The environmentalist agenda as a kind of aristocratic paternalism at odds with growth, prosperity, and “progress”? You don’t say!
Fred Siegel, City Journal:
Like the Tory Radicals, today’s liberal gentry see the untamed middle classes as the true enemy. “Environmentalism offered the extraordinary opportunity to combine the qualities of virtue and selfishness,” wrote William Tucker in a groundbreaking 1977 Harper’s article on the opposition to construction of the Storm King power plant along New York’s Hudson River. Tucker described the extraordinary sight of a fleet of yachts—including one piloted by the old Stalinist singer Pete Seeger—sailing up and down the Hudson in protest. What Tucker tellingly described as the environmentalists’ “aristocratic” vision called for a stratified, terraced society in which the knowing ones would order society for the rest of us. Touring American campuses in the mid-1970s, Norman Macrae of The Economist was shocked “to hear so many supposedly left-wing young Americans who still thought they were expressing an entirely new and progressive philosophy as they mouthed the same prejudices as Trollope’s 19th century Tory squires: attacking any further expansion of industry and commerce as impossibly vulgar, because ecologically unfair to their pheasants and wild ducks.”
Neither the failure of the environmental apocalypse to arrive nor the steady improvement in environmental conditions over the last 40 years has dampened the ardor of those eager to make hair shirts for others to wear. The call for political coercion as a path back to Ruskin’s and Mishan’s small-is-beautiful world is still with us. Radical environmentalists’ Tory disdain for democracy and for the habits of their inferiors remains undiminished. True to its late-1960s origins, political environmentalism in America gravitates toward both bureaucrats and hippies: toward a global, big-brother government that will keep the middle classes in line and toward a back-to-the-earth, peasantlike localism, imposed on others but presenting no threat to the elites’ comfortable lives. How ironic that these gentry liberals—progressives against progress—turn out to resemble nothing so much as nineteenth-century conservatives.
Laurie David’s tennis court and barbecue pit — built atop protected wetlands — could not be reached for comment.
Nor could Rachel Carson. Who is quite dead.
(h/t Tman)
I am glad we can now see eagles and falcons relatively easy, but it would have been fitting if Rachel Carlson died of malaria.
I really don’t see it as aristocratic paternalism so much as a mindless secular religion, with carbon offsets typifying the various aristocratic Papal indulgences on offer.
the cocksucker president has mothballed an entire industry with nary a peep from Team R.
It should be noted.
On the other hand, one can now become a putative country squire by purchasing a jumped-up double-wide trailer with an above-ground pool and giving it a name.
Perhaps it is time for a reality show where a bunch of environmentalists volunteers get placed on a recreated Native American village in some place with sufficient game and plant life to support them and have to work for a couple of months. Hell, make it an entire year. A few old Indians (Squanto style) can show up occasionally to show them how to hunt deer and turkeys, plant corn, and collect clams.
But the deal is if you die you die. Like this guy.
I mean they all are into Rousseau and Thoreau aren’t they?
I a lot note it cause of many many times every single day I’m asked to go vote for a couple dirty Team R McCain whores what don’t think that a broke-ass broke-down suck your dick for a dollar California should be put upon to drill any oils.
Between you and me I think they’re big sillies and I’d as soon go get tasty pancakes.
Ow.
The college student can’t find a job these days, and government is full-up already – you can hire only so many useless people.
Welcome to permanent unemployment, college boy.
Hey, at least you saved a frog, or a turtle…or something.
Greetings:
I did my undergraduate work in the early ’70s. One day, my Calculus professor lectured on what he called, “Somethingyou’ll never hear from an environmentalist”. He went on to link the Theory of Limits to environmental cleanups and asserted that as you approach total cleanliness, the costs skyrocket. As an example, he stated that if it costs $100 to get something 90% clean, it may cost another $10 to get it 91% clean and another $15 to get it 92% clean. Costs can easily increase exponentially as perfection is pursued.
I live in the San Francisco Bay area and there is a whole local “Air Quality Management” bureaucracy, pulling down those now identified public sector wages and benefits, while convincing themselves and their fellow travelers that increasingly severe regulatory standards most be imposed on their fellow citizens while unemployment is rampant and jobs continue to leave the area for different environments and standards.
I have long held that to be a liberal or, now, a progressive one must have missed the lesson of the Princess and the Pea fable. What I learned was that if the problem isn’t resolved by several levels of investment, the problem may be in your head.
I love drinking dirty water and breathing smog too.
Turns out we need a clean earth in order for human beings to survive.
Crazy I know.
I love drinking dirty water and breathing smog too.
You rather embody the ill-effects of a polluted environment.
Perhaps it is time for a reality show where a bunch of environmentalists volunteers get placed on a recreated Native American village in some place with sufficient game and plant life to support them and have to work for a couple of months.
Frontier House — Three modern families that attempted to live as homesteaders of 1883. I saw several of the episodes and, believe me, one fast appreciates modern “conveniences”.
Right AJB,
But you have no problem with whole forests being cut to supply the billions of tons of paper needed to run the absolutely insane regulations to keep the water clean.
