Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
I have long been perplexed, and more than perplexed, by the seeming contradiction between the more intelligent right wingers’ stirring defenses of ‘freedom,’ ‘the rule of law,’ and ‘small government’ and their cheer-leading for George Bush, who under-mined these values more than any other president in my life time. I think I now understand – and oddly, my being a Pagan has helped.
Being of a minority perspective often enables us to see what others see from a new vantage point. This can be useful for all concerned. I think my Pagan based sensitivity to relationships and harmony trumping atomistic isolation has helped me to finally come to an understanding of why so many conservatives are utter hypocrites.
A person can support freedom, limited government, and the rule of law for at least two reasons. First, from a respect for other people, a respect that is in harmony with traditional spiritual insights as to how we appropriately relate with one another. With Christians respect is a less demanding quality that can culminate in love and charity. For Buddhists, it can culminate in compassion and kindness. For many Pagans, including this one, respect is the basis of how we seek to relate with all life, not just human life,. This concept also extends into compassion for all beings. There is no paradox between respect for all beings and kindness, charity, compassion, or love for them.
But we can also support freedom, limited government, and the rule of law to prevent the arbitrary intervening of others’ will against my own. I am lord of my own home, my own castle, and oppose others’ interference with my desires. In my own realm, I am king.
This is the retail despot’s defense against wholesale despots, and because respect for others need not be involved, when the small time despot finally enjoys the power to rule over others, his or her concern about limitations on government evaporates like ice on a hot summer sidewalk. When that power is then lost, once again concern for limited government, freedom, and the rule of law reappears, almost like magic.
The hypocrisy grows from rank egoism.
Our Founders’ devotion to the values of the rule of law, limited government, and freedom came from a strong sense that no one should be subject to arbitrary power. In the last letter he ever wrote, shortly before he died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”
Too many of today’s ‘conservatives’ who speak as if they owned the American tradition repudiate Jefferson and our other Founders, and only care that they should not be subject to the will, or even considered judgment, of others. They dress their conceit up in the language of liberty. But they have the hearts of slavemasters without the tortured conscience of a Jefferson.
Two paradoxes then emerge. First, these self-described defenders of freedom do not care about freedom for others at all. When they have the power, they act like the despots they always were at heart.
Second, while they continually and correctly tell us America’s most basic founding principles are in harmony with spiritual truth, they themselves live and act in complete repudiation of both.
posted February 28, 2009 at 2:28 pm
But the most dangerous Hypocrite in a Common-Wealth, is one who leaves the Gospel for the sake of the Law: A Man compounded of Law and Gospel, is able to cheat a whole Country with his Religion, and then destroy them under Colour of Law. – Ben Franklin
I grew up in an Evangelical Republican household. It’s time for thoughtful liberals, conservatives, people who believe in a pluralistic society, etc. to take the country back.
The founding fathers were not religious zealots!
posted February 28, 2009 at 5:36 pm
People should be able to believe and do what ever it is that makes them happy?????
posted March 1, 2009 at 1:04 am
“First, these self-described defenders of freedom do not care about freedom for others at all. When they have the power, they act like the despots they always were at heart.
Second, while they continually and correctly tell us America’s most basic founding principles are in harmony with spiritual truth, they themselves live and act in complete repudiation of both.”
I believe they do not experience freedom in their own lives. Think about it. If you are bound to a moral code you can’t keep (Senator Craig comes to mind), and you feel a need to sneak around fulfilling your desires, isn’t a rigid, repressive society exactly what you want? The structure of despotism gives cover for guilty consciences.
I am not willing to say the founding documents of the country embody great spiritual truth, but I do find them of great value, especially for their time. I would not easily discard them. But I don’t worship them–again, those who say they do probably feel the need for cover for their shame.
posted March 1, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I think that in many, if not most, cases, that conservative “defense” of political values is nothing more than an expedient agit-prop tactic. I sense that these conservatives never held thos political values in the first place.
I aggree with you that they do want to be able to do whatever seems possible in order to carry out their own willfulness.