Indulgences

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of Do As I Say (Not As I Do). The book is a humorous and ultimately edifying expostion of liberal hypocrisy. The Kennedy family all by itself provides substantial material for Peter’s book. For example, Schweizer discusses Ted Kennedy’s opposition to a wind power project on Nantucket Sound that would apparently impair the view from the Kennedy family compound six miles away. Not in his backyard!
Peter’s book has a serious point. Peter argues that the behavior of notable liberals conflicting with their professed beliefs shows their beliefs to be “ultimately self-defeating, self-destructive, and unworkable.” The themes at work in the book appear in Peter’s thinking about the subject of “offsets” for hypocritical environmentalists such as Al Gore. In a column for USA Today yesterday Peter proposes “offsets” for adulterers, vegans, and the obese. The column is “Offset away our guilt.” Why should environmentalists have all the fun?