Since 9/11, there has been an international debate concerning a battle of civilizations. After the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., many have categorized the war on terrorism as an epic struggle between East and West, a modern day Crusades if you will.

In the few short weeks since the Democrats officially took over Congress, a different war has taken shape within our own borders, and has morphed into a potentially more important conflagration, at least for the time being.

At the heart of the debate is anthropogenic global warming, and what America should do about it if anything. On the fringes is: the battle to unionize Wal-Mart; another push for universal healthcare; the perennial goal of raising taxes; the jealous desire to limit the pay of CEOs, and; a Hugo Chavez-like call to strip the oil companies of their profits.

As Americans, we should be almost as fearful of this ideological war as the one we are waging against Islamic extremists. After all, the first time capitalist principles lost out to socialist ones in the depths of the Great Depression, decades of budget deficits and exploding federal debt ensued that still threaten our financial solvency today, and our children’s futures tomorrow.

In fact, two and a half decades since the start of the Reagan Revolution, the free market is once again under attack. If capitalists on both sides of the aisle don’t take a stand to squelch this call for government to solve all of our problems, our children will be destined to live much more austerely than us, and become the first generation of Americans to be less successful than their parents.

Global Warming Deniers are Now on a Par With Holocaust Deniers

The center of the battle between socialism and capitalism right now is clearly global warming, and it is fascinating to see what lengths the left will go to advance their forces on this issue. Such actions now include threats to people’s jobs if they don’t conform to the views expressed by liberals concerning man’s “undeniable” role in causing the earth’s temperatures to rise.

In late December, The Weather Channel’s foremost climate expert Heidi Cullen called for meteorologists to be stripped of their certifications by the American Meteorological Society if they disagreed with the tenets of anthropogenic global warming.

Just last week, the Democrat governor of Oregon threatened to remove the mostly-ceremonial title of State Climatologist from a man that has held the position since 1991 all because the gentleman questions man’s role in climate change.

On February 7, former Vice President Al Gore, the left’s true champion on this issue, told a group he was speaking in front of in Madrid, Spain, that China is correct to blame America for global warming. Maybe more important, Gore stated to the crowd that this Asian country – which happens to possess the fastest growing economy on the planet with the largest population base – shouldn’t be required to participate in climate solutions until the United States does its share.

Those familiar with the strategies employed by socialists must recognize the common tactic of blaming the world’s problems on America while absolving all other nations of any responsibility. Gore is indeed a master at this.

Of course, an interesting hypocrisy exists in this strategy as Gore travels the world stoking irrational fear to win over the simple-minded. After all, isn’t he now doing exactly that which he accused President Bush of in 2004?

For those that have forgotten, this is what Gore said about President Bush and the war in Iraq on February 9, 2004, just prior to the Tennessee Democrat primary:

He betrayed this country! He played on our fears! He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place!

Remember this? How different is Gore’s claim about the President three years ago from his current rant about civilization’s imminent doom all based on a slide presentation that he created well before he was elected Vice President in 1992?

In reality, by exaggerating the dangers of global warming, as well as man’s real or imagined role, Gore and his ilk are using exactly the same fear tactics they claim the Bush administration was guilty of in the lead up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Somehow, the media have all missed this extraordinarily delicious hypocrisy as they themselves fall hook, line, and sinker for the conclusions they so desire to hear from those they hold in highest esteem. A fine example was published in the February 9 Boston Globe, as liberal writer Ellen Goodman offensively proclaimed:

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future [emphasis added]. 

Goodman was employing a common liberal tactic of eliminating debate on an issue by self-ordaining dissenters as vile vermin. This was especially offensive given a recent ACNielsen Internet poll which concluded that more than 50 percent of Americans don’t believe humans are responsible for global warming.

Don’t you love it when these sanctimonious socialists claim to be smarter than everyone else as they advocate taking away our money for our own good? If they’d only learn how to insult us in a fashion that wasn’t so obvious, we’d gladly turn over all our worldly possessions for the causes they hold so dear.

Calling a Charade a Charade

In the end, that indeed is what this is all about: Global warming represents the Democrats’ weapons of mass destruction. With it, they hope to scare enough Americans into sacrificing their own financial well-being all for the noble goal of saving the planet.

