12/15/2005
Pandering or Paranoid?
This has to be one of my favorite games here at the Alternative Hippopotamus. The way it works is: we look at a quote, and try to guess whether the author is pandering or paranoid. If you answer correctly, you get a cookie.
Here we go. No peeking:
For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society's politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.Paranoid or Pandering? The answer is, since the author is George Will, years of fealty to various rightwing causes make his paranoia indistinguishable from his pandering. So, if you bothered to answer the question at all, you got it right. Give yourself a cookie.
The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism -- of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America -- is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.
People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.
Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern -- the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.
Oh, and by the way, George, (yes, I know you're reading this) the reason that folks like me oppose drilling in the Arctic Refuge is because destroying the entire coastal region of a wildlife reserve so some thug can drive his SUV at 85 mph is just plain wrong. And by folks like me I mean the majority of Americans.
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