Political jeremiads

There is nothing like imminent doom to focus people's attention and get everyone fully in the war effort. For the last 40 years, we've been hearing jeremiads thundering from the left, but they would have a lot more credibility if the impending disaster didn't change every 10 years or so. One eventually starts looking for an agenda behind the agenda.

When I was in high school in the 1970s, we were taught that our planet faced serious "limits to growth." Earth was said to be alarmingly frail and inadequate to sustain us. Bad planning on someone's part, I suppose. The Club of Rome had done all the research, and my teachers taught it with greater certainty than they did the causes of the Civil War. Meanwhile, Paul Ehrlich was shouting "population bomb" on a crowded planet. We had to stop having babies and cut way back on our use of natural resources. The consequences of inaction, the experts assured us, would be cataclysmic. It seemed plausible. But southern Ontario wasn't overcrowded, and there were no actual signs we were running out of raw materials.

By the 1980s, when I was at university, attention had shifted to the nuclear danger. Somehow, America had elected Ronald Reagan as president, and he was waving around nuclear missiles in a zany attempt to scare off the Soviets, which was surely going to bring down on our heads a nuclear war from which the human race would never recover. The knowers among us warned that if we did not repent of our reliance on nuclear weapons for security, we would inevitably turn the world into a global wintry wasteland. "The nuclear clock is ticking," went the chorus. "The end is near! Flee from the wrath to come!" But as we know, Reagan proved wiser than his detractors, and we ended the decade in peace.

For the decade following the end of the Cold War, the fire and brimstone of political street preaching cooled to a simmer as those most attuned to the great dangers instructed us in the need for broad environmental concern if we were to "save the planet." But it was more of a catechism than a trumpet call. More recently, the secular millenarians have found a more immediate threat to justify more radical measures: global warming. The message is, "Turn or burn!"

Having led us in abandoning God to make our way in the world by our own wits, the secular left has come to see terrors on every side. But instead of returning to God, the rock of ages and shelter from the storm, they call us to seek refuge under the shadow of Leviathan, the almighty state, which 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes called "that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence." They reject as absurd the notion that God governs all the affairs of men with perfect goodness, yet they seek to establish a human government that will administer all the affairs of men with perfect efficiency, foresight, benevolence, and justice.

Once again, reports of the world's end are turning out to be greatly overstated. Data on global warming is disputable, and the case in favor of it has been exposed as significantly doctored. People are growing in their skepticism on the question. As for the Leviathan's readiness to help out (as he always is), our already sickly economy is looking at a second dip and our national debt, according to the Congressional Budget Office yesterday, is fast approaching unsustainable levels. For this reason, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that there will be no cap-and-trade legislation this year. But ministers of Leviathan will continue to press their case, though the grounds may shift again.