Is America Still the Land of the Free?

After reading the letter that Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe wrote to Rex W. Tillerson, the new Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, the answer to that is “maybe not.”

The good senators have decided that global warming is a fact. The issue is decided, the debate is closed. They are “concerned about the credibility of the United States in the international community” and believe that denying global warming adversely affects that credibility. While they admit that “other factors complicate our foreign policy,” they “are persuaded that the climate change denial strategy” has “helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind and has thus damaged the stature of our nation internationally.”

It is their “hope that under your leadership, ExxonMobil would end its dangerous support of the ‘deniers’. Likewise, we look to you to guide ExxonMobil to capitalize on its significant resources and prominent industry position to assist this county in taking its appropriate leadership role in promoting the technological innovation necessary to address climate change and in fashioning a truly global solution to what is undeniably a global problem.”

Apparently, ExxonMobil has been using its money (ill-gotten or not is another debate) to fund organizations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute that dispute the mainstream beliefs on global warming. According to these two great scientists of the senate, there is no such thing as skepticism, there is only “obfuscation.” Non-belief in the mainstream’s idea of global warming is merely a “pseudo-scientific, non-peer reviewed echo chamber.” “Climate change denial” has “exerted an influence out of all proportion to its size or relative scientific credibility.”

Rockefeller/Snowe want ExxonMobil to “come clean” about its “past denial activities” and that the “corporation take positive steps by a date certain toward a new and more responsible corporate citizenship” because “ExxonMobil is responsible for much of this bogus scientific ‘debate’ and the demand for what the deniers cynically refer to as ‘sound science’.” God forbid that sound science should actually enter the debate.

“In light of the adverse impacts still resulting from your corporations activities, we must request that ExxonMobil end any further financial assistance or other support to groups or individuals whose public advocacy has contributed to the small, but unfortunately effective, climate change denial myth.” No threat there.

As an example of how far the current debate on global warming needs to go before global warming can be accepted as a fact, look no further than the predictions on this year’s hurricane season. Before the season began, the experts’ predictions were dire. As it turned out, this year’s season was the mildest in a decade. If “experts” can’t predict what’s going to happen three months, two months, a month from now, what on earth makes us believe that they can predict years into the future? Just as an aside, I wonder if the global warming jihadists have figured into the equation the consequences of a nuke or two set off by the Islamic jihadists.

So, is America still the land of the free? When government moves to silence dissent and people are not allowed to act on their beliefs, then the answer is, No.

The actions of Sens. Rockefeller and Shower are beyond disgraceful.