Sunday, August 19, 2007
Giving climate change activism a bad name
The tendency of social change activists to promote the whole range of lefty issues together in unified "direct action" events is politically idiotic. For example.
Lefties would make much more progress with the bourgeoisie if they promoted only one revolution at any given rally. We prefer to pick and choose our causes, rather than having them bundled together like pre-loaded software we do not want.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
13 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Aug 19, 04:56:00 PM:
Progressive agenda = Microsoft Vista?
By 
GreenmanTim, at
Sun Aug 19, 05:43:00 PM:
With all respect, TH, if I judged every self-identified Republican or Conservative by the lunatic fringe of these categories, there would be precious little for us to talk about.
Some activists are idiots. Fair enough. People can be profoundly stupid. But still, you are getting a great deal of mileage out of beating this horse to death and I can't help but wish instead for creative, substantive, rational discussion and debate that neither the radical or reactionary fringe is capable of providing.
Maybe that is not something the blogosphere as a whole does well, but then, I am by inclination "a uniter, not a divider" and on conservation issues that's one of the windmills at which I persist in tilting. Cheers,
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Aug 19, 05:51:00 PM:
Sorry, GT. The climate change activists seem to be doing and saying a lot of counterproductive things lately. Or maybe I've only just begun to notice.
In any case, this post was really about a sort of lefty activism that you really do not see on the right. Apart from the anti-abortion activists, there really are not very many "direct action" types on the right. Many righties my in fact hold similar views across a range of issues, but they do not stage promotional events that involve, say, gun rights, tax-cutting, and prayer-in-the-schools. Why does the left mix up all these causes? Seems like a poor strategy to me.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sun Aug 19, 05:56:00 PM:
The political left is pretty good at getting publicity. The left usually is lousy in most other areas of public relations.
The left often makes erroneous assumptions. It's a good thing these people are peaceniks. A person who makes erroneous assumptions usually lasts less than five minutes in military combat.
Keep it up, leftists. The last time you played these games you brought us Nixon rather than Humphrey and Governor Reagan rather than Pat Brown.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sun Aug 19, 06:07:00 PM:
P.S. President Bush made erroneous assumptions, too. But from the very beginning he reminded me of a left-wing wolf under a right-wing sheepskin. (How big is the federal government today?)
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 06:13:00 PM:
It's the activists beating the dead horse here.
In my home state the major city is impoverished (almost went into receivership) because all of the big manufacturing jobs have left town. No new factories can be built because the leftist socialist weasels who run the state have decided it's bad for the environment to give people they chance to make a living.
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 06:19:00 PM:
With the usual smarta** thoughts that jump out of my brain, when I saw the pictures of the police with bolt cutters "freeing" the protesters I thought that they should have brought hacksaws instead to cut thru the softest material, like hands and feet to "free" them. Then I saw the guy with the bicycle lock around his neck and thought, this looks like a job for al Qaeda.
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Aug 19, 06:28:00 PM:
Let's not get nasty. One should not get angry at lefty activists or feel vindictive toward them. First, they are always entertaining. Second, they are occasionally right (as in correct).
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 06:38:00 PM:
1. Combining protests makes it difficult for a participant to respond. Even in the 60s there was a risk that you'd shout "we don't want your ___ing war!" only to find you'd walked into a rally for the PLO, or shout "kill the pigs!" only to find it was a rally for vegetarians.
2. When they chain themselves to something there is a simple response. Police here used it some years ago. The institution on the receiving end just gave them lots of soft drinks and ice tea, to show how nice they were. Then waited. Within an hour, their bladders were straining, and a rather embarassing PR moment was about to arrive. By then they were begging, literally begging, to know where the police and lock-cutters were.
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 07:14:00 PM:
Lefties are like Linux -- loosely organized, lots of independent semi-coordinated efforts going in different directions, ultimately ineffective at really getting much done on any large scale.
Right-wing politics is like Microsoft -- much better at staying on-message because the message comes down from the top, and there's a lot of organizational power (Fox, Limbaugh, etc.) behind it. Not everyone likes it but if they aren't willing to go over to linux they don't have much choice but to put up with it and the spyware, etc., that comes with the territory.
By SR, at
Sun Aug 19, 08:48:00 PM:
The Right stays on message because it is developed by the use of logic and reality testing. It is a canard that the messages come from on high.
The left's message comes from and appeals to emotion which is self evidently quite fickle.
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 09:05:00 PM:
In my experience, cars with multiple cause-related bumper stickers carry messages that skew left. If broadly true, this would support your thesis.
By , at
Mon Aug 20, 12:57:00 AM:
I see where a bunch of eco-wackos in europe climb naked up onto a glacer to call attention to this GLOBAL WARMING poppycock and frankly i hope they got frostbite on their tender litle green backsides
