Stubborness Is No Virtue, Mr. Inhofe

Sen. James Inhofe, Fool or False Prophet?
Supporters of Sen. James Inhofe like to tout his "stubborness" for refusing to budge from his position that the scientific research pointing to a human cause for global warming, if not global warming itself, is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He holds to this despite the fact that all but a handful of the world's scientific community dedicated to studying the problem show him to be dellusional.

The problem with praising stubborness is that it ignores the fact that stubborness is a trait and not a virtue.

When a child refuses to eat his vegetables or go to bed at his appointed hour, his parents do not say to him, "Junior, we admire your stubborness, but we disagree with your decision." Instead, they say, something like, "If you don't quit being to stubborn, we're going to make you wish you had never heard of the word no!"

And those who admire Inhofe's intranscience should look at Inhofe's motives. He wants to lull us into a comforting belief that if we just keep on doing what we have always done, we will somehow magically get something different from what we already have. If we just drill some more as we have drilled before, we will have more oil and lower prices. Of course, this ignores the simple economic fact that we will never drill enough to supply our ravenous appetite for oil. And even if we do tap some of our reserves, other countries will just pump less canceling out any savings we might get from spoiling the last pristine areas in nature and further exacerbating the problem with CO2 emissions.

Be afraid, very afraid of the man who tries to tell you that you can get everything you want without a price, without sacrifice. The Bible called such a man a false prophet, not a public servant.

We can do what we have always done and expect not to get what we always have gotten. We have to change which is scary and sometimes painful. But as St. Paul said to the Romans:

[W]e also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us. . . (Romans 5: 3-5).