Hysteria: a psychiatric condition variously characterized by emotional excitability, excessive anxiety, sensory and motor disturbances, or the unconscious simulation of organic disorders, such as blindness, deafness, etc.

That's how my dictionary defines hysteria. It's a good definition — especially insofar as the way I use the word to characterize the pathological obsession with the thoroughly unscientific theory that the world is facing doom and gloom from manmade, catastrophic global warming.

For many of the purveyors of this psychosis, there is little reason to offer up facts to counter their delusions. There can be no debate on this matter, they contend. The hour is too late. Anyone who counters their zealotry has suspect motives and is probably on the payroll of the oil industry.

Ironically, of course, the politician most closely associated with global warming hysteria is Al Gore, whose family fortune was built on Occidental Petroleum stock. Now he is attempting to expand his fortune through the sale of carbon credits.

But the real measure of how thoroughly global warming hysteria has pervaded the political culture of America is the fact that President Bush has embraced it.

There is almost nowhere clear-thinking Americans can turn politically now to express their skepticism about global warming hysteria. Barack Obama is an apostle of the cult. Hillary Rodham Clinton is an adherent. John McCain is an evangelist.

Now Bush says he wants Congress to pass a bill combating global warming. That is tragic because there is nothing about this religion that is true:

— Global warming is not a result of man's activity.

— It cannot be stopped by actions of government or business.

— It is not bad for man and Earth; it's good.

— It is part of a cyclical and natural trend of cooling and warming, not a one-way street.

— The slight warming we've witnessed in the past 20 years is not unusual.

— Global warming is not caused by carbon dioxide levels — natural or manmade.

For those reasons and more, the definition of hysteria applies to the believers.

They are getting themselves worked up emotionally about nothing. They have excessive anxiety about nothing. Their ability to understand and accept truth on the subject is disrupted by sensory and motor disturbances. They are, in effect, rendered blind and deaf to any and all facts, data and information that might liberate them from their mental disorder.

Send your children to school and they will be indoctrinated into this faith. Send your young adults to college and they will become missionaries for the faith. Read your newspaper or watch the network news and you will be a target for conversion or discipleship. Go to the movies or watch television entertainment shows and you will get old-fashioned, fire-and-brimstone, apocalyptic preaching. Turn to major-party presidential politics and you will have only the choice of supporting forced global warming tithing on a massive scale. Criticize the high priests on their proclamations and you face ostracism, ridicule and excommunication from the new pantheism.

But just so you don't get the wrong idea, global warming is not really about atonement for mankind's sins against Mother Earth. Oh, no — not by a long shot.

In fact, this false religion was founded upon the basest materialistic motivations. It's not about saving the planet. It's not about God or spiritual matters. It's not even about doing good.

Instead, it's about money and power. It's just the latest and most sophisticated effort by elitists to empower themselves at the expense of the people and the rule of law by redistributing wealth as they see fit.

To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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