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2006-12-31 International-UN-NGOs

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Posted by Steve White 2006-12-31 00:58|| || Front Page|| [11131 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Absolutely outstanding fisk, Steve. Bravo.

You hit every nail squarely on the head.

I attended - almost out of morbid curiousity - a panel discussion about "America's Evil New Badness" or something (OK, it had a neutral title and a "mixed" panel) at a Washington think tank a few years back. This Lieven character was one of the presenters. His detachment from reality was one of the primary contributing factors to my reaction to the whole event: I felt like an undercover FBI agent, cloaked and hooded, at a KKK rally. WTF were these people talking about? It was all US-unilateralism this, world-alienation and disapproval that, and generally a scary and bizarre discussion untethered from Earth.

Finally one or two audience members - one was a fairly high ranking Polish diplomat from their embassy - stood up and bitch-slapped Lieven and one or two of his co-panelists, saying they could not speak "for Europe", etc., and generally dressed them down in specific, concrete terms for which they had no rebuttal. To my dismay, I saw several audience members look shocked and appalled that the delusional, preposterous themes being propounded were being debunked with prejudice.

One of the panelists was some guy named Lind - a smart guy who generally tries to style himself a high-end, sophisticated isolationist of sorts. He was so astounded by the bizarre presentations that he commented with a smile that he'd have to take a comparatively interventionist, administration-friendly line just to return the discussion to reality.

My snarky one-liner on "global warming": no thanks, I'm not religious. It's clear that environmentalism in general serves as a secular religion for many, many adherents who are otherwise quite above religion, thank you very much. Global warming (well, the anthropogenic part) is merely the central tenet of the more extreme versions of the faith.

But as you point out, the climate change ideology is more than just a religious stand-in. It is the latest - and perhaps most audacious - attempt to dress up anti-freedom, anti-capitalist, statist social engineering in some other garb. Note the shopworn and preposterous swipes against western consumer economies and lifestyles.

When statist, fascist models that cynically claimed to be aimed at eliminating "social injustice" didn't just fail (or commit genocide and mass impoverishment) but actually came crashing down in dramatic fashion, these sorts needed a new weapon to use in their ultimately doomed effort to constrain economic freedom and demonize productive human undertakings.

I hate pop psychology (heck, I hate all psychology), but the fit between global climate change ideology and the emotional and political needs of the self-hating elites is hard to miss.

The allusion to Soros is especially revealing and ironic - as if his largely misbegottten and arrogant little operations are the most notable engines of democratic change on the planet, as opposed to America's mere example and America's uniformed military.

BTW, those who don't already visit should go by Tim Blair's site regularly, for the most hilarious skeptical takes on climate change religion and its usually clownish clergy.

Posted by Verlaine 2006-12-31 02:34|| 2006-12-31 02:34|| Front Page Top

#2 Environmentalism and global-warmism are the new Marxism-Leninism, with the same kind of staffers as before 1989. George Soros is just a modern-day pirate.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2006-12-31 03:19|| 2006-12-31 03:19|| Front Page Top

#3 When I saw the title, I thought the article would be along the lines of Steyn's "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It ." Instead it's the typical anti-capitlalist rant from the Left. Where Steyn's argument is based on demographics and migration (both of them real and measurable), the Left's is based on the bugaboo of Global Warming/Climate Change.

While environmentalism can be viewed as a secular religion, don't forget that there is a Religious Left (think Jimmy Carter) that is just as strong an adherent to environmentalism as the secularists. It is a means to an end.

The GW/CC is a convinient weapon that the Left uses to attack Capitalism. When the Left talks about "unlimited consumption", what it wants is to limit the individual's right to choose. You can see this in their opposition to free trade, school choice and healthcare. The Left's drive for Socialism always leads to an authoritarian regime, as Hayek argued in "The Road to Serfdom."

Posted by Chuck 2006-12-31 05:48|| 2006-12-31 05:48|| Front Page Top

#4 Environmentalism: What other people do to make me feel good about the environment.

