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Before I get to how liberals sell less so effectively (a la the last post: LIBERALS: NOTHING TO SELL BUT LESS), I want to make sure that I have been perfectly clear about why they sell it. 

The point I want to make here is: Liberal solutions do not come from intensive, exhaustive, well-researched and well thought-out determinations of the most effective way to solve a problem or achieve a goal. Liberal solutions are dictated by the limitations of liberalism itself. I’ve already identified one of those limitations — the real reason liberals are always telling us that we need to use less, produce less, and reproduce less, and, if we don’t, we’re going to run out of everything and be bad people and destroy the planet, yadda, yadda, yadda. The real reason they keep telling us this is: they have no hope of outcompeting free-market capitalism in producing more. 

That’s why they work so hard to peddle global warming/climate change, the end of oil. It’s also why they’re constantly villainizing the U. S. for its excesses. Since they have nothing else to sell but less, they have to give us some reason to want less rather than more and since that decision is so counter to our natural inclinations — Who want less rather than more of anything? — it has to be a very good reason.

IF ALL YOU HAVE IS A HAMMER

Here’s another way (actually there are quire a few of these) in which the nature of liberalism dictates the problems they identify and the solutions they propose: liberals are limited by the nature of the tools in their toolbox. 

The main tools in the liberal toolbox are regulation, legislation, investigation, litigation, income redistribution, taxation, and confiscation — the taking of property rights including the direct taking of property itself (Which is what taxation is.).  

The reason liberals are always claiming that we’re threatened by energy shortages, overpopulation, global warming, the death of the oceans, poverty, racism, and on and on is because these crises provide excuses for more regulation, more legislation,  more villainization of the producers of more, etc.. If you’ve got an energy shortage, what do you do? You either produce more (Which liberals can’t do.) or you enact regulations to require rationing, institute huge government programs to create “alternatives” (which are really ways to create less and call it more), and raise taxes to fund all of the above. 

TOOLS THAT CAUSE PROBLEMS RATHER THAN SOLVE THEM

The most convenient part of all this, for liberals, is that the tools they tell us we absolutely have to use to solve these crises actually make them worse. This creates the opportunity for them to tell us we must submit to even more government control. For instance…

Regulations that prevent us from drilling for more oil or producing more electricity cause the energy shortages that require rationing techniques like cap and trade and alternative energy programs, which don’t work and deepen the shortage. 

Regulations that raise the cost of health insurance decrease the availability and quality of health care, which in turn creates the opportunity to socialize medicine and make things even worse. Villainization of the producers of more, such as when we call them the destroyers of the planet or vilify them for the money they make, discourages our most creative innovators from producing us out of these shortages (and, worse yet, recruits them to the cause of creating less). And, while we’re at it, there is no more effective way to create less of everything than by increasing taxes, the liberal’s piece de resistance.

HOW LIBERALISM WORKS

This is how liberalism works: Liberals can’t produce more so they exaggerate or even dream up crises which at least seem to require that we tighten our belts, reduce our footprint, “Live simply that others may simply live.” This provides the campaign “pitch” for them to convince us we should vote them into office so they can use the tools in the liberal toolbox to force us to do the above (for our own good of course). Once applied, the liberal tools then deepen the very crisis they are supposed to solve and create the twisted logic that we should keep voting liberals into office, ideally forever. 

It’s sort of like bailing water into (rather than out of) the lifeboat.

This spotlights yet another way in which the actions of liberals are dictated by the limitations of liberalism itself. The only way the tools in the liberal toolbox can be applied is via government. In order to regulate, legislate, levy taxes, dismantle rights, confiscate property, etc. you have to be in control of the government. For that reason, if liberals don’t control the government, they’re out of the game, they don’t exist. To liberals, politics is blood sport, a life or death activity. If they don’t win this time, they have to win next time.

WHY LIBERALS ARE BETTER AT POLITICS 

That’s why liberals are so much better at campaigning than conservatives (think Clinton vs Dole and Obama vs McCain), and why their campaigns are so much more vicious. It’s also why liberals are campaigning 24/7/365. For them, politics is the only sea in which they swim. It is the air they breathe.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are usually people who achieve their success in a sphere different from politics. They produce more — more oil, more cars, more food, more whatever. They see the role of government, as did the people who founded this country, as limited to apprehending and punishing those who commit crimes and defending us from outside enemies. They become involved in government in order to do their part in performing those functions but also in order to keep government out of our way, because they believe that people being free to exercise their creativity is what brought us to the greatness we now enjoy. And it is the only hope we have of solving whatever problems do crop up, including whatever the ever-changing climate of this planet throws at us, or whatever shortages we encounter as we try to create an ever-growing abundance in this finite ecosphere. For conservatives, politics is a necessary evil to keep government out of our way and off our backs. That is why they aren’t very good at it.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIBERALISM AND CONSERVATISM

