“No Limits”
Posted on November 10th, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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There is another passage in Continetti’s Palin article that tells us a lot about the mentality of Palinites and those who would pander to them:
Dismiss airy prophecies about “peak oil,” “green jobs,” and “limits to growth.” Pledge, instead, that Americans will have access to as much of the cheapest, cleanest energy they need to stimulate the economy. Palin is right. No limits.
In other words, the right-populism of which Palin can supposedly be the great leader is going to a movement of irresponsible consumption, limitless appetite and unfettered desire. This is so obviously at odds with both Christian stewardship and conservative temperament that it scarcely seems necessary to mention it, but here we find the moral vacuum at the heart of Palinism. It happens to be expressed here in connection with the use of natural resources, but it conveys hubris, arrogance and self-indulgence and indifference to the welfare of the commonwealth that will be inherited by those not yet born. “No limits” is the slogan either of the anarchist or the libertine. There is no sane populism that would embrace such an idea, and it certainly has nothing to do with anything recognizable as conservatism.
Even an anarchist would say that there are limits, they’d just have a fuzzier way of creating and applying them.
The oceans are full of our trash, which doesn’t require faith in bizarre computer models to see. There are limits, and you don’t have to be an SUV-burner to see that.
One can only smile wryly as the Ivy League left and the troglodyte right battle for control of the ship of state, as the waters slowly rise.
Old Man, wow, that is Grumpy! What have you got against the Ivy League?
Smug, snobbish “progressivism” in the Congregationalist-reform Jewish mode.
if I were to coin a phrase to describe such a philosophy, it might be “economic hedonism”.
1 part Moralistic therapeutic Deism, 2 parts Diversitism, and 3 parts nobless oblige.
Meh.
noblesse (Amconmag, get a preview box!)
I particularly loathed this particular passage:
Yeah, how dare the world not adhere to our simplistic mental models of how it ought to be? Why, when I was your age, Up was Up, Men were Men, Women made cookies, and Oil was American!