Proselytizing Not Solely for GOP
By: Kip Payne, Daily Trojan (USC)
December 1, 2006 10:31 AM
(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES - In his new book, "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back," London Times columnist Andrew Sullivan spends a great deal of time explicating the so-called "Christianists" plaguing America, those fools who ascribe to the Bible-revealed truth.
He argues religious fundamentalists have slowly taken control of the Republican Party, making it a political wing of Christian evangelism. Accordingly, American conservatives who believe the same things Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan believed - limited government and individual rights, rather than massive social programs and the regulation of private conduct - should change their party affiliation.
Of course, should the Republican Party be freed from its current fundamentalist overlords, the reign of an entirely different fundamentalism that has poisoned both the Democrats and liberalism will have been left untouched. It's a leftist sort of fundamentalism, to be sure; it isn't based upon the Bible, but it is as bereft of reason and logic as the other.
One such leftist fundamentalism is that, without doubt, humans are causing the globe to warm, and in the process killing bears and ruining icecaps. (The delicious irony of such a conceit is that as humans advance further from our dependency upon the natural world, we are destroying it.)
It's not enough merely for enviro-fundamentalists, safely at home within the Democratic Party, to make policy based upon their faith. They have enlisted the U.N., that global church of leftism, to evangelize to children of the third world on their behalf.
"Tore and the Town on Thin Ice," a new children's book published by the United Nations Environment Programme, informs its young readers that catastrophic climate change is being caused by "rich countries." It's the story of a young Arctic dogsled racer named Tore, who lost his most recent race because his sled fell through the ice, which had been thinned because of global warming.
Upon losing the race, Tore is visited by Sedna, "Mother of the Sea." Sedna was "created and cared for the sea creatures - whales and walruses, seals and fish."
According to the Sea Mother, evil, unnamed, rich people are destroying the ice with their autos and air conditioning and the like. This prompts Tore to find out more about manmade global warming. Along his way, he encounters various leftist-as-fuzzy-animal prosopopoeia.
There is a "snow owl," which explains that the Arctic and Antarctica "are warming almost twice as fast as elsewhere" and will soon be gone. (Never mind that, according to the International Arctic Research Center, the Arctic was warmer during the 1930s than it is today.)
Also there's a friendly, not-at-all-threatening polar bear that bemoans its "starvation" to Tore. The ice is thinner than acceptable, not only for sledding, but also for bears hunting their prey. "It looks like many animals and fish and birds will go extinct - die out - during your lifetime, partly because of changes in climate," says the bear.
(A story from Canadian NewsWire Group recently reported that, in three Arctic villages, polar bears "are so abundant there's a public safety issue." According to the story, polar bear numbers there increased from a little over 2,000 in 1997 to around 2,600 in 2004.)
Tore finally, exasperated at the news, screams to a talking whale, "I've had all the bad news I can stand. Our world is melting. Polar bears are starving and all sorts of animals won't survive. I don't want to hear anymore!"
The whale responds to Tore by discussing with him projected coastal flooding.
Tore is frightened by the predictions of future human misery, and so the Mother of the Sea comforts him: "Setting up solar panels to get electricity from the sun, and modern windmills to capture the energy of the wind" will save his village and no doubt help him win future dog sled races.
The talking whale and bear have terrified small children, and so the book gives suggestions as to what they can do to prevent a visit from the Sea Mother. The suggestions include: start an environmental club! And, write your local politicians!
In Sullivan's book, he implores us that our government should be based not on reactionary nostalgia for the past, but rather on the "doubt" that any of us knows the better way to live than any of our neighbors. He writes that government has no authority or right to inculcate us with virtue. But, clearly, the Republican Party (and conservatives generally) is not alone in virtuous proselytizing.
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