Kathleen Parker on Hitler and the Lack of "Serious Debate" in This Country

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker nails it in the Washington Post today with her column, "Hitler In August." Here's my favorite part:

... Invocations of Hitler usually mean two things: one, a poverty of imagination, and two, a paucity of good arguments. It is nearly axiomatic that any protest against government action will feature Hitler in some form. Left and right are equally guilty. Trivializing such evil is an insult to the memory of millions who suffered and died by his order, as well as to the intelligence of all sentient beings.

It may no longer be possible in this country to have a serious debate about anything. Inevitably, substance devolves into silliness. Even the most dignified of statesmen become caricatures when juxtaposed with the ridiculous.

While it's easy to blame "the media," there's no longer any single entity to indict. In a world where everyone has video -- and distribution is both free and easy -- every little thing is a "story." And so the exercised Israeli American and his mocking nemesis become stars on the world stage. The Obama-Hitler woman may be only infamous, but she is a celebrity of sorts.

One may reasonably oppose, on the merits, the views that Frank and the Democrats hold on health care -- and plenty of informed people do. But when Frank is tossed into the ring with a Hitler-wielding instigator, he looks the sage from Vesuvius, and his opponents escapees from the asylum.

I agree with all this, particularly that - with the likes of Sarah Palin, Orly Taitz, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. running their mouths off - "it may no longer be possible in this country to have a serious debate about anything." In fairness, as Parker points out, there's been plenty of insanity and idiocy on the left as well. Take the extreme-left International ANSWER coalition of anti-Semites and Marxist-Leninists. Please! Or take Cindy Sheehan or Code Pink. Again, please!

But right now, for a variety of reasons, the loony left is relatively quiet (except for the Larouchies, who are more fascist than left as far as I can tell, but as the saying goes, eventually the far left and the far right meet and become indistinguishable), while the far right is in full insanity mode. And what is it that they're so ANGRY about, invoking Hitler's name faster than you can say "achtung?" Well, you see, the government might actually save the economy from Great Depression Part II; provide high-quality, affordable health care to all Americans; and jump-start a new energy economy with millions of "clean tech" jobs that otherwise would go to China, India, etc. (begin extreme snark) As you can see, it's horrible stuff, definitely on the scale of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and a World War that took the lives of tens of millions of innocent people. (end extreme snark)

Look, when doing good becomes equated with doing evil and the "screamers"/"birthers"/"deathers"/dittoheads take over, Kathleen Parker's right: we can NOT have a "serious debate about anything" in this country. So why are we even bothering? Why don't we just invoke Godwin's Law every time someone invokes Nazis or Hitler or whatever, give the Barney Frank response to whatever loony is speaking, and move on with the pressing business of the day?

Kathleen Parker Pens Stupidest Editorial in Human History?

Despite the fact that she's a conservative, I usually find Kathleen Parker's op-ed columns to be well-written and intelligent, even if I disagree with her. Not today, though. Au contraire: Parker's column, "A Crude Reality About Energy Independence", is very possibly THE stupidest editorial I've ever read, possibly the stupidest editorial in all of human history, even stupider than George Will Stupid. OK, sure, I'm having a bit of fun here, but I'm completely serious that this column is complete and utter crap. Let me count the problems.

1. The entire argument, that "the greener we are, the less secure we're likely to be," is completely, 180-degrees, flat-out, perniciously wrong. Instead, what the American Clean Energy and Security Act would do - through a variety of measures - is to ultimately (by 2050) slash our oil consumption, and hence oil imports, by around 80%. How on earth importing 80% less oil from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc. would make us less secure is beyond me, but somehow Kathleen Parker concludes that it will. Duhhhhh.

