Hearing our opponents hijack the language of justice, equity and environmental safety frustrates the hell out of me. They lay claim to words like ‘progressive’ and ‘sustainable’, to the point where it’s use necessitates a brief investigation of what type of ‘sustainability’ the speaker actually means. (Option A – a recognition of the fallacy of infinite growth with finite resources, or option B – the continuing of that infinite growth completely ignoring those finite resources.)
So let’s not let that happen here.
The public struggles for freedom, for democracy, that have brought to life a stale Western image of the Middle East must remind us that we believe in freedom. Human rights are essentially freedoms. Equality is about freedom from oppression and discrimination. The great social movements we regard with awe – Suffragettes, Abolitionists, Diggers – all of these were centrally concerned with freedom.
I was shocked to see various conservative commentators ask questions such as ‘are we sure democracy is always right?‘ yesterday. Seems to me that when we scratch beneath the surface of these ‘free-marketeers’, what we find are conflicted, prejudiced and ill-informed views. (Read John Cassidy’s recent book How Markets Fail for a good insight on this.)
So what does this mean for us?
Too soon are climate advocates accused of undemocratic, dictatorial tendencies. For me – to suggest that a temporary suspension of democracy is necessary in order to deal with the unprecedented global problems we face reveals two failures on our behalf.
- A failure of belief in the wisdom of the crowd. Vox populi, vox dei and all that. (See here for an interesting anecdote on that phrase.)
- A failure to imagine new democratic, global governance systems through which we can take these decisions equitably.
I certainly know that that isn’t easy – seeing the UNFCCC negotiations at close hand is enough for anyone to want to run away from global dialogue. But to abandon the principal that so many of our ancestors fought for, and that many around the world still struggle for, would be to abandon any hope of a solution.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” MLK
And, to bring in an expert on language…