seriously, Pom Pom?
So, even though I probably have more important things to do than look up articles about everyone's favorite VP candidate, let alone *shudder* read and contribute to the comments section, I'm rather proud of my response to someone trotting out the Marxist Bogeyman.
Damn, ol' Karl wasn't kidding when he said there was "a specter haunting Europe". I was always surprised by his use of that phrase - was calling his own ideology a "specter" some kind of proto-Nixonian (more accurately, pre-Nixonian) rhetoric comparable to the phrase "silent majority"? Was he trying to drum up support for his fellow Reds in this way? I am puzzled.
Anyway, here is the aforementioned response:
Mike, I don’t dispute your claim that there is a correlation between Marxist leanings and environmental extremism.
As an aside, I don’t consider support of the global warming idea to be extreme. It’s not a terribly new idea, at least not in a last-twelve-months kind of way.
However, I think you might be putting the cart before the horse when saying, “People who hate economic freedom will be quick to embrace any findings that capitalism is doing harm to the planet.” Again, I don’t disagree with the substance of your idea (yes, hardcore Marxists actually do seek proof in the natural world for their ideology. Look at Lysenko biology, for example!), but to say that Marxists and other economic leftists hate economic freedom is misleading. Marxism is an approach to dealing with the inequities that can be brought on by economic disparity; it is not specifically about the hatred of anything. Well, arguably it’s about hatred of monarchy and the super-rich. Okay, not just arguably ^_^
Not to say it’s a very *good* approach, necessarily, especially when you consider its track record as a guiding philosophy for authoritarian regimes in Russia and China.
Still, even the most blind-faith global warming proponent (someone who supports the theory, that is) is not rubbing his hands together thinking, “Haha! THIS will strangle economic freedom! My pinko dreams are finally coming to pass!” No, more likely he’s thinking, “Wow, this global warming stuff is a problem, and economic freedom is not a big priority of mine. What to do?”
While libertarians and other economic right-wingers think long and hard about the impact of government on personal and economic freedoms, socialists, Marxists, and other economic leftists do not tend to view problems in this way. They tend to see deregulation as a problem, but they do not see it explicitly as denying anyone’s freedom. This is like saying that, because someone is not a hawk on the terrorism “issue”, he or she must “hate America and want the terrorists to win”. Of course not - Democrats and other would-be doves simply have different ideas about how to solve the problems posed by and uncovered by terrorism.
Should we drop everything for the environment, always? No. I think you and I can agree on that. But nobody in any position to implement such a thing is advocating it; heck, the whole Green craze is incredibly consumerist in nature, and definitely market-led, as opposed to government-led.
As far as fringe leftists being anti-science, I argue that *any* person or group that puts ideology over facts consistently will be anti-scientific. Dr. Lysenko and the Creationist crowd have that in common, and they’re arguably at different ends of the political spectrum (not the economic spectrum, inherently, but one is Left and the other is Right, at least by common assumption).
Thoughts? I just get really bent out of shape when people assume that others share their priorities to such an extent that the only *possible* explanation for a difference of opinion stems from somebody Hating Our Freedom.
Damn, ol' Karl wasn't kidding when he said there was "a specter haunting Europe". I was always surprised by his use of that phrase - was calling his own ideology a "specter" some kind of proto-Nixonian (more accurately, pre-Nixonian) rhetoric comparable to the phrase "silent majority"? Was he trying to drum up support for his fellow Reds in this way? I am puzzled.
Anyway, here is the aforementioned response:
Mike, I don’t dispute your claim that there is a correlation between Marxist leanings and environmental extremism.
As an aside, I don’t consider support of the global warming idea to be extreme. It’s not a terribly new idea, at least not in a last-twelve-months kind of way.
However, I think you might be putting the cart before the horse when saying, “People who hate economic freedom will be quick to embrace any findings that capitalism is doing harm to the planet.” Again, I don’t disagree with the substance of your idea (yes, hardcore Marxists actually do seek proof in the natural world for their ideology. Look at Lysenko biology, for example!), but to say that Marxists and other economic leftists hate economic freedom is misleading. Marxism is an approach to dealing with the inequities that can be brought on by economic disparity; it is not specifically about the hatred of anything. Well, arguably it’s about hatred of monarchy and the super-rich. Okay, not just arguably ^_^
Not to say it’s a very *good* approach, necessarily, especially when you consider its track record as a guiding philosophy for authoritarian regimes in Russia and China.
Still, even the most blind-faith global warming proponent (someone who supports the theory, that is) is not rubbing his hands together thinking, “Haha! THIS will strangle economic freedom! My pinko dreams are finally coming to pass!” No, more likely he’s thinking, “Wow, this global warming stuff is a problem, and economic freedom is not a big priority of mine. What to do?”
While libertarians and other economic right-wingers think long and hard about the impact of government on personal and economic freedoms, socialists, Marxists, and other economic leftists do not tend to view problems in this way. They tend to see deregulation as a problem, but they do not see it explicitly as denying anyone’s freedom. This is like saying that, because someone is not a hawk on the terrorism “issue”, he or she must “hate America and want the terrorists to win”. Of course not - Democrats and other would-be doves simply have different ideas about how to solve the problems posed by and uncovered by terrorism.
Should we drop everything for the environment, always? No. I think you and I can agree on that. But nobody in any position to implement such a thing is advocating it; heck, the whole Green craze is incredibly consumerist in nature, and definitely market-led, as opposed to government-led.
As far as fringe leftists being anti-science, I argue that *any* person or group that puts ideology over facts consistently will be anti-scientific. Dr. Lysenko and the Creationist crowd have that in common, and they’re arguably at different ends of the political spectrum (not the economic spectrum, inherently, but one is Left and the other is Right, at least by common assumption).
Thoughts? I just get really bent out of shape when people assume that others share their priorities to such an extent that the only *possible* explanation for a difference of opinion stems from somebody Hating Our Freedom.