Poor Kermit. He lived too soon. Had he waited a few years, he would have found it all-too-easy, indeed almost mandatory to be green. “Environmentalism,” as the philosopher Harvey Mansfield observed years ago, “is school prayer for liberals.” It has that Award-Winning, Never-Fail, Left-Liberal combination of 1) providing its exponents with an ever renewable (and hence environmentally sound) source of self satisfaction (”I recycle/drive a hybrid/don’t use plastic/only bathe weekly . . . Do you?”) and 2) it is infinitely elastic: you can never be green enough. There are always new prohibitions to impose, new causes to espouse, new ways to demonstrate your moral superiority over your neighbor. What great religion! The Green shall inherit the earth . . . .
The always-sensible Thomas Sowell makes a further pertinent point about the new Kermits of the world. “At one time,” Sowell observes, “to call someone ‘green’ was to disparage them as inexperienced or immature. Today, to call someone green is to exalt them as one of the environmentalist saviors of the planet. But it is amazing how many people are green in both senses.” Indeed.
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7 Comments
1. Paul:A few years ago, in connection with the routine award of a Master’s degree to a young relative, I attended (reluctantly) a convocation at a distinguished old liberal arts college. It was opened by a short speech from a — shall we say — central administrator, as follows: “Welcome to _____ ______. We are gay, lesbian, transgendered,and green…” Every chest (and poitrine) swelled with pride.
May 20, 2008 - 5:35 am 2. Lubyanka:Like so many “progressive” predilections–pacifism, communitarianism and anti-capitalism, to name a few–environmentalism is a blank check for sanctimony.
May 20, 2008 - 11:36 am 3. LSD:Is it easy to navigate the ’straight and narrow’? While some celebrities may feel satisfied with their eco-righteous fides; reports of their erring and backsliding make the headlines. -Just like the preacher caught with a prostitute; the news has a lurid appeal.
Lord guide my steps, lest I should falter in front of everyone…
May 20, 2008 - 11:51 am 4. 11B40:Greetings:
I have long thought that to be a liberal one had to have missed out on two of my favorite fairy tales.
The first is Chicken Little’s “the sky is falling!” If something scares or negatively impacts me then, ipso facto, it’s the end of the world as we know it.
The second is the Princess and the Pea. No matter how much is done to ameliorate a situation, it will only be fixed when I say it is fixed.
May 20, 2008 - 4:48 pm 5. Chicken Little:Why is it a problem that people are placing societal pressure on others to make their lives more green.
Yes, climate change might be and likely a myth, but toxins spew everyday into our earth. Are you going to say otherwise. People are poisoned by water supplies, air pollution, and heavily marketed products everyday, but if “liberals” start to coalesce and deal with these problems they are derided?
I am a fan of Sowell and some of his thinking, but the time is now to start the healing from the Industrial Revolution. Derision is not needed. Innovation and political reconcilliation is needed.
May 22, 2008 - 1:48 pm 6. LSD:Chicken Little:
Climate change isn’t a myth, it is seen thoughout the geologic record that it has been continually in flux.
What is provoking derision is the environmentalist idea that relentlessly correlates all measured change to human activity. -As an example, science tells us that over 90% of recorded species found in the fossil and living record were not alive to be witnessed during the whole of human history, yet environmentalists swear that from this present time forward, any and all species extinction is the result of human transgression. They mean to stand athwart the process with the apparent goal of forcing stasis, without a second thought.
Our children are being taught environmentalism as if it were science. With all due respect, this ought to be derided and it ought to be challenged. Societal pressure is fine so long as it doen’t cosign wrong ideas.
May 23, 2008 - 5:24 pm 7. John the Baptist.:“Why is it a problem that people are placing societal pressure on others to make their lives more green.”
That’s a false, simplified way of putting it, reducing the true goals, extent and evil of their agenda, and then helping characterize the opponents of the Enviromental Paganism as indifferent polluters.
May 31, 2008 - 6:06 pm