The Middle is Always Evil

Since starting this blog, I’ve blogged about environmentalism a little more than I’d like to.

There are other issues out there; issues that are more pressing, that affect our country and our world much more directly– like Iran’s nuclear program, or the fact that they’ve been launching test missiles capable of striking Israel. But so often I choose to write about the Environmentalist Movement over other things for a very specific reason, which is:

The choice to accept environmentalism or not is the choice between industry and inactivity, civilization and primitivism, comfortability and suffering; it is the choice between life and death. Many may disagree with this claim, citing the good intentions of the environmentalists: taking care of the earth couldn’t be bad, could it? After all, not all environmentalists are nut jobs like Eric Pianka, a noted ecologist who wants to kill off 90% of human life; most are in fact quite moderate, and simply believe that humans have a responsibility to look after the earth.

Such people are not evil, but they are misguided. They accept the two basic premises of environmentalism: that the environment is good because it is the environment, and that the smallest human interference in the natural ecological structure is a desirable goal. The logical conclusion of these premises, of course, is that human activity must be restricted as much as possible in order to prevent such interference. If you accept these premises, chances are good that you would not be in favor of a mass culling of the human population. The danger is that men like Pianka also accept them, and they desire to see their logical ends carried out. Since you’ve already accepted their premises, they can use the power of guilt to get you to accept a gradually more oppressive environmental policy. Case in point:

Yesterday, the leaders at the G8 Summit agreed to cut their countries’ carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, a radically anti-industrial move that will dismember the economy and stunt the standard of living for the global population. No one can claim that such an act was motivated by anything other than a hatred for mankind. Last week, a measure was put up for conideration in the British Parliament that would institute a personal cap-and-trade policy for every resident of England. Was this act considered because its proponents love the earth, or because they hate humanity? You be the judge.

With the basic premises of environmentalism so common today, it won’t be long before such cap-and-trade proposals are made in the United States. Do you really believe that such a measure would be beyond the scope of a Barack Obama environmental policy? Maybe not now, but what about four years from now? This is why the environmentalism issue is so important to me.

But there is another reason I frequently choose environmentalism over other topics. Throughout history, the war against man’s productive faculty has been waged under the banner of countless different names and movements; tribalism, monarchism, feudalism– more recently communism, socialism, and fascism– and of course, there’s always been the monstrosity that is organized religion. All of these have been a part of an overarching war on Individualism and a hatred of humanity; environmentalism is no exception here– it is merely the newest leader in the same war, the latest manifestation of the same hatred. However, environmentalism is different from its ideological ancestors in one, very important way.

In the past, movements that sought to destroy humanity (the modern ones anyway) have disguised their hatred for man’s virtues, proclaiming them to be the immoral while holding up their own standards as the moral alternative. With the broad base of society accepting altruism, their unpracticeable moral code, they guilted people into embracing their own self-destruction in the name of the love of mankind. Environmentalism is different because it makes no attempt to disguise its contempt for humanity.

Now, I won’t run through my whole spiel on environmentalism again because I’ve already blogged on it and have stated my opposition to it in as clear terms as I can, both here and in other places. But I will say this:

I commented on gas prices in an earlier blog post, but I feel that more needs to be said.

Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Nominee, has said that if elected, he would impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies. It is said that companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobile have made an “unfair profit, ” and that they should have to give the excess money that they made “back to the American people.” Obama himself has said:

“I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.”

Other liberals have spouted similar rhetoric. Here’s Hillary Clinton:

She wants to “take” their profits.

Obama and Hillary aren’t the only ones. Every Democrat in the Senate– as well as two Republicans– voted for such a windfall profits tax, which– thankfully– did not pass.

If you take away the windfall profits of oil companies, they will be unable to reinvest in new supply; they will be forced to slow their own production of crude oil. Where will they go for crude oil then? Ah, yes, the Mideast; where else? But buying their crude oil from the Mideast will be much more expensive than it would be if they were able to process it themselves. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to because Obama will have “taken” the money that they would need. But what does all of this mean for the average American?

