Apples, oranges, and pears, Oh my!

Fossil-Fuel Divestment

I would have thought these are 6 separate and politically separable issues.

1. Do we need or want to leave some significant portion of fossil fuels unused in order to prevent horrific damage as a result of the added climate change using it would cause?
2. Should someone pay reparations/compensation to someone for black slavery? Do we want to, if "someone" is us?
3. Should someone pay reparations/compensation to someone for colonialism? Do we want to, if "someone" is us?
4. Should someone pay someone to defray costs associated with climate change? Do we want to, if "someone" is us?
5. Ought to or does one have a positive/negative attitude toward capitalism/socialism?
6. Ought to or does one prefer Republicans to Democrats or vice versa?

I assume, of course, that what matters in the end is what we want even if we fall for the moral schlock people dish out for us.

But, as for me, I think morality is bunk and I want no part of 1 through 4.

See the posts on amoralism for an explanation of those schlock and bunk bits.

I have a positive attitude toward both capitalism and socialism, though either can do devastating harm if overdone or handled carelessly.

And I have a distinctly negative attitude toward both major parties, but less so toward the Democrats owing to their position as the lesser evil in the class war and their not being quite so bad on foreign affairs.

Anyway, Stanley Kurtz is running all 6 questions together.

Now, if the Republicans would just dump their blockhead conservatism they could continue to oppose the Democrats on all the rest and what he thinks is the crucial point, the attitude of the young toward the differences between the bare-knuckle capitalism insisted on by the conservative-dominated Republicans and the moderate progressivism of the Democrats, won’t matter.

The Republicans having seen the light on American social democracy, people will choose between the Republicans and the Democrats in the voting booth on other issues.

Social issues, say.

Or issues 1 through 4, say.

Not a chance in hell the conservatives in control of the Republican Party will even consider letting things play out that way.

When you get down to it, they’re in business for one thing only, to repeal a century of progressivism.

And they can’t do that by letting the Republican Party escape their death-grip.

And that, by the way, works out just fine for the liberals, too.

Right now they know well they are still getting a lot of votes exactly because they are, on matters of social democracy and traditional progressivism, by a pretty fair distance the lesser evil.

If that distance narrows, Democrats look out!

And then say goodbye to social liberalism, global redistribution, and the prospect for global liberal interventionism.