Great Movies
From Jason M. Fitzmaurice, Dallas, TX:
As you stated you were a liberal up front let me state I am a conservative. I voted against Al Gore in 2000, and disagree with him on many issues.
I've long wondered how we conservatives let the environment become a liberal issue. We supposedly stand for individual responsibility, and individual rights. This has always been our rallying cry against regulation. The cry of "a man has a right to do what he likes with his property." Well, if my factory pumps out smoke that pollutes the air over your house, it isn't my damn property that is being violated, it is yours. No one would excuse it If I dumped a bag of garbage on your front steps, but polluting the air in your house, or putting mercury in the fish you are eating, or polluting the stream that runs through your backyard, this is ok? I am a conservative. I believe in almost absolute private property rights. To me this means you can't force me to paint my house a color you like, and I can't dump garbage in your air, or water, or destroy the ozone WHICH DOES NOT BELONG TO ME!
Allowing pollution, refusing to regulate fuel economy reasonably, these are not conservative values, these are nihilistic values. One of the greatest of all Republicans Teddy Roosevelt must be spinning in his grave. The party of the great conservationist, a great defender of individual rights, how has his party -- my party -- moved to a point where we defend the right of a corporation to destroy everyone else's property? You cannot be for individual rights, individual responsibility, and private property rights while defending the rights of some of your neighbors to dump
garbage in everyone's property. Not honestly at least.
I have not had a chance to see "An Inconvenient Truth" yet, but I will, and I hope many of my fellow conservative Republicans will do likewise.
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
