Liberalism: The Culture Of Death Marches On, This Time In Green

For those of you who think I'm a bit over the top when I call liberalism the culture of death, or refer to environmentalist 'wackos', this is a must-read post.  First, an excerpt from today's wacko, Diane Francis:

The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.

China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet.

For those who balk at the notion that governments should control family sizes, just wait until the growing human population turns twice as much pastureland into desert as is now the case, or when the Amazon is gone, the elephants disappear for good and wars erupt over water, scarce resources and spatial needs.

Wow.

Let's look at the substance of her words.  She's endorsing a global forced abortion policy.  Just stop and think about that for a moment.

My first thought is that it would be impossible to implement and enforce a global law without a duly recognized global governing body.  The U.N. is a farce, and that's as close as it gets right now.  Quite frankly, the idea of any global law is one of the reasons that I hope I (and my children's children's children) die long before any duly recognized global government does become reality.

My second thought is that China is hardly the shining example of society.  There is little freedom, huge disparity between the peasant class and the ruling elites (and yes, that's actually how it is over there), rampant poverty, tremendous pollution, overcrowding, and a generally low standard of living.  That's what she thinks we should shoot for?

My third thought is that this notion has been tried before - remember the Population Bomb?  According to this book (if I recall correctly), the planet was going to implode upon itself via overpopulation sometime in the next 30 years.  Of course, this book was written in 1970, so...huh, how about that?  I think we can safely put away the overpopulation hysteria.  Coincidentally, the book was written by one of Barack Obama's top advisers.  Hmmm...

Anyway, here are some other great thoughts on Francis' article (emphasis mine).

Jonah Goldberg at NRO:

One of the simultaneously heartening and dismaying aspects of the Obama era is how it demonstrates that bad ideas never, ever, ever, die. They can go into remission, to be sure, but the the bacillus lives on.

I don't have the time to go through all of the arguments why Diane Francis's supposedly brave truth-telling is disgusting and idiotic, but the good news is that I'll have plenty of opportunities in the future!

But one point does cry out to be made. Imagine if someone wrote an op-ed saying that we need a planetary ban on abortion. Feminists would get their dresses over their heads in outrage about such a naked assault on "reproductive freedom." But here is a woman in a very prestigious Canadian newspaper arguing, in effect, that every country in the world should force women everywhere to have an abortion if they already have a child. Put aside, for a moment, the pro-life objections to this. Even if you think the unborn are really just a bunch of cells, mere "uterine contents" with no more moral import than fingernail clippings, how on earth can anyone believe in "reproductive freedom" and not be absolutely horrified by the police-state evil of such proposals?

I do love irony.

Allahpundit at Hot Air:

China itself has already used this argument, in fact, to claim that it's "doing its part" to fight global warming. Two points, then. First, does the author realize that, with a few exceptions (like the U.S.), it ain't first-world countries that are driving the population boom? The birth rates in Europe and Japan are already helping to depopulate the planet; if she wants to make a dent in global crowding, talk to the third world. And second, what's alarming about pieces like this isn't that they're close to being implemented politically but that the basic idea — fascism in the name of environmentalism — is respectable enough to warrant publication even in outlets like the Financial Post and the NYT. If you think the illuminati at Copenhagen are wagering an awful lot on the science being settled, imagine how heavy a bet idiots like this are willing to lay. Thank goodness there's no one in power in America who's ever entertained similar ideas.

That birth rate thing is a key consideration in the struggle against radical Islam, too.  Mark Steyn has done incredible work on revealing how the shifting demographics of the world are already pointing toward the Islamization of the world in just a couple more generations.  This sort of one-child policy would only accelerate that phenomenon.  Speaking of which...

David Bass at American Spectator:

...how would Ms. Francis intend to implement an international one-child policy? It might work in leftist European nations already committed to erasing their populations through rampant birth control and abortion, but Muslim nations would send the U.N. child police home in a body bag, probably headless.

Too bad tolerance isn't practiced by those who most need it, huh?  But, Bass mentions something else that really cranks up the irony:

[Francis] complains that world leaders in Copenhagen "don't even have this on their agenda," and worries that unless governments limit couples to one kid, the human population will decimate the planet and wars over "water, scarce resources and spatial needs" will erupt.

The only problem: Ms. Francis has two kids (I mean, carbon emitting units) herself. Worse, her sister also has two kids.

And there we see the typical weakness in just about any liberal argument (I know, it's rare when they actually make an argument, preferring to hide behind platitudes and slander, but it does happen occasionally): they don't want to adhere to the rules that they insist upon for everyone else.  It's always two sets of rules, with them getting to select which they prefer and who gets what.

In this article, Francis encapsulates the very worst of the liberal Left: the culture of death, breathtaking hypocrisy, environmental wackoism, and a mind-bogglingly naive understanding of how the world really is.  She's very instructive that way.

I think we should abort liberalism.  The world would be much better off.

There's my two cents.