What I’ve just told you is a very important difference between liberalism and conservatism. That’s what I’m developing here: a more complete and useable description of the difference between liberalism and conservatism than you’ll read anywhere and, along the way, a list of the elements of the true nature of liberalism. Now you’ll know why liberals do what they do and why it so frequently doesn’t work.

At this point I should probably revisit why I’m doing this and where I get the credentials to do it. For me delving into the difference between liberalism and conservatism is not just an academic exercise. Nor is it an effort to decide who to vote for. It is a completely practical matter.

My interest in this topic came as the result of my efforts to change the nature of environmental issues from confrontative to collaborative. What could be more liberal, more Kumbaya, than that? How could this set me to deconstructing liberalism to see how it works, and why it doesn’t work? That is the topic of the next post.

In the previous post I pointed out that liberals are committing group suicide by living childless and by aborting many of the fetuses they do happen to beget. Also, I noted that they work to make the above seem sensible, even necessary, by actually fabricating the scarcity they say is proof that the current human population is unsustainable, and that a future catastrophe of biblical proportions is inevitable, if we do not reduce our numbers. They do this by encumbering human productivity via increased regulation, making resources off limits, and creating scares such as global warming, the extinction crisis, the End of Oil, the overpopulation scare by wishing for famine and pandemics, and even by touting an upside to war (see previous post) 

In spite of all of the above, I warned at the end of the previous post that conservatives couldn’t just sit back and wait for Liberals to remove themselves from the scene via this self-inflicted suicide. The reason? Unlike the Shakers (the old time religious group that renounced reproduction and died out because they couldn’t convince enough newbies to become Shakers) Liberals are unsurpassed recruiters.

How do they do it? By achieving what appears, on the surface, to be impossible. They recruit us supposedly greedy, gluttonous Americans by promising us less…. less food, less comfort, less abundance, and, in the end, less independence and freedom. 

Liberals have mastered the ability to sell Less to a culture that is universally considered to be totally obsessed with More—the U. S., Americans, us.

I’ve puzzled and puzzled at why Liberals have chosen this apparently impossible course. And, of course, I’ve puzzled at how they have made it work so well. The obvious answer to the first question is that they have chosen it because it works very, very well. But they couldn’t have known it was going to work so effectively because they were certainly aware of American’s reputation for being obsessed with More. At some point it had to be a leap of faith for them, an immense leap. Why did they take what was apparently a suicidal leap?

I’m convinced that Liberals got in the business of selling less for the simple reason that they had no choice. They had nothing else to sell. 

Liberalism is doomed to selling less because “more” is already taken. Nothing produces “more” better than free enterprise capitalism, the economic system that has been the basis for our economy here in the U. S. for as long as our nation has existed. Capitalism, operating within a high degree of individual freedom, has been the most productive economic system humans have ever devised. Here in the U. S. it has enabled us to achieve a greater and broader prosperity than any other system in human history.

Faced with serving as perpetual also-rans if they tried to compete directly with the unsurpassed producers of more, Liberals had to find an alternative that they could tout as, in some way, better than more. For better or worse, they chose less. 

This may sound like a sure ticket to the graveyard of failed political movements. Instead it has served as a spectacular windfall. In fact, it ranks as one of the greatest political discoveries of all time. Selling Less, especially to Americans, is actually a whole lot easier than selling More.

For one thing anyone can do it. Selling less is a wide open field. Anyone of any age, sex, ability, or appearance can do it without any qualifications, training, education, or experience. 

Selling more is not so easy If you’re selling more, you have to produce something: more food, more cars, more TVs, more energy, more something. That usually means you have to have skills, training, experience, and know-how. Most likely it also means you have to work within an organization set up to produce whatever you’re selling more of. That means you’ll have to pick up more skills, higher levels of training and accumulate experience if you wish to excel and move up the ranks.

Producing Less involves no such requirements. You can go as far as your persistence, hard work, creativity, energy, etc., will take you. To get started all you have to do is say, “We have to use less,” and you are automatically brilliant, a realist, a prophet, a hero. Even a child can become an unimpeachable authority just by saying this, and children are used to make these pronouncements for this very reason.  

