The Newest Red-State Concern: Global Warming - CSM

[hatrack]

Global warming isn't just a "blue state" issue anymore. From the Rocky Mountain West to the Southeast, influential red-state voices are beginning to call for more concerted efforts at local, state, and federal levels to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.

And they are prodding Washington to address the challenge of adapting to the effects of global warming, which many scientists say are at work.

So far, movement in a handful of red states has been modest when weighed against actions in California or the Northeast. But if this momentum is sustained, it will be harder for congressional and presidential candidates of either party to campaign in these states without backing more aggressive action to reduce emissions than the Bush administration has to date, some political analysts say. "There is a much broader degree of support for action that is first apparent" as many grass-roots groups in red states see what's at stake, says Timothy Profeta, director of Duke University's new Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy.

EDIT

In addition to evangelical leaders, sportsman's groups are also concerned about the regional effects of global warming - in particular on hunting and fishing, which translates into tourist dollars. "These people are on the front lines" as they traipse across the countryside each season looking for game or a new fishing spot, says Jeremy Symons, head of the climate change and wildlife program at the National Wildlife Federation in Washington. Elsewhere, coastal states look at the effects of hurricanes Katrina and Rita and "sense that if global warming turns out to be real, the effects on society would be significant," says University of Tennessee political scientist David Feldman.

EDIT

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0214/p03s03-sten.html

[umass1993]

1. The Democratic Party's greatest failure

is to alienate the evangelicals. They could have been our greatest allies on green issues.

So far, the Dems have gone to the mat (on wedge issues) for the special interests while the Repubs have consolidated power via the evangelicals. Meanwhile, our country ...our WORLD...is being destroyed in every way conceivable.

I hope the gay people enjoy their marriages, and the women appreciate their abortions, the world has paid a heavy price for these rights.

If anybody is offended by this, what can I say, it's the truth. Count the number of Dem's representing the once "Democratic" South. Virtually none. Why?

[NNadir]

2. I am offended by this.

Gay people and reproductive choice are NOT responsible for global climate change. As I have frequently argued, poverty, especially poverty of the type perpetuated by fundementalist religions of all types, is a big part of the crisis.

I am very sorry for the people living in Red States who have suffered from global climate change, but to put in biblical terms they have reaped what they have sown. Their newfound concern is really concern for their own asses.

[umass1993]

4. Well, the facts speak for themselves.

I think the evangelicals are a bunch of hustlers. I call Jesus Christ , "The Greatest Mountebank of All Time."

But, I am not delusional as to the reason the Dems lost all the South, and midwestern states. This happened, by the way, over a period of 20 years or more. It's not, like, "Damn, all of sudden they just turned on us." The Dems through them away like the Repubs through away American manufacturing. They thought they could win without them, they were wrong.

So really, it's thought processes like yours that have led to the demise of the Democratic Party. There have been some substantive demographic changes in the U.S. and the Dems have failed to adjust to those changes. This is what Jared Diamond calls "cultural rigidity" in his book "Collapse."

Maybe, I'm just more tolerant of people that are different from me, and more willing to see things from another perspective.

[umass1993]

6. You're offended...

the polar bears are starving to death. The Great Barrier Reef is dying.

If the Dems had just given the evangelicals the smallest excuse to vote for them, maybe the House and Senate would be Democratic, and Gore would be in the White House, and we would be DOING something about these horrible tragedies, instead of just whining and watching.

[NNadir]

8. You are making the mistake of assuming I buy your absurd premise.

I think the premise that gay hating = solution to global climate change is nuts.

The fucking evangelicals are not rational and neither is the equation above.

[umass1993]

9. Sounds to me like you hate evangelicals.

That's your perogative. But I wouldn't expect them to vote for you, nor anybody who shares your views. In a democracy, under current conditions, that means you won't have much say in policy, which is sad, because some really bad policy is being followed right now.

[phantom power]

10. And your plan is...

what? To tell the evangelicals "Hey, if you just vote for us, we'll stay quiet about your little problem with homos? Pretty please?"

Speaking for myself, the fatal problem with this idea is that you're planning to ask for reality-based behavior from a group of people whose core view of the world is profoundly non-reality-based. They persecute whole groups of people because they think their 2000 year old religious text tells them to. What help is that kind of thinking going to bring to the table on climate change?

[umass1993]

13. See posts below. eom

[NNadir]

14. I am not fond of religious thinking.

Everywhere I see it, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Jewish... religious fundementalism is making life more violent and less sustainable.

In general I think people should resist ignorance, not cater to it, or appeal to it on the backs of other people. Yes, earth to UMass, gays are people.

I suspect that the assholes in Red States who voted for George W. Bush for whatever reason will come around eventually because their asses are in slings.

I certainly don't think I owe their hatred anything at all.

[umass1993]

17. Their asses are in slings?

The WORLD'S ass is in a sling.

BTW: religion doesn't make life less sustainable, cars do.

Like I said, I agree that "Religion is the opium of the people." But it exists, and I am willing to deal with it.

[NNadir]

19. No, ignorance makes life less sustainable.

Religion promotes ignornance.

The fundementalist Bush voters in red states are ignornant.

[phantom power]

3. As if the "suck up to the hard right" strategy has been working so well...

The southern "democrats" defected en masse, the moment that the Democratic part decided to stop supporting racism. That was a long time ago, and we've known their true colors for 30 years. I, for one, don't intend to suck up to the American taliban and the disgruntled southern bigots, just on the off chance that they might exhibit a bit of environmental "reality based" thinking, which is unlikely under any circumstances.

[umass1993]

5. Suck Up the hard right?

The Dems NEVER courted the evangelicals. Never. You imply that they did, and you couldn't be more misleading. Moreover, the evangelicals are not the "hard-right," they have their own agenda, as is evident by their pro-environmental concerns.


Yeah, the Dems did, on the Pro-Business agenda, NOT the social issues where the problem lies. (I call "strong defense" pro-business, for obvious reasons). Liebermann is as socially left as they get, but he likes the defense contracts to come into his state.

So, yeah, if you suck up on the wrong issues, it doesn't get you anywhere.

