Attention Environmentalists: It's the Economy, Stupid

The problem with liberals is that they mistake the end result for the cause or for the process that leads to the end result.

Simply stated, liberals generally get things backwards.

Recently I wrote, "Our diversity is not our strength. Our strength is our shared values, if any remain. Our diversity is the spice that makes living in the United States a rich experience."

Liberals see the rich diversity in our nation and mistakenly believe diversity itself is the good thing that makes us strong. Here's the truth: Because we have been a nation united in the belief that God has given individuals the right to personal liberty, we are strong enough to allow a diverse group of people to express themselves and coexist peacefully (more often than not) among one another.

Liberals often point to the words of Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…" as a "proof verse" that our strength is our diversity, or our willingness to allow anyone to immigrate to the United States. However, it is the next words that are the most important, "...yearning to breathe free." The diverse group of immigrants this nation opened its doors for was made up of individuals who valued personal liberty.

It is the shared quality of recognizing individual liberty that allows for diversity. Further, the concept of "God-given" individual liberty is a biblical Christian notion. You see, the idea of people being able to freely choose their own destiny is central to the Christian faith. Simply put, a person becomes a Christian by "believing" in Christ.

"Believing" in Christ is not possible unless a person can also choose not to believe in Christ. Without the personal freedom to reject Christ, Christianity cannot exist.

I am not saying that those who have professed to be Christians over the millennia have practiced their faith perfectly. But, if you look at the history of Christianity I believe you will see that Christians have recognized the times when they have erred and the foundational truth that Christianity is a free and unfettered faith in Christ has been true since the days of the apostles.

Without going into great detail, I want to explain why it is important that the founders of our nation recognized that our right to personal liberty comes from God:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The men who signed our Declaration of Independence recognized the ultimate authority of God and since God gave men the right to liberty, men could not take that right away. It is a universal and eternal fact. Even if there is a referendum tomorrow in the United States and a majority votes that man does not have personal liberty, the vote is null and void. Certainly we can be cruel and abrogate one another's liberties but that doesn't mean we don't have the God-given right to liberty, just as when a murderer takes someone's life it doesn't mean that the victim didn't have the right to live.

Humanists—virtually all liberals are humanists as well as many conservatives and libertarians—believe man is the ultimate authority. And, as we have seen many times, what man giveth he can also taketh away. Therefore, recognizing the fact that our right to liberty comes from God is vitally important if we want to maintain our liberty.

Before I move on to what I really want to discuss—which, believe it or not is the economy and the environment—let me capsulize the points I've made so far. First, liberals get things backwards. They think diversity itself is strength while the strength is actually the shared value of recognizing the right of personal liberty, among other shared values. And, personal liberty is a Judeo-Christian God-given right. The Islamic view of Allah does not share this attribute.

But, as I said above the real subject of this is the balance the interaction between our concern for the economy and our concern for the environment. This relationship illustrates another example of liberals getting things backwards. 

During my entire adult life, and I'm almost 60 years old, liberals and the mainstream media have been pushing the message that our economic well being is dependent on environmental protection. (We have an Environmental Protection Agency that works like crazy to protect the environment and a Commerce Department that generally makes commerce difficult.)

In fact, the truth is the opposite: Environmental protection is dependent on a strong economy. Simply stated, when people are impoverished, they don't give a damn about the environment. That's why poor people who live on islands will chop down and burn every tree. It is human nature. When we are poor we will destroy our environment in the short term without any regards to the long term implications of our actions. Again, it's human nature. It cannot be changed.

This issue is more important today than it has ever been because our economic well being is more threatened than it has been since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Yet, we still see liberals investing in "green technologies" that are contrary to the best interests of our economic development.

For example, the federal government has invested billions of dollars in electric cars and has pushed private corporations, like General Motors, to do the same thing. However, it takes a big population of wealthy people willing to spend the money on this technology for electric cars to be viable and given our economic crisis this is a virtual impossibility. The billions of dollars invested, is wasted. Money is also a resource that we must wisely steward.

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." As much as we might want to do everything within our power to make the environment pure, it cannot happen if we are not sufficiently wealthy as a nation.

If I there are any liberal environmentalists still reading this, here's my message: If you really care about the environment, you'll do everything you can to restore material prosperity in our nation, even if on the short term it seems contradictory to your environmental concerns.