Scuse us yer highness
by digby
Back in 2006, I wrote about “Monckton of Benchley” partying like it was 1775, when he wrote this letter:
To: The Honourable Senator Olympia Snowe (Republican, Maine) The Honourable Senator John D. Rockefeller (Democrat, West Virginia)
Madame, Sir,
Uphold Free Speech About Climate Change Or Resign
The US Constitution guarantees the right of free speech. It is inappropriate for elected Senators such as yourselves to suggest that any person should refrain from exercising that right, as you have done in your letter of October 27 to the CEO of ExxonMobil. That great corporation has exercised its right of free speech — and with good reason — in openly providing support for scientists and groups that dare to question how much the increased concentration of CO2 in the air may warm the world. You must honour the Constitution, withdraw your letter and apologize to ExxonMobil, or resign as Senators.
You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to “senior elected and appointed government officials” who disagree with your opinion. You are elected officials yourselves. If you do not believe in the right of persons within the United States to exercise their fundamental right under the world’s greatest Constitution to petition their elected representatives for the redress of their grievances, then you have no place on Capitol Hill. You must go.
[…]
You will rightly deduce from Beckett’s sinister remark that after a decade of Socialist government freedom of speech does not figure in our constitution. But let me quote the First Amendment to yours: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the Press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I call upon the pair of you to live by those great words, or to leave.
Yours truly,
MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY
Right-o! Or he’ll have your head on a pike, what what?
In my original piece, I discussed how Monckton’s father had been Chairman of the Iraq Petroleum Company and mused a bit on the new money aristocrats engaging a real peer of the realm to do their dirty work for them. A rather eccentric one at that:
Lord Monckton is an ardent global warming science foe who recently published an exhaustive 52 page roll of toilet paper on the subject for The Telegraph. (George Monbiot explains the whole thing in this article in the Guardian.)He has no degree in any scientific subject and has never done any work in the field. Lately, he’s best known for his (admittedly impressive) jigsaw puzzle design. But he styles himself an expert, writes nonsensical papers and then demands the resignations of anyone who disagrees with him. I think there was more intellectual rigor involved in Galileo’s trial.
So what’s the old boy been up to recently? A couple of years ago he made some news calling climate change activists, “Hitler Youth” and Nazis.
But like so many wingnuts on this side of the pond, he’s now officially gone insane:
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