Three days ago, our local paper ran an editorial warning of the dangers of conducting financial transactions, whether buying or selling, over the internet. The writer used as an example, the case of a local man who, in attempting to sell his car on a website that offers those services, was offered bogus money orders as payment. The counterfeits, though very realistic, were spotted and the counterfeiter was apprehended.
The problem with the argument is that the internet is really not at fault. Crooks are waiting to part honest people from their money regardless of the medium the transaction takes place in. Would this particular case have been any different if buyer and seller had found each other through our newspaper’s classifieds? Needless to say, our paper like most papers is a stronghold of the “progressive” world view, and the editorialist’s rant reveals the paranoia of the progressive movement towards technology and human advancement.
Perhaps nowhere is this paranoia more evident than in the progressive movement’s baby, radical environmentalism. Now, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the tireless champion of the global warming rationalist crowd, has made a booklet entitled “A Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism. Hot & Cold Media Spin Cycle: A Challenge To Journalists who Cover Global Warming†available to the general public. The booklet is the work of the Environment & Public Works Committee of which Inhofe is chairman and challenges the shamefully bad science behind the global warming scare.
In addition, David Deming of the University of Oklahoma testified before the U.S. Senate this week about how the media has manipulated the available information on global warming to support the progressive view of approaching catastrophe. Seeing as how the hallmark of the progressive movement seems to be an utterly irrational aversion to human progress, it seems more fitting to refer from now on to the political left as the “regressive” movement.