Terry Gilliam is a movie producer. He’s worth millions. CelebrityNetworth.com has him at about $40 million. He is dependent on people with money to make his living. The people he pays to help in the production of the films he produces make a lot of money. The actors who star in his films are multi-millionaires.

And yet he believes that some capitalists should be shot. I suspect he means only capitalists that don’t line up with his worldview. “Those people will always be a fungus and if I was running the country I would take them out and shoot them frankly, but that’s something else.” Of course, he laughs after saying this. Leftists are such comedians.
I wonder how many of these fungi capitalists fund his films.

Liberals are like that. They are hypocrites, like Global Warming fanatic Al Gore who owns several mega-homes and flies around the world in gas-guzzling jets in the name of saving the world. He can be a hypocrite because his cause is righteous. Self-righteous people can muck up the planet as long as in the end their goal is achieved.

In addition to being wacko in the capitalist department, Terry Gilliam is just as crazed when it comes to his understanding of some recent history. (All for the cause.)

“I remember when Reagan was president, the secretary of the interior was a guy who was an Armageddonist who actually believed the end of days were not too far in the distant future.  He was put in charge of the environment and his approach was of course, not to protect it, but let’s get as much money as we can before Jesus comes back. And I despise that.”

I despise that too, and I’ve written a number of books and numerous articles on the subject. The problem for Gilliam, James G. Watt, Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior “guy,” never said any such thing. (If Mr. Gilliam is interested in the facts, he can read my article on this subject here. What follows is an abridgement.)

So what did Watt actually say during congressional testimony before the House Interior Committee in February 1981?:

“I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.”

The context of Watt’s testimony can be found on John Hinderaker’s Power Line blog, sent to him by Watt, that puts the quotation in a larger context. There is an amicable exchange between Congressman James H. Weaver, a Democrat from Oregon, and Watt. Here’s part of the exchange:

Mr. Weaver: Do you want to see on lands under your management, the sustained yield policies continued?

Secretary Watt: Absolutely.

Mr. Weaver: I am very pleased to hear that. Then I will make one final statement…. I believe very strongly that we should not, for example, use up all the oil that took nature a billion years to make in one century. We ought to leave a few drops of it for our children, their children. They are going to need it…. I wonder if you agree, also, in the general statement that we should leave some of our resources—I am now talking about scenic areas or preservation, but scenic resources for our children? Not just gobble them up all at once?

Secretary Watt: Absolutely. That is the delicate balance the Secretary of the Interior must have, to be steward for the natural resources for this generation as well as future generations. I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.

In an editorial response to Bill Moyers who claimed Watt said “after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back,” Watt wrote the following: “I have never thought, believed or said such words. Nor have I ever said anything that could be interpreted by a reasonable person to mean anything similar to the quote [sic] attributed to me.”1 In a Washington Post editorial that appeared after Bill Moyers’ speech where these fictional quotations were used, Watt reiterated his incredulity that these anti-environmental remarks had been attributed to him in his article “The Religious Left’s Lies”:

“I never said it. Never believed it. Never even thought it. I know no Christian who believes or preaches such error. The Bible commands conservation — that we as Christians be careful stewards of the land and resources entrusted to us by the Creator.”

Like Terry Gilliam’s fictional film making, he must create a fictional story line to justify his own warped worldview and misrepresent the worldviews of others who have a better handle on reality than he does.

1. Also see John Hinderaker, “‘Rapture’ Rupture: Republicans, the environment, and the Second Coming: The origins of a liberal myth,” The Weekly Standard (February 14, 2005). See the following admission of misattributions: “‘God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’ Attributed in Austin Miles, Setting the Captives Free . . . and widely repeated after appearing in Grist magazine (Scherer, Glenn (2004–10–27). ‘The Godly Must Be Crazy.’). Grist has since retracted and apologized for Scherer’s comment, noting that the quotation appears nowhere in Watt’s Congressional testimony or any other source it could find. Watt has responded: ‘I never said it. Never believed it. Never even thought it. I know no Christian who believes or preaches such error. The Bible commands conservation—that we as Christians be careful stewards of the land and resources entrusted to us by the Creator.’” [↩]