If someone engages you in a debate the only argument you need to win is, “You mean to tell me you think we can keep consuming this much stuff and not wreck the planet?” Never mind that this is a recognized logical fallacy named the Argument From Ignorance. If you use the above in any argument against any authority, you will be declared the victor, even by logicians. If your opponent persists, all you have to do is say he or she is probably a pawn of the capitalists and Rush Limbaugh, and they will be hooted down by your supporters.  

Here are some more reasons that Selling Less is an unsurpassed recruiter. 

When I was a math major at Ohio State, on “Career Day” I learned that the major opportunities available to me were: I could become an actuarian for an insurance company and calculate the rate at which people died or had car wrecks so my employer could better calculate insurance rates; Or I could become a math teacher.

I found all this much less than exciting, but then I learned about a much better offer. In this alternative, I could start right out arguing as an equal, eyeball to eyeball with governors and congressmen, even the president. I could immediately be considered as much an authority on a variety of topics as my old college professors, even more of an authority if they were proponents of More. All I had to do was say those magic words—”We have to use less.” If I was good, I could start chocking up victories that would make the newspapers and even go down in history. 

The appeal of this alternative offer is so obvious it is painful: Instead of working on what I considered to be an inconsequential, unfulfilling job trying to produce a profit for some soulless corporation, I would be saving the planet, mountain lions, butterflies, rare plants, even the human race. 

Which offer would you take? Needless to say, I took the latter. 

That’s not all. There are still more advantages to selling less over welling more. If you’re selling less, you don’t have to prove that what you’re doing won’t harm the planet or that it won’t cause us to run out of something, or that it won’t cause too much pollution, or even that it won’t make the rich richer and the poor poorer. What you’re doing is reducing our human impact, our carbon footprint. You’re living simply that others may simply live…..

All of those who oppose you are fossils, soon to be dead old white men or their allies merely to make a profit. You are doing what you do to save the planet. You are selfless, the wave of the future, the great bright hope.

That’s not to say that selling less is not hard work. Those who are best at it work very, very hard. Many are incredibly creative, inventive and persistent. Ironically, many of those who are best at selling us less today are the entrepreneurs, the venture capitalists, the pioneers who would normally be selling us more. In truth they are selling us more… more of less. Lots more of it. How they’re doing it is extremely revealing. That is the subject of the next post.

Warren Buffet, the world’s second richest man, has publicly taken issue with President Obama’s policies on Card Check and Cap and Trade, which formed the heart of Obama’s run for the presidency and remain high priorities for his administration. Buffet also says he objects to the Obama administration’s demonizing of corporations and corporate CEOs and to their use of the economic crisis to shove high dollar liberal policies and vote-buying earmarks for Democrat s through Congress.

In spite of these core differences,  and in spite of the fact that, under Obama, net income for Berkshire Hathaway, the company Buffet heads, has plummeted to 4% of what they were under Bush, Buffet says he voted for Obama, still supports him, and believes Republicans have an obligation not to oppose him.

Huh?

Buffet voted for someone whose policies he opposes? And then he’s surprised when, after being elected, that politician works to implement those policies? 

That’s stupid.

And then Buffet tells the rest of us we shouldn’t oppose this politician and his policies?

That’s crazy.

It is also exactly what I mean when I say Obama is not going to be held accountable for the results of his policies even when those policies go very sour and cause great harm.

And Warren Buffet isn’t the only big-time capitalist helping me make this point.

Jack Welch, who took GE from a value of $14 billion to $410 billion and authored the books Straight From the Gut and Winning, takes issue with Obama “throwing all these initiatives (Cap and Trade, etc.) into this game in the middle of a crisis.” he even calls Obama “crazy” for doing so and says he’s “lost in another world,” and then he gushes,

 “I love the guy. I think he’s great.” Welch says this even though GE’s stock has plummeted from more than $42 under Bush to less than $6 under Obama—a drop of more than 86%.

Hedge fund cofounder Barton Bigg objects to Obama’s intent to raise capital gains and other taxes targeting “the real entrepreneurial, long-term investment part of the economy” and says this and other elements of the redistributionist part of Obama’s social agenda “has bothered the market a lot,” On the basis of this he says, he’d like to see Obama “back off.” Then he adds,

“I voted for Obama.  I’m a fan of Obama.”

