Phony Sustainability and Liberal Extinction

Are liberals extincting themselves? Is San Francisco a model for the decline of liberalism? Is the whole idea of Sustainability as a religion a complete myth? Liberals keep talking about sustainability. What is that?

From Chicago Boyz Smitten Eagle:

Perhaps we ought to redefine what sustainability is. It ought not mean organic soy milk, fair-trade coffee, the Toyota Prius, or voting for Obama along with the rest of your sorority. It should be more radical than that. It should be an unabashedly pro-human philosophy, as we should recognize that sustaining humanity is our top mission, not sustaining nature. This means using nature for human benefit, not Gaia’s. It means giving economic vitality to humans by creating trade pacts where they can export to the world market. It means opposing autarky. It means recognizing that human life is more important than nature, and affirming humans’ mastery of nature. This sustainability is really humanism, and is the stuff of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the Globalization, where in each case people have created systems to increase fertility, wealth, and freedom.

And Victor David Hansen's take on Liberal Sustainability:

I spent some time speaking in San Francisco recently… There are smartly dressed yuppies, wealthy gays, and chic business people everywhere downtown, along with affluent tourists, all juxtaposed with hordes of street people and a legion of young service workers at Starbucks, restaurants, etc. What is missing are school children, middle class couples with strollers, and any sense the city has a vibrant foundation of working-class, successful families of all races and backgrounds. For all its veneer of liberalism, it seems a static city of winners and losers, victory defined perhaps by getting into a spruced up Victorian versus renting in a bad district, getting paid a lot to manage something, versus very little to serve something. All in all, I got a strange creepy feeling that whatever was going on, it was unsustainable–sort of like an encapsulated Europe within an American city. The city seems to exist on tourism, and people who daily come into the city to provide a service, get paid–and leave….

I remember SF in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a kid visiting with his parents. A much different place altogether of affordable homes, vibrant docks, lots of construction—and children everywhere.

While I agree with VDH I think its tragic that a whole artificial culture has devolved into this. Let's hope for sanity. Growth and Development of our internal creative ability will get us out of this, not artificial sustainability.