HOW OBAMA DODGES ACCOUNTABILITY

I learned about the liberal disconnect in accountability (that liberals identify success as a matter of installing liberal policies, rather than in terms of the results they produce) while I was involved in a collaborative effort to resolve the long standing war over predators that has had ranchers and environmentalists at odds for more than a century. The particular get-together that provided the learning opportunity involved a “conflict resolution” facilitator. The facilitator of this meeting was a woman, Tommie Martin, who came from a ranching background and had considerable experience and success in this line of work. The technique Tommie used (identifying shared interests among the parties to the conflict) is a common one, I have since learned, but Tommie used this technique in a way that, I believe, remains unique and revealing.

What is unique about Ms. Martin’s approach became apparent whenever one of us said something like: “I want all the cows off public lands.”  or ” I want higher grazing fees,” or when a rancher said, “I want fewer regulations and fewer meetings like this to go to.” Whenever a demand like this was made, Tommie would ask the demander what he or she hoped to achieve by such an action. How we would expect the land to change as a result? How would it look? How would it make us feel? What would we want to change? And she would keep asking questions like this until we answered in terms of real world results: that we wanted less bare dirt. More plants. Healthier populations of wildlife, and so forth. 

The result was that, whenever Tommie used this technique, in almost every case, ranchers and environmentalists ended up affirming that they wanted the same results. Everyone wanted green mountainsides and more vital plant communities and populations of wildlife appropriate for the type of land it was. 

Realizing that we wanted so many of the same things made a huge change in the tone of the meeting. We had started the meeting by making the same demands ranchers and environmentalists always made in situations like this, and the mood had been typically confrontational. Each side cheered for their side and hooted at the demands made by the other side. But, the first time Tommie Martin’s facilitation led one of the ranchers to say he wanted something that was considered “environmental,” I remember that we all sat in stunned silence. At least I know I did. And as this happened a second and third time the meeting became more friendly. We joked. We laughed. Some people even hugged.

I remember being extremely impressed by what had happened, and very puzzled. After I thought about it, I decided that Tommie’s facilitation had revealed that there are two kinds of goals, and I labeled them: “Goals that Incite” and “Goals that Unite.” I also labeled these different kinds of goals “prescriptive” and “descriptive.” 

Prescriptive goals involve prescribing (or demanding) that a certain process or policy be adopted —”Get the cows off.” or (getting back to Obama) forcing energy companies to use wind power and solar rather than drill for more oil or develop cleaner ways to burn coal. 

Descriptive goals involve achieving certain results—greener rangelands, less dependence on foreign oil, or greater prosperity.

Prescriptive goals are “Goals that Incite” because no one, not even a two-year-old likes to be told what to do. 

Descriptive goals are more likely to be Goals that Unite, as they were at the meeting I described above, because, when you get right down to it, most of us really do want the same things. This is especially true with regard to the environment. Who doesn’t want clean air and clean water and healthy ecosystems? 

So, why do people who want the same things fight?

The best way to answer that question was given to me at a small get-together with a couple of friends at which I was showing my slides and talking about what I had discovered at that facilitated meeting.

When I pointed out that the ranchers and environmentalists at that meeting had discovered that they had the same goals, one of my friends, an ecologist and activist, was so offended she positively fumed.

“We have no right to set goals for nature.” she spat. “We need to do the right thing and whatever happens is what’s supposed to happen.

That explained to me better than anything else I have encountered why so few environmentalists were interested in the message that they could achieve what they wanted more effectively by working with ranchers (and other people they saw as environmental adversaries) than by fighting with them. I had made the mistake of believing that, for the people within the mainstream (liberal) environmental movement, environmental goals, such as healthy rangelands, functional watersheds, and healthy wildlife are primary, while, in truth, they are not. 

My friend, the ecologist/activist, and all the others who have no interest whatsoever in working with their adversaries to achieve Goals That Unite, made it very clear that for them and many other mainstream environmental activists, what is primary is getting other people to do what they (the environmentalists) think is “the right thing” regarding the environment, and that protecting endangered species, reducing the human “footprint” on the land, fighting global warming, and the whole list of environmental causes are the excuses they use to impose the regulations, elect the politicians, and win the lawsuits that enable them to dictate people’s actions vis a vis the environment, which means vis a vis everything.

And if the threatened fish disappears, the endangered bird nests somewhere else, and the rangeland turns into desert; that is what’s supposed to happen. You can’t blame them, and you can’t blame the policies they promote. 

My friend took issue with my “manage for common goals” solution to rangeland conflict because, to her, the question of how to manage the environment is a matter of moral judgement—and as with all moral matters, outcomes are irrelevant. How’s that? When we are exhorted to be honest or to follow the golden rule we are told that we must do so whatever the outcome. Whether it benefits us or not. The problem is, how we manage the environment has a practical as well as a moral side. Although the people who forced the removal of cattle from along the Verde River did it because they considered it the right thing to do (See earlier post). They also did it to save a “threatened” fish, and when their action exterminated the fish they and their method deserve to be held accountable.

What does this have to do with Barak Obama? The policies he has promised to bring to government, and is now in the process of enacting, have been sold on the basis of their morality. We’re supposed to abandon the most successful energy source humans have ever devised (fossil fuels) for a bunch of 1960s pipe dreams: windmills, biofuels, solar, and cogeneration (whatever that is), which are technologies into which we’ve poured billions for almost half a century and still they haven’t performed, because “it’s the right thing to do.” We’re supposed to negotiate without preconditions with enemies who place plenty of preconditions on us; turn loose murderers who can’t wait to murder more of us, kill ourselves via increased abortions and euthanasia disguised as restricting treatment to elders and others who are “low priorities” because a socialist economy won’t support as many of us. And last, but certainly not least, we’re supposed to scrap the most effective economy humans have ever devised—free market capitalism—for the real “failed policies of the past”—socialism. 

We’re supposed to do all of this for the flimsy reason that a lot of liberals think it is “the right thing to do.”

As for accountability: When the “chickens” of this transformation come home to roost, you know what’s going to happen. When the economy tanks, when our enemies gain strength and we weaken, when our freedoms disappear and government control is extended into every aspect of our lives, the proponents of these policies are going to tell us that this is “what’s supposed to happen.” They’re going to tell us that it’s is the best we can hope for. It’s what we have to do to live within our means—to keep from destroying the planet. They’re going to give us all these excuses when the real reason is these disasters are the best a socialist economy and policial system can produce.

When that happens will the fact that in a socialist society the people who live highest on the hog are the political leaders be any solace?