David Davis
It confirms all I have ever suspected about GreeNazis and environmentalists.
I am indebted to davidncl for pointing to it, somewhere else, I think on Mr Eugenides, somewhere on his comment thread for this piece here.
Free Life
For Life, Liberty and Property
This should come as no surprise. Apart from National Socialism itself beong deliberately named to include both ‘left’ (socialism) and ‘right’ (nationalism) have you ever been to http://www.nazi.org/ ?
Rational discourse is not helped by replacing one brand of hysteria with another.
If the nazi regime favoured arithmetic and fitness, this tells us nothing about the intrinsic merits of arithmetic or fitness. Arithmetic and/or fitness stand or fall on their INTRINSIC merits (if any) and demerits (if any).
Let’s unpack the content:
“The Nazis promoted:-
* organic farming
Living things ARE “organisms.”
* reforestation
Any problems with planting more trees?
* species preservation
Different species are intrinsically attractive and potentially useful. Monocultures are BAD NEWS…
* naturalism
“Health and Efficiency”???
* neo-paganism
Wiccan? Roman? Greek?
* holistic science
Science is the unpacking of cosmology, and is inherently of universal applicability.
* animal rights
Humans are animals with volitional consciousnesses: Such creatures have inherent RIGHTS. Didn’t Ayn Rand and John Locke and Robert Nozick tell us that?
* sun-worship
“Freedom of Religion” comes to mind: Is Mithraisnm to be prohibited in the libertarian Utopia??
* herbalism
Again, if people want to participate in thise forms of medication, is that anyone else’s business??
* anti-capitalism
Well, insofar as the Mondragon worker-owned co-ops, functioning in a market economy, show TWICE the return on capital (at 8% per annum), this avenue would seem most promising…
* ecology
Given, that we presently have no means of getting Mankind off our beautiful blue-green planet, it clearly makes good sense to look after the only habitable planet we have.
* anti-urbanism
I prefer leaft y surroundings: don’t you-all?
* alternative energy
“Alternative” to WHAT? COAL???
* hysterical anti-pollutionism
I remember the London smogs in the ‘Fifties. No way we’ll repeat that, thank you!!!
* and apocalyptic anti-industrialism.
High-tech Arcadian sounds good to me…
And you???
So, there you have it:
* [ FX: “We are all Nazis now???” ]
Nope. Just rational and sensitive and intelligent…
Is that so bad?
-RH
No it goes much further and deeper that Hitler was a veggie. The ideological roots of the Nazi’s the environmentalist and the Fabian / Proggresives are the same. They are the same.
I’ve never really had a problem with young aryan madchens prancing on hilltops (quite nice) or planting trees, or indeed promoting healthy lifestyles. Its the forcing of people to do these things that I object to. That and the total warfare and genocide, natch.
Thanks for reminding me why I hesitate to call myself libertarian. Alarmist nutjobs like Bramwell (and by extension, you guys) give the whole party a bad name.
FWIW, consider http://ecolibertarian.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_libertarianism
Just for the sake of others who might be confused by Frankie’s comment:
Anna Bramwell is a Oxford History Prof and a green. The (critical) review of her work, by William Walter Kay is from a classically liberal or perhaps conservative perspective.
There is a great deal of well written, intelligent and provocative writing at the site both Mr. Davis and I linked to. I found it far from nutty. Your millage may vary. I’d encourage people who have green leanings to explore that site.
Good advice by davidncl
I wasn’t able to reach the review by WW Kay, so don’t even know what book he was reviewing. But I was disappointed to find myself referred to as a nut job by your blog; I had just seen myself referred to as a libertarian nutter by Daniel Hinds in another critical review of ‘Ecology in the 20th Century. A History.’ Yale UP 1989. He found the book too polemical, yet strangely difficult to read, just like an academic book. By the way I was a research fellow at Oxford not a Professor ( though thanks) and I am not a Green. I have old fashioned environmental values, rather like those James Lovelock expresses in his most recent book, and inspired by the same experiences.
I’ve just recently read Ecology in the 20th C and Hindes’ review and was a little puzzled about his argument regarding the logical progression of ideas at the beginning of his article, which seems to me to be based on a misreading. It was especially frustrating that I couldn’t find an email address to contact the reviewer nor a space for comments to be left regarding the article. I actually found the book less polemical that Hindes, who claims (and I disagree) that ‘A suspicion to the point of hostility to all things German lies just beneath the surface of the prose throughout the book’.