[phantom power]

7. One example: Did you watch the Democratic response to the SOTU?

Gov. Kaine was practically tripping over his own tongue, he was working so hard to mention God, faith and apple pie, just as many times as humanly possible.

I'm unfamiliar with "pro-environmental" evangelicals. Here's the evangelicals I'm familiar with:

Evangelicals Will Not Take Stand on Global Warming

(...)

In a letter to Haggard last month, more than 20 evangelical leaders urged the NAE not to adopt "any official position" on global climate change because "Bible-believing evangelicals . . . disagree about the cause, severity and solutions to the global warming issue."

The letter's signers amounted to a Who's Who of politically powerful evangelicals, including Charles W. Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries; James C. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family; the Rev. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries; the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention; Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University; Donald E. Wildmon, chairman of the American Family Association; and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition.

(...)

Beisner, who helped draft the letter to Haggard from evangelical leaders, said they had feared that the NAE was going "to assume as true certain things that we think are still debatable, such as that global warming is not only real but also almost certainly going to be catastrophically harmful; second, that it is being driven to a significant extent by human activity; and third, that some regime, some international treaty for mandatory reductions in CO2emissions, could make a significant enough drop in global emissions to justify the costs to the human economy."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/01/AR2006020102132.html

But anyway, what is it you think we should actually do, to court pro-environmental evangelicals? And if they are already pro-environment, what is courtship from the Democratic party going to bring to their table?

[umass1993]

11. As much as I could stand....

it was truly awful. He was more stilted than George Bush...and that's saying something.

Many evangelicals are working-class people. The loss of manufacturing jobs, the de-facto deregulation of coal mines. Health care. Virtually any issue that involves money, the Dems are on their side. That's the sad part.

Just because you say "God" doesn't mean they'll vote for you. There have to be concrete policy proposals that would ameliorate their concerns. I have learned this just by watching interviews on LIBERAL shows like "NOW" and "Frontline."

In fact, on "NOW" David Brancaccio seemed surprised by how reasonable and courteous his pro-life interviewee was. She was not a raving lunatic.

Anyhow, I appreciate your willingness to hear my side and ask a legitimate question.

[umass1993]

12. here's a link. I just googled this.

from http://www.whatwouldjesusdrive.org/statement.php


But we are not just consumers. We are also citizens of a great democracy, and as such we have a responsibility to inform our elected officials about our views on vital ethical concerns like global warming. We believe it is now time for the United States government to lead our country in reducing global warming pollution.

[Dogmudgeon]

15. This is a joke post, right?

Climate change and resource depletion are a result of gay marriage (which doesn't exist in the USA) and abortion?

Okay, who do you write for? Stern? John DeBella? Chris and the Bear? Opie and Anthony?

--p!

[umass1993]

16. You can characterize my comments....

You can characterize my comments any way you want. It doesn't change reality.

I guess anybody who disagrees with W hates America, and anybody who disagrees with you hates gays and the right to privacy.

I think this summarizes why America is in disarray, if not decline.

[Dogmudgeon]

18. That's another big leap

Here is what I "got" from your last two posts:

1. Gay rights and abortion contribute to global warming via political alienation.

2. Anyone who disagrees with me, Pigwidgeon, hates gays and the right to privacy.

3. My being astounded by your hasty conclusion and leaps of (il)logic mean America is in disarray, if not decline.

Re-read your original post. There is only one word for it -- absurd. You might as well blame the brown acid at Woodstock for causing the Left to come a-cropper in the 1970s.

Then, instead of modifying the argument you wanted to present -- which I assume was your anger over a loss of solidarity with the Southern Democrats -- you immediately began the CYA dance.

You'll also note that the defection of the Dixiecrats wasn't over sexual issues, it was over race and segregation. It became Nixon's "Southern Strategy" in the 1972 election, and political scientist Kevin Phillips build his career on it.

It's fine to have strong political opinions. But many of us have strong political opinions of our own, especially regarding the rights of gays and women. They're not fungible "bargaining chips" any more than is Civil Rights. If you'd ever been on the receiving end of the KKK's wrath, or a gay-bashing, or even Daddy's belt after he found out about your abortion, you'd know these rights aren't trivialities.

--p!

[umass1993]

20. That's why dems lose.....

They're not fungible "bargaining chips" any more than is Civil Rights
"No man left behind!" Right. The Dems are too principled to modify their policies in order to win. Right.

was over race and segregation
I agree. Affirmative action has been a disaster for the Dems as well. If you think about it, AA is just a cheap way of waving your hand at a systemic problem that needs massive funding. So it doesn't do the minorities much good, and it further alienates the majority.

I never said that the problem was confined to the 2 above issues. You invented that in your head.

which I assume was your anger over a loss of solidarity with the Southern Democrats
Again, you invent this in your head. I'm not angry. I am simply diagnosing the problem. The simple fact is, Repubs have a 37% point advantage against Dems, because of the social issues. That's why, no matter how shitty a job W does, he still maintains a 40% approval rating.

Gay rights and abortion contribute to global warming via political alienation.
Along with other wedge social issues, yes, this is exactly right. Go to Yahoo and read the message boards. Look at the bumper stickers of Christians. These are the people that won. They were used by the pro-corporate Repubs (Bush, Cheney, Frist, etc.) to obtain power and wipe out all environmental safeguards. This isn't theory, it's reality. Just look at the Alito nomination. It backfired on the Dems because they deluded themselves about this reality.

No need to hyperbolize, the middle ground may be closer than you think. On gay rights, Dean found middle ground. On abortion, there is 9 months of middle ground.

Once again, in my first post, I said that Dems should negotiate with the evangelicals, for the good of the world. Failing to negotiate, isn't doing ANYBODY any good. Just take a look at the Supreme Court.

[blindpig]

21. You got it wrong, friend.

While Democratic stands on the above mentioned topics has no doubt been an irritant to many blue collar voters in the South these would not be deal breakers if those voters were offered something tangible that would affect their daily lives. I'm talking economic populism, jobs, universal health care. By not offering these folks anything tangible or discernibly different from the repugs the Democratic Party has left itself open to this kind of propaganda game. To most of those folks the only thing that they know about the Dems is gays and abortion, which generally doesn't affect them at all but is all they hear because there is nothing else.

