{"id":7017,"date":"2014-02-18T09:51:52","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T17:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7017"},"modified":"2014-02-18T09:51:52","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T17:51:52","slug":"aristocratic-sermonizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/aristocratic-sermonizing\/","title":{"rendered":"Aristocratic Sermonizing"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Secretary of State John Kerry, a veritable billionaire who is not shy about acquiring carbon-consuming luxury boats, cars, and toys, and who leaves an incorrectly large carbon footprint when he engages in private travel, just gave a screed to relatively poor Indonesia on the\u00a0need to make drastic changes to prevent climate change, the new vocabulary to account for the linguistic limitations of global warming, when the United States, for example, is in the midst of a record cold winter, and the planet itself has not heated up for 17 years. The problem with Kerry\u2019s sermons reflects much of the paradoxes of modern liberalism.<\/p>\n

It is increasingly an ideology of elites who believe that they themselves should be exempt from the ramifications of their politics. \u201cFairness\u201d and \u201cequality\u201d do not mean its avatars would at least symbolically try to live like the\u00a0average folks they romanticize from a distance from Martha\u2019s Vineyard. \u201cClimate change\u201d does not mean that Al Gore should not make enormous profits peddling a failed cable channel to a petrodollar-rich, carbon-fuel-profiting Middle East despotic regime. And save the smelt does not mean that Bay Area activists would be willing to sacrifice a daily shower or a washed Mercedes in order to divert their own Sierra water from their\u00a0Hetch\u00a0Hetchy\u00a0supplies out to\u00a0sea to ensure viable bait fish populations in the San Francisco delta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner\u00a0 Secretary of State John Kerry, a veritable billionaire who is not shy about acquiring carbon-consuming luxury boats, cars, and toys, and who leaves an incorrectly large carbon footprint when he engages in private travel, just gave a screed to relatively poor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[208,603,262],"tags":[882,291,405,1062],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Pb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3697,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-ugly-american\/","url_meta":{"origin":7017,"position":0},"title":"The Ugly American","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate for president, is at it again with another rude gaffe, this one providing an unintended glimpse of the way many contemporary\u00a0cosmopolitan elites characterize their homeland when abroad. In the past, Kerry has said that our soldiers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2007"","block_context":{"text":"February 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/february-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7072,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-pseudo-scientism\/","url_meta":{"origin":7017,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Pseudo-Scientism","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Too hot? Too cold? Regardless, it must be global warming. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online\u00a0 President Obama came to California. He saw a drought. He announced the cause to be global warming and left. How accurate was the president\u2019s diagnosis of harmful, man-made climate change in stopping\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1383,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/democratic-leadership\/","url_meta":{"origin":7017,"position":2},"title":"Democratic Leadership?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's The Corner Not Quite the Clinton Solution In all the talk about returning to the Clinton income-tax tables, I have been confused on one small point: As I remember the Gingrich-Clinton years, the tax raises were followed by spending freezes and caps, and some time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2010"","block_context":{"text":"August 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/august-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2459,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-tottering-technocracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":7017,"position":3},"title":"A Tottering Technocracy","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We are witnessing a widespread crisis of faith in our progressive guardians of the last 30 years. These are the blue-chip, university-certified elite, employed by universities, government, and big-money private foundations and financial-services companies. The best recent examples are sorts like Barack Obama,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8060,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/liberalism-in-ruins\/","url_meta":{"origin":7017,"position":4},"title":"Liberalism in Ruins","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama\u2019s hubristic promises have been followed by a total discrediting of his ideology. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Barack Obama will end his tenure with the ruin of Hope and Change. The implosion was brought about not by the marginalization of Hope and Change, but by the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Identity Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Identity Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/identity-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1666,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/global-warming-rip\/","url_meta":{"origin":7017,"position":5},"title":"Global Warming–RIP?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Not long ago, candidate Obama promised to cool the planet and lower the rising seas. Indeed, he campaigned on passing \u201ccap-and-trade\u201d legislation, a radical, costly effort to reduce America\u2019s traditional carbon energy use. The theory was that new taxes and greater regulations would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7018,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017\/revisions\/7018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}