As a devotee to the concept that truth is fractal and complex I try to read from a number of political perspectives. No one has a corner on truth and no one is above getting it wrong but sometimes I read something that makes it seems as if someone is just trying to go out of their way to be thick, David French’s article ‘The Green New Deal is Everything That is Wrong With Progressive Environmentalism‘ is just such a thing.
The core argument of the essay is that progressives even when they are motivated singular subject cannot resist the allure of their various causes and these drag unrelated topics in an every expansive net to transform, alter, and control American culture. As evidence of this he cites Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s legislative proposal ‘The Green New Deal,’ and the numerous issues it addresses beyond climate change and environmentalism. He is right that the issues addressed range far and wide but he’s wrong to suggest that this is some sort of nefarious mission creep or a legislative Trojan Horse, the title alone is enough to explain the scope of her proposal.
The title ‘The Green New Deal’ is comprised of three elements, we can safely ignore the article as simply something required by English grammar leaving us with two elements, “Green” and “New Deal.”
Green clearly refers to the environment and currently the point of concern is Global Climate chiefly driven by human induced atmospheric pollution. Here French seems to have stopped reading the title of the legislation and his piece works off the assumption that everything in it is about and should be restricted to environmental policies but there is that second element to consider.
The New Deal was a set of sweeping program, financial reforms, public work projects, and yes social engineering enacted during the Administration of FDR in the decade before America’s entry into World War II. Now, set aside if The New Deal was a good idea or a bad one, a successful government project or not, those questions are immaterial to the French’s disingenuous or dense observation about AOC’s proposal. As French states in his piece ‘Because when you read the document you quickly realize that progressivism is the priority, not the environment.’
The entire critique is built upon the assumption that The Green New Deal is only about the Green and not at all about The New Deal. The title was chosen, clearly, to harken to back to what the Democratic Party, and many others, feel was the shinning success that came about following the Great Depression and ignoring that aspect is misleading and unworthy of a columnist’s precious word count. AOC clearly plans social engineering on the scale or FDR’s and she is not hiding that intent behind bland euphemisms like ‘Enhanced Interrogation,’ ‘Job Creators,’ or ‘Persons of Wealth.’
So I put it to you, who is being dishonest and trying to hoodwink the public?
