The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 2 of 13)

May our gracious God grant that Britain's coming history not track that of the Fatherland of some others of my ancestors. Should Mohammedans seize control of the British government we may expect hard totalitarian nightmare to replace the soft secular socialism now ruining the land. Recall the horrid, post-Wilhelmine, let-it-all-hang-out decadence of secularized Germany under the Social Democrats. Germany suffered three horrendous economic and social crashes (1918-19, 1923-24, 1930 on) in a dozen years. Numerous Nietzschean political factions took advantage of the Weimar government's, and society's, shock and lack of will to survive. How did the increasingly desperate Germans deal with the social disorder in their streets, and the growing and varied threats of totalitarian socialism? With emigration--and appeasement. "Let's try to tame the beast. Give that Austrian painter some responsibility and see! He calls for a New Order! He'll drop all those silly overheated rants against the Jews and the Church once he actually has to govern..."

p>"Finis Germanae" (Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, 1944). Thirty years hence, will anyone then residing in Britain possess even a notion why 1940 remains its "finest hour"? br> -- Dave Hanson br> Fayette, Iowa /p>

Australian spelunker and policy guru Hal Colebatch is incensed at Conservative Party Leader David Cameron contributing "to a large carbon-offset company, Climate Care, which does things like supplying treadle pumps -- treadmill-type devices-- to Third World villages rather than have them use diesel pumps," in order to undo the CO2 of the turbojet engines that lofted him to an event in still-agrarian India.

This suggests an appropriate energy bonanza in the offing, as energy efficiency in appropriate technology is paramount in curbing CO2. While paddlewheel pumps are ideally matched to the needs of irrigating rice paddies, human treadmill performance falls off direly at turbojet turning rates. Thus to minimize CO2 emissions in connection with environmental diplomacy, the international climate change conference circuit and Eco-Rock concert jet setting, participants in all of the above should transfer their transportation needs to specially retrofitted human powered paddle boats, possibly drawn from the Irawaddy Flotilla, as nobody is going to Burma these days anyway.

Propelled at a sensible 1 1/2 knots by the efforts of several hundred Third World pedestrians glad of such gainful employment , this Great Green Fleet could transport Mr. Gore's cohort from Hollywood to Stockholm or Cannes in six months flat, and whisk the entire International Panel on Climate Change from its venues to its labs and back in under 1,000, for the first time allowing all participants ample deck chair time to read the last edition of their vital work.

Most importantly, it will allow readers writers and editors of journals as diverse as the Nation and the Weekly Standard who now assemble offshore for a hopelessly brief cruise-ship week each year to apply themselves to the formulation of policy in adequate depth. Think how the political environment might be transformed were they to remain outside the 12-mile limit for a minimum of 52 weeks a year?

p>Move over, Churchill, this fellow Cameron may be on to something. br> -- Russell Seitz br> Cambridge, Massachusetts /p>

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