Who you calling fundamentalist Bob?

There's S. Fred Singer over to the left. He was referenced as authority by Bob Norman, perhaps this one serving on Auburn's City Council and/or serving as an Elder with Covenant Presbyterian Church and/or selling real estate for First Realty and/or ... yet I'm hardly certain, who wrote a Letter to the Editor in the March 12, 2008 Opelika-Auburn News that was titled It’s fashionable to be skeptical of fundamentalists, isn’t it?

As a contrast with Al Gore and others' “Church of Man-Made Global Warming” he offers up Dr. Singer and points readers toward a Hillsdale College's Imprimis article for a "free exchange of ideas surrounding this issue". You'll have to work to find it but it's there where he uses "scaremongers" and "propaganda" and ... to describe what he claims are "irrational and scientifically baseless climate fears". I'm, however, still unable to find any "free exchange of ideas" Bob. This is Hillsdale College after all.

Hillsdale is consistently in YAF's Top Ten Conservative Colleges after all. I've posted on YAF before in case you need a reminder of that organization's bona fides. As to Hillsdale, among their graduates you'll find Blackwater's Eric Prince (here's another recent MoJo piece on the Prince) and former Indiana Representative Chris "Count" Chocola, one of the many Bu$h buddies we (and Dubyah!) helped retire in 2006.

I go to their Hillsdale's Center for Constructive Alternatives and I get to see a picture of Dan Quayle. Their National Leadership Seminars have involved a reliable list of right wingers with a few rare exceptions. Hillsdale's Charles R. and Kathleen K. Hoogland Center for Teacher Excellence seems like another effort of foundation money to influence an agenda supportive of conservative views. Their recent free seminar in San Diego had Dr. John Eastman, Henry Salvatori Professorof Law and Community Service, Chapman University School of Law among its speakers. That's Chapman Law, home of the learned Hugh Hewitt.

Mr. Norman also mentions Dr. Singer's work with George Mason University, another favorite of those leaning right, especially of the Libertarian variety. You suggested we ought to be "following the money" didn't you? Looks like there's some sweet endowments and the like to be gathered from holding the right, as in right-wing, beliefs.

As for climate change, recent posts here, here, and here and ... can shed more light on what I'm thinking yet all pretty much deal with the push back from those on the right as they try to get regular folks thinking there is a uncertainty on climate change. Astroturfing is bad enough yet to use the academy is all the more bothersome. I'm worried about the lack of action on climate change and accept that the scientific community thinks we have a problem.

I'm willing to admit that I'm part of Al Gore's church I suppose. Who'd have thought I'd ever be a fundamentalist? If that means holding to "an intransigent set of beliefs" then I'll beg to differ. All I seek to do is keep an open mind and learn. I hold my beliefs tentatively as that's perhaps the mark of a liberal mind. Do you do the same Bob? John Gunn