Jim Cramer, host of the TV show “Mad Money” added himself to this list. On an interview on NBC’s “Today” TV show, Cramer said,” Obama is causing the greatest destruction of wealth I have ever seen by a president,” After enjoying a few days of celebrity on conservative talk shows because of his comment, Cramer hedged it with this statement: “But the truth is I actually agree with almost all of Obama’s agenda right down to having the rich pay more taxes.  I just think it’s the wrong time.”

Marxists call people like this “useful idiots.” Many of the rest of us might want to ask them “If you’re so rich why aren’t you smart?” But before the rest of us start thinking of ourselves as superior to these ultra-rich icons, we should know that plenty of the rest of us are  just as guilty of the same idiocy.

A recent Rasmussen poll reveals that 53% of the American people say it is likely we are headed toward a depression similar to the thirties while 56% of us approve of Obama and the policies he is enacting that  will create that depression.

What does this have to do with the environment? Plenty. First, it gives all of us a more clear idea of how someone who helps create policies that exterminate populations of endangered species such as the spikedace, or desertifies pieces of rangeland such as the Drake Exclosure can call themselves an environmentalist. They can do it in the same way that the people I have just mentioned can support policies that are aimed at destroying capitalism and still be absolutely convinced they are good capitalists.

And maybe they are. 

Most of the people I know who support the policies that have exterminated the Verde River Spikedace and desertified the Drake exclosure and tens of millions of acres like it consider themselves good environmentalists. 

And maybe they are.

They love wildlife, undeveloped land, beautiful scenery, uncut forests, and undammed rivers. They hug trees and rescue prairie dogs and try to get obscure species of fish and bugs protected as endangered.

However, the actions of Warren Buffet, Jack Welch, Barton Bigg, Jim Cramer, and plenty of the rest of us show how people who consider themselves to be totally, spiritually, cellularly committed to the cause of environmentalism, who even consider environmentalism the most important cause in their lives, can be presented with examples of how their actions have caused the extermination of populations of endangered species, caused nonnative species to invade and replace native species, and desertified tens of millions of acres of land across the West, as I have done time and time again, and say, “I voted for those policies.  I’m a fan of those policies. I support those policies,” 

And how they can tell those of us who see that this emperor has no clothes that, when we oppose these policies, we are the problem.

(For specific examples see “Seeing is Believing” and previous posts)

In the previous post:  I told you that Trish and I were moving out of my house in Santa Barbara and going on the road in our 5th wheel, so it might be a while until my next post.

Now, Santa Barbara is in the rear view mirror. Trish and I have put everything in storage, and we’re on the road. Considering the current state of the economy, we are up-to-date. Homeless! Unemployed! Foot loose and relatively fancy free (unless the banks tank and the dollar becomes toilet paper).

So, why haven’t I been posting? Since we left Santa Barbara, we have lived on the beach in Carpinteria (a small town south of S. B.), camped in a state part in San Clemente (beautiful and uncrowded) and spent a month on Mission Bay in San Diego walking along the bay, watching the winter arrival of various species of waterfowl, and rowing around the bay in our little red dory. At one point, after a day on the water, I thought “I’d better get back to work (blogging, trying to line up talks)!” The next thought was almost instantaneous: “What for? That would get in the way of doing what I’m doing—having fun! That was probably about a month ago.

Lately, however, I’ve been getting the itch again. Since we’ve moved to a private RV park in Gold Canyon, AZ. we haven’t had to move every few days, which was required while we were living in state parks and other gov. run campgrounds. So, I have more time, which means (I hope) I can write and have fun, too.

Since my last post, the liberal messiah BHO has been elected and is building his administration. That in itself provides an  unlimited amount of material vis a vis creating a conservative alternative to liberal environmentalism. And plenty of other things have been happening, too, some with regard to some of the issues I have been writing about, and some totally new. For instance, during my hiatus I have given a number of talks in small towns in Northern California (Placerville, Red Bluff, Sutter’s Creek, Woodland, and Nevada City). That always provides good material. And I have got a private park in Santa Barbara interested in using animals to restore health and function to some of the lands in their park. That’s a good topic, too. And, of course, George Yard is still struggling to save the spikedace only now he’ll have to deal with an even bigger army of liberal world savers drunk with the drug of victory.

In other words, posts are coming. I just wanted to let you know.

 I am in the process of moving out of my house in Santa Barbara and going on the road with Trish in our 5th wheel. That’s why posts have been erratic for a while. That should change once we’ve moved into the trailer and no longer have a large yard and house to take care of.

Presently I’m working on a post entitled: LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM REALLY ISN’T ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT. 

Stay tuned