GayandRight

My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam. I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Friday, January 25, 2008

The Greens need authoritarianism...

Yes, the only way they can get us to drastically change the way we live is to change the way we are governed....
Have you ever heard anyone make the argument that we must take a certain course of action because the experts tell us we must? The issue might be the threat of another country or an environmental risk, but increasingly we see appeals to authority used as the basis for arguing for this or that action.

In a new book, David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith take the appeal to experts somewhat further and argue that in order to deal with climate change we need to replace liberal democracy with an authoritarianism of scientific expertise. They write in a recent op-ed:

Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. . .

There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties. . .

We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions.

On their book page they write:

[T]he authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"but this will be governance by experts
and not by those who seek power."

Same thing.

10:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Scientific authoritarianism will inevitably overflow the boundaries of simple environmentalism and into other areas... Eugenics, anyone?

10:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Experts, eh? Didn't the intelligence authorities/experts from all the countries of the world conclude that Iraq had WMD's?

Whoops.

11:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

it means evil scientists meet stalin kinda government...maybe its a good idea...

4:31 AM  

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