The Council Votes

Right Wing Nuthouse stands atop the heap this week for his essay on the Left's word deficit:

The word “enemy” has been removed from their lexicon – except as it relates to the President and their political foes on the right. Our enemies are called “insurgents.” They’re called “rebels.” They’re referred to as “the opposition.” Some on the far left have gone so far as to call them “freedom fighters.” Even al Qaeda fighters in our custody are called “detainees.” But to call them “the enemy” opens an intellectual chasm beneath their feet that the left simply cannot look into without blanching in horror.

Do you think this kind of intellectual black hole is akin to aphasia?

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The Non Council winner is Maxedoutmamma. I can only say thank heavens someone finally did this. We talk about that fool Erlichman's stoooopid predictions all the time, but never thought to fisk him the way MM has. Brilliant woman. First she quotes some of his more egregious predictions:

	Some words of extinct wisdom from Paul Ehrlich, the man who singlehandedly made environmental idiocy a scientifically respectable and profitable endeavor (this was inspired by this WSJ article about how Americans refused to become hysterial over global warming):
	“This vast tragedy, however, is nothing compared to the nutritional disaster that seems likely to overtake humanity in the 1970s (or, at the latest, the 1980s) ... A situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death.” [Paul Ehrlich, “The End of Affluence” (1974), p.21]

As Maxedoutmamma puts it:

See, in the magical world of environmental Cassandraism, you don’t have to be right. In fact, you can be completely wrong over a matter of decades. All that matters is your devotion to doom. And this brings me back to Thomas Bray, writing in the WSJ about the American public’s refusal to scream and run in circles about global warming...

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It's all here on the Watcher's page. Some great reading, too. A good way to cover a lot of blog territory in a short time.