Mythology

The Left often gets policy dreadfully wrong, but is rarely apologetic about it.   Liberals like Ted Kennedy were so certain about policies and outcomes and were prepared to impose tremendous costs on us, expose us to risks, and in some cases, erode our freedoms and livelihoods to pursue a path to nowhere. 

Once again, we are being asked to make large sacrifices in the name of climate change.   With Al Gore as the great proselytizer, we are told that climate change is “settled science,” and that anyone that questions it is a “climate change denier,” (language that associated with Holocaust deniers), and is relegated to the same intellectual status as fundamentalist Christians that chose the book of Genesis over Evolution.

However, before we blindly accept the Left’s demands that we kill certain industries (e.g. coal), use public funds to fund others (solar) and agree to impose large costs on ourselves, it is worthwhile to remind ourselves of  a few of the big misses the Left has had during our lifetime.

·         Population Bomb. Certainly, Paul Ehrlich was at the forefront of this looney bomb of an idea.  I remember reading his book Population, Resources, Environment in the early 70’s.  The basic notion was that earth had a fixed “carrying capacity” and that population growth was exponentially headed to a place that would exceed earth’s capacity (today’s stepchild idea is “sustainability.”  There would be dire consequences if population growth was not arrested—widespread famine, depletion and social unrest.  He proposed   Ehrlich and his progeny proposed zero population growth (ZPG) and, if voluntary measures weren’t sufficient, proposed mandatory sterilization.  What we are learning now is that the truth is the exact opposite.  Population growth is vital to a growing economy.  And growing, vibrant economies are gentler on the environment.   And Ehrlich and “intellectuals” of his ilk assume that science, technology and business processes do not advance.   They most certainly do.  Almost a half century after his landmark book, the Population Bomb, we are now worried more about population crashes.  Europe, Japan, China and Russia face tremendous economic problems not because of overpopulation, but because of an aging one with fertilization rates down dramatically.  The same has occurred in the Muslim world as Muslim populations are crashing from 7 births per woman a generation ago to 2 now.  Compared to other countries, America is in decent shape, especially with immigration.  If we would have followed the prescriptions of Ehrlich and his ilk, we would have been in deeper trouble and it would have taken a Nazi-like government to execute them.

·         Peak Oil.  This is my personal favorite.  Peak oil is the ugly cousin of ZPG—the foundational notion is that we are a planet whose population is outrunning its resources.  The idea of peak oil really got lift during the oil embargo and gained momentum during the disastrous Carter years.  Even as recently as a few years ago, when gas was hovering at $4/gallon, President Obama, defending his energy policies, piously announce, “We can’t drill our way out of this problem.”


Uh, we kinda did. 

We are now drowning in the stuff.  We don’t have enough storage capacity. Banks balance sheets are in pretty good shape now, except for loans to oil related companies.  Osama bin Laden is dead and so is OPEC.   As sanctions have been dropped, Iranian oil is coming on line as well.  All those smug Middle East regimes that thought they could freeze America out are looking at an oil exporting America now—despite the restrictions that Obama put on leases permitting drilling on federal land and offshore drilling.  At the root of this is good old American innovation—sideways drilling and fracking.   The oil industry, ever a demonic icon of the Left has done a great job of marginalizing the importance of those odious Middle Eastern regimes.  Unleashed, American industry and technological innovation have a pretty good track record of problem solving.  The Left has been very quiet about this lately (except for the extremists that want to ban fracking with no evidence to support why it makes sense).

·     Giving the Palestinians a homeland will end terrorism.   This idea has been the conventional wisdom since the 1972 Olympics, and still echoes around the Obama administration.  It makes about as much sense as Marie Harf’s assertion that “we can’t kill our way out of this problem [Islamism],” and that what is needed is more economic opportunity (derided as “jobs for jihadis”).  This idea accelerated after the first Gulf War and a deal was almost reached in 1993 and ended with the Israelis giving up large concessions and Arafat walking away from the deal.  But bad actors from Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden routinely cited “the plight of the Palestinians” on their list of grievances to justify their bad acts.

We now know that the Palestinian issue is a red herring.    Every Jew in Israel could agree to pack up and move to Miami and New York, hand the deed to the Palestinians and never come back, and Islamic terrorism would continue unabated.  Funded by the Iranians, Hamas and Hezbollah will continue to harass Israel and seek its destruction.    Despite liberal attempts to punish Israel (even pushing for boycotts and disinvestment) and frame the Israelis as the oppressors, the Palestinian issue is, and has been, a sideshow since the Iranian revolution.  Islamic terror wouldn’t even slow down if a two state solution could even be reached.  But that doesn’t keep the Left from trying.  As recently as a few years ago, Obama was calling on Israel to pull back to its 1967 borders and just last week Biden was bashing Netanyahu’s policies.  “Land for peace”  is illusory.  It won’t stop attacks on Israel and certainly won’t affect the Islamist’s ardor for attacking the West anywhere else.

·         SDI.  Just as Obama mocked Romney in the 2012 debates for asserting that Russia was our greatest existential threat (“the 80’s are calling and want their foreign policy back”—now Russia is buzzing our warships and surveillance planes), the Left mocked Reagan’s plan for a defensive shield as “Star Wars.”   But missile defense has made great strides in the 33 years since Reagan proposed it.  SDI has not, of course, turned out exactly the way Reagan envisioned it.  But it has already had three large victories under its belt.  First, the very idea was instrumental in ending the Cold War.  Reagan would not bargain it away to the Soviets at Reykjavik, even though he did not even have it to bargain away.  But the mere idea of an effective shield using US technology was more than the Soviets could bear.  Second was the success of the Patriot missile system in the Persian Gulf War.  Its actual effectiveness was somewhat limited, but it was enough to keep the Israelis from being dragged into the war.  Third was the Iron Dome.  Using technologies developed from SDI, the Israelis have developed their own missile system that has been effective at intercepting Hamas rockets and keeping them from inflicting more Israeli casualties.   Recently, I saw a presentation by James Syring, head of the US Missile Defense Agency.  I was impressed with our capabilities and they keep improving.  With Iran and North Korea plowing ahead with their missile programs, the vision of Ronald Reagan is still very much alive, although in different form.  Ted Kennedy and other liberal Democrats worked hard to defund and kill the program and it is easily foreseeable that we will be happy if it is even somewhat effective.  It does not have to be close to 100% effective (although that would be nice).   But if it is enough to change the probabilities, these bad actors might have second thoughts about attacking us first.

And if we are successful in knocking down an Iranian or North Korean strike, people will forget how dreadfully wrong those on the Left were. These examples were huge whiffs by policy advocates that either had or could have had costly implications including the loss of human life on a grand scale.  Before we dive right in and merely accept policy prescriptions on climate change, we ought to think about the Left’s track record on some of these big issues  as we confront their push to restrict freedom and enlarge government power in the name of climate change.  They couldn’t have been more wrong.