Comments JackH has made

The Unified Vanguard Strikes Again!

"Labor rights, women's rights, and racial equality are on the decline; there's pushback against GLBT and the disabled."  Yep - exactly like how Down's Syndrome babies are disappearing in affluent parts of the U.S..  Marketplace eugenics.  And don't think for a minute that the day after the first test for a "gay gene", there won't be the first abortion of a potentially gay child.  Which'll lead to more "disappearances".  

"Today there are new bipartisan attempts to destroy social security and a lack of serious efforts to establish universal health care."  What on earth does universal health care have to do with global warming?  I support it, but come on!  Please, please, PLEASE get over the "unified revolutionary vanguard" fetish.  Again, you're going right into that old leftist trap, of ever-increasing purity and every-increasing jihads against other factions, until you're like the Trotskyites.   On A review of Joe Romm's new book posted 2 years, 10 months ago 34 Responses

The perfect storm of self-satisfaction

I think y'all are the ones who need to lighten up a little.  You're acting like I said something obscene about Rosa Parks or Gandhi.  It wasn't a March on Washington - it was a party.  Calm down.  Don't be so defensive.  

The original post went on at length about how wonderful it was that this party "defied stereotypes".  I merely pointed out that, in reality, it seemed to actually confirm some far more widely held stereotypes (i.e., lily-white, San Francisco, gentrified urban, hipster-leaning, affluent, etc).  It's real nice and all to want environmentalism to be "fabulous", but fashions change.  What's fabulous today is laughable tomorrow.  Do you really want to go the route of turning environmentalism into another class marker, a status symbol?  I'd say that is precisely the stereotype most widely held about environmentalists today, not some 60s-era picture of sandals and patchouli flogged to death by aging conservative radio talk show hosts.

That's all I'm gonna say about this - it's great you had a nice party.  But when people go on about how it defied stereotypes, as if somehow it's a great moral and political event, don't act shocked if some people don't quite buy it.  On It kicked ass posted 3 years ago 15 Responses

Hubris

"I do not need to respect everyone's views- this is the fallacy of post-modernism writ large."

That's BS.  There's a massive, massive difference between respect and agreement.  Respecting arguments you disagree with prevents you from falling into intellectual hubris, willful ignorance, and self-satisfaction - qualities which, and there's no way to put it delicately, you've shown in spades in your arguments against religion.  You dismiss the opinions of quite a large number of historians, including atheist and agnostic ones, about the origins of the Enlightenment because... what?  You just don't like the sound of it?  Your arguments have an extremely retro feel to them, like reading some late 19th century dusty old tract.  A few provocative insults at God, some red herrings, profound misunderstandings of religion, a little bit of looking down your nose, and there you go.  You can't think people haven't heard this before, can you?   Honestly, it's been done many, many, many, many times before, and with far more style and wit.  I think a bit of study of what you oppose would do you good - it would give your arguments a lot more heft.  

I absolutely respect your skills as an economist.  And, believe it or not, I respect your arguments, because without respecting them, I'll fall victim to the fallacy you've fallen into.  

You don't have to respect me or my opinions.  But it would do you good to learn how to respect differing opinions, so as not to underestimate your opponents - to study those arguments in order to refute them.  Else you'll keep talking a lot about things you know very little about.  On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

Question

I echo David Roberts' sentiments, but I'm more curious about this 5% figure.  

This is an honest question, so please take it as such: who should the 5% be?   Who chooses?  On Do you care? posted 3 years, 1 month ago 22 Responses

Unnecessary linkages...

Prof. Scorse, with all due respect, religion's dark side is not at all the issue.  Actauly religion itself is really only a part of the issue.  What is the issue is the making of unneccessary linkages that only lessen support, not broaden it.  

Environmentalism alone doesn't seem to be good enough:  it has to be environmentalism + strict secularism + hardcore animal rights + Friedman/Hayek-esque unrestricted capitalism, etc... I don't presume to know your political leanings, but you're displaying that progressive tendency to link everything together and then spend endless hours and days and months and years and decades demanding that everyone else agree with you before you can really get down to work. It's well and good to critique one position or another, but at some point, it's just one of those academic point-scoring contests that damages far more than it helps.  What is the problem with letting religious people believe whatever ethic it takes for them to do what needs to be done?  In your first paragraph, you say you don't care what people believe, but you spend the rest of the post arguing exactly the opposite.  

It's counterproductive, it's offputting, and to be perfectly honest, it's something I haven't seen nearly as much from the religious end of the discussion.  

This reminds me of some earlier discussions about animal rights, in which identical issues came up: could you be a carnivore and an environmentalist?  Does every environmentalist have to carry a copy of "Animal Liberation" in their back pocket?  Does every Sierra Club meeting have to inspect the attendees to make sure they're not wearing leather or other animal product?  Can we agree to disagree on some issues?  Do we really have the luxury of time to be this scrupulous?  On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

Environmentalism, Christianity, and Purity

I'm sure it'll be an interesting special, although I wonder what is with the American media's obsession with evangelicals like Cizik and Warren, as if they're the first and only Christians who've ever considered the environment worthy of serious concern.  

I do have a simple question, and it's one I've had from reading Gristmill for quite a while now.  My question is:

Am I allowed to be an environmentalist?  I'm no evangelical, but I am a Christian (God knows an imperfect one :).  

Just about any time Christianity comes up in Gristmill, the scorn and condemnation is such that I seriously wonder whether I - and a whole lot of other people - am welcome in the environmental movement.  The strangest thing is that quite often, the condemnation has little to do with the environment.  The message seems to be that if I disagree with you on, say, gay marriage or some other talk-show-host-red-meat-but-ultimately-unimportant issue, I'm not welcome on the same side on environmental issues, which I happen to think are the most vital issues facing the human race.  Linkages are made with, say, animal rights, and the argument is attempted that if one does not buy into one element of the "broad popular vanguard revolutionary front", one is not welcome at all.  

I personally think this drive for purity is suicidal.  I think back to my days being a fellow traveller of the anti-globalization movement (I was here in Seattle in 1999, but I was too chicken to go downtown for the protest).  I remember how exciting the idea of "Teamsters and Turtles Together At Last" was, and how, finally, the social divisions that opened during the Sixties were healing in the service of the cause of global justice.  But the trustafarians almost immediately started pushing out their new allies with making linkages to utterly unrelated issues (what is with the "Free Mumia!" stuff?), and mere months later, during the IMF meeting in DC, the dreadlocked white kids vastly outnumbered the "hardhats".  The global justice movement in the U.S. was dead long before September 11, 2001, and it wasn't killed by the big corporations - it was killed by the insistence on purity by wannabe radicals.  It had become exactly what right-wing talk show hosts parodied it as - a place full of smelly affluent white kids picking up hippie chicks while spouting incoherent slogans about "Bushitler".  It was a joke, and it was nothing like what got started in Seattle, and nothing like what was going on in the rest of the world, from India to South Korea to Brazil.  

The environment's far too vital an issue to let this happen to.  You guys need all the allies you can get.  Remember, the vast majority of the planet is full of religious people (even in China, underground religious groups spread like wildfire).  There have already been quite a few religious figures who've come out in favor of caring for the environment, from the Dalai Lama to, even more forcefully and consistently, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.  Millions of people on the ground are fighting the good fight, even if they don't share the belief systems of the First World's intelligensia.  

Which brings me back to my original question: Am I allowed to be an environmentalist?  On Tune in posted 3 years, 1 month ago 12 Responses