AJB can’t be a real person. It’s some sort of program that pops off non-sequitors keyed on whatever topic arises.
AJB – When you wake up in the morning, how do you decide which voice in your head you will listen to?
You ungrateful peasants turn my stomach with your constant whining about your precious liberty. When will you learn to quietly and decently submit to your betters?
I really don’t see it as aristocratic paternalism so much as a mindless secular religion.
Maybe you didn’t see this part?
That’s the connection they’re making, and it’s not incompatible with the secular religion thing.
I love drinking dirty water and breathing smog too.
AJB doesn’t seem to understand the difference between restricted government and no government. On account of all his arguments only counter absolute anarchy.
when did the dirty socialist Associated Press propaganda whores adopt this cocksucker “we” mode? It seems relatively recent.. as in
who exactly is we, cocksucking Associated Press propaganda whore Christopher S. Rugaber?
He and his cats, I would guess.
As Joe said, too bad it wasn’t from malaria…
Serious question: the ideas expressed in which book have led to more deaths of innocents, Mein Kampf or Silent Spring?
Why do my tags work on this thread, but not on the one just before this one?
I’m confuzzled…
“Neither the failure of the environmental apocalypse to arrive nor the steady improvement in environmental conditions over the last 40 years has dampened the ardor of those eager to make hair shirts for others to wear.”
I hope one day to have the ability to write a sentence like that…bastard.
No, Rachel Carson should be quite alive and living locked in a New York City apartment with a very bad infestation of bedbugs, and a big-ass pesticide sprayer of DDT.
I wonder, expressed in minutes, how long her ecological purity would last.
Clean-room clean, at that. Because human beings are such a frail kind of animal.
Turns out that what humans need, at least at this point in time, is better arguments than the drive-by AJB is equipped to generate.
STOP IT! YOU’RE KILLING US, AJB!
COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS:
“Neither the failure of the environmental apocalypse to arrive nor the steady improvement in environmental conditions over the last 40 years has dampened the ardor of those eager to make hair shirts for others to wear.”
VS.
“Turns out we need a clean earth in order for human beings to survive.”
DOES LEFTISM MAKE YOU INTELLECTUALLY WEAK, OR DO THE INTELLECTUALLY WEAK NATURALLY GRAVITATE TO LEFTISM?
“Turns out we need a clean earth in order for human beings to survive…dude.”
There, I fixed it for you.
“Turns out we need a clean earth in order for human beings to survive…dude.”
“Did you know that we on the earth are totally going to, like, bake in 100 years or something?”
“I know, man, it’s bullshit from Wall Street is what professor Zinn says. Or I guess said because he’s totally dead now.”
“Are you going to bogart that shit all day, man?”
“Bogus.”
“I’m hungry. You want to head down to the cafeteria for some chili, homes?”
“Sha. Me too.”
“Then when we come back we from scarfing mega-chili we can befuddle Goldstein with total facts and logic and stuff.”
“Sha.”
“Turns out we need a clean earth in order for human beings to survive”
Nah, not so much. It is nice when things are clean though. I learned recently that 90% of the cells that make up our body are bacteria. That’s something you don’t want to think about too much though.
“But you have no problem with whole forests being cut to supply the billions of tons of paper needed ”
That one always peeves me. Trees are a crop for crying out loud. It’s like lamenting the destruction of whole fields of wheat just so bread can be made and tasty sammiches consumed.
Here we go.
oikophobia: fear of the familiar, as opposed to xenophobia. “the disposition, in any conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably ‘ours.'”
Taranto explains “Why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.”
And so now we have the term “oiks.”
I like that. Phonetically close to “oink” and “ick.”
“homey-fear” or fear of one’s homeys, pretty neat coinage on the whole. Beats the living hell out of “econophobia” anyways.
LBacom,
I was pointing out the waste of resources that the government prides itself in – regarding commerce strangling rules and regulations, taxes and other crap so onerous that not even tax attorneys can digest it.
From the recent raid on the street corner lemonade stand to giants like Cisco, Cypress Semiconductor, Seagate etc – the government is regulating them as well as us serfs out of existence.
Turns out we need a clean earth in order for human beings to survive.
Crazy I know.
No, you need us to provide for your own effete bad-self’s sustenance. It’s not a big secret, how the hell do you think you’ve made it this far?
True, Mr. Peden.
Q: What are the chances AJB can be counted among the members of the producer class?
A: Zee-Roe.
Funny, I just got done watching “Furry Vengeance” with my two beautiful little girls. At first, I thought it was a 70’s porno flick and this is terribly innappropriate to be watching with my children, but instead it was a “save the forest, man is bad” flick. The positive out of it? Funny. Silly raccoons, squirrels and opossums saving the day is great entertainment watching with the girls. But, my 11 year old saw right through the entire line of bullshit. She actually said, “Daddy, why shouldn’t those people live as well as other people as long as they want to. Operative phrase being the italicized part. I don’t know. I thought it fit in with the post. Oh, and AJB is a fucking idiot. That is all.
