Pride and humility, and knowing the difference

And then George goes and buys me flowers.

The environmental movement in retreat

"In the middle of the 20th century, Americans, impressed by the government's mobilization of society for victory in World War II, were, Mead says, 'intoxicated with social and environmental engineering of all kinds." They had, for example, serene confidence that 'urban renewal' would produce 'model cities.' Back then, environmentalism was skepticism.

It was akin to the dissent of Jane Jacobs, author of the 1961 book 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities.' She argued that ambitious social engineers such as New York's Robert Moses were, by their ten-thumbed interventions in complex organisms such as cities, disrupting social ecosystems. The apotheosis of technocratic experts such as McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara gave us 'nation-building' in conjunction with a war of attrition -- the crucial metric supposedly was body counts -- in a Southeast Asian peasant society. Over time, Mead says, 'experts lost their mystique':

'An increasingly skeptical public started to notice that 'experts' weren't angels descending immaculately from heaven bearing infallible revelations from God. They were fallible human beings with mortgages to pay and funds to raise. They disagreed with one another and they colluded with their friends and supporters like everyone else.'

And expertise was annoyingly changeable. Experts said margarine was the healthy alternative to butter -- until they said its trans fats made it harmful.

Environmentalism began as Bambi doing battle with Godzillas, such as the Army Corps of Engineers. Then, says Mead, environmentalism became Godzilla, an advocate of 'a big and simple fix for all that ails us: a global carbon cap. One big problem, one big fix.' Mead continues:

'Never mind that the leading green political strategy (to stop global warming by a treaty that gains unanimous consent among 190-plus countries and is then ratified by 67 votes in a Senate that rejected Kyoto 95 to 0) is and always has been so cluelessly unrealistic as to be clinically insane. The experts decree and we rubes are not to think but to honor and obey.'

The essence of progressivism, of which environmentalism has become an appendage, is the faith that all will be well once we have concentrated enough power in Washington and have concentrated enough Washington power in the executive branch and have concentrated enough 'experts' in that branch. Hence the Environmental Protection Agency proposes to do what the elected representatives of the rubes refuse to do in limiting greenhouse gases. Mead says of today's environmental movement:

'It proposes big economic and social interventions and denies that unintended consequences and new information could vitiate the power of its recommendations. It knows what is good for us, and its knowledge is backed up by the awesome power and majesty of the peer review process. The political, cultural, business and scientific establishments stand firmly behind global warming today -- just as they once stood firmly behind Robert Moses, urban renewal and big dams. They tell us it's a sin to question the consensus, the sign of bad moral character to doubt. Bambi, look in the mirror. You will see Godzilla looking back.'

Mead, who says that he is a skeptic about climate policy rather than climate science, says that the environmental movement has 'become the voice of the establishment, of the tenured, of the technocrats.' This is the wrong thing to be in 'Recovery Summer' while the nation wonders about the whereabouts of the robust recovery the experts forecast."

Perhaps it is time to humble our notions of power. And how it can solve all. Perhaps we are not wholly imcomparable with those who have known how to overpower problems of yore. Perhaps the temptation of pride and power is unremitting. Perhaps honest humility is patient effort.

But perhaps we can learn to tell the difference.

Enough is enough

Jeff Jacoby, like George Will, confuses piety, disillusionment, and skepticism with wisdom in his otherwise thoughtfully composed column in today's Boston Globe.

Victims on the road to 'peace'

"But far from opposing a 'peace process’ meant to push Israel into ever-deeper concessions, retreats, and self-endangerment, terrorists — whether affiliated with Hamas or with Fatah — seek to accelerate it. The two Palestinian factions may be at war with each other, but they have always been as one in rejecting Israel’s existence as the sovereign state of the Jewish people. So long as they refuse to budge from that position, Israeli-Palestinian peace is impossible."

It's a tempting and clever interpretation of events. Too clever by half.

There is no hope for peace. If I don't acknowledge what's at stake. What people involved are really pained about. If I can reframe them as whatever I please. To ignore honest concerns.

The Palestinians, you see, by this interpretation, are not peoples angry and embittered about being expelled forcibly by Israelis from their homes and lives when Israel was founded. They are not a people tired and fed up with Israeli occupation and the restrictions and real fears for safety it persistently imposes on their lives. They are not peoples genuinely grieving the loss of lives that have taken place over the course of this long, bloody, foolish history.

The Palestinians, you see, are heartless murderers. All of them. They are systemactically unwilling of humanity, you see. Which justifies all of the rest, you see. And justifies why only military strength can put the thumb firmly on the trigger fingers of those who would otherwise murder innocent Israelis.

It's a tempting interpretation. A clever one. And a thoroughly self-righteous one. That maintains the bloodletting.

One very much similar to the tempting, clever, self-righteous interpretation of Palestinians that Israelis have murdered their way into a Jewish state meant to oppress, occupy, and let the blood of innocent Palestinians who want nothing other than to live their lives in peace.

They are both patently untrue, of course. And involved, sophisticated, and deceptive means of avoiding the responsibility that each party has in the bloodshed and bitterness of the last 100 years in this region.

And people like Jeff Jacoby and George Will make life difficult for those who would unravel that ugly and self-deceptive legacy.

And so they do.

And so would-be statesmen like Benjamin Netanyahu and would-be leaders like Mahmoud Abbas (who has a long journey, to be sure, before he is a responsible leader for the Palestinian peace and a more trustworthy partner for peace) move forward and let the Jeff Jacoby's and George Will's of the world wring their hands and predict failure. Because they were never really committed to a peaceful resolution of this unrelenting human tragedy, in the first place.

And so they weren't. And so they are ignored until they can offer a vision of something other than unflagging war.

Plenty of figures in this tragedy who will die never accepting peace. And so they will. Some of them, those who murder, against their will. And so it goes.

In the meantime, the rest of us have work to do.

There's too many lives at stake to stand around pretending that they can't be saved for good. Because Jeff and George say so.