Lessig: We Are Squandering Away The Future

Illissius writes "Lawrence Lessig has a new article up on Wired, with the title Our Kids Are in Big Trouble. I suck at summarizing, so here's a choice quote: 'Gone is the sense of duty that made so compelling Kennedy's demand "ask what you can do for your country." We don't even ask what we, as a nation, can do for our kids. The rhetoric of self-interest so deeply pervades politics that an ideal as fundamental as building a better future has been lost.'"

Comments

Re:Libertarianism and the failure of selfishness

[ronfar]

I know it's fashionable these days to claim to be a libertarian of one stripe or another, but the fundamental philosophy of libertarianism -- "greed is the ultimate good" -- is to share a large part of the blame here.

The fundamental philosophy of libertarianism is that Liberty is the ultimate good. Government bureaucrats are the ones responsible for the current mass slaughter in Iraq, and are indeed Satanic.

Liberal Guilt syndrome

[RealProgrammer]

The heart of his article is one paragraph. I'll split it up into sentences, since it's too off-base to do all at once.

Think about our behavior over the past four years.

"Our" behavior? What have "we" been doing? Mr. Lessig suffers from LGS, Liberal Guilt Syndrome, which demands that we feel bad about everything good that happens. Further, he tries to disguise his obvious criticism of President Bush by not naming him but declaring it to be "our" behavior.

We have cut taxes but increased spending, benefiting us but burdening our kids.

I agree that having a plan to both cut taxes and increase spending is not wise, but it's not so simple as that. President Bush inherited the dot-bomb crash, and decided to cut taxes to cope with it. He did recommend a bunch of spending increases that I can't support, and then there was that pesky 9/11 thing. Mr. Lessig glosses over that, though, because it doesn't fit his reality.

We have relaxed the control of greenhouse emissions, creating cheaper energy for us but astronomically higher costs for our kids, if they are to avoid catastrophic climatic change.

Mr. Bush extended the grandfathering of older power plants to get up to speed wrt the Clean Air Act and other regulations. He pulled out of that stupid Kyoto treaty. None of that is "relaxing" controls. Even if he had relaxed controls, it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans as far as the climate is concerned. Global warming is not a real thing. It's a phony emergency invented by the Left to further their own agenda.

We have waged an effectively unilateral war against Iraq, giving some a feeling of resolve but engendering three generations of angry souls focused upon a single act of revenge: killing Americans.

What's wrong per se with a unilateral war? Most wars are unilateral. The President, rightly or wrongly, judged that Iraq was a threat to our national security. He waited 14 months while the leadership of United Nations lined their pockets with money stolen from the Oil for Food program. He got Congressional approval for military action. We are not beholden to any other nation or group of nations as to what military action we do or do not take. As to whether generations of Iraqis will hate us, I don't know. I do know they are glad to be out from under Saddam.

And we have suffocated stem cell research through absurdly restrictive policies, giving the sanctimonious ground upon which to rally, while guaranteeing that kids with curable diseases will suffer unnecessary deaths. In each case, we have burdened children - that one group that can't complain - so as to supposedly benefit those of us who do.

The policy is: don't kill anybody to get your stem cells. What's so drastic about that? Especially since there's no evidence, NONE, that fetal stem cells can help cure anybody of anything. Rather, they tend to grow cancers.

So next time, I hope he sticks to ripping Darl McBride.