Toward the Separation of Cult and State

Druidry (or Druidism?) has officially become a state-sanctioned religion in the U.K., opening the door, according to CNN, for a similar status change for Pagans, animists and other pantheist or polytheist religions. Traditionalists will decry the move, but I welcome it, as a potential step toward recognizing the only state-sanctioned religion in the United States -- environmentalism -- for what it really is.

Once we acknowledge the fact that environmentalism is a religion, which has wormed its way into government under a secular and "scientific" guise, we can begin fighting for the separation of cult and state.

Eco-nomics Comes Out of the Closet

Mike Rosen has an interesting column in The Denver Post, shining a welcome light on the economic underpinnings of the environmental movement. Perhaps those who still believe it's all about bunnies and butterflies will view things differently, when they come to see the strong anti-capitalist, anti-free market, anti-property rights and anti-consumer choice strains that infuse the ideology. Eco-economics isn't often talked about, explicitly (for fear, no doubt, of making skeptics of those who still laugh-off environmentalists as harmless granola-crunchers), so it's helpful to see a few proponents lay their cards on the table and make the agenda explicit.

Anti-capitalism can be found in almost every strand of the movement's DNA (think Edward Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang), but the shift toward eco-socialism became more pronounced after the fall of the Soviet Union, when hard-core collectivists, suddenly left out in the cold, so to speak, began searching for a new, more politically-fashionable home to inhabit. They were warmly received by the movement, which already saw prosperity, consumer choice, development, property rights and the market economy as threats to the planet.

Thus appeared the so-called "watermelon" -- shorthand for someone who is green on the outside and red on the inside. It's good to see the watermelons come tumbling out of the closet, so average Americans can see that there's much more to this movement than cleaning waterways and saving trees.

Let Them Build Plug-ins

It's a dream come true for bashers of gas-guzzlers. The scourge of the planet, the American SUV, has been driven to the brink of extinction, killed off by high gas prices and bad PR from guilt-tripping greens. Here's part of a recent New York Times obituary:

"Even a federal bailout could not save three of the last remaining plants in the United States still making sport utility vehicles.

Reeling from its financial problems and a collapsing S.U.V. market, General Motors on Tuesday closed its factories in this city and in Moraine, Ohio, marking the passing of an era when big S.U.V.’s ruled the road. The moves followed the shutdown last Friday of Chrysler’s factory in Newark, Del., which produced full-size S.U.V.’s.

The last Chevrolet Tahoe rolled off the line here in Janesville shortly after 7 a.m. in the 90-year-old plant, which had built more than 3.7 million big S.U.V.’s since the early 1990s.

Most of the plant’s 1,100 remaining workers were not scheduled to work the final day, but many showed up for an emotional closing ceremony. Dan Doubleday, who had 22 years on the job, broke down in the plant’s snowy parking lot afterward.

“I was a fork lift driver,” he said, glancing at his watch through welling tears. “Until about seven minutes ago.”

Only now will public attention turn to the assembly plants that will be shuttered, and the jobs lost, to the consumer choices that will be narrowed and the motorist safety sacrificed, because of the SUV's demise. That part of the story wasn't talked about much before. Nobody have a damn about the fork lift driver in Janesville.

Are SUV-haters -- putzing along in the slow lane in their matchbox toys, munching tofu burgers and anxiously searching for someplace to plug in their plug-in -- feeling a tinge of guilt or regret about the SUV's decline, or the economic hardship this will bring to those who built and sold and maintained these Mastodons? Not a bit.

Such sacrifices are required to "save" the planet. "Let them build plug-ins," they'll say, echoing Marie Antoinette.