"Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists.Take well-meaning environmentalists who warn us that our plush lifestyles heat up and pollute the planet.
"To listen to former vice president Al Gore or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, we must immediately curtail our carbon emissions — or face planetary destruction.Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture. From time to time, Al Gore hops on a private jet — and purchases “carbon offsets” as penances for the privilege.
"His mansion not long ago consumed more energy in a month than the average American home does in a year. Friedman lives on a sprawling estate reminiscent of the grandees of the 18th-century English countryside...
"Then we have other aristocrats on the barricades railing about the economic inequality of America. Former senator John Edwards preached about “two Americas”: one poor and abandoned, one wealthy and connected. Edwards should know, since he built himself a multimillion-dollar gargantuan mansion in which he might better contemplate upon the underprivileged outside his compound.
"Sen. Chris Dodd sermonizes about corporate greed and credit-card companies’ near extortion. But Dodd managed to squeeze out of the corporate world a low-interest loan, a sweetheart deal for a vacation home in Ireland, and thousands in campaign donations...
" Former senator and cabinet nominee Tom Daschle was a big proponent of hiking taxes to nationalize our health-care system. But the populist Daschle both hated paying taxes and loved limousines — and so he avoided the former but welcomed the latter."
The must-read rest:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTNhZWZkMGQyYzc5YWY3NTExY2VlYmFjYjkyYWM3MmM=&w=MA==
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