I’m writing a long article on this topic. And I’m going share parts of it with you two paragraphs at a time.
It would be more interesting to talk about the president losing control of his own spins in ways that reveal (as Carl is more insistent that I am) his deep inauthenticity or lack of character. He is a politician, after all. Impeachment doesn’t really seem likely. But personal isolation on multiple levels that reminds us of Nixon is clearly being displayed. Meanwhile, there’s less and less chance any Republican can work with him.
But I digress. Here are the two paragraphs:
Conservatives properly understood are as concerned with social ecology as environmentalists are concerned with natural ecology. Thats not to say the two concerns are mutually exclusive. But conservative environmentalism, whether natural or social, is anthropocentric. Were concerned about the natural and social conditions indispensable for the flourishing of whole persons. The deep ecologists, pantheists, and so forth say that nature would cheer if manthe human personwere to disappear. From that view, the human being is a kind of cosmic accident whos bound to trash his hostile natural environment. Deep ecology is really deep pessimism: How could beings such as ourselves ever show the discipline required to sustain ourselves? From a natural view, after all, theres no reason we should exist, and its dangerous that we do. So the natural hope is that well manage to take ourselves out before extinguishing all life on our planet.
We conservatives think that nature exists to be used well by the human person, just as we think that human nature isnt an oxymoron. As the beings given speech or complex language by nature, weve been given excellences, responsibilities, perversities, and the potential for both good and evil not given to the other animals. We alone among the beings are given the charge of taking responsibility for living in the truth. And so were charged with subordinating our technological accomplishmentswonderful displays of the freedom we have been given that are often won at the expense of natureto properly human purposes. Those purposes, of course, include sustaining our not only beneficialbut also indispensablenatural, social, and relational orders. How could there be freedom without such corresponding responsibilities?