America has just witnessed another amazing episode of hypocrisy from the left, specifically, the recent controversy over former Vice-President Al Gore’s extravagant usage of a private jet. But while breathtaking, given his status as supposed high priest of environmental awareness, Gore’s behavior is also entirely typical. As such, it is illustrative of the real arrogance and indifference driving American liberals.

 

Issues of the day are never determined as a result of the concerns and needs of the citizens, but rather by their ability to be utilized to further accrue prestige (and thus, power) to the political left. Within this framework, amazing “about faces” regularly occur. And some of them vastly eclipse former presidential candidate John Kerry’s schizophrenic proclamation of “I actually voted for the 87 billion dollars before I voted against it.”

 

On occasion, certain Democrats such as Hillary Clinton have strayed too far off of the liberal reservation, at which point they are taken to task for their duplicity. Since declaring her intentions to run for President, Clinton has had to perform an impressive political tap-dance away from her previously staunch support for the Iraq war.

 

Conservative leaders correctly characterize the Democrat Party as having a vested interest in securing defeat in Iraq. Consequently, any postures by Clinton that might appear to support America and thereby jeopardize the desired outcome, run counter to the current leftist orthodoxy and cannot be tolerated.

 

More often than not however, ideologues of the political left are content to ignore the glaring inconsistencies among their members, since they know that the “mainstream” media will never point such contradictions out to the general public. A few sterling examples of recent weeks, when considered in conjunction with the virtual media blackout in response to them, prove this point.

 

It is striking that, at the same time Gore’s fossil fuel squandering escapades are coming to light (at least among the “alternative media” and conservative circles), Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has brazenly voiced a demand for the Defense Department to provide her a Boeing 757, essentially for her personal use.

 

Her pretext for insisting on such lavish arrangements is that she needs to be able to travel coast-to-coast without stopping to refuel. Yet past speakers managed to scrape by with a commuter class Gulfstream jet, which is fully capable of making the non-stop trips to Pelosi’s home district in California, rendering her excuse to be wholly without merit.

 

So, where are the sincere liberal environmentalists (an oxymoron to be sure) who should be decrying Pelosi’s excesses along with Gore’s, as they callously risk the very future of the planet? Their cause being deemed so noble and worthy, Gore and Pelosi get a “pass,” as is invariably the case among liberal icons.

 

No doubt the eco-Nazis will rediscover the extremes of environmental harm from jets, both commercial and private class, on the very day a Republican again becomes House Speaker. In the meantime, they are no more likely to take issue with Pelosi than they were with Clinton Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary and her massive celebrity-cruise style “fact finding” junkets.

 

No less of an outrage is apparent in the words of “decorated war hero” (now also a distinguished “hero” of Al Qaeda) John Murtha. Both in regards to the Pelosi jet controversy and his efforts to thwart those who want to secure the country from future terrorist attacks, Murtha has again displayed his true loyalties. And they clearly lie with the liberal cause, at the expense of the rest of the country.

 

Murtha took the occasion of Pelosi’s jet tantrum to level a threat against the Pentagon, warning that defense funds would be cut unless the Speaker’s self-serving stipulation is met. It is grimly telling that, in Murtha’s mind, military expenditures are entirely flexible, based not on the defense needs of the country, but instead on whether or not his cronies are properly indulged.

 

The needs of the troops, so loudly proclaimed by the left when those troops were supposedly being denied battle armor, are now entirely negotiable. Of course the body-armor controversy was never about the troops either. It merely served as an excuse to attack then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

 

Not surprisingly, Murtha’s treachery against the military goes even further still. He has been caught on video, gloating that he will logistically starve our troops by denying supplies and reinforcements, ultimately forcing an American retreat from Iraq. Any war strategist knows the importance of cutting an enemy’s supply lines. Murtha is accomplishing nothing less than a rout on behalf of the terrorists.

 

Thus Murtha dispels any lingering doubts as to whose side he has taken in the terror war. Yet according to Murtha and his comrades, we should be much more concerned over the “national security threat” ostensibly resulting from the squabble between old-media hack Tim Russert and former Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby.

 

“Global warming” scares are proving to be nothing more than the normal cyclical patterns of weather combined with the standard selective liberal alarmism. In stark contrast, the terror threat is real. Its horrific scope was made known to us once already. If we have not learned the necessary lessons of that event, we will be shown again.

 

Meanwhile, Democrats play ghoulish games with this and every other potentially volatile situation in hopes of reaping political gains from them.