WINGNUTTERY'S SECOND FRONT

You know Albania worships Bush as a god and Poland fears gay marriage and gay Teletubbies. Well, here's Czech president Vaclas Vaclav Klaus in the Financial Times with an op-ed that makes him sound like the third Limbaugh brother:

We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough -- irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent -- for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

In the past year, Al Gore's so-called "documentary" film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain's -- more or less Tony Blair’s -- Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.

The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: "the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda"....

Crichton? OK, I've had enough.

I guess I've adjusted to the fact that the nations of Eastern Europe are exceedingly fond of the U.S., even (or perhaps especially) under our current president. What surprises -- and scares -- me is that we have here a head of state writing as if he's auditioning for a weekly column at Townhall. And probably passing the audition.

My favorite Klaus line:

Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term "scientific consensus", which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority.

Always? Is that true for, say, the assertion that HIV causes AIDS, or that the planets revolve around the sun? Were these beliefs forced on us by a "loud minority"?