The Democratic stand on these subjects is correct, it is the lack of anything else which allow the propagandists to hammer on it day and night. They might not be crazy about gay marriage or abortion but given a very good reason to vote Democratic many will. Bread and butter is always the bottom line. You should vent your spleen on the corporatist in the Democratic Party, it is they who have dropped the ball.

BTW, I live about 40 miles from Bob Jones U. and deal with blue collar folks all day long.

[umass1993]

22. At least you acknowledge some truth to my statement.

You should vent your spleen on the corporatist in the Democratic Party, it is they who have dropped the ball.
Like Jim Breaux. I really do not like that guy.

Dems is gays and abortion, which generally doesn't affect them at all but is all they hear because there is nothing else.
I agree. But they vote on it. If they vote on it, it matters. In particular, if these issues create an impediment to connecting and communicating, which they do, then they need to be addressed.

While Democratic stands on the above mentioned topics has no doubt been an irritant to many blue collar voters in the South
First, it's not just the South, Kerry lost Ohio for christ's sake. Second, why have any policy that causes widespread irritation? Especially when you fighting for every seat you can get.

Overall, I think your comments are helpful. No doubt, real life experience has helped frame your judgment.

[blindpig]

23. "why have any policy that causes widespread irritation"

Because sometimes it's the right thing to do. The Dems could have their cake and eat it too, as I said, bread and butter issues rule. Why abandon what is right when you can get enough of those votes by adopting other positions that are right and badly needed? Furthermore, to run away from these social issues is to tactically admit that we're wrong, and we're not. Cowardice is never admired. Much better to say yes, we support this but here's that health care you so badly need. Trust me, Bubba can do that math.

[umass1993]

24. High stakes hypothesis

Why abandon what is right when you can get enough of those votes by adopting other positions that are right and badly needed?
I guess that's where I disagree with you. This why I mentioned Ohio. Ohio has been devastated economically during Bush's term. Dem's still lost it in 2004, when all the economic factors were in their favor. You state one thing, but the facts speak otherwise.

To me, the most outstanding human rights issue in the USA is failing to admit tens of thousands of prisoners the right to vote. I don't hear jack shit from ANY politician (except maybe Sharpton) on this. I mean, women and gays at least have the right to VOTE. The reality is, they just have more political clout than prisoners....and much more money.

So I find this Jimmy Stewart, "It's just not right" argument to be disingenuous.

Whatever. Like I said, much of the damage has been done, despite a Clintonian interlude. Maybe we'll understand how high the stakes were a couple of decades from now.

[Dogmudgeon]

25. WTF ...

I’m going to go against my instincts and assume you’re sincere, and not some punk-ass Freeper playing “Infiltrate the Enemy”. Either way, I’m going to assume you were baiting us; “trying to make us think”, as most similar efforts are excused by their perpetrators.

Why would I assume that? Well, almost all the arguments you give are derived from a central, right-wing talking point -- that the Democratic Party is failing because of our failure to accede to the demands of the Republican Religious Right. Or, as you said, negotiate -- although we’ve negotiated time and time again, and been played the fool for it. You can’t negotiate with fanatics and bullies. We should have stomped the life out of the radical right in the early 1970s before sugar daddy Richard Viguerie was able to feed it the milk of big money. However, we were too busy making nice with the pit vipers to see that there were still fanatics and bullies in the world.

Indeed, I’ve gone on-line and read Google. I’ve been on-line since the 1980s and have read the opinions of cyberpundits across that span of time. And the bumper sticker campaigns, too -- I even did a couple of “answer” campaigns. (Remember “I Found It”? I was one of the whackos who was distributing the “I Lost It” stickers.) I was involved in the fight against the right back in the late 1970s, and I know my political history quite well. The New Right did NOT come about as a result of Democratic intransigence; it was a well-orchestrated political coup based on exploiting anxieties over crime, “immorality”, and people’s dislike of paying taxes.

Let me just repeat that in case anyone blinks: The New Right did NOT come about as a result of Democratic intransigence; it was a well-orchestrated political coup based on exploiting anxieties over crime, “immorality”, and people’s dislike of paying taxes.

The men and women who put this juggernaut into operation were brilliant, cunning, and ruthless. They designed a candy-coated reactionary ideology that was tailor made for White Americans made fearful by their TV sets, their acid-dropping sons who were burning their draft cards, and their mini-skirted daughters on The Pill. They presented a world filled with pregnant feminists demanding abortions and refusing to shave their armpits, aggressive gays who “recruited” cute young straight boys, and ungrateful Blacks who back-sassed their white employers. They advocated a return to old-fashioned values that never existed, and back to “basics” that never were basic. Their solution was God, Guns, Guts, and the GOP -- and Religion, and Patriotism, and Punishment. The resulting reality was a full-throated roar of undifferentiated rage that has led, over the last 30 years, to America becoming the feared-and-loathed laughingstock of the civilized world instead of its undisputed moral and intellectual leader.

And how could you look back on the past 40 years and think that the Democratic Party has ever “gone to the mat” for women or gays? As soon as the going got tough, most of the party leadership got going ... in the opposite direction. That’s been one of the big failings of the Democratic leadership. We sure as hell didn’t “go to the mat” over Alito. It was the Press who played up the Senate hard-liners, all six or eight of them. The Press’ source? The Republican Party. And you say you’re just bringing us The Truth?

You also may be misinformed on exactly who is calling the shots in the Religious Right. It isn’t the Evangelicals, it’s the Fundamentalists. It’s an easy point to miss; on DU, we tend to lump them all together, but they are distinctly different groups. The Evangelicals are, as you said, mainly working-class folks. The Fundamentalists are the elitists, and it is they who have been the architects of the radical Religious Right. And when the Fundamentalists said, “Jesus is a Republican”, they all voted Republican.

