Radishes and watermelons

In the underground jargon of the Stalinist era, a radish meant a posturing Communist who really wasn't one; like a radish, he was red outside, white inside. But after the exhilarating events of last fall, the radish died an ignominious death.

No, I am thinking of the deeper similarities between the sham-environmentalist and Communist churches.

For starters, they both embrace nominal causes that have no enemies. I have never met anybody opposed to peace, social justice or brotherhood of the nations, any more than I have met anybody who wanted foul air, dirty water, reckless abandonment of toxic wastes or devastating oil spills.

In both cases these unopposed causes are baits for deception and cover-up of a hidden agenda. In the name of peace and brotherhood, mankind's liberators installed history's most bloodthirsty power elite; in the name of the environment, the profit motive is presented as evil and entire industries are being dismantled.

Marxism-Leninism is a science, not a faith, cried its bishops and priests, but the alleged science twisted the facts to fit a theo-logy. The sham-environmentalist de-industrializers masquerade as scientists, too, bringing you global warming that contradicts the historical record, yet opposing nuclear power, environmentally more benign than any other. They select facts that fit their gospel and ignore those that contradict it; that is the "science" of both churches.

No fundamentalist faith can exist without a devil to scare the sinners into true belief. The Great Satan USA or the Imperialist Warmongers are but mirror images of the evil companies who love only one thing more than profits: the wanton destruction of the environment. "Ozone depletion! Overpopulation! Radiation!" are echoes of "Spies! Saboteurs! German revanchism!"

Nor can the flock of sinners be kept within the faith without constant repentance. Self-criticism is the ritual in which the worthless sinners seek penance in the Communist church; in the environmentalist church, it is sinful to use energy, to have an in-dustry, to produce new materials, to advance science and do anything else which diverts "the masses" from the ultimate ideal of subsistence farming. "We are killing the planet!" whine the penitent sinners, "We have depleted the ozone layer! We have poisoned the oceans!"

The majesty of the priests before their flock is kept up by a double standard. In the tradition of Honnecker's and Ceausescu's swimming pools, the environmentalist priests who preach forbearance to the sinners are lavishly financed by the leftist foundations; they get hysterical about Brazil burning forests, yet they wouldn't be here if their American or European forefathers had not burnt the forests to make room for agriculture; they are kept alive by the world's most advanced medicine so they can rant against genetic engineering and about animals' rights; they write about energy from sunbeams and chicken manure on word processors running on nuclear power.

But above all, they are blood brothers of the totalitarians by their obsessive love of coercion and by their deep contempt of their professed hero, "the people," whom they do not trust to make individual decisions. They panic frantically at the suggestion of energy conservation by price in a free market; for it can be achieved only by decrees, regimentation, prohibition and penalties, all of them ultimately enforced by the gun. Collectivist coercion is the very essence of both churches' gospel.

Obey ye the commandments of environmental stalinism: