PrintSeptember 5, 2009
The Big 'Green' Picture
The radical leftist green movement is inherently hypocritical at its core. The left implores America to live greener, more eco-friendly lives, while at the same time advocating policies and theories that directly contradict their own agenda. Conservatives seem to have a perpetual case of Laryngitis when it comes to countering this disconnect. I believe this is due in large measure to conservatives failing to identify the dispositive issue.
Why is this relevant? In March, Van Jones was appointed to be the ‘green' czar by the Obama administration. Van Jones is slick, polished and able to nimbly weave his firebrand, take no prisoners style into a smooth onslaught that carries strong populist appeal. Van Jones's direct involvement in radical, anti-American organizations is not what interests me. I want to peel back the layers of the leftist mantra to uncover the roots of the radical leftist green movement. The answer will explain how a militant, anti-American and self-confessed communist can be transfigured into a self-described ‘green capitalist.'
In order to have an intelligent debate on environmental issues, it is essential to know each side's position-where the opposing views originate. Sun Tzu summed it up succinctly in an often misquoted phrase:
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.Consequently, the key to winning or losing any contest or debate depends on greater knowledge or informational disparity. It didn't take modern economists to figure out that "never will those who wage war tire of deception." Sun Tzu, The Art of War. In fact, deception is the oldest trick in the book.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
What is the driving force behind the green movement? Power. And the left knows how to wield it, including Van Jones.
The environmental debate can arguably be distilled to one single question: What is the role of man on earth? While it may seem rather existential and simplistic to ask such a temporal question, the answer draws a clear line: Man is either a mere mutation from algal sludge or a created steward. Therefore, human origin must be weighed when considering the context of the debate.
One of the unintended (or intended) consequences of Darwin's theory is that it lowers man to the lowest common denominator. Darwinists are proud that they share 98% of their genetic makeup with a chimpanzee.1 Darwinists are adamant that man is not the master of his universe. Man is relegated to being no more than just part of nature.2 Some on the left have even gone as far as to state that man is no more than a complex disease or virus-a mere parasite.3 The radical left openly advocates drastic population control measures to reduce world population.4
In the next breath, these same intellectuals will argue that humans are inherently good. Yet, according to the Left, there is no right or wrong-no truth, no morality, only shades of primordial grey.5 Left to his own devices, man will continue to evolve into a higher, more utopian state.6 How does this position square with the violent millennia of recorded history, let alone the continuing violence in the world today?7 This position is logically irreconcilable. The mental acrobatics the left must leap through to reach this point are akin to complex regression analysis. The results are no better than the assumptions. Garbage in, garbage out. The data can be stacked, just so, to lead to a predetermined conclusion. Al Gore's charts are no exception.
If human existence is no more than a chance collection of cells, how do we reconcile the following question? If global warming will raise sea levels, cause catastrophic climate change and massive population reductions, what is this to the earth? If humans are merely part of the system, didn't natural selection just work its perfect symmetry by removing them from it? On a grand scale, what is a few thousand years or several hundred million years?8 Once the scars left by man had healed, the earth could resume her concentric journey around the sun ad infinitum. Extinct life could simply re-evolve from a post-industrial sludge. Right?
Ultimately, this exposes an inescapable truth: human existence is valuable. The question then becomes, whose existence is valuable? Is that value a positive or negative integer? Darwinian logic's answer is those who are the fittest. How then do you reconcile the animal survival instinct with the parasite view? We can't. At the end of the day, right or left, both sides value life, albeit in gross disparity. More simply, conservatives value life intrinsically-the left, extrinsically.
The question of where we come from drives our sense of how we should care for this planet. From an intrinsic view point, human existence should be protected to improve the opportunity for individual quality of life. The extrinsic view holds that human existence should be subservient to perceived interests of the earth as a whole.9 What is the difference? Everything. It comes back to the earlier question of who gets to choose who survives.
Preposterous, right? "The left can't be in the business of choosing who lives and who dies!" Can they? The current administration has crystallized this fact. For example, placing arbitrary caps on carbon emissions merely shifts environmental impact from those who have to those who currently have not. The proposed healthcare bills arbitrarily take quality care from those who have and give to those who don't. The end result is the same. It is a systematic attack on the intrinsic value of human life.
Remember Sun Tzu? "Never will those who wage war tire of deception." The only way irrational society can accept this malevolent devaluation is to cloak it with layer upon layer of deception. "Let's be ‘green' so our grandchildren will have a green planet to enjoy." Isn't that the talking point de jure? It's fun to say. It's in to be green. All this hyperbole hides the base truth: The left seeks total dominion over every aspect of our lives. Because it can never be exposed for this, the left must cloak its true motives in populist slogans and feel-good catch phrases, all the while numbing the citizenry into mindless submission. Once achieved, the left will be able to carry out its designs with impunity. Out is survival of the fittest. In is survival of the powerful.
Intellectual dishonesty goes a long way. What a better way to conceal the ultimate goal then for Van Jones and the current administration to repackage their unmarketable agenda into a readily saleable populist pitch.10 The only way to fight back against this rising tide of disinformation spewing from government is to fight deception with truth. It is imperative that we humans act as stewards of this earth. This much is clear. However, conservatives have lost their voice and credibility on environmental issues. Could it be we have forgotten what really matters?
1 Karl-Henrik Robrt, The Natural Step Story: Seeding a Quiet Revolution 3 (2008).
2 “I reject the idea that humans are superior to other life forms. . . Man is just an ape with an overly developed sense of superiority.” Paul Watson, director of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and a founder of Greenpeace. See: Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac 204 (1970).
3 “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies - often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparent brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance to survive.” Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb 6 (1968).
“The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems has become appallingly evident…Unless nations agree to work together…the prospect for a decent life on our planet will be threatened…The United Nations can and should play an essential role in helping the world find a satisfactory way of stabilizing world population.” David Rockefeller, Chairman, The Rockefeller Group, Address to the 28th Annual United Nations Ambassador Dinner (September 14, 1994) as quoted in the Business Council for the United Nations Briefing; Vol. 8, Issue 2, Winter 1995, page 1.
4 “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” Ted Turner, Interview, Audubon Magazine (1996).
“Reproductive freedom is a matter of social justice, not individual choice.” Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty 6 (1998).
“In the past few decades, tension has grown between feminist women's health activists who sought to expand women's reproductive rights and the population control advocates whose chief goal was to cut fertility levels as much as possible.” Lara M. Knudsen, Reproductive Rights in a Global Context 2 (2006).
5 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (1965).
6 Kenneth L. Deutsch & Walter Soffer, The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: a Straussian Perspective 35 (1987).
7 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac 220 (1970).
8 Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life 93 (1992).
9 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac 214 (1970).
10 Van Jones, Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix America's Two Biggest Problems (2008).
