Poke a stick in the Treehugger cage again: "I am an environmentalist, and yes I do want to limit your freedom" - Granite Grok

Poke a stick in the Treehugger cage again: “I am an environmentalist, and yes I do want to limit your freedom”

My, aren’t we being a little totalitarian here, eh (you WILL change your life according to my beliefs)?

Your heterodoxy might need tweaking, especially if all of the warmist predictions (and the climate change models are all being shown to be wildly out of whack with their predictions to actual temperatures seen).  And if this turns out to be true (http://notrickszone.com/2013/08/09/major-danish-daily-warns-globe-may-be-on-path-to-little-ice-age-much-colder-winters-dramatic-consequences/), then perhaps we DO need to bring back the Hummer (would look good next to my Suburban).

As Grokster Steve captured here (“The Sustainable Development Challenge Grant program is also a step in implementing ‘‘Agenda 21, the Global Plan of Action on Sustainable Development,’’ signed by the United States at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.”), it IS all about Elites deciding “this is how you will live your lives”.  Oh yes, for those of you who accuse many of us of wearing the tin-foil hats, it is lines like that in the post title, what Steve caught, and the latest from HUD is that they will use the force of Government in re-writing local zoning to further “neighborhooddiversity” (but really to further the aim of Obama’s “regionalization”) that have our hackles up and furrows in our brows. We are supposed to be free – meaning to be free to decide things for ourselves.  A free country is NOT where the Government increasingly makes more and more decisions “on our behalf, for your own good” and then uses regulations and laws to make their choices, your choice.

Well, one Liberal Democrat loon politician in Britain (more akin to their Fabian Socialists – oh, ok, pretty much the same as our New Left driven Dems) decided that a perfectly good campaign idea to run on is to completely eliminate gas power vehicles:

Nick Clegg’s party has unveiled proposals to only allow ultra-low carbon vehicles on UK roads by 2040. The controversial measures would mean millions of petrol and diesel cars being forbidden.  Only electric vehicles and ultra-efficient hybrid cars would be allowed on UK roads under the Lib Dem plans.  However, petrol and diesel vehicles would still be allowed for freight purposes.  The plans will be voted on by members at the upcoming Lib Dem conference in Glasgow and could become party policy if approved.

Of COURSE the TreeHuggies picked up on it (emphasis mine):

…”Ban all Liberal Democrats by 2040,” is the likely response from many who believe we have the God-given right to pollute.

Truthfully, I have a hard time seeing this idea gaining much traction in the near-term future, but that doesn’t mean it’s a worthless discussion. What constitutes “freedom” in an age of potentially catastrophic climate change is a crucially important question. (I am an environmentalist, and yes I do want to limit your freedom.)

…That’s not to say a ban on cars is the best way to go about it. There’s legitimate debate about what policy measures will transition us to a low carbon future in as rapid, sustainable, equitable and prosperous manner as possible. But the debate is not about the end goal, but the means and timeframe of getting there.

Yeah, my next post will be about what I used to read about all the time in college – but instead of global warming, it was all about a new Ice Age beginning.  In the mean time, it is this type of “I’m saving the world – and I will force you to do so as well” attitude that is so off-putting.  I doubt that few of these self-righteous ninny Nannies would be so amused if the role was reversed: “all you urbanist city slickers will immediately be re-located to highly undense rural areas whereby they will have to walk to work (er, miles and not city blocks) and heat their homes with “renewable energy” (and using two man saws and an ax to ready it).”

Look, some of the TreeHuggies are walking the talk – they have built their own e-vehicles, gone alternative energy to power their homes, insulated up – the whole schmear.  They are to be congratulated but one important point has to be brought up – THEY decided to do this on their own.  NO ONE forced them into doing so.  They simply believed that what they had to do was right for them – so they went and did so.