Perhaps this is why it’s easy to see the Evangelicals as being “just folks”. It’s true, they tend to NOT have much of a taste for controlling people, but they’ll vote for anything claiming attachment to Jesus. The Fundamentalists “wear the pants” in the movement, but there are far fewer of them among the working class. You don’t see them -- but they write the laws. Ralph Reed once said that he liked to be invisible, to change history without appearing to be doing anything at all. That is the attitude the Religious Right revolutionaries cultivated. It was a kind of fascist Gramscian thinking, and it worked. The Evangelicals don’t come across as fascist, though they vote that way these days; the Fundamentalists include, among their number, nearly all of the real-world tyrants in modern American politics.

You would have us believe that we must kowtow to the Right in order to save the world. All because a few Evangelical ministers have now discovered the environment and climate? The Press, once again, is a distorting prism of reality. There are still only a few such rare birds around, and they are shown off by a press deep in the throes of irony overload, the “Man Bites Dog” (or “Evangelicals Go Liberal”) instinct. I’m glad that Rick Warren is advocating “environmental stewardship” as he calls it, but by far, most of the Religious Right’s preacher-politicians are still frightening their audiences by telling them that environmentalists are worse than Nazis, and that they sacrifice babies in nude lesbian rituals to worship the Earth Goddess. Most of them who don’t think of environmental and climate concerns as being black witchcraft think they’re liberal junk science. Do you think they’ll bargain with us if we drop our support for women, gays, and blacks? These are core ideological points to the right. Pretending that WE have been intransigent is absurd. Thousands of legislative votes, executive orders, judicial decisions, and repetitions of conservative mantras makes this clear. They do not compromise on what they believe, unlike Democrats, who are TOO willing to compromise on the matters you mock. They -- like YOU, incidentally -- believe they, and they alone, are in possession of The Truth.

No amount of negotiation could have, or will, change that; but change is happening on its own natural timetable. The Radical Right is starting to fall apart. Evangelicals bleed the same blood as atheists, liberals, and Unitarians; they have also been dying in Iraq, and the arrogance, corruption, and elitism of Team Bush has been a shock to most Evangelicals who once though he was Jesus’ best buddy. Many are re-examining their commitment to a political agenda far astray from what they read in their Bibles. A generation of well-educated Christians has been raised up, and they realize that they’ve been played, too.

Once the Radical Right is out of power, I hope that some strongly committed Democrats (and reformist Republicans) will get into power. The Evangelicals will pose no threat, and the younger Evangelicals will wonder why their parents followed such Pharasaical bench-jumpers. The Republican Party will suddenly discover that it’s on the side of the Earth after all. Not that everything will be wonderful -- oh, no, we’ll have our hands full for decades fixing the damage America and the World have sustained. But at least we will have learned that bullies and fanatics must be confronted from the very first time they try to throw their weight around.

--p!

[phantom power]

26. Preach it, brother.

[umass1993]

30. We don't need platitudes....

the environmental movement needs wins. "Preaching" makes you feel good, but it doesn't help anybody. in a way, it's just vanity.

[phantom power]

32. Sure, but your suggestions for "winning" don't impress me.

Evidently, they aren't impressing anybody else either. If you are looking to influence anybody's thinking, you'll probably find a very sympathetic ear over at the DLC HQ. They've been listening to guys like you for at least the last decade. I think they're track record speaks for itself.

[umass1993]

34. See post #33.

They aren't listening to me at HQ. If they were, you would see a lot of Democrats winning.

[Name removed]

29. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[umass1993]

33. I gues my point is..

Since 1980, the Dems, my party, have lost the Presidency, the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the House. Which is OK, except that it precludes any pro-environmental policy from being pursued..in a particularly critical time.

In a way, it's almost comical how the Dems have compromised their policy on virtually every issue except the few that would actually help. Death penalty is OK. NAFTA is good. War is OK. Privacy (PATRIOT Act) isn't a big deal. More prison for druggies.

I see similar behavior on a local level. Traffic is a problem around here and they want to address it in every way except the one way that would help. Widen roads, tinker with the lights..etc. They would do anything to avoid charging money for road use, which is the only solution. They can continue to mess with these other options (and destroy the city in the process) but the problem will never be solved and everybody will lose in the end.

[phantom power]

35. I think the difference between you and I is...

I view courting evangelicals as just more of the same losing "tack-right" strategy. Especially courting them via compromising on human-rights issues such as intolerance towards homosexuality.

[umass1993]

37. Characterization doesn't substitute for analysis.

the human rights thing is ridiculous. The death penalty is as fundamental of a human rights issue as you can get. The Dems rolled over on it like Fido. I guess the prisoners on death row need to hire a few more people on K Street.

From an ethical standpoint, I don't see why death penalty has such "flex," while other "human rights" issues are untouchable. The Dems conceded the death penalty in order to get more votes. It was a purely populist decision, and I don't see why other groups should get a free pass, especially when the situation is much more dire than it was in 1992.

My question to you is, why do the powerful groups get a free pass, but the groups with little political power get stomped all over? How do you justify that as "reasonable" or "principled."

Would you let polar bears, and whales go extinct in order to protect people from getting sentenced to death?

[phantom power]

40. My exact point is: there should be no such "flex."

We shouldn't "flex" on death penalty. Or other human rights issues. We don't have to compromise on these things, and more importantly, we shouldn't. Furthermore, we can walk and chew gum at the same time: there is no zero-sum law that says we can only defend the environment if we compromise on human rights. In fact, the two are linked in many ways. A healthy environment is a human right, among other things. Or, it should be.

The DLC has largely abandoned principles. I'm just saying: compromising on these other issues is just more of the same. It's not going to magically get us back the environment if we ditch whatever few issues they're still clinging to.

[NNadir]

36. An excellent post. n/t.

[megatherium]

28. Why did Democrats lose the South?

The answer is real simple: Racism. The Republicans used to run ads that were anything but suble. Remember the Jesse Helms ad talking about a white worker who couldn't get a job because "they had to give to a minority"? Or Willy Horton? When Lyndon Johnson made the Democratic party the party of civil rights, he knew they would never win the South again.

[umass1993]

31. Let's assume you are correct...

I really don't see the advantage of labeling entire regions of the country as "racist." How does that help the cause? Are you saying that the Dems should just concede themselves to irrelevance for the forseeable future because the South is all "racist" and there's nothing we can do about it.
Just throw up our hands and shrug our shoulders? What kind of attitude is that?

