Posted by
Peter and Helen Evans on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 8:37:39 PM
Why is it that, "Whenever Nature displeases us, it must
be our fault for doing something that displeased Nature"? This was a
question raised by John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute,
speaking at the Heritage Foundation on January 23, 2007 in support of
his new book "Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism is Hazardous to Your
Health!" If the winter's too hot, summer's too cold, hurricane Katrina
too extreme, environmentalists always conclude that it's because
we did something wrong, like atmospheric pollution, habitat destruction
and/or the paving of America. Not only does this knee-jerk reaction
indicate a colossal sense of self-importance, that importance lies in
what we are doing wrong.
This condition is widespread among the multi-culturalists, who would
never acknowledge that Western civilization is in any way superior to
any other. The blame-America-first folks are closely related to the
blame-mankind-first eco-freaks. The ACLU types who are more concerned
for the spurious Geneva-Conventions 'rights' of terrorist detainees
than they are for the safety of innocent Americans are another example
this pernicious mindset.
We have taken to calling this attitude "projected self-loathing." It's
principal belief could be rhetorically summarized thus. "How can
'society' (America, the West, the human race, etc) do anything right or
worthwhile when 'society' is composed of worthless people like me?"
This paradoxical combination of self-hatred and Narcissism has been
characterized by a recovered sufferer as feeling like "the piece of
crap at the center of the universe."
By projecting their self-loathing (i.e., finding their own faults in
those around them, instead), they can feel morally superior without
having improved themselves at all. They can feel themselves
'elite' in comparison to the benighted 'masses' who don't even have the
sense to feel guilty about valuing themselves.
John Berlau touched on the global-warming alarmists preferred explanation of the cause and meaning of "Katrina."
Revealed by the analysis of Katrina's consequences in New Orleans was that, over the last four decades,
environmentalists had effectively blocked several measures that could
have reduced or prevented the mess that resulted when the storm came
ashore at the end of August 2005. Naturally, the left is reluctant to
acknowledge that well-intentioned environmental activism combined with
forty years of well-intentioned Democrat control of New Orleans
contributed to the catastrophe now known as "Katrina." Their preference
is to blame this "extreme" storm on "man-made global warming."
The one consistent element in these opposed explanations is that, in
both cases, "it's our fault." However, the eco-freaks emphasize the
human behavior they think is 'bad' (gas-guzzling, pollution, etc) as
the culprit, rather than the human behavior they think is 'good'
(environmental 'sensitivity'). They prefer to think that our bad
behavior provoked "Nature" to send a mighty storm to punish our
misdeeds rather than admit that we made the wrong choice in deciding
not to raise the levees and build the floodgates that would have
increased New Orleans' chances of surviving this entirely predictable
category 3 hurricane. Interestingly, the private-enterprise oil
installations in the gulf didn't spill a drop although they were
hammered by Katrina while she was still a much stronger category 5
storm.
There is much hard evidence to suggest that higher levees and
floodgates would have done much good for New Orleans. There is no
hard evidence (and much dispute) that man's influence had anything to
do with Katrina's existence or intensity. "Global warming" has
become so disputed that it's proponents now prefer to speak of
human-induced "climate change" instead. This indicates their
religious fixation on the belief that "it's our fault" regardless of
what's happening.
Let us consider what happened to New Orleans an example of the self-loathing Left doing it their way.