The horror!

2009-12-28T11:38:00.004-07:00

Apparently there was a grave national security threat recently. So absolutely grave and terrifying that I found out about it last night, indirectly. I'm glad we all came through that safe.

Anne Applebaum, you're a moron.

2009-12-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

Anne Applebaum just vomited out this little gem, wherein she performs this bit of sleight of hand:

Over the years there have been many radical statements of this latter creed. In the infamous words of a National Park Service ecologist, "We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." A former leader of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals once declared that "humans have grown like a cancer; we're the biggest blight on the face of the earth." But it is a mistake to think that this is the language of only a crazy fringe.

Look, for example, at the Optimum Population Trust, a mainstream organization whose patrons include the naturalist David Attenborough, the scientist Jane Goodall and professors at Cambridge and Stanford -- and that campaigns against, well, human beings. Calling for "fewer emitters, lower emissions," the group offers members the chance to offset the pollution that they generate, merely by existing, through the purchase of family-planning devices in poor countries. Click on its PopOffsets calculator to see what I mean: It reckons that every $7 spent on family planning generates one ton fewer carbon emissions. Since the average American generates 20.6 tons of carbon annually, it will cost $144.20 -- $576.80 for a family of four -- to buy enough condoms to prevent the births of, say, 0.4 Kenyans.

The assumption behind this calculation is profoundly negative: that human beings are nothing more than machines for the production of carbon dioxide. And if we take that assumption seriously, a whole lot of other things look different, too. Weapons of mass destruction should perhaps be reconsidered, along with the flu virus: By reducing the population, they might also reduce emissions. Perhaps they should be encouraged?

See that? Through a simple false equivalence, condom use becomes mass murder.
I'm here to correct you Miss Applebaum. The two are not equivalent, and you are a moron for suggesting it. Please publish a correction and public apology as soon as possible.

Oh how I hate making up titles.

The horror!

Anne Applebaum, you're a moron.