A Greener Shade of Right

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And if ever “social engineering” by government is just, surely environmental issues call for it. However, the environmentalist movement itself must deal with its own confusing and contradictory alliances with the left. As John Lukacs has written, Greens are often the self-made prisoners of their leftist and anti-establishment inclinations. They are split-minded: traditionalists and anti-traditionalists at the same time. They want to conserve the land, and they are opposed to the inhuman progress of bureaucracy, automation, technology. In that respect they are conservatives, in the proper, larger-than-political sense of that word. Yet at the same time they favor abortion, feminism, unlimited immigration, nomadism—at the expense of the traditional family, of traditional patriotism, of traditional humanism, of the traditional respect for rights of property.”

Who knows? Perhaps Greens would not have been driven to embrace such allegiances if conservatives had not abandoned their conservationist roots. The crowd that forms around Lukacs whenever he speaks to young audiences is an encouraging sign that someday soon, there may be a conservative movement that is dedicated to healing that schism.

Jeremy Beer has written on conservatism, environmentalism, and agrarianism for a number of periodicals, including First Things, Crisis, and Modern Age. From re:generation quarterly (8.1), a Cambridge, Massachusetts–based magazine that is as liable to quote Henry David Thoreau as Saint Francis of Assisi and covers a range of contemporary issues from a progressive Christian perspective. Subscriptions: $19.95/yr. (4 issues) from Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834. 

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