A few days ago, a number of liberals lamented how stupid voters are. The charge was leveled against conservatives. While delivering a speech at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland, President Barack Obama said that the Republican presidential candidates’ views on energy policy qualifies them as members of the ‘Flat Earth Society.’

Obama’s college audience ate it up. I suspect, however, that they have no idea how economies work, the amount of effort that goes into bringing cheap, clean energy to their dorms, homes, and gas stations. I suspect they also believe that there was a time when people believed that the Earth was flat. Will come back to this topic in a moment.

The President tried to compare opposition to his present (non) energy policy to people who believed that “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a fad.” Actually, it’s President Obama who believes that oil is a fad and that algae and wind power are the fuels of the future. I don’t know about you, but all the wind in the world is not going to power our cars. And what’s this thing about algae as a fuel source? Algae? Can you imagine what the press would have done if George Bush had pushed algae as an alternative fuel?

It’s backward thinking to drill holes in the ground to take out concentrated energy and turn it into fuels of all kinds as well as thousands of other commodities, but it’s forward thinking to suck up pond scum? Can you imagine what the environmental nuts would have to say about spoiling the face of the earth and the oceans looking for algae? Come on. They won’t even let a farmer drain a swamp that’s a breeding factory for mosquitoes.

Charles Krauthammer of Fox News delivered this sarcastic bit of fun at the expense of President Obama:

“Now, it happens that algae will grow on anywhere on earth. . . . I did research. It grows in oceans, in lakes and ponds, in your swimming pool when the pool man is on vacation. In snow, in ice, on soil, on turtles, on sloths, the bark of trees and rocks. Why are we drilling for oil? We are the Saudi Arabia of rocks. We have a mountain range called the Rockies and we are allowing ourselves to be dominated by these oil producers. I think he’s on to something here that is truly revolutionary. Why would you build a pipeline, the Keystone pipeline with real oil from Canada to put in real refineries and put in real existing cars when you can do algae?”

These community college students might to do some studying on the flat earth barb. There was no time in history when scientists and theologians believed the Earth was flat. The myth was developed by Columbus biographer Washington Irving in the 19^th century.

The myth was so deeply ingrained that it found its way in our nation’s textbooks.

“In 1991 Jeffrey Burton Russell published Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Russell’s research destroys the long standing myth that contemporaries of Columbus held to a flat earth theory.”

The President and the students at Prince George’s Community College should read it. We wouldn’t want these young folks to grow up to be “stupid voters.”