[Dogmudgeon]

39. You put the cart before the horse

Megatherium did none of what you claimed s/he did. The argument was that in areas where there is a lot of racism, the Radical Right has been able to exploit it and win.

I also didn't notice that there was any call to "(j)ust throw up our hands and shrug our shoulders..."

I disagree with the remark about LBJ, mainly because the South also lost a lot, if not most, of its racism since the 1950s. But enough remained to exploit. And enough exists outside of the South to exploit, as well. Although the South suffered and inflicted more than its share of racism, other social and historical dynamics were at work -- least of all poverty.

--p!

[Dogmudgeon]

41. Another point you raise

Again, concerning "Just throw up our hands and shrug our shoulders? What kind of attitude is that?"

Why, then, would you have us take the same defeatist attitudes in dealing with women, gays, and minorities? Yet, you have written strongly in favor of radical-rightist felons, evangelicals, and now racists. As Jay Leno might ask, "What' that all about?"

You've staked out a very strong moral position that pairs women/gays/minorities against the environment, but privileges racists, felons, and evangelicals. If you want to keep asserting that your posts are "the truth", you are going to have to confront that set of strong contradictions you've posed.

--p!

[megatherium]

43. Might I remind you, Bush kicked off his 2000 primary season

with an event at the unaccredited Bob Jones University, known for its retrograde attitudes on race relations (they didn't allow interracial dating). So use of racism for political purposes by the Republicans is certainly still going on.

But as far as the South not being as racist as it was, you are correct. My point however was the Democratic Party should not and need not concede civil rights as an issue -- and it should not concede human rights for gay people in particular, because that is now the frontier of the American project of creating a free and just society for all.

I personally subscribe to the theory that Gore "lost" the 2000 election and Kerry lost in 2004 because they were outmaneuvered by a dishonest and vicious Republican campaign apparatus. I believe that if the Democrats nominate a good campaigner (or have the best campaign people working for them) they can prevail. Wedge issues, even gay marriage, can only go so far, and popular outrage at the war and corruption is building.

I see this in the person of my own mother. She used to go to a evangelical megachurch, but in the wake of 9/11 and the war in Iraq, she got tremendously fed up with the rightwing politics at the church, and in the evangelical world in general. She returned to the Episcopal Church, in spite of her misgivings with their liberal attitudes about gay people.

By the way, I taught in the deep South for seven years. The university I taught at was a historically white institution, but when I taught there, its student body was 13% African-American. (This was about a dozen years ago.) Right about the time I left there, the very first African-American fraternity house at that university was established. Then somebody troubled themselves to burn the house down. Remarkably, the white sororities and fraternities gathered their resources together and rebuilt the house for the black fraternity. There is still plenty of racism in the South -- just as there is in the North -- but I was greatly heartened by that gesture of reconciliation, it made me proud to be American.

By the way, I gather opposition to gay marriage has collapsed in Massachusetts; politicians and the general public, who have lived with gay marriage for some time now, are now longer animated by this issue. They correctly perceive that it isn't a problem. There are not that many gay marriages, nor are they affecting anyone else's lives. Is my perception accurate?

[Vogon_Glory]

27. I've Long Suspected That to Be A Denying Wing-nut Has Geographic...

I've long suspected that to be a hard-line right-wing-nut who denies that climate change is either real or affects them has a strong geographical component. I suspect that many on the right are beginning to have the evidence for climate change shoved past their walls of denial and into their faces.

To me, to be a climate-change denier has a geographical component. You have to live away from the sea coast, so you won't think that increased hurricane and storm activity as well as rising sea levels, doesn't affect you. You have to live far away from ski resorts so you can't notice declining snowfall and warmer winters. To deny climate change, you have to live away from the Rockies and the Sierras so you won't notice shrinking glaciers and smaller snow-caps. To be a climate change denier, you also have to live outside the Great Basin or the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts so that you won't think that earlier snow melt and drought at the source of your water supply won't affect you. To deny the effects of global warming, you also have to live well east of the old barrier where dry farming was a crap shoot and irrigation was necessary.

That leaves the Holy Joes, the Praying Janies, and the Freepers interior Dixie, the Midwest, and parts of New York, Pennsylvania, and New England.

[Dogmudgeon]

38. Don't forget the Libertarians

The types that use the upper-case "L".

They are the real driving intellectual force behind anti-environmentalism. At the heart of it, they fear that environmentalism will lead to the end of the Private Enterprise system. They've been the ones collecting the scientific evidence against climate and environmental action. Of course, now that the scientific evidence of human-induced climate change has reached the "damn near certain" level, the tactics have shifted.

One of the interesting things about the Libertarian intellectuals is that more than half of them are atheists -- amazing, but true! This is probably from the influence of Ayn Rand, herself a staunch atheist. She also wrote that air pollution was beautiful, as it was a sign of wealth being created. See The New Left: The Anti-Intellectual Revolution for more of these astounding quotes. The atheism is scattered throughout her writings -- "peppered", as it were.

Most of the Private Enterprise thinking filters into the less bookish strata of the Right via opinion leaders who read a lot. These people usually think of themselves as intellectual rebels, swashbucklers, hell-raisers, and heirs to the mantle of H.L. Mencken. They have a common, peculiar, and cliché-laden style of writing; it is very popular among lay readership. Fortunately for us, it is also easy to identify by its backslapping arrogance, "broad" sense of humor, and repetitive jokes. Sources as disparate as Reconstructionist Christian Gary North and get-rich-quick author Robert Ringer have mastered this style and taken it to the bank. The cliché character is also common in science fiction (the classic Heinlein and Hubbard protagonists), with slightly different shadings of behavior.

The geographic component of which you speak is probably strongest among those who don't read much; Libertarians and other hard-core Private Enterprisers usually read a lot, even if it is mainly movement literature. They themselves tend to not be fanatics, but produce most of the agitprop. As in any movement, the elite is usually a lot different than the rank-and-file, but it's the rank-and-file who vote, usually against their better interest. I wrote about this in my last post ("WTF ...") when I made the point about Evangelicals and Fundamentalists.

