The Redhunter

Strange. Not so long ago, car ads prioritized liberty. Your vehicle opened up new horizons: Gitcha motor running, head out on the highway, looking for adventure. . . . To sell dull automobiles to people who lived in suburban cul de sacs, manufacturers showed them roaring round hairpin bends, deep into forests, splashing through rivers, across the desert plain, invariably coming to rest on the edge of a spectacular promontory on the roof of the world offering a dizzying view of half the planet. Freedom!

But now Audi flogs you its vehicles on the basis that it's the most convenient way to submit to arbitrary state authority. Forty years ago, when they first began selling over here, it's doubtful the company would have considered this either a helpful image for a German car manufacturer or a viable pitch to the American male.

But times change. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out, all the men in the Audi ad are the usual befuddled effete new-male eunuchs that infest all the other commercials. The sort of milksop who'll buy the TDI and then, when the Green Police change their regulatory requirements six weeks later, obediently take it back to the shop and pay however many thousand bucks to have it brought it into compliance with whatever the whimsical tyrant's emissions regime requires this month.

Indeed we are trading our liberty for illusory environmental gains.

I've noticed a few things about this entire matter, especially surrounding the topic of global warming climate change.

One, the same people who screamed and hollered that the Patriot Act was the ultimate violation of our civil liberties have no problem regulating the most minute aspect of our lives when it's in the name of environmentalism. They will create the most gargantuan bureaucracies with the most vast powers, and which are largely unaccountable to lawmakers. But mention that maybe we shouldn't treat would-be airplane bombers as common criminals, and you'd think the world was about to end.

Two, if you're against any part of the environmentalist agenda, you must also be against any sort of regulation whatsoever and in favor of air and water pollution. Don't believe me? Here are the two comments left at my blog after my first post on the Green Police ad:

Are you saying there are no environmental problems severe enough to warrant government intervention? There are limits to what voluntary civic action can achieve. Actually I think these low-emission light-bulb campaigns etc are good examples of how calls for voluntarist action so often wind up irritating people, creating a backlash.

Shouldn't there be laws on the books preventing companies from dumping hazardous chemicals into water supplies, for example? And if environmental regulations are sometimes necessary, why is it so absurd that the government should enforce them? If a company is caught dumping illegally, shouldn't the CEO be arrested? Call this the "green police" if you want, but I doubt you'd want to live in a society where government didn't intervene to protect drinking water standards.

I know that we disagree about climate change, but seeing as you have ridiculed my country of birth I will at least say this. The UK government has decided that CO2 is a pollutant (as has your own, for that matter). If they want to regulate it, good for them.

Posted by: Mylne Karimov at February 10, 2010 1:27 PM

If you look at the website for the NY "Green Police", their enforcement covers petroleum spills, illegal burning, dumping oil in storm drains, and chemical spills.

Those crazy greens!!!! Next they will have notions about not letting me cut down tree on my own property!!!

To protest this we could have our own tea party. I'll dump oil in the storm drain, and you can crap directly into the river that provides water supplies for your neighbors. That will put an end to this green madness!!!

Posted by: jason at February 10, 2010 1:37 PM

It'll be interesting to see what I get this time.