Further Thoughts on EU Protectionism

While looking through Technorati's webcosmos view of Prof. Norm Geras's blog, I came across a site called Crumb Trail.

Although the site's a bit less whimsical than my own, OK, it's dead serious, there's much of interest there (as well as appearing very neat and tidy in Opera 7.1, my Browser Of Choice). For example :

To be good environmentalists, to live on this planet while caring for it, we need to see ourselves in context. We are part of nature rather than separate from it. We are a consequence of natural processes and we alter those processes by simply living. We must choose how we want to live in the world and what kind of people we want to be but not all choices will result in good outcomes because physical reality constrains the range of aesthetic and ethical choices we might make. Somewhere beyond the modernist rigidity of viewing nature as Nature - a given which is submitted to with near religious awe - and postmodern relativism which sees nature as an illusory construction, there is an informed view that has elements of those earlier views but is more realistic and complex. A scientific path - ruthlessly honest, empirical, pragmatic and open to revelation - can arrive at this same destination but not all environmentalists can travel that route.

Is this damning Evironmentalism with faint praise, or just a ruthlessley honest appraisal of a movement by someone "on the inside"? I strongly suspect the latter.

It's very easy to demonise those we disagree with strongly on important matters. It's less easy to criticise the imperfections of those whose ideas are similar to one's own. A reminder that many people can be doing good for all the wrong reasons : Irrationality and Superstition may sometimes be enlisted in a good cause, but in the long term they lead to Year Zero and Auschwitz.

From a comment by Rolf Goergens on Samizdata.net :

Fischler (an Austrian) is actually the best of a bad bunch. He tried to ram through some agricultural reforms, including cuts in subsidies, but a coalition of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Ireland stopped him. If he didn't do the posturing described by the Guardian he would be toast and replaced by someone even worse.

Just as you think you have someone pegged, a nasty and inconvenient little fact gets in the way of your cosy, comfy little worldview of Good and Evil. A timely reminder that most people, even those doing considerable harm, are acting according to their consciences, and within the constraints of their Life and Times.

<humour>I exclude Postmodernists, they're Irretrievably Damned.</humour>