In 20 years, the Holy Joes and Praying Janies may indeed be leftists who vote Democratic and/or for other progressive parties. Stranger things have happened in American political history. They will then read books by a new generation of opinion leaders and political wonks who will find plenty of Scripture that supports their position. The long-term goal, hopefully, is to aim for more education, more self-directed learning, less fanaticism, and a better view of what Democracy is all about. The modern Radical Right has been a painful, embarassing exercise in social regression.

--p!

[phantom power]

42. In the interest of increasing the total irony of the universe...

I shall now simultaneously defend Ayn Rand, and yet wield her own ethical system against her:

Fundamentally, the means by which we live our lives as humans is reason. Our capacity for reason is what enables us to survive and flourish. We are not born knowing what is good for us; that is learned. Nor are we born knowing how to achieve what is good for us; that too is learned. It is by reason that we learn what is food and what is poison, what animals are useful or dangerous to us, how to make tools, what forms of social organization are fruitful, and so on.

Thus Rand advocates rational self interest: one's interests are not whatever one happens to feel like; rather it is by reason that one identifies what is to one's interest and what isn't. By the use of reason one takes into account all of the factors one can identify, projects the consequences of potential courses of action, and adopts principled policies of action.

The principled policies a person should adopt are called virtues. A virtue is an acquired character trait; it results from identifying a policy as good and committing to acting consistently in terms of that policy.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/rand.htm

I happen to think that old Ayn was barking up the right tree here. And yet, we now know that our own unchecked growth and pollution have become an enormous threat to our own existence. By applying reason (Rand's chief ethical virtue) to the available data, we see that Rand herself was wrong to favor unchecked economic growth at the expense of concerns for our finite biosphere. Whether or not that proves Rand herself was lacking in virtue, I leave open for discussion: was she taking into account all factors, and projecting consequences in good faith?

[IrateCitizen]

44. You're scratching the surface, but not quite there yet...

Rand's writing is rather common in its presuppositions for that time period, namely, the Enlightenment notion of the primacy of the individual. Most of the problems we are facing -- global warming, energy source depletion, pollution, etc. -- are the result of the legacy of the Enlightenment, coupled with a distinctly American flavor of messianic Christianity that pops up every few generations in the form of another great awakening, which helps to solidify individualist notions through its Calvinist notion of divine grace and the "dangers" of a doctrine of good works.

For the flip side of Ayn Rand, check out some of the writings of the Frankfurt School -- Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Habermas. Where they differed was their assessment of post-industrial capitalist society. While Rand saw absolutely nothing wrong with it because it fit into her positivist tendencies, the Critical Marxists recoiled from it in horror as suppressing individual creative freedom and supposing that there was only one possible "future" that we were flying toward. Where they were in agreement, however, was the way in which they placed primary emphasis on the individual, which, as I said before, is a legacy of the Enlightenment that we are still living with today.

Having studied these things a little bit while pursuing my BA in History and having resolved to study them in much more depth when I pursue my MA, I have become almost consumed with questions of individualism vs. collectivism, the legacy of the Enlightenment in these matters, and how this dialectic plays out in modern societies. Personally, I am convinced that for something resembling modern civilization to survive, we have to undergo another revolution in consciousness on the level of the Enlightenment of the late 17th and 18th century. Individualist notions with regards to climate change and energy source depletion are perhaps our biggest handicap. We need to evolve toward a more collectivist notion of how we view the world, our relationship with it, and with each other. A part of this will likely be the eventual demise of the free enterprise system -- not because it is inherently "evil" or anything like that, but because a society that possesses a significant degree of collectivist sensibilities will simply find the free enterprise system to be incompatible after a period of time.

[phantom power]

45. It does seem that we have to grapple with limits.

I'm interested in dcfirefighter's notions regarding the proper economic treatment of finite resources. In economic speak, resources which cannot be produced in greater quantity, in response to an increase in price. Like what we're seeing with oil, or will be seeing soon enough.

How would you describe a "collectivist" sensibility? What would that look like?

[IrateCitizen]

46. One that places the group on at least equal footing with individual

Our current social arrangements are, IMHO, so incredibly stilted in favor of the wants of the individual that it isn't even funny. The classic American attitude is still, "You can't tell me what to do with MY land!"

A collectivist sensibility would mean that we wouldn't necessarily look at that as "my land". Rather, it would see land (and the associated resources) as a more communal source. Suburbia especially would gradually melt away, because the very notion of a bunch of single-family homes on acre lots with the only real transportation option being the automobile would be seen as an extremely wasteful arrangement, because it would result in tremendous amounts of resources being consumed for the comfort of a few people.

A collectivist ethic would involve a significant amount of empathy and concern for the well-being of others. Accumulation of wealth would be a socially unacceptable activity. People might be judged on how much they make the lives of others around them better rather than how much capital they can gather for themselves. The needs of the community would come before the wants of the individual. There would also have to be an aversion to subordinating the needs of the individual to the desires of the community, and this could be done through the vilifying of exploitation (unlike covertly celebrating it in pursuit of comfort, as we currently do).

I've read dcfirefighter's posts on LVT especially, and it is an intriguing notion. It seems that it could be a step toward achieving a greater collectivist mentality. If the concept of land speculation for profit could be largely eliminated, then we could work toward a point at which land ownership would not hold nearly the same primacy as it traditionally has held in American society, which would in turn allow us to make good use of our natural resources rather than exploiting them.

[dcfirefighter]

47. Fear of collectivism

IC, I read your post and think of the oh-so-many 'collective' property use laws in and around Maryland, dictating what a property owner can and can't use 'his' land for. I especially think of the wonderful 'collective' rules regarding land use in Montgomery and Howard Counties - both wealthy suburbs, of DC and Baltimore, respectively. In each case, there are 'smart growth' rules and agricultural preserves, as well as density limits to 'preserve' greenspace. In each case, the average working family cannot afford to purchase or, in many cases, rent, an artificially scarce home in these jurisdictions.

