THE OLD BOY'S CLUB PROTECTS ITS OWN

“Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost.” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Katherine Betts on why the NEW CLASS supports OPEN BORDERS

Australian sociologist Katherine Betts has examined this phenomenon. She uses the term "new class" (a group similar to what former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich calls "symbolic analysts" to describe the intelligentsia, professionally-educated internationalists and cosmopolitans, lawyers, academics, journalists, teachers, artists, activists, and globetrotting business people and travelers. Her cogent analysis of why the new class has eschewed the cause of limiting immigration in Australia is germane to the case of U. S. environmental leaders: "The concept of immigration control has become contaminated in the minds of the new class by the ideas of racism, narrow self-seeking nationalism, and a bigoted preference for cultural homogeneity....Their enthusiasm for anti-racism and international humanitarianism is often sincere but there are also social pressures supporting this sincere commitment and making apostasy difficult." And later: "Ideologically correct attitudes to immigration have offered the warmth of in-group acceptance to supporters and the cold face of exclusion to dissenters." Similar analysis in the United States suggests that it is "politically incorrect" to talk of reducing immigration. (Leon Kolankiewicz
Forsaking Fundamentals)

I think we can begin to broaden our understanding of Betts’ conception of the “New Class”, this smug intelligentsia of rootless globe-trotting cosmopolitans who belong to a mutual admiration society of academics, by taking note of their networking. It is very much an Old Boys Club. If one tries to bring one of them down, the rest of the fraternity will be sure to react in his defense, for after all, he is a fellow academic, not one of the great unwashed.

Brishen Hoff well recalls when he tried to bring Dr. Rees to account for repeatedly failing to get him to answer a fundamental question. (“How bad would Canada’s environment have to get before you would say that we had absorbed too many refugees—how many Canadians can we sustain, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 million? Can you give us a number Dr. Rees?) Then I tried, with due deference, and failed. Then Eric Rimmer tried with the greatest deference, and failed. And still, those with advanced academic credentials found reasons to excuse his stonewalling. He was the great Dr. William Rees, after all, and deserved to write one seminal book and then spend the duration of his career spouting soft green growth management soft soap.

Dr. Suzuki, on the other hand, while not the charming gentleman off camera as Bill, was nevertheless, to be included as part of the celebrity union. Tim Flannery was moved to call him “the greatest environmentalist of our age”. Good God. I knew we were in deep trouble. But I didn’t realize we were in that much trouble. And I didn’t know that the Australians were in that much trouble. I mean, if that is their idea of the greatest environmentalist. A man who tells us on page 98 of his “Green Guide” not to participate in fishing, but routinely flies up to the Queen Charlotte Islands and fishes beyond the limits under the cover of his Aboriginal friends and then flies to a Toronto CBC studio to preach to us about living within our limits. A man who sires 5 five kids who most probably collectively emit more than 100 metric tonnes of GHG gasses lecturing Canadians about making smaller footprints.

And yet, the New Class, the Quisling academics and the bourgeois Green celebrities, even those who stress population stability rather than simply per capita consumption or efficiency improvements, rally around him. In recommending Suzuki’s Book, “Good News”, Paul Ehrlich said, “If you’re beyond debating whether the planet is in trouble, read this book.” Even Robert Bateman, who is among the few who recognizes that population growth is killing Canada’s environment, remarked, “If you want to take heart and catch the wave of the new ‘industrial revolution’, read this book and pass it on. It is amazing, and it what’s more important, it is inspiring.”

It is no wonder that revolutionaries never trusted the intelligentsia. In fact they were the first on their hit list, for they would always provide sanctuary for their birds of a feather on the other side. Kim Philby may have defected to our side, comrade, but underneath, he still wreaks of a public school Engish cricket player, and will give quarter and to an enemy of his social background. Suzuki’s children are my sworn class enemies and their environmentalism is the environmentalism of upper class moralists who tell us to cut back consumption when we have never had enjoyed a fraction of their wealth. Suzuki’s carbon tax is a tax prescribed by someone who never was a single mother and could only afford to drive a “beater” to pick up her kids from school on the way home from a minimum wage job. His retro-fits and solar panels are fantasy options for working families just trying to pay the rent or meet the mortgage payment. The population density inside and outside the modest homes where working folks lived was never a New Class reality, and never will be as long as they can escape to weekend or foreign retreats. So immigration control is not even on their radar screen. Take Suzuki’s escapist “Green Guide”. Here are some of his recommendations:

“Smaller Footprint”: No mention of reducing the number of footprints.

“Advocate Policies That Could Save the Planet” : You can bet that ending Canada’s policy of foreign aid to developing countries that is not made conditional on family planning is not one of the them. Or closing the borders to migration and re-deploying the enormous money wasted on immigration to doubling conditional foreign aid is not among his recommendations. Even though immigrants to North America quadruple their GHG footprint and accelerate the timetable of our collective demise.

“Participate in Community Activities”: He is infamous for non-involvement in local activities here. Especially the Official Community Plan consultations, which could have used a powerful voice to fight growth. But apparently his battle is with growth in the abstract.

“Donate”:To whom? A soft-green politically-correct organization that wants to manage growth instead of fight it, that wants to concede defeat before the battle is fought by taking the defeatist line that growth is “inevitable” so let’s manage it? That pretends that population growth can be nullified by land-use planning and nature reserves and ah yes, by Green Living guides like this one?

“Vote for the People Who Are Ecologically Literate” (ie. Myopic on population issues) Here is an environmentalist who, along with the rest of the Canadian environmental establishment, awarded the Green Party of Canada top marks for its policy on climate change, and the Liberals and New Democrats not far behind , simply because they promised to freeze expansion of the Alberta tar sands development and introduce a carbon tax. But he neglected to notice than neither the Greens nor the Liberals and NDP would actually dismantle the tar sands monster that was pouring out 40 million metric tonnes of GHG gasses each year. More troubling, all three opposition parties were advocating an immigration increase of 38% which would hike GHG emissions by the same amount when immigration was already contributing a quarter of all GHG emissions. All things considered, the incumbent Conservatives were the greener choice. Which stands to reason, because the environmental NGOs all gave them an F.

No matter. On election night, the voters gave the opposition parties a resounding “No”!, and by extension, an even more emphatic ‘No!” to the David Suzuki Foundation and its Green clones.