Disney is still fucking that AGW chicken; Nickelodeon mocks the worshipers of Gaia.
Sorry, Algore. The kids are wise to the indoctrination grift.
#27: I’ll take both for $1000, Mr. W.
Turns out we need a clean earth in order for human beings to survive.
Crazy I know.
Why don’t you keep your obsessive-compulsive cleansing down to, say, washing your own hands about a thousand times per day – like responsible OCD’s people do – instead of demanding that everyone else participate in your own disease with you?
Reckoning
?????? ?. ??? ???????? accounting for, i.e. paying the penalty for their doings.
is needed and coming.
Wrong thread.
[…] August 2010 in Personals and Softballs, Topical Rachel Carson should be quite alive and living locked in a New York City apartment with a very bad infestation of […]
When it becomes obvious that complex modern insecticides aren’t going to give New Yorkers a night’s rest, and the only realistic alternative becomes clear, I’ll be chuckling happily, dancing in the dark with the ghosts of ten million African babies who died of malaria, singing
di-CHLOR-o-di-PHEE-nyl-tri-CHLOR-o-eh-THANE!
di-CHLOR-o-di-PHEE-nyl-tri-CHLOR-o-eh-THANE!
di-CHLOR-o-di-PHEE-nyl-tri-CHLOR-o-eh-THANE!
Catchy tune, ain’t it?
Regards,
Ric
Man, according to the OCD – as focused on “the human plague is little short of The Doomsday Machine” – Proggs, not only is the Perfect the Enemy of the Good, the Perfect is also the Enemy of Existence itself.
But other than this being a Progg statement about their own worthlessness, who knew?
Damn. I’m stealing that.
Ric:
Thank you for the pronunciation guide. I have no mind for chemistry. And is it really true that DDT made eggshells thin or was that also hype?
That claim has been around since the 1960s, but the raptor and pelican populations didn’t actually recover until tetraethyl lead was removed from gasoline in the 1970s.
DDT FAQ here.
Also, the Malaria Clock, where the answer to my question in #22 can be found.
No, dicentra, the eggshell thing wasn’t “hype”. It was, and remains, a damnable, palpable, bald-faced lie, concocted and disseminated with malice aforethought, supported by evidence that makes 9-11 Trooferism look like rigid logic, and passed on by people who neither thought nor inquired about it because it fitted their preconceptions.
“Hype” connotes “silly”. “Cynical opportunist” fits St. Rachel and her worshippers much better than “silly” does.
Regards,
Ric
A semi-skilled chemist with the proper toys can make DDT at home. Much safer than crystal meth, at least to your neighbors, as your bathtub likely won’t explode.
The press has loved the Democrat Party to death.
Like a wife that calls work to make excuses for her alcoholic husband, the press has covered for the Democrats as they have let their collective, and collectivist, hair down.
It’s okay, said the liberal echo chamber, you’re among friends, go ahead and jerk off to old issues of Mother Jones.
But very quietly, a new type of bugging called “The Internets” had been hidden in plain sight by Rethuglican tools like Apple and Google. This “Internets” thing allowed the leering Jesus lovers to observe the Elites, with their legislative pants around their earmarked ankles, get their regulatory rocks off.
The hicks, to the surprise of none of the right people, did not understand ground-breaking performance art. Rather than be grateful for the economic bludgeoning they were taking for their own good, they mistook it for an attack on the structure of the economy, which, ironically, it was, but for the good of the country. See?
I know, it’s confusing. That’s why CNN tells both of their viewers, the House and Senate, to leave it to the professionals. Which makes the House and Senate sleep soundly right up until November.
…To sleep, perchance to dream…
Jeff? I can’t do it justice and I’ve tried. Can you tell the story of how the press killed the Democrat Party?
Obama’s just an accessory to the murder.
I bet the black market for DDT is booming in New York. If you have the money.
NY Democrats: bedbugs for thee, but not for me…
#52 serr8d: What a relief! Ignorant bitter clingers will never figure that out, being too dumb to interpret die Deutsche sprache!
Regards,
Ric
Or should that be “der”? I think so.
Never mind. Sexist anyway.
Regards,
Ric
No way it would be “die,” but could it be “das?”
It’s been almost 30 years since high-school, so I don’t remember much about it.
Bad news. That recipe includes chloral hydrate. Great stuff if you can get some, a colorless relatively tasteless liquid that will put you right to sleep, just like a roofie; the original Mickey Finn. All of which makes it a controlled substance here in the US of A.
The German language, looks like you had it the first go.
Monday morning links…
Cannibalism is for nutrition. But what about flavor? Friends Disagree Lots Cubbing in Virginia On Fermat’s Last Theorem: Theo: Completely honest first date ..there is Andrew Wiles, the frail knight who for seven lonely years pursues the proof t…
There’s no telling German gender just by what you think it ought to be. Sexless objects can be masculine, feminine or neuter. People (even overtly gendered, specific people) can be masculine, feminine or neuter.
I said it once and I’ll say it again:
progressivism is to progress is what pedophelia is to child care.