If you’ve not read Mark Levin’s new book, “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto” you really must.
Page 114 begins a chapter called, “On Enviro-Statism”. This is how it begins:
“Science, broadly defined, is a door to knowledge. Although the Statist is found of accusing the Conservative of slamming the door shut, it is actually the Statist who abandons science – just as he abandons the laws of nature, reason, experience, economics, and modernity – when he promotes what can best be characterized as enviro-statism. His pursuit, after all, is power, not truth. With the assistance of a pliant or sympathetic media, the Statist uses junk science, misrepresentations, and fearmongoring to promote public health and environmental scares, because he realizes that in a true, widespread health emergency, the public expects the government to act aggressively to address the crisis, despite traditional limitations on governmental authority. The more dire the threat, the more liberty people are usually willing to surrender. This scenario is tailor-made for the Statist. The government’s authority becomes part of the societal frame of reference, only to be built upon during the next “crisis”".
Levin refers throughout the entire book to the Statist, the culprit that promotes tyranny and threatens our liberty. A Statist is what Levin uses to define the Modern Liberal. The Liberal term has been twisted and redefined over history. Today’s liberal is far from the true meaning of liberty and as such Levin chooses Statist instead.
Environmentalism or enviro-statism, threatens our liberty. When a country compiles something in the order of 75,000 pages of laws within the Federal Register, common sense tells us our liberty is threatened. Levin refers to what Alexis de Tocqueville described as a “soft tyranny”. This can also be similar to incrementalism or a slow destruction of our freedoms and if not brought into check can eventually lead to a “hard tyranny”. As we continue to pile on law after law, we slowly erode the liberty that some of us are quite fond of.
Levin claims the onset of today’s environmental movement began with the banning of DDT, an insecticide used to save millions of lives around the globe. You’ll have to get the book to follow how this all played out. It’s truly amazing!
Environmentalists don’t buy into the notion that life on earth surrounds man or that nature is hear for the sake of the people. Instead they believe the Earth has priority. With that view, often times these Statists see man as expendable. Levin explains it this way:
“If nature has “intrinsic value” then nature exists for its own sake. Consequently, man is not to be preferred over any aspect of his natural surroundings. He is no better than any other organism and much worse than most because of his destructive existence. And so it is that the Enviro-Statist abandons reason for a faith that preaches human regression and self-loathing. And he does so by claiming the moral high ground – saving man from himself and nature from man. Most individuals who are sympathetic to environmental causes are unwitting marks, responsive to the Enviro-Statist’s manipulation of science, imagery, and language. Over time, they self-surrender liberty for authority, abundance for scarcity, and optimism for pessimism. “Save the planet!” is the rallying cry that justifies nearly any intrusion by government into the life of the individual. The individual, after all, is expendable.”
If you do not fit the profile of Levin’s Statist, then probably much of what he says here makes sense and if so can certainly help to understand and deal with these individuals. Of course if you fit this profile, you would deny any validity to Levin’s view.
It is said that the best way to defeat an enemy is to first understand your enemy. Perhaps Levin has given us a bit more knowledge or at least a way to verbalize it.
Tom Remington
