According to some Democrats, if you are a Republican, you might be a racist. According to those on the left, if you are a conservative, you are probably a racist. And according to some in the media, particularly those at MSNBC, if you are a “Tea Partier”, you are certainly a racist. Now, if you are a “Global Warming Skeptic”, then you might just be a racist as well. Thus speaks Al Gore.

Or if not a racist per se, then at least the moral equivalent thereof.

I have been told that I am a racist because I fit into so many groups (Republican, conservative, Tea Party sympathizer, Christian, attend church regularly, gun owner, white, male, Mormon, Anglo, etc, etc, etc) that I am beginning to believe that it may be true. Now I just have to figure out what the word “racist” means, because it sure doesn’t seem to mean what I was brought up to understand any longer.

According to the dictionary, a racist is a person who believes in the doctrine of racism; that is, that there are inherent differences in people’s traits and capacities that are entirely due to their race and that as a consequence, racial discrimination (non-equal treatment) is justified.

By this definition, one who believes in affirmative action could be considered a racist I would think.

The term is highly emotionally charged in the United States with regard to the treatment of blacks by a large segment of the white population throughout the history of the country. It is used to a lesser extent to describe treatment of other races, such as oriental, Hispanic, and indigenous American peoples, primarily by whites of European ancestry. It is seldom used to describe the activities or actions of minority groups against the majority white population or minority groups against each other.

In modern day America, it is probably one of the worst labels that can be hung on a person, and it is used in so many contexts that it is almost becoming cliché. It is the favorite term to use by Democrats and those on the left to describe anyone who disagrees with anything they have to say on just about any topic. It conveniently lumps any opposition into a pariah camp, whereby anything further they have to say on the subject can instantly be discredited. Who cares what a racist thinks anyway?

Examples of this rhetoric abound.

The “Tea Party”:

“This is the effort we are seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress would love to see us as second-class citizens; some of them in Congress right now – of this Tea Party movement – would love to see you and me…hanging on a tree. Some of them in Congress are comfortable with where we were 50 and 60 years ago.” – Rep Andre Carson (D-Ind.) [1]

“I mean, basically they…believe in sort of white, middle-America, gun-toting. I mean it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.” – Ron Schiller, former NPR fund-raising executive on Tea Party members [2]

“The data suggests that people who are Tea Party supporters have a higher probability of being racially resentful than those who are not Tea Party supporters. The Tea Party is not just about politics and size of government. The data suggests it may also be about race.” – Christopher Parker, University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality concerning a study put out by the institute. [3]

The verdict is in! Tea Party supporters are racists! Even President Obama has weighed in on this matter. I am a Tea Party supporter. Ergo, I must be a racist. And here I thought it was all about smaller government, less government spending, and taxes.

Republicans:

“30 percent of this country will always vote Republican. I’m just asking why? Yes, paranoia, greed, and racism are fun, but it’s, it’s like when you see someone driving a Mercury, you think, you think, Did that person really wake up one day thinking, ‘You know what car I want to drive, a Mercury Mariner.’ No. No. You assume he knows someone who sells them or he was molested by a Kia dealer as a child.” – Bill Maher [4]

And another Maher minute:

“I would never say and I have never said, because it’s not true that Republicans, all Republicans are racists. That would be silly and wrong. But nowadays, if you are racist, you’re probably a Republican. And that is quite different.” – Bill Maher [5]

[Republicans] “want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally – and very transparently – block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote Democratic candidates than Republican candidates.” – Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), DNC Chairperson. [6]

I could go on, but life is too short. A Google search on the phrase “Republicans are racist” netted “about 13,400,000 results.” You don’t have to look far to find examples. And once again President Obama weighed in:

“We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid. They're going to try to make you afraid of me. (laughter) They're gonna.... They're going to say, "You know what, he's -- he's -- he's young, inexperienced, and, uh, uh, he's got a funny name. Did I mention he's black?” -- President Obama, 20 Jun 2008, campaign event in Jacksonville, FL.

Ok, he didn’t come right out and say “Republicans are racists”, but how else do you interpret his “Did I mention he’s black?” comment? Who but a racist would care? It is just about as disingenuous a comment as Bill Maher’s second one quoted above. The first one just accepts as fact that if you are a Republican then you must be a racist. The second allows that there may be a Republican somewhere, perhaps living under a rock who might not be a racist; but if there is, Mr. Maher has never met him or her – at least not recently. And by definition, Maher’s definition, if you are a Democrat it is highly unlikely that you are racist. There might be one or two, again, perhaps living under a rock, but Mr. Maher has never met one.