Posted by badanov 2006-12-31 06:21|| http://www.freefirezone.org]">[http://www.freefirezone.org] 2006-12-31 06:21|| Front Page Top

#5
Verlaine said: "But as you point out, the climate
change ideology is more than just a religious
stand-in. It is the latest - and perhaps most
audacious - attempt to dress up anti-freedom,
anti-capitalist, statist social engineering in
some other garb."

The "garb" looks like "Agenda 21" to me - "sustainable development", "global governance", punitive water, transport and energy pricing etc.

Posted by Whiskettes4Hilali 2006-12-31 07:07|| 2006-12-31 07:07|| Front Page Top

#6 ...a rise in sea levels of up to 25 meters.

Hah! You should at least try to make your scary numbers remotely believeable, Anatol.

(25 meters is 82 feet)

Posted by Parabellum 2006-12-31 09:22|| 2006-12-31 09:22|| Front Page Top

#7 Best fisk of the year, and you made us wait till the last day of the year to enjoy it, you visigoth!

Thank you, Mr. White.

The obstinacy of the left is evident in this guy's article. The worst thing in the world that can befall a leftist (short of death, which in their mind removes the reason for the universe's existence) is to admit error, and worse, error in basic precepts. The meme thread that came out of the French revolution has repeatedly and universally been shown to be inferior to the one that came out of the American one. Yet the left is so terrifed of admitting this fact to themselves that they will simply, in a way defying any logic, keep inventing excuses and justifications for the continued championing of their cause.

Hence global cooling morphs into global warming morphs into climate change, so that no matter what happens in the world of meteorology, it's anthropogenic, evil, and can be solved by more statism, less capitalism, less liberty, and more distrust and regulation of the entrepreneurial spirit.

Guys like this are the meteorological equivalents of Paul Ehrlich.

Posted by no mo uro 2006-12-31 10:08|| 2006-12-31 10:08|| Front Page Top

#8 So long as the good doctor isn't an Ostrogoth, I s'pose he can be forgiven. ;-)

Posted by trailing wife 2006-12-31 14:39|| 2006-12-31 14:39|| Front Page Top

#9 With a name like White...

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-12-31 15:41|| 2006-12-31 15:41|| Front Page Top

#10 Great commentary Mr White. One correction, if I may. Oranges will not be growing in Delaware, instead, we will be fishing over the Delmarva Shallows. And great fishing it will be.

Posted by wxjames 2006-12-31 17:55|| 2006-12-31 17:55|| Front Page Top

#11 The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Oh, wait - different fairy tale.

And out of respect for chicken little he was not a democrat! LOL

Posted by 49 Pan">49 Pan 2006-12-31 19:08|| 2006-12-31 19:08|| Front Page Top

#12 In the last 100 years (approx) Western Civilization have acquired a belief that people have rights but not obligations. Win or lose the war with Islam (draw isn't possible), this will be gone.

Posted by gromgoru 2006-12-31 21:10|| 2006-12-31 21:10|| Front Page Top

#13 In the 70's I read a book called (as I recall) 'Chariot of the Gods' about the end of the world -- which was supposed to happen in 1986...

Posted by CrazyFool 2006-12-31 22:41|| 2006-12-31 22:41|| Front Page Top

23:51 Barbara Skolaut
23:18 tu3031
23:17 Free Radical
23:10 ed
22:41 CrazyFool
21:53 bruce
21:50 Zhang Fei
21:47 Frank G
21:39 Frank G
21:17 Chuck Darwin
21:17 twobyfour
21:10 gromgoru
21:08 Elmert Crosh5077
21:04 gromgoru
21:04 Frank G
21:00 Jackal
20:59 gromgoru
20:58 Jackal
20:58 Mike N.
20:54 Frank G
20:48 Mike N.
20:48 Sherry
20:43 Barbara Skolaut
20:38 49 Pan