Lock and Load

This excellent piece came today:

Three More Attacks on Civilization

Mises Daily: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by Jeffrey A. Tucker

The article concludes with this:

In these three examples, we can see the model at work: Puritans and paranoids work with bureaucrats to unravel all the gains that markets have made for civilization. And they do this not with persuasion or an attempt to convert us to their primitive faith. Instead, they do it by force, driving us back to the compost pile, the river for cleaning, and, eventually, having to hunt and gather for food that we take back to our caves, which serve as domestic environs for those lucky enough to survive their regime of coerced poverty.

Read it for the details.  Those details would be funny if they did not represent what is now a clear and present danger to civilization:  environmentalism.  Of all the recent “isms” this one might be the worst.  It now infects almost all educational institutions, many retailing corporations, most churches, and (of course) governments at all levels.

I have tried to be forgiving and understanding of environmentalists.  But the luxury of those days is over.  It is now time for all those who prefer not to live in caves to declare war on environmentalism and all of its followers.

Not long ago at the grocery store I was presented with a cloth grocery bag that was inscribed with a slogan about “saving mother earth.”  I told the store employee (in a rather loud voice so everyone around would hear) that the earth was not my mother, that the earth was in no danger from human activity, and that I was more than a little bit sick of having this garbage foist upon me when trying to buy some groceries.  This employee – a nice lady with whom I am somewhat acquainted – was baffled by what I said.  She had never thought about it, it seemed.

We are constantly bombarded with environmentalist excrement to the point that we don’t know that we are covered with it and standing in it.  It is past time to clean ourselves up, and take out the trash. 

For now this is a war of ideas.  But there could come a time when, in order to defend even the possibility of civilization, we might have to defend ourselves physically against the aggression of environmentalists and their “ism.”  As Tucker points out above, environmentalists routinely use force to achieve their insane goals.

Remember, self-defense (even according to Augustine) can be a justification for war.