As George Will notes in a video that is viewable here, Corporations don’t pay taxes, they just raise their prices, and the consumer pays them. Taxing away gas companies’ profits will only hurt the American consumer. That’s what happened in the 80’s under Carter’s profits tax, and it will happen again under a similar Obama tax– only this time it will be much worse. Why? Because this time around supply is being even further restricted by environmentalist congressmen–Democrats mostly. What exactly are they doing to restrict the supply of oil? First, a bit of history.

In 1995, Congress passed legislation that would have allowed oil production on a small fraction– less than one tenth of one percent– of ANWR. With this land designated for oil production, America could have produced an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil. Such a measure would certainly have been a huge step toward relieving America of its dependence on foreign oil, but the bill was vetoed by Clinton. Why? The same reason that the Democratically controlled Congress opposes the same drilling in the present day– Environmentalism.

Democrats today want the same things they wanted in ‘95: A complete and permanent halt of all development on ANWR, as well as a ban on offshore drilling on the east and west coast of the United States. The men who draft such proposals talk about the devastating effects that such acts, if taken, would have on the affected ecosystems. Not only are these claims unfounded (offshore drilling has actually been fairly clean since the ’70s, and as I said above, the ANWR drilling in question would be over less than .01% of the reserved land, thus affecting little of the wildlife, if any), but it is my sincere belief that the men who make them do not believe what they themselves are saying, and their motives are sinister in nature.

Think hard about what the liberals in Congress actually want.

First, they want a huge windfall profits tax of at least 25% on an industry that already has 45% of its income taxed, an action that will cause a decrease in supply, a rise in demand, and ultimately, an increase in gas prices. Next, they want to ban oil exploration and drilling everywhere. But thats not all: liberals want heavier taxes on coal companies, as well as the continuation of a very heavy tariff on ethanol from Brazil, which is a de facto ban. And it doesn’t even stop there: most liberals, including ‘Bama, do not support nuclear energy, the cleanest, safest energy source known to man, because– guess why? Environmental hazards.

If Barack Obama is elected president, this kind of supply restriction will occur, and it will result in a kind of perfect storm for the American consumer. Over time, gas prices will hit an unimaginable level, and the American economy will be devastated. But just as always, the guilty parties will receive no blame. The blame will fall on “greedy corporations,” and like fuel onto a fire, more harmful restrictions will surely be put in place.

If liberal Congressmen actually wanted lower gas prices for Americans, they would take the opposite position on all of the above issues. But they don’t. Why not?? These men are not stupid; they are not misguided; they are elected officials; they all have been well educated, and have a significant amount of experience in the world. They know what they are doing. They want our gas prices to go higher. George Will put it well when he said:

“On the left in this country what they want is a manufactured scarcity so that government can have the rationale to ration [oil supplies], which gives the government what the left wants: an ever more minute supervision of our daily choices.”

And while this is what the left wants on the surface, it is only a means to an end, which is, ultimately: the destruction of all that is good. The Dems in congress hate the profits of the oil companies, not because they are evil, but because they are good. They hate the production of oil refineries and drilling for oil, not because those things represent ruin, as they claim, but because they represent production. They consider that which is good to be evil because it is good. Ayn Rand wrote about this view of life in her book, Atlas Shrugged:

They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.

How can we defeat this kind of evil? As believers in Capitalism and the free market, we have historically put ourselves at a disadvantage. We must start believing that we are right, and that what we believe in is virtuous. We cannot win a fight in which we consider ourselves to be evil, and our opponent good.

We allow these men to escape from moral judgement by accepting that the cause that they say they fight for– environmentalism– is virtuous. As I have said before, to hold nature as an end in and of itself is not a moral position, it is an immoral one. All of that which is anti-mind is anti-life. By accepting the premise that environmentalism is a fundamentally positive ideal, we are giving them a moral sanction that they do not deserve. It is for this reason that we get candidates like John McCain, who compromise progress and pay lip service to “stewardship of creation.” McCain tentatively supports offshore drilling, but only recently, and only because it has become so politically convenient in the last few months.

Proclaim Capitalism to be your moral sanction, and that each man’s right to his own life is an absolute that cannot be superseded by any legislature. This is the truth they fear, but will never admit.

Tell it.