I've been having a little fun with Jeff Id's freaky freakouts about the leftist/socialist/Marxist plot take over Western civilization. Over at Lucia's, I've wondered why none of his fellow travelers in the skeptic sphere ever ask him to dial down his paranoid rants against Democrats and environmentalists. I never got an answer, which I suppose is an answer. Meanwhile, Jeff's come over here to say he stands by what he wrote, and challenged me to explain
why my views are wrong
Flummoxed as to how I can explain why it's a bit of an overreach to call President Obama the "extremist in chief," or why it's wrong to regularly characterize Democrats as leftists/socialists, or why it's utterly delusional to claim that "Obama has many policies which are extremist leftist and some which appear to me to be fully Marxist," I was getting ready to attempt some rational rejoinder when I saw, over at this Judith Curry thread, the utter futility of such an endeavor. It turns out that Jeff Id is not alone in his paranoia. Here's a sampling that should give him some comfort. Let's start with the dept of who knew:
Earth day is Vladimir Lenin's birthday. I was always under the impression that was intentional.
Ah, yes, it's all so obvious, the linkage:
Environmentalism, or eco-socialism, is at least as old as Marx. Indeed Marx wrote about, "the metabolic rift between man and nature". There has always been a strong link between socialism and ecology, especially throughout the 1970"²s in Eastern Europe and onwards into the present day. I don't believe you can so easily separate the two and perhaps that is why the political imperatives of a lot of AGW "solutions" seem to be more concerned with redistribution and against free market capitalism, then they are about the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Fortunately, there are voices of sanity in that thread, as well. Jeff, all I can say is to keeping checking under your bed every night for those leftist/socialist/Marxist bogeymen.
