As I’ve written about in the past, there were many things that pushed me to the right, from the dozey McGovern-style liberalism (at least in terms of domestic policy) I believed in when I was in my late teens and early twenties, to voting for Reagan in ’84. Books (Modern Times, The Gulag, Crime and Punishment, Republican Party Reptile), events (the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet chicanery over the SALT talks), personalities (the amazing Reagan versus the comical Carter, the room-temperature Mondale, the loathsome Gary Hart)…

…but the key log in the logjam was Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech, in which a fiftysomething who’d been rewarded far out of proportion to his talent personally (so it seemed to me at the time) told me that I, a fifteen-year-old kid in the middle of nowhere, that I was going to inherit a much crappier American than he’d gotten, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

And that bothered me; even though I didn’t really expect a whole lot at that time, being told to just go and suck it bothered me enough that my adolescent certainty about liberalism started to crack around the edges (although I chalked most of it up to Carter, not the movement itself, initially).

Of course, “The sky is falling” is a key mantra of liberalism – and Obama isn’t just the leader…he’s a client!

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

Now, on the one hand I get the context here – he’s reacting to criticisms from India’s prime minister about American environmentalists and politicians demanding concessions on growth from their growing economy (and yet still highly impoverished society).

And yet behind it there’s still the sense of liberal guilt, that the US doesn’t really deserve its success; that the people who didn’t feel proud of America until Barack Obama became a candidate really do believe that the only thing holding back the still-socialistic economy, ossified social structure and corrupt government of India is American imperialism.  That they dont’ know that while the US does use much of the world’s power, its productivity per unit of power used is vastly higher than most of the world, and our pollution per unit of productivity is lower.
Oh, there’s some real context as well:

Pitching his message to Oregon’s environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to “lead by example” on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which could be exported to developing countries.

Leaving aside Obama’s usual audacious vagueness (what “new technologies”?  Are you going to develop them by decree?  Or perhaps buck your own nutroots and embrace nuclear power?), it shows a stifling ignorance of the real issue; the only way to solve the problems of pollution and third-world economic stagnance is growth, not shrinkage.

Just as it was for the last cataclysmic problem India faced – forty years ago, when the likes of Paul Ehrlich predicted that overpopulation and famine would soon render India a wasteland.  Liberal politicians of the day suggested we needed to “triage” India and the other nations threatened with overpopulation – and, like the global warming crisis today, highly-publicized scientists were absolutely certain, and wrote libraries full of peer-reviewed papers proving that the world was doomed unless government took decisive action to limit population – although it was already too late.
Fortunately, the Indians “followed our example”, and embraced economic growth – which, inevitably, curbs population growth.  The only thing “triaged” was Paul Ehrlich, who went on to make a series of other absurd comments that were largely obsoleted by more economic growth.

So the examples that we need to set for the third world are:

1. Pelt Paul Erhlich with rocks and garbage
2. Respond to the ecological crises (real or manufactured) the best way there is – via the free market.
3. Send Barack Obama back to Illinois.

Let’s get on it!

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 6:05 am and is filed under Campaign '08, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.