Dear HCN,
I am writing in response
to the excellent essay by Ken Toole on the far right (HCN,
12/8/97). I have only one problem with his article: Except in the
title, he almost always refers to extremists and militias and white
supremacists as “the right.” This might give readers the false
impression that the entire political “right” holds their wacky
beliefs. These fringe groups are in no way part of the responsible
right, which goes by the name of conservatism, nor are their ideas
at all closely related to the political philosophy of conservatism,
which developed from two schools of thought which go back to Adam
Smith (the libertarians) and Edmund Burke (the
traditionalists).
The principles of that
political philosophy clearly support conservation and environmental
protection – something which our politicians who claim to be
“conservatives’ too often don’t know, never having read a word of
political philosophy in their lives, or which they forget whenever
convenient for their campaign contributors.
Nor
does the wacky right recognize the implications of some of the
slogans they spout mindlessly. To take just one example from
Toole’s essay: The far right says it favors the free market. But
that’s pretty doubtful, especially coming from Westerners, because
it would mean giving up subsidies – so logging would cease on all
but a few national forests and many ranches would quickly go
bankrupt. And a true free market would mean absolutely no “negative
externalities,” i.e., pollution would be prohibited, unless the
polluter negotiated with and compensated all victims in advance.
Goodbye to a large part of the mining
industry.
Enclosed is my explanation of
conservative principles as they relate to environmental protection.
It appeared in a newsletter published by Republicans for
Environmental Protection and shows that the wacky right is not
“conservative.”
John R.E.
Bliese
Lubbock,
Texas
The writer is a
professor of communications studies at Texas Tech University. For a
copy of his essay, “Conservative Principles and the Environment,”
published in the fall 1997 issue of The Green Elephant, write to:
Republicans for Environmental Protection, P.O. Box 7073, Deerfield,
IL 60015
(847/940-0320).
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The “real’ right isn’t wacky.
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