National Review on Al Gore
Kevin Drum:
The Washington Monthly: AL AND OSAMA....National Review, classy as always:
Who Else Should Al Gore Share the Prize With? [Iain Murray]: How about that well known peace campaigner Osama Bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore's stance — and that of the Nobel committee — in his September rant from the cave.
Comments
I love the sound of thousands of tiny hamsters tripping off the wheel of their Wingnut's brain. It's been a tough week to be a Wingnut, first the public outcry over beating up a 12-yr old and now Gore. Posted by: ckelly on October 12, 2007 at 1:28 PM....
So if Osama Bin Laden says that the sky is blue, a patriotic American ought to say that the sky is green? Is this the logic now? Posted by: troglodyte on October 12, 2007 at 1:59 PM....
Come to think of it, writing for National Review must be awfully fun. The illogical possibilities are simply endless. Posted by: AJB on October 12, 2007 at 2:18 PM....
Stop brushing your teeth! After all, Hitler thought it was a good idea. Posted by: Virginia on October 12, 2007 at 2:20 PM
Al Gore is not the equal of Martin Luther King, Jr.; and his causes are not the equals either. But parallels are instructive.
So let's do National Review on Martin Luther King, Jr.!:
Recall the Words of the National Review » The Moderate Voice: the doings of such high-minded, self-righteous “children of light” as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates in the leadership of the “civil rights” movement. If you are looking for those ultimately responsible for the murder, arson, and looting in Los Angeles, look to them: they are the guilty ones, these apostles of “non-violence.”
For years now, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates have been deliberately undermining the foundations of internal order in this country. With their rabble-rousing demagoguery, they have been cracking the “cake of custom” that holds us together. With their doctrine of “civil disobedience,” they have been teaching hundreds of thousands of Negroes — particularly the adolescents and the children — that it is perfectly alright to break the law and defy constituted authority if you are a Negro-with-a-grievance; in protest against injustice. And they have done more than talk. They have on occasion after occasion, in almost every part of the country, called out their mobs on the streets, promoted “school strikes,” sit-ins, lie-ins, in explicit violation of the law and in explicit defiance of the public authority. They have taught anarchy and chaos by word and deed — and, no doubt, with the best of intentions — and they have found apt pupils everywhere, with intentions not of the best. Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind. But it is not they alone who reap it, but we as well; the entire nation....
The “civil rights” movement and the consequent lawlessness has well nigh shattered these hopes... because of the corruption and demoralization of the children, who have been lured away from the steady path of decency and self-government to the more exhilarating road of ‘demonstration’ — and rioting...
Will Herberg, “‘Civil Rights’ and Violence: Who Are the Guilty Ones?”, The National Review Sept. 7th, 1965, pp. 769-770.
And Jim Fallows adds:
James Fallows: I am old enough... well, there are many ways to end that sentence, but for now: I am old enough to remember, from my school years, the disdainful reaction in my home town to the news that Martin Luther King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. The reaction was, of course, racial at its root. This was a majority-white, minority-Hispanic small town with very few black residents, which went for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election that same fall. But the stated form of the objection concerned not King's race but his obnoxiousness as a man. He was a windbag. He was pompous and self-dramatizing, He was holier than thou. Plus, he had started getting involved where he didn't belong, in raising questions about the Vietnam War. Through the rest of Martin Luther King's life, the father of my best home-town friend always went out of his way to refer sneeringly to "Martin Luther Nobel."
As is the case now with some similar complaints about Al Gore, the criticisms weren't about nothing. Gore can be pompous, lecturing, pedantic, and all the rest. I agree with the argument in his book The Assault on Reason but wish he made the point with fewer larded-in references to Jurgen Habermas. (Think of of how, yes, Bill Clinton would make similar points about the simplifications and distortions of today's nutty media world.) But in retrospect the criticisms of King look very small, and -- without equating the stature of the two men -- I think something similar will be true regarding Gore.
Like him or not, he has turned his efforts to an important cause, under historical and political circumstances that would have tempted many people to drown themselves in drink or move to Bhutan. It's interesting about the Nobel Peace Prize -- unlike the quirky and PC-conscious prize for Literature, or the quasi-Nobel* "medal" in economics -- that its list of winners holds up very, very well under historical scrutiny.
There are a few choices that look fishy in retrospect. (Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973??? Arafat as co-winner with Peres and Rabin in 1994?) But the great majority stand up very well. Desmond Tutu, and then Mandela and deKlerk. Albert Schweitzer. George C. Marshall. Lech Walesa, Willy Brandt, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi. The Norwegian Nobel Institute has earned the benefit of the doubt...