Conversely, wealthy families can own vast tracts of land for their hobby farms and horse stables, purchasing land for less than they'd have to pay for such acreage sans restrictions. If they hold the land long enough, eventually, the zoning laws will be changed, and they'll enjoy a windfall gain in value...thanks to the 'collectivist' idea of holding private lands out of use.

The brand of collectivism that I'd subscribe to wouldn't' involve giving up the primacy of the individual, but rather emphasizing the 'enlightened' portion of self-interest: choosing to live (and trade) by a set of rules that enhances the probable outcomes for all players isn't necessarily counter to self-determination.

In fact, the degradation of ecological wealth has much to do with the 'collectivization' of authority and power. Without state power, there can be no property rights in land, there can be no patent rights, there can be no heavy industry. It is only through collectivism that we can create a hierarchy of power that allows 'few' to decide for 'many' - and against their best interests.

It is not merely important to 'share', it is especially important to determine *what* we share. Without the accumulation of wealth, there would be no surplus of wealth for lean times, nor would there be employment above mere sustenance. Without the accumulation of wealth, there would be no advances in the practical sciences - and little in the theoretical sciences. Without advances in science, the survival of the species becomes brittle, and subject to fail. Eventually, 4-5 billion years from now, the earth will be engulfed by the sun, and life will end. Perhaps what you were hoping for was that 'the collective' would determine what direction scientific exploration would take, and that the joy of service would induce the best and brightest minds to dedicate their lives to advancing technology? You have devised some feedback loop that ensures that the choices of the collective are wise and correct, and not merely popular?

A blanket collectivist ethic is not the panacea for the world's ills. What is needed is more enlightened 'enlightened self-interest', coupled with a more equitable balance of legal authority.

Keep what is yours, share what is ours. Own yourself, your labor, the products of your labor, and what you can fairly trade for. No one created the earth, the seas, or the sky; no one has a rightful claim to ownership; they cannot be traded for.

[IrateCitizen]

48. What you're describing isn't collectivism, its bougeois liberalism...

I'm quite aware of one of the areas of which you speak, Howard County. I have family that live in Ellicott City, MD. I also currently live in an area that is even WORSE in those regards than the areas around DC and Baltimore, and that is Westchester County, NY. In fact, it's so bad in those regards that my wife and I are moving from the NYC metro area simply because there is no way that we can afford housing here and still maintain a decent quality of life.

Ideas like "greenspace" are of a bourgeois liberal mentality, not a collectivist one. So is the idea of maintaining agricultural preserves that consist of horse farms rather than actual food-growing enterprises. At the same time, given the propensity of developers to seek out farmland parcels for greenfield development, measures have to be taken to ensure that people who legitimately want to farm are able to afford to do so while putting the brakes on sprawl development.

Degradation of the environment, IMHO, has more to do with the primacy of the individual than any sort of collectivist outlook. Bourgeois mentality has spread throughout the population like a cancer, with the aim of almost every person to achieve the kind of luxury that seems to be taken by many Americans as a birthright. As an example, I will take my wife's attitude toward public transportation. Now, she may not like the way in which the environment is being degraded, but she would always rather drive the 37 miles into Manhattan than take the train -- even though the station is a 5-minute walk from home. Her rationale is that her car allows her to go when she wants rather than having to adhere to some sort of schedule, failing to see that this kind of self-interest is extremely destructive to the environment. Another one would be our debate between having only one or two children. I only want one, because I want to do my part to reduce overpopulation. However, my wife wants two -- because she doesn't want an only child and wants our children to have siblings, even if she will agree with me that the earth is overpopulated. At root, her perspective is still a highly individualist one. (I still love her dearly anyway!)

Speaking of self-interest, I don't really believe in any kind of "enlightened" self-interest. There is simply self-interest. Sometimes, it can result in positive outcomes. Others, it can be extremely destructive. For instance, my choice to change my career from civil engineering to teaching history is one based upon self-interest (I was miserable as an engineer) as much as it is a desire for altruism and to help the collective. It is not through self-interest that this greater good is really realized in my instance, but rather balancing that greater good with my self-interest. One of the reasons I was miserable as an engineer is that I saw many of the projects my company was involved in, and felt a strong moral dilemma in participating in things that I viewed as destructive -- even as I was paid relatively well at the same time. It was a combination of self-interest and concern for the collective, a balance, if you will, that led me to leave my previous career -- not any kind of "enlightened" self-interest.

I think that your post is displaying the best of intentions, but at the same time the inability to break free from constraints that blind us to deeper realities. So long as you try to draw the line between selfishness and "enlightened self-interest", you will be engaging in an exercise that will naturally drift in the direction of selfishness, because ultimately you are placing the highest priority on the desire of the individual in the hierarchy of values. I liken it to those who call for a form of "enlightened capitalism" -- when you operate in a system that places a higher value on making profit than anything else, ultimately every other value is subordinated to making profit. It is such rationalizations that have made slavery, corporate malfesance, and war for control of resources possible throughout recent human history.

You liken the formation of government to a collectivization process that has precipitated the degradation of the environment. I don't buy that. Governmental systems tend to reflect the values of the societies that create them through dialogue of a multitude of social forces present in those societies. That is why dictatorships are often short-lived -- because they do not express the values of the society for very long. The reason that we have this "collectivization" of state power and authority is because pursuit of profit and the creation of comfort in some positivist notion of "progress" is a traditional American value. So long as pursuit of profit remains the highest social priority, then our system of governance will reflect that. If society's perspective were to change, you would see radical changes in the government to reflect that -- either voluntarily on the part of government, or that government would eventually collapse under its own weight due to lack of support.

Your ideas of a person's right to their labor harken back to the theories of John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government. Basically, it's the concept that anything in the natural world has no real value until a human applies labor to it, at which point it becomes a commodity. I am a little puzzled how you propose to get around the problem of commodities in your system, but I would be open to hearing how you propose to balance the commodification of resources through labor with the need to avoid further degradation of the environment. All I am saying is that so long as commodification remains profitable, the environment will continue to be compromised in favor of the pursuit of profit -- and I predict with disastrous consequences.

