Soccer Dad

The silent iconoclasm

Friday's Washington Post featured a hagiographic treatment of Rachel Carson, "An Environmental Icon's Unseen Fortitude" in honor of her 100th birthday. Carson, who died in 1964, is widely credited with starting the environmental movement with the publication of her book "Silent Spring" that led to the banning of the pesticide DDT.

The problem is that in recent years there's been a re-thinking of DDT and it's introduction is being encouraged (in limited circumstances). Why? Because it fights the mosquitoes that cause malaria. Rich Karlgaard writes (h/t Instapundit)

Buried in paragraph 27, and paraphrasing the Congressman, The Washington Post concedes that "numerous" deaths might have been prevented by DDT.

Let's stop here. Any curious reader would ask, Just how "numerous" is numerous? Wouldn't you ask that question? The Post never asks that question. Why?

Because the answer devastates Rachel Carson and her followers. According to these CDC figures, malaria kills more than 800,000 children under age five every year.

Every year, 800,000 small children die from malaria, a disease once nearly eradicated. Ponder that.

(Actually it was State Senator who also happens to be a physician, not a Congressman.)

So more than forty years later, Carson's efforts can be shown to have had a negative effect, yet the Washington Post barely recognizes that, focusing instead on her heroism. But why doesn't the Washington Post acknowledge the problem with Carson's work more explicitly? Is environmentalism such a faith that it requires unthinking devotion?

And if environmental dogma is so important what does it say about a liberal newspaper ability to report accurately on other environmental matters (or even scientific matters like embryonic stem cell research)? The dogma apparently does trump the science. Funny, but I thought it was conservatives who put ideology ahead of facts.

It also makes me wonder about another famous person who was profiled on the front page of Friday's Washington Post, Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz has now been forced to resign his position as president of the World Bank because of a manufactured scandal involving his lady friend. He had asked that she be re-assigned but the Bank's board of directors directed him to handle the personnel matter and then accused him of favoritism.

The article on Wolfowitz starts off with some nice observations about the man and acknowledges the Wall Street Journal's defense of him. But then the long knives are out.

The immediate cause of Wolfowitz's resignation was a pay deal he ordered for Shaha Riza, a bank employee with whom he was romantically involved. But the public vitriol that poured from the bank once his fall began in late March with revelations about the deal underscored wider problems.

Far from respecting the bank, member governments and staffers charged, Wolfowitz surrounded himself with doctrinaire former White House and Republican officials and gave them wide authority. He altered long-standing policies and imposed new ones without consulting the staff or member governments. He risked the bank's credibility and the future of the poor countries it serves.

A turning point came last month when Wolfowitz's handpicked managing director, New Zealander Graeme Wheeler, told him he should resign for the good of the institution. In a signed letter to the Financial Times, more than three dozen former top bank officials described his signature anti-corruption initiative as "implemented with no consultation, and little transparency or apparent consistency." Employees wore blue ribbons supporting "good governance," a signal that they wanted Wolfowitz to go.

Proof of Wolfowitz's estrangement from the bank came when he hired a famously aggressive lawyer to fight for his job and warned that if he were fired, the bank's reputation would fall along with his own.

Imagine that, Wolfowitz implemented an anti-corruption initiative without consulting his betters! I can understand that the World Bank may think that it has all the money in the world to play with and that corruption may therefore be tolerated.

Wolfowitz's predecessor, James Wolfensohn, invested hundreds of thousands of his own money in Gaza greenhouses that were later destroyed by the people he sought to help. If his stewardship of other people's money was as poor as his stewardship of his own, it would explain why an anti-corruption drive might ruffle more than a few feathers at the World Bank.

Yet, Wolfowitz had his supporters such as Nuhu Ribadu

FOR the past few weeks, the world has been riveted by the difficulties of Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, regarding a potential conflict of interest involving the salary of his partner, also a senior official there. With the bank’s board deliberating this week over how to handle the charges, the controversy now needlessly and regrettably threatens Mr. Wolfowitz’s presidency, which has been largely defined by his energetic support for a new Africa that is struggling to emerge.

Over the last two years, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively directed the bank’s energies toward fighting poverty and improving human life. He is a champion of using international development institutions to deal with some of the world’s major problems. And he has been a steadfast supporter of the efforts of African organizations to rescue our people from the scourge of misrule, which leads to poverty, disease and early death.

Over the last three years, Nigeria, once the emblem of outlandish corruption, has become a leading reformer, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which I head, has been at the cutting edge of these efforts. The enormous challenges we face would have proved almost insurmountable without external help, especially from the World Bank under Mr. Wolfowitz.

If one were really cynical, one would say that there's a tinge of racism to Wolfowitz's forced resignation. After all he championed a better Africa, but invested European interests wouldn't have that.

But more generally, will we, in forty years, see an article in the Washington Post revering Wolfowitz for his anti-corruption efforts? Will he be viewed as martyr to selfish interests in the future? My guess is that we won't see any such article in a liberal newspaper, as Wolfowitz is not a liberal icon. He will alway be viewed as "doctrinaire."

Iconoclasm is defined by Wikipedia as "...he deliberate destruction within a culture of the culture's own religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives." Liberalism has no room for iconoclasm. It accepts only blind obedience and no skepticism.

I suppose that there is some of that in any set of political beliefs, in conservatism too. In liberalism today there's a tension because of the certitude of its correctness and its claim to openmindedness. The canonization of Rachel Carson despite the evidence she was wrong and the skepticism directed toward Paul Wolfowitz, though he may well be right is consistent with this certitude.

I used to call this "liberal orthodoxy," but others gave it the name "political correctness." And it is one of the reasons I got turned off to liberalism 20+ years ago.

UPDATE: I edited this and changed a few things to sharpen my point. This post is slightly different from the original.

Environmentalism, Rachel Carson, Paul Wolfowitz, Liberalism.

Posted by SoccerDad at May 22, 2007 6:26 AM