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An "environmentalist" is a totalitarian socialist whose real
objective is to revive socialism and economic central planning under the
subterfuge of "saving the planet" from capitalism. He is
"green" on the outside, but red on the inside, and is hence
appropriately labeled a "watermelon."
A conservationist, by contrast, is someone who is actually
interested in solving environmental and ecological problems and protecting
wildlife and its habitat. He does not propose having government force a
separation of man and nature by nationalizing land and other resources,
confiscating private property, prohibiting the raising of certain types of
animals, regulating human food intake, etc. He is not a socialist ideologue
who is hell bent on destroying capitalism. He does not publicly wish that a
"new virus" will come along and kill millions, as the founder of
"Earth First" once did. More often than not, he seeks ways to use
the institutions of capitalism to solve environmental problems. There is even
a new name for such a person: enviropreneur. Or he
may call himself a "free-market environmentalist" who understands
how property rights, common law, and markets can solve many environmental
problems, as indeed they have.
In light of the distinction between an environmentalist and a
conservationist, "Watermelons of the World Unite!" should be the
theme of the upcoming "Earth Summit" in Rio that begins on June 19.
The meeting will be devoted to endless conniving about how to go about
creating a centrally planned world economy (under the auspices of United
Nations bureaucrats) in the name of the latest euphemism for socialist
central planning, "sustainable development." This doesn’t
mean that the Watermelons of the World will be successful; only that they are
as numerous as flies on a herd of cattle, and will never give up on their
pipe dream of a centrally planned, socialist world economy, no matter how
much of a nightmare socialism has been for millions of people all around the
world.
The watermelon strategy was announced and encouraged by one of the
gray eminences of academic socialism, the late
economist Robert Heilbroner, in a September 10,
1990 essay in The New Yorker entitled "After Communism."
Written in the midst of the worldwide collapse of socialism, and the
realization that socialist governments during the twentieth century had
murdered more than 100 million of their own people as part of the
"price" of establishing their "socialist paradise," Heilbroner’s essay was a huge mea culpa (See Death by Government by
Rudolph Rummel). He even wrote the words, "Mises was
right," about the inherent failures of socialism, referring to the
writings of Ludwig von Mises in the 1920s and 1930s
that explained in great detail why socialism could never work as an economic
system (See his book, Socialism).
After admitting that he had been dead wrong for the previous half
century during which he devoted his academic career to promoting socialism in
America (the veiled purpose of his The Worldly Philosophers,
that made him a millionaire), Heilbroner sadly
bemoaned that "I am not very sanguine about the prospect that socialism
will continue as an important form of economic organization . . ." While
much of the rest of the world was wildly celebrating the demise of this
diabolically evil institution, Heilbroner was
crying in his soup over it.
Rather than facing the reality of the inherent evil of all forms of
socialism, Heilbroner intoned that "the
collapse of the planned economies has forced us to rethink the meaning of
socialism." (Writing in The New Yorker, Heilbroner
naturally assumed that all of "us" readers were socialist
ideologues like himself). After all, he continued,
"socialism is a general description of a society in which we would like
our grandchildren to live." But "what, then, is left" of
"the honorable title of socialism," asked Heilbroner.
The man was obviously depressed and dejected that history had proven
his academic career to have been a complete fraud, but he was not about to
admit that fact, or to give up on perpetrating the same fraud that he had
perpetrated for at least the previous half century. A new subterfuge must be
invented, he said, that will fool or lull the public into acquiescing in
adopting socialism. This might take a while, he said, and if "we"
are successful, "our great grandchildren or great-great grandchildren
may be prepared to acquiesce in social arrangements that our children or
grandchildren would not."
Heilbroner’s suggested
subterfuge was explained by him as follows: "There is, however, another
way of looking at . . . socialism. It is to conceive of it . . . as the
society that must emerge if humanity is to cope with . . . the ecological
burden that economic growth is placing on the environment."
"We" socialists must all become watermelons, in other words. If
enough members of the public can be hoodwinked with this subterfuge, then
"capitalism must be monitored, regulated, and contained to such a degree
that it would be difficult to call the final social order capitalism."
That is exactly what will be discussed at the upcoming "Earth
Summit" in Rio.
Originally
published on http://lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo230.html
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