Do I believe that collectivism is a panacea for the world's ills? No. What I do believe is that a shift in our perspective from one of individualism to collectivism in order to remove the blinders that prevent us from adequately addressing the problems we face. So long as we remain stuck in these same modes of thought, we will be completely unable to consider viable alternatives to making our situation on the earth a little bit better.

[dcfirefighter]

49. bourgeois liberalism

NYC - I feel your pain. It's tough to pay the rent around here as well - and this reaches to the root of 'my' solution. We each must pay exhorbant prices for our rent / mortgage (unless we inherit property or otherwise have established property bought long ago). It'd be much easier on the both of us, if we collectivized or socialized such a payment: taking the payment from the rentier doesn't discourage anyone else from producing land; whereas taking the payment from the homebuilder, or the grocer, or the producer of any good or service, does. Such a socialized payment would replace the portion of our labor and legitimately owned (Locke's proviso) property that we currently socialize.

It seems like your definition of collectivist ideas is pretty subjective. Who determines what is and what isn't a good idea for the collective? In the case of greenspaces, the body politic determined that greenspaces were a good idea. Who determines who wants to farm, and what is and isn't 'being a productive farmer'? Do I have to have a certain proportion of my land under crop? Can I leave some fallow? Who checks up on me? Why grow corn in westchester county when it can be grown much cheaper (financially, ecologically, etc.) elsewhere? Who decides?

Public transportation is far less convenient and pleasant than private transportation, and is generally not much cheaper, even with hefty public subsidy. This is largely because the COSTS of private transportation are not borne by the user- your wife may freely dispose of her waste carbon in OUR atmosphere. Additionally, the ground costs of roads is ignored. Due to the nature of property ownership - allowing the increased utility of land due to public improvements to go unshared - the typical network of destinations is not dense enough to support a dedicated transit network. In short, 'my' system would tend to create dense collections of buildings, residences, offices, shopts, etc., that can more easily be serviced by public transit infrastructure. But, in the meantime, transit loses to individual transportation because while the benefits aren't shared, the costs are.

As for overpopulation, i believe that claims of overpopulation are based on ignorance, selfishness, or general anti-social behavior. I've specified the details elsewhere in the E/E forum, but in short, the world has more than enough resources to meet the phyisical needs of a population many times the current one. It's a matter of resource allocation and defining needs. Dispite your obvious distaste for capitalism, and a similar distaste for free market allocation: free markets distribute resources according to need far better than any alternative. The failing of Capitalism is in its treatment of non-produced resources - natural wealth, or what Messrs. Smith and Marx refferred to as 'Land'. Failing to socialize the returns to land leads to land hoarding, which is less than optimal use. Conversely, if the returns to land are socialized, land must be put to highest and best use, as determined by market forces - arable land gets farmed, urban land gets built on, etc., etc. As water becomes expensive, it gets used for production rather than decoration. The key is to realized that highest and best use 'uses up' demand - it answers demand in the best location for it, negating the need to answer the demand elsewhere - discouraging sprawl.

'Enlightened' self-interest, imo, is self-interest with the long view, and considering 'rule' based ethics. It is certainly more 'enlightned' than short view, opportunistic self-interest. You left your job as an engineer for purely self-interest reasons: You liked the idea of helping the 'collective' good more than you liked the idea of remaining an engineer. Same for me - I left my job as an Industrial Engineer to become a firefighter because I liked the idea of being a firefighter - the honor of being associated with 'helping' people was no small part of that. IOW, people do 'selfless' things for 'selfish' reasons, because it makes them feel good, or because it appeals to their sense of duty, or honor, or justice, which is really just the same thing.

I make no secret that I think that people always act in their own self interest. I don't advacate eliminating affairs of the conscience though.

The American pursuit of profit has improved the living conditions of more people than the indigenous tribal pursuit of ujima, through the actions raising the standard of living, as well as through 'selfish' acts of charity by 'the rich'.

It seems as if you are saying that for 'collectivism' to work, society's goals must change - I agree, but further state that for society's goals to change, human nature must change. Marxism ignores human nature. People cannot act in the best interest of 'the collective' if only because they cannot know what those best interests are. You may think that the collective needs more history teachers than civil engineers, but neither you, nor anyone else, can be sure. However, market forces can set the price of civil engineers higher than that of history teacher, indicating a relative surplus of history teachers - though not dictating that any individual choose engineering as a profession.

The failure of the 'Capitalist' system isn't in it's free markets, but rather in it's preferential treatment of ownership of capital over labor, and it's modern conflation of land and capital. Nearly every ill that (i'm guessing, you and) I see in the world today is the result of this: ecological, social, and even spiritual. Some form of 'government' or other means to share the bounty of nature is required: however, I agree, that ideally, eventually much of the government apparatus would 'wither' away.

I disagree on your interperetation on Locke - I would clarify and say that nothing in the natural world can be owned until a human applies labor to it: a chunk of tree on the forest floor isn't property, but an axe-handle carved from it is. I'm unclear on your definition of commodities, but will try an answer. Exclusive access to natural resources (very similar, but not exactly the same, as 'ownership') would be granted to individuals or groups of individuals only if they compensate all the individuals they exclude from said resources. Pratically, such the rights to such resources would be periodically (annually?) auctioned, or otherwise sold at maximum price. The proceeds would then be shared among all members of the community - either directly, or through government services. This would be similar to sharing incomes through income taxes, except without the deleterious effects on employment and the price of labor.

I would cease environmental degredation by forcing the degraders to pay for their actions - this requires a government. This would require a majority of individuals to recognize the trespasses committed by polluters, and to recognize the trespasses committed by exploiters. This would require that these individuals act selfishly in defense of their individual shares of the 'common-wealth'. From a global perspective, lowlanders will pay the price of American oil use - conversely, if lowlanders were selfish AND EMPOWERED they would DEMAND payment, and they would demand such payment as to make oil use much, much more expensive, and therefore, much much less prevalent.

Personnally, I think that a more widespread appreciation of 'commonwealth' as well as a more widespread recognition of the presense, size of, and disposition of economic rent is necessary: once people understand what 'Rent' is, how it is created, and where it goes, their natural self interest will correct most of the problems of the world. For what it's worth, Marx recognized most of this.