage and guilt nor do we fall for the Left's race hate bait, now the Marxists are trying to move us into centralized submission with global warming fear.

Give us your money, your freedom to move and your business and we will use your freedom and money to control the climate so that it does not change? Otherwise, you are going to all die. Yeah, right!

Meet them on their own terms. Who is funding them and what is their ideology? What is their goal? Can they control the climate if we submit to their demands? What, ultimately, are their demands and how do the preachers of global warming gain from their demands?
-- Jo Marie Fullerton

Mr. Chesser makes a valid observation about the science of climate change. There are many variables that affect weather and climate and any judgments about the relative importance of each variable and the interplay among them is necessarily tentative at this time.

However, I would suggest that the pollution introduced into the atmosphere since the advent of industrialization has probably (note the weasel word) had some negative effect on weather patterns and climate. I would be genuinely amazed (and greatly relieved) if scientists demonstrated conclusively that a century plus of pollution has had no effect on either. Until we learn more, I think it is prudent to entertain seriously the hypothesis that pollution is adversely affecting our climate and to take steps to reduce it.
-- Mike Roush
North Carolina

Not that I buy into it, but...if we can assume, for the moment, everything the global warming alarmists believe is true...I think I'd rather see the whitecaps rolling over the peak of Mount Everest rather than do what the activists want done.

The past century has produced a lot of "crises" that would be "solved" by the same solution---turn everything over to big and extra-constitutional government, and everything will be fine. The "solution" to global warming is just more of the same.
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

Even if global warming is 100% human-caused, I am very skeptical of the ability of any body, governmental or otherwise, to actually undertake and enforce "corrective" action against global warming. The liberal doomsdayers and their leader Al Gore can bemoan the existence of global warming, but what are they seriously intending to do about it? Is Gore going to shut down his power-gobbling Tennessee mansion and move to a small apartment in Nashville to set an example?

If the situation is anywhere near as dire as we are being told, it will require draconian measures. The way I see it, if this "crisis" is human-caused, there are only two possible solutions. Either we reject the modern, Western lifestyle that is now being adopted throughout much of the developing world (perhaps we could insist that the people of China and India give up their newly acquired automobiles and go back to their bicycles) or we reduce the human population. We all know that neither of these options are feasible or even sensible, but given the calamity that is being predicted by the left, I can't think of any other approaches that will actually get results. I hear about a lot of baby steps being suggested, like compact fluorescent light bulbs, but they are all irrelevant in terms of expected results.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Health Care, Business, Abortion, Global Warming, Books, Constitution, Law, Military, Iraq, NATO, Communism, Immigration, Energy