I will often hear someone make the claim that this or that social movement started out fine but over time changed into something hideous. Proponents of this viewpoint point to the civil rights movement where they assert that the movement morphed from one centered around a charismatic Southern black minister surrounded by followers who were well-mannered into the race-hustling extortion racket of today. However, I contend that if there were a period at its inception that we could fondly look back upon, it was short-lived.

From a reading of Tom Wolfe’s 1970 book, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, one can see  that the civil rights movement had already metastasized into a total scam by the time he penned his novel. In reading Wolfe’s description of the antics of black community activists in 1970, you would be excused if you thought he was writing about BLM in 2020.

Many also believe that the environmental movement started out noble and only later morphed into the intrusive green blob. Again, I would maintain that if there were a period after the movement’s inception when its impact on society was tolerable, it was short.

One need only list the environmental movement’s early accomplishments to understand their damaging effect. The movement’s campaign that banned the use of DDT, single-handedly contributed to the deaths of tens of millions in Africa and throughout the tropics. In the United States, the environmental movement was successful in hindering the nuclear industry with a regulatory burden that made new investment in nuclear power unattractive. An early accomplishment that deprived Americans of a useful source of power.

By 1970, government regulatory agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had acquired powers to police an ever-growing range of human activities. They introduced an era in which the protection of the environment and the disadvantaged became a quasi-religious crusade, fought with increasingly fanatical zeal. It had a peculiar appeal to the hundreds of thousands of graduates pouring off the college campuses, keen to find ways to express the radicalism they absorbed there. Nothing was more calculated to produce a climate hostile to business than the growth of this lobby, and all this occurred in the early days of the environmental and civil rights movements.

We have now experienced over 50 years of these crusades, and we know the extent to which they can sap our national strength and energy. Mythologizing the early years of these crusades masks their latent potential for destruction. It is something to remember next time MLK or Earth Day arrive.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.