Let's face it - the chances of anyone on either side of the EU debate coming up with a new, game-changing argument between now and the referendum are remote. I suspect about one third of us have already decided to vote for staying in, another third already know they're going to vote to leave, and most of the rest, having pretended they've "listened to the arguments" but having in reality assiduously ignored them, will make a decision based largely on a vague fear of what the "stay" team will have remorselessly characterised as a terrifying, "Here Be Dragons" unknown (but is, of course, nothing of the sort) and vote to stay. And that - at least in my lifetime - will be that, because if the British aren't sufficiently disgusted by the EU's greed, incompetence, arrogance and corruption by now, they're never going to be.
Every now and then, and despite all the evidence to the contrary to be found in this blog, I try to see things from the other chap's point of view. No, honestly, I do. I even watched a speech by Ed Miliband during the general election campaign and tried my damnedest to be convinced by his arguments (I use the term loosely). I failed, of course, but at least I tried. Similarly, I have, over the years, occasionally made myself listen with as much sympathy as I can possibly muster to the arguments of climate change enthusiasts, rather than automatically rejecting everything they say. It never works, of course - I remain unconvinced - but I'll keep on making the effort, because it's a way of testing my own beliefs and making sure I haven't adopted them just because they make me feel morally superior to other people. This exercising of the imagination also helps curb my tendency to automatically assume that everyone who doesn't agree with me is either mad, stupid or evil - let's leave that sort of bone-headed, knee-jerk response to the Left.
Mind you, I saw a video yesterday which did have me wondering whether the person being interrogated by US Senator Ted Cruz on the issue of their climate change beliefs was mad, stupid or evil. To refresh your memory, Cruz is a right-wing Republican and one of the candidates standing against Donald Trump in the race to become his party's presidential candidate. The person being questioned was Aaron Mair, President of the Sierra Club, an American environmental organisation established in 1892, which has always been "progressive" and is now a screamingly left-wing, Obama-loving, propaganda tannoy for green issues and climate change. Either Mr. Mair is either incredibly thick (in which case, apart from the obvious answer, how did he land the job?) or he really has something to hide. Otherwise, why does he act as if his lawyer's Tom Hagen, and he's itching to plead the Fifth?:
I don't know about you, but that certainly had me questioning my scepticism regarding the theory of man-made climate change! It also had me wondering whether, having had his ignorance revealed in such a brutal manner, it might occur to Mr. Mair to delve into the available evidence as a means of examining the validity of his own beliefs (which, in any case, seem to be provided for him on a "need to know" basis by the Tom Hagen figure). C.S. Lewis was once flummoxed in a public debate about religion by the philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe (something she said about a speak-your-weight machine), and was so appalled by his own inability to deal with her argument that he - the most successful British writer of Christian apologetics of the 20th century - never again ventured into print on the subject. (Sad, because he was very good at it - and, besides, Elizabeth Anscombe was a fellow-Christian, albeit a Catholic.) It wasn't that he stopped believing in Christianity - he just felt he wasn't intellectually equipped to defend it in public.
I somehow doubt whether Mr. Mair will display a similar level of intellectual probity by not uttering a word about climate change until he has actually delved sufficiently deeply into the subject to grasp the basic themes - and facts - involved in the current debate. He won't, of course, because he has evidently forged a startlingly successful career out of blithely parroting standard alarmist "truths" without, it appears, having understood them. I've taken the following from his CV on the Sierra Club website:
SIERRA CLUB LEADERSHIP POSITIONS: National Environmental Justice and Community Partnerships Chair 2010-present; National Diversity Council 2008-2010. Atlantic Chapter: Environmental Justice 2003-2004; Chapter Chair 2002-2003. Hudson Mohawk Group: International Human Rights/Environment 2003-present; Environmental Justice 2002-2008; Water Quality/Habitats 2006-2011.
OTHER LEADERSHIP POSITIONS: EPA Environmental Quality Award for clean up of PCBs on the Hudson River 2000; Friends of Clean Hudson 1999; Current New York League of Conservation Voters Board Member 2000; Arbor Hill Environmental Justice Founder 1995-Current.
Remarkable, how high a person can reach fuelled by nothing but Premium Grade virtue-signalling bullshit.
Similarly, I doubt if the squalid twerps who run the EU ever stop to examine the beliefs that have earned them such lavish benefits. Surely the sheer number of axle-bushing bumps in the road the Great European Project has trundled over in the recent times has given even the most swivel-eyed Euro-loon pause for thought as to the possibility that the top-of-the-range super-powered 4x4 off-roadster they invested so heavily in all those years ago might not be suitable for the heavy load they're now asking it to carry? No - having bought a fantastically expensive lemon, they want to spend yet more money expanding the very features that have been causing it to break down with such monotonous regularity. (Mind you, if they were to buy a new car, it'd probably be a VW Diesel.) Or maybe they've actually realised how catastrophically wrong they've been but are now "in blood stepp'd in so far...that returning were as tedious as go o'er." Doubt it.
Let's be honest - Nigel Farage didn't have a particularly good general election campaign, and the shenanigans of the post-election period might have proved terminally disastrous for UKIP had it not been for Labour's suicidal leadership election. But Farage still talks sense. Unfortunately, he seems most at home in the European Parliament, which no one gives a flying one about, so most British voters never get to see him on top form. Here he is talking Truth to Power - and Power is looking distinctly shifty:
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