2. The following statement by Parker is flat-out false: "Basically, the energy bill focuses primarily on stationary sources of carbon dioxide emissions (power and manufacturing plants) and would do little to address mobile sources of emissions, i.e. transportation." The fact is, this bill caps carbon, whether it's from stationary or mobile sources, and all fossil fuels - solid, liquid, or gaseous - contain carbon. For Kathleen Parker's (and everyone else's) edification, here are a few of the coefficients (Million metric tons carbon dioxide per quadrillion Btu) courtesy of the US Energy Information Administration:

Motor Gasoline: 70.88
Distillate: 73.15
Crude oil: 74.54
Petroleum coke: 102.12
Coal (for electric power plants): 94.70
Natural gas: 53.08
Alcohol fuels: 65.95

Also, just for fun, here are the carbon contents of a few other fuel sources:
Wind: Zero
Solar: Zero
Geothermal: Zero
Hydroelectric: Zero
Nuclear: Zero
Energy efficiency: Zero

Get the idea? In other words, capping carbon shifts the incentive/disincentive structure, making fuels with lower (e.g., natural gas) - or zero (wind, solar, etc.) - carbon content more competitive, while making those with high carbon content (oil, coal) less competitive. What that will do over time, particularly as the carbon cap is progressively lowered, is to slash consumption of coal and oil while boosting consumption of renewables, hydro, and possibly nuclear. Then there's energy efficiency, the lowest of all low-hanging fruits when it comes to energy, in that it is almost always far cheaper to save a watt of power than to produce one, given how energy inefficient/wasteful we are now. And, of course, energy efficiency - achieving the same amount of output using less energy - does not emit any carbon dioxide.

Again, this bill caps carbon, which as I mentioned earlier, is contained in both coal (a stationary source fuel, used primarily to generate electricity) and oil (a liquid fuel used primarily in "mobile sources" like cars). As this blog points out, "the Union of Concerned Scientists has a report saying the bill will reduce oil use by 6 million barrels a day by 2030." That's huge, and would have a tremendously positive impact on our trade balance, our economy, our energy security situation, and our contribution to global warming. It also "put[s] drilling for a few hundred thousand barrels to shame." Again, Kathleen Parker is 180 degrees wrong, to a degree that is laughable to anyone who knows anything at all about this topic.

In sum, ACES will help to slash carbon dioxide emissions by slashing U.S. consumption of carbon-based fuels, particularly coal (stationary) and oil (mobile). ACES also encourages the rapid adoption of clean, renewable energy that can be used both to power our homes and our cars, presuming that we move towards plug-in hybrids, etc. What Kathleen Parker is talking about, I have no idea.

3. The stupid goes on and on. For instance, Parker argues - apparently this is not satire - that "[t]he only way to be less dependent, obviously, is to produce as much domestic oil as possible." Without even getting into the fact that the United States is a "mature oil province" long past "peak" (U.S. crude oil output's been declining since around 1972), the fact is that there are two ways to become less dependent on imports of oil or anything else: produce more of it domestically, or consume less of it. Or both. But somehow for Parker there's only one option: produce more of it. That's completely wrong, both logically and also practically. The fact is, for a mature oil province like the United States with high energy intensity, it makes much more sense - like, a gazillion times more sense - to focus on the demand side of the question than on the supply side. But even if you disagree with that for whatever reason, Kathleen Parker is still wrong, because it's simply NOT TRUE that "[t]he only way to be less dependent, obviously, is to produce as much domestic oil as possible."

4. Parker is also flat-out wrong when she says that ACES will be "giving the Saudis an advantage" over Canada, etc. That could be true in theory, but the reason it's not true in the least is that: a) the Saudis don't have the capability to significantly ramp up their oil production more than 1-2 million barrels per day, which may seem like a lot but is actually nothing in the context of an 84-million-barrel-per-day world oil market; and b) it won't matter regardless, as U.S. oil consumption plummets we won't need Saudi oil or, eventually, anyone else's. How on earth it's an "advantage" to the Saudis to have no market for their oil in the United States is beyond me, but perhaps Kathleen Parker can explain, since she's apparently an expert at world oil markets (snark).

5. I could go on all day here, Parker's article is so ignorant and so wrong. But let me just conclude by pointing out that Parker never even mentions the words "global warming" or "climate change" in her op-ed on a bill, one of the major purposes of which is to address...that's right, global warming. That's a glaring omission on several levels, including the fact that the military itself recognizes global warming as a serious threat to U.S. national security. For instance, see this report by a bunch of Admirals and Generals, who conclude that "Projected climate change will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world" and that "Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world." So, you'd think that actually doing something to reduce this threat might be good for U.S. national security? Not in Kathleen Parker's world, apparently.