Conservatives: Google search on “Conservatives are racist”; about 8,180,000 results. Look them up yourself if you are interested.

You get the idea. Now we have a new category of “racists”; those who do not believe in “global warming.” Previously, these were labeled as akin to Holocaust Deniers; people who believe that six million Jews actually were not slaughtered under the demented rule of Adolph Hitler during the Second World War. Now, according to Al Gore, they are, morally at least, to be granted full racist status as well.

First, let’s define a term here. When those on the left refer to “global warming” they are using a form of verbal shorthand. “Global Warming” in their terms means Anthropomorphic or human-caused global warming. This is an important difference, and it is to their benefit that the two terms are confused, which is why they have shortened the nomenclature to simply “global warming” in the first place.

As anyone with half a brain already knows, the Earth has been in a warming trend since the end of the last ice age. Technically speaking, what most of us refer to as an “ice age” is in reality a “glacial” period within an existing ice age. An ice age proper is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth’s surface and atmosphere, characterized by the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets. Since the Earth at present still has a glacial cap at the South Pole and on Greenland, we are still in an ice age that has been going on since the beginning of the Quaternary, around 2.588 million years ago; the last time Earth was ice-free.

An interglacial period is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature lasting thousands of years that separates consecutive glacial periods within an ice age. We are currently in an interglacial period which began about 11,400 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene era; Earth has been in a warming trend since then.

Interglacials do not exhibit straight line temperature increases or decreases. Like most natural phenomena, there is a lot of variability. Looking back across the history of an interglacial (and there have been many in Earth’s history), there is a period in each called an interglacial optimum, which is the period within an interglacial where the most ‘favorable’ climate occurs. This is often in the middle of the interglacial, but need not be. The interglacial optimum is denoted by a period where sea levels rise to their highest values and the temperature is at its highest mean values, indicating a ‘better’ climate than the rest of the interglacial.

One would think that we must now be in such an interglacial optimum, since apparently temperatures are higher and sea levels higher now than ever before in Earth’s history, and projected to increase until all life as we know it has been wiped from the face of the planet. At least that is what the purveyors of AGW, such as Al Gore, and Prince Charles in England would have us believe. The greatest threat the world has ever known, according to them.

According to scientists, however, we have already hit two climactic optimums in the current interglacial; the Subboreal (3000-500 BC) and the Atlanticum (7000-3000 BC). In both of these, mean sea levels and mean planetary temperatures were higher than today. And yet, the Earth survived.

In fact, the very fact that the Earth has had periods where it was ice free tells us that it has been warmer at certain times in the past than it is today. And yet life not only survived, it thrived. Were all the Earth’s glaciers to melt tomorrow, and sea levels correspondingly go up, the world would no doubt be a different place. However I also have little doubt, based on past evidence that life would somehow muddle through. Indeed, I have little doubt that barring some sort of cataclysmic event of our own making, that mankind too would somehow muddle through.

In any event, the fact that Al Gore considers me a racist because I don’t believe in his AGW bilge is small potatoes compared to the latest comment by Senator Barbara Boxer. According to her, I am not just a racist, I am “endangering humankind.” Wow! Who knew I was so powerful!

But you know, this new-found notoriety may seem comical because it is so patently over the top, but I probably had best watch out. As silly as it seems, people like Senator Boxer and Al Gore have a lot of power; much more than I have certainly. And they seem to really believe the bilge they are spewing. Being as I have just graduated from minor nuisance to major menace, should they ever get into a position where they can unequivocally have their way on this issue, does a Soviet style re-education camp lie in wait for me in the future?

[1] “Black Caucus Blast Tea Party as Racist, Offensive to Minorities”, The Christian Post, 31 Aug 2011.
[2] “NPR executive calls tea party ‘seriously racist,’ most Americans ‘uneducated’”, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 Mar 2011
[3] “Are Tea Partiers Racist?”, The Daily Beast, 25 April 2010.
[4] “Bill Maher: Republicans are Paranoid, Greedy Racists”, NewsBusters, 7 May 2011
[5] “Maher: If you are racist, you’re probably a Republican”, The Raw Story, 2 May 2010
[6] “Racist Republicans Block Access to Polls?”, National Review Online, 6 Jun 2011