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Thursday, July 17, 2008

A Liberal Behind the Times with a New Label

A while back I saw a sign at a business owned by an ardent liberal who touts his business for being green. The sign brags about serving drinks in eco-friendly glass mugs, recycling cardboard, selling plastic pails for reuse, sending deep-frying oil to be reused and buying energy efficient appliances.

I guess it must be a badge of honor to be green. Among liberals it also must be a badge of honor to slap one’s own back for this great accomplishment. Why it’s like getting a gold star on your completed assignment in grade school!

So how green is this business? Well, this very business was serving drinks in eco-friendly glass mugs back in the ’50s before the current business owner was even born. (Did you know that glass has been around for more than a thousand years and plastic less than a hundred?!!!) If this makes them green today, then they were green back then. Recycling cardboard has been around a long time and assuredly since the ’50s—nothing new here. Why capitalists even buy the stuff to recycle, creating a whole new industry! Yah, and we recycle plastic too.

Recycling deep-frying oil is easy to do. In fact, truckers arrange to pick up the used oil for their own fuel. It’s so easy to do that a business owner almost has to stubbornly refuse to avoid that capitalistic, money-saving venture.

As far as buying energy efficient appliances goes, it’s almost impossible to buy one that is not energy efficient. As decades-old appliances wear out, energy efficient replacement comes from the capitalistic manufacturing market so that a business owner doesn’t have to do much to be the beneficiary of it. Sure there are choices regarding the levels of efficiency (depending on the cost), but all the appliances are more efficient than a few decades ago.

So what’s so great about these things? Nothing. Republican business owners do this everyday without bragging, simply because these are good business practices. Why even some Democrats do the same without touting their business as green. Amazing, but true!

Why does a liberal have to brag about being green? Any merchant is in business for the best profit that can be made. The above practices either make or save money. They also happen to be eco-friendly. A conservative likes to conserve money, conserve energy, conserve on and reuse waste and we like to conserve our environment too. We do it all the time, but don’t brag about it. Perhaps because conservatives don’t tout their eco-conservation, they are viewed as eco-unfriendly.

Liberals do absolutely nothing better than the conservative business owners do, but they label themselves as green. Thus they feel better about themselves. They have less guilt for using the environment which they do just as much as those nasty capitalists. And their elitist green customers feel so much better when they make a capitalistic purchase at a green business.

Being green is all about feeling good and nothing more. Being green is the anti-depressant used to counteract feeling guilty for just living on planet earth.

We conservatives feel good naturally by living on planet earth conservatively and thanking God for his bountiful gifts to us.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I wanted to put a finer point on this question: "Why does a liberal have to brag about being green?"

Although you mentioned that business owners are in it for profit generally, it cannot be stressed enough that "being green" has become a marketing tool of the highest magnitude. Car makers, oil companies, big screen TV manufacturers, even a local junk yard owner is peddling his crappy used lawnmowers as "green" because they are "recycled."

It is getting so you can't tell the true believers from the cynical profiteers anymore.

"Green" is just a slogan used by people who want to sell products to easily duped people with environmental guilt and nothing more. Even more specifically, it is for people who can be made to feel they have "done their part" through meaningless purchasing decisions.

"I don't have to make any sacrifices. I bought a Sony."

It is the "Where's the beef" of the new millenium. Unfortunately for enviromentalists, once everything is marketed as "green" (even though its not, like the business you mentioned) it will get more and more difficult to tell people they aren't doing enough.

In other words: It will backfire, just like everything else from the left.