This is why the sudden urgency for action. After all, the Democrats and their media minions learned from their successful defeat of Social Security reform in 2005 that Americans aren’t concerned about what they perceive as problems in the distant future.

As the left and the press were able to convince folks that Social Security insolvency wouldn’t occur for at least another thirty years or more, the problem was easily swept far enough under the rug to be ignored. In this way, the largest and most obvious example of socialism in America was miraculously kept intact, for the time being of course, without the slightest capitalist tinkering.

However, by cleverly claiming that seas are going to rise and begin killing innocent people in ten years if nothing is done to stop it, the liberals have created an urgency about global warming that the Bush administration failed to with Social Security. As a result, the population is now ripe for listening to solutions for a problem that is significantly more a figment of the imagination than the mathematical certainty that America’s largest entitlement program will go bankrupt if changes aren’t enacted.

Put another way, two years ago, the left and the media were able to convince the American people that there was no consensus about when Social Security would run out of money, and though they agreed it will certainly happen at some point, Americans were more than happy to defer concern for this seemingly distant problem. Yet, two years later, these same politicians and press representatives have created an hysteria over an unproven theory, professing a consensus that they advertise as incontrovertible even though none exists, all over a calamity that might never actually occur.

Isn’t that extraordinary?

But this is only part of the charade. As America has moved away from organized labor in the past two and a half decades, the stock market has exploded, as have real estate prices, wages, and the number of people on non-farm payrolls. During this period, the average net worth of the citizenry has dramatically outpaced inflation while the standard of living improved across all social strata.

Of course, this makes socialists despondent, for the better off people are, the less they need to rely on government. As such, along with using global warming to scare the population into making financial sacrifices for the supposedly common good, the left have also vilified America’s largest employer, Wal-Mart, and are advocating legislation to force it to unionize.

Bear in mind that union membership has been steadily dropping in this country for six decades. Estimates suggest that one-third of American employees were union members in 1945. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this percentage was 20.1 in 1983, and plummeted to 12.0 percent in 2006.

This can’t possibly make socialists happy. Therefore, compelling America’s largest employer – with 1.4 million employees – to unionize would be seen as a huge victory for the forces of socialism.

I Want to Take Those Profits

Of course, another bugaboo of socialists is the idea of companies making money. As such, the following proclamation by the presumptive favorite to win the Democrat Presidential nomination in 2008, Sen. Hillary Clinton, was quite cautionary:

The other day the oil companies recorded the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits. And I want to put them into a strategic energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy, alternatives and technologies that will actually begin to move us in the direction of independence.

Has there been a statement made by a leading presidential candidate in recent memory that better defined a Party’s ethos than this? 1984 comes to mind, but we’ll get to that.

A Reach Too Far

In the end, grave changes appear to be transforming the American population that are certainly far different than the conservative realignment Karl Rove spoke of after President Bush was reelected in November 2004.

Republicans must accept some blame for this shift, as the 109th Congress achieved almost nothing that history will look favorably upon other than two Supreme Court appointments. Furthermore, the public’s continuing decline in support for the Iraq war naturally moves the electorate away from the President’s Party.

As a result, Democrats currently have the eyes and ears of the population like no other time since Bill Clinton was first elected president. With global warming now on the front pages of major newspapers on almost a daily basis, the left have a high-profile issue that easily cuts across gender, race, and social strata.

However, are the liberals overplaying their hand here?

The Democrats took back Congress in 2006 by keeping their opinions about everything other than George W. Bush and the war in Iraq to themselves. As such, the elections weren’t an affirmation of socialist concepts, but, instead, a repudiation of the war in Iraq and the Party the electorate rightly or wrongly held responsible.

As Rove conceivably overestimated the public’s message in November 2004, it is just as likely that the Democrats have perilously misinterpreted the electorate’s intentions two years later.

In fact, it seems implausible that the left would have been as successful at the polls three months ago if candidates would have campaigned for: higher taxes; turning Wal-Mart into a union shop; creating universal healthcare; stripping oil company profits to create a strategic energy fund, and; imposing CO2 emissions caps on businesses that would raise prices on virtually all domestic goods and services.

In the end, the country has likely not moved anywhere near as far to the left in the past twelve months as the leading Democrat candidates for president have.

Of course, such an overreach seems quite common to this ilk. Just ask Walter Mondale.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.