The problem is that they believe that they have the right to FORCE others to live the same.  This, by definition, is totalitarianism.  No, we don’t need a Hitler or a Mussolini or a Castro or a Chavez or any other single person in having a totalitarian state.  But in our peculiar style of governance, all it takes is a set of people, tied together by an ideology similar to this, creating regulations that are as binding as the legislation that cannot be passed in the light of the process to effectively create such a State, one word at a time.

we have the God-given right to pollute” – something that is the Enviro’s war cry.  Yet, who on the Right is saying that?  What we DO have is the God given right to have choices – which can be a choice opposite to theirs.  I have no problem with their choice, but they will couch their words in an amalgam of Enviro / New Age / Marxist pseudo-babble with pretensions of enlightenment:

To truly defend “freedom”, we must first accept that it is not simply about getting to do whatever you please, and that one person’s freedoms can easily impinge on those of another. That’s a lesson that most of us should have learned in pre-school. Teaching your child independence does not mean letting them do what they want, but rather giving them the tools they need to negotiate increasingly complex interactions over who gets to play with which toy; whose turn it is on the swing etc.

It seems their idea of Freedom is already limiting – and that they make with co-value that they are the victim, that our lifestyle is, by definition, evil as it does not match up to theirs.  What the author’s moonbeamish squeal of “yes I do want to limit your freedom” is simply yet another mish-mash hash of Communitarianism.  His post, like many Socialists, try to redefine the notion of “Freedom” (note all the scary quotes around Freedom – what in poker would be called “a tell”) in which one’s Freedom is only that which is allowed by those “interconnected” to you.  Throw in two more values that these Enviro-Communitarians: an exaggerated sense of “you need community” and a “no carbon future is non-negotiable”.  That is their worldview framework – all in is allowed, but even one step over their line is heresy.  Rejection is not allowed (like the Sustainable Communities Initiative) – they will extend their framework into our legal framework.  Freedom can only be exercised within circumscribed activity – which, I am afraid, is just a malleable as what words are PC today and highly un-PC tomorrow.  In essence, there is no Freedom when there is no stability and coercion by others exist to warp the definition of Freedom.  Which these folks do to achieve an ideological end-point.

And for the record, just because they say what Freedom is, in their definition and only within their framework, doesn’t make it so.  They believe that Freedom is a complicated thing with many overlapping interconnections.  They don’t come out and say it, but the intent is that with each interconnection, Freedom becomes limited.  Their sense of Community overrides the sense of individual Freedom.  And they just can’t seem to understand that some people don’t WANT to be part of a Community – be it in meat-space or cyber-space.  They simple want to be left alone and run their lives the way they want to without outside interference (to the extent possible, and they outright RESENT continued intrusions by those who refuse to give them that freedom).  But these brand of TreeHuggies will not allow it.  And they, with their own words, have put their fealty to that of their GAIA lifestyle and not to those outlined in the Declaration.  They demand that individuals subsume themselves to a common goal – and hate the realitythat many disagree with their idea.

Me? Is Freedom all that complicated as they make it out to be?  Nope.

I do think it is simple; Freedom is.  That’s all, and it is that simple.  It just ISIt does not have to be justified or explained.  I only have to choose it – and use it to make other choices for myself and for those that have chosen to rely on me (e.g., my family, my friends, and to those I have extended an obligation from me to them to assist in some fashion).  Their requirement that Freedom is subject to the notions of others is a false one.  That is not to say that the idea that responsibilities play no role in it – but they have conflated the two.

I guess my sense is that Freedom to them is but a secondary value – else, why would one subjugate it to others?  It is one thing for me to make a choice to do so voluntarily and only binding upon myself, but to make that definition extant upon all?  Yes, there are social limitations and legal limitations, but in all of their argument, one question never comes up (and the Communitarians I have met seemingly avoid the question) and never is answered:

When is enough, enough?

And yeah, I’m still banned from TreeHugger.  Which is fine – they have the right to associate, under the First Amendment, with those that they wish to and NOT associate with others (like me).  Problem is, they wish to deny me my Right to the same.

>