The Middle is Always Evil

During his world tour this week, Senator Barack Obama has been up to all sorts of trouble. Before heading to Germany to deliver a speech at Victory Square, he stopped at the Wailing Wall, where he took the opportunity to turn the holiest site in Jerusalem into a crass campaign stop, where he paused to look contemplative and to meet with rabbis– in front of a horde of media hounds which he brought along with him for the “event.” God was not amused.

Apparently, some of the local yokels in Jerusalem weren’t too happy either; one man shouted, “Obama, Jerusalem is not for sale!” as he passed by the myriad of campaign posters and literature that had been set up around the sacred West Wall prior to the Obamessiah’s momentous visit (source). It isn’t hard for me to believe that Obama would pull something like this– after all, in his eyes, God answers to him.

Later on, in Berlin, Senator Obama forgot (once again) that he isn’t JFK, as he delivered a speech in which he spoke of nothing but vague bromides and empty platitudes, to 200,000 screaming fans who have no idea who he is or what he stands for. Throughout the speech, Obama made veiled references to “tearing down walls,” invoking the memory of president Reagan’s memorable “tear down this wall” speech. If you’d like to hear the real thing, follow this link; if you’ve never heard it, its definitely worth a listen. You’ll get a chance to hear a real American president speak in Berlin.

When I was watching the video of Obama’s speech, I couldn’t help notice that throughout the oration, the junior Senator would occasionally pause and giggle a little. I can’t say I know what he was thinking in those moments, but I definitely have a guess: he was probably thinking how hilarious it was that he could get away with so much presumptuousness, having so little experience, and only his charm to back him up.

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: