Suppose a man who wrote the following ran for president of the United States and narrowly lost:
Saving the environment is the “central organizing principle” for civilization, which “means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action — to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our ecological system. Minor shifts in policy, marginal adjustments in ongoing programs, moderate improvements in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change — these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle, and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary.”
That lengthy but revealing quote is from page 274 of Vice President Gore’s book Earth in the Balance. Other passages likewise predict his behavior when confronted with political loss.
Remember, this is the same person who, at the end of the campaign, remarked in his stump speech that he advocates good while those who oppose him favor evil. People gasped at his egomania as if it were something new. But 12 years earlier, concerning global warming, he wrote in The New Republic:”’Evil’ and ‘Good’ are terms not used frequently by politicians. Yet I do not see how this problem [global warming] can be solved without reference to spiritual values.”
Such a person would simply not accept narrow rejection by the electorate, and would believe that forces of evil — not voters — were responsible for his failure. He would probably stop at nothing if there were any chance, however small, that he could change the result. It is very clear that one step on the way to imposing the “central organizing principle for civilization” is becoming president of the most powerful nation in civilization, which is, in Gore’s mind, simply required.
He is now acting out the script of his book. He has 150 lawyers in Florida exploring “every law and institution.” He is engaging “every tactic and strategy,” one of which is becoming dangerously apparent: civil unrest charged with racial animosity. He clearly does not care about this danger. He could have told Jesse Jackson to cool it. When Al Sharpton shows up, as he likely will (no Democratic circus is complete without his act), Gore he won’t tell him to go away.
Gore apparently believes that his mission to save the planet is worth the destruction of the way we elect presidents. And every day that this charade continues, the chance for more corruption and fraud increases. Gore says he will tie up the process for “as long as it takes.” The part he left out is that he meant as long as it takes for him to usurp the presidency with “every plan and course of action.”
On page 11 of his book, he wrote, “In my view…our [political] system is on the verge of losing its essential equilibrium” because of “the timidity of vision that characterize too many of us in government.” Well, he’s certainly on a bold path now. On page 15, he tells us why: “I have become very impatient with my own tendency to put a finger to the political winds and proceed cautiously.”
But extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures. See page 294: “…we now face the prospect of a kind of global civil war between those who refuse to consider the consequences of civilization’s relentless advance and those who refuse to be silent partners in the destruction.”
Does it matter what the voters have said? On page 167, Gore says there is “a fundamental problem with the political system itself. Aside from its uninspired response to the environmental crisis, our political system itself has now been exploited, manhandled, and abused to the point that we are no longer making consistently intelligent choices about our course as a nation.”
As an environmental scientist specializing in climatology, I have studied Gore intensively for two decades. Along the way he has trashed the careers and reputations of dozens of scientists who, by his logic, are “evil” and obstruct his vision of a “wrenching transformation of society.”
It was only a select few of us who had personally witnessed his malignant ego. Now it is the entire world. But it is nothing new. He told us all about himself in his book, published nine years ago.
— Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.