Mad Dogs and Ideologues

By Randy Alcorn
June 2, 2015

By now most of us who pay any attention to American politics know that the nation is dominated by two opposing ideological camps, the liberals and the conservatives, whose ardent adherents have pretty much reduced all discussion of the nation’s issues to doctrinaire simplicities. The ferocity with which they band together and hold their positions is rivaled only by that of packs of feral dogs.

In this contest of snarling mutts the conservatives have clearly been the winners. Like hyper-vigilant junkyard dogs, they bark the loudest and almost incessantly. And, when it comes to sheer irrational viciousness, especially when attacking Barack Obama, whom they detest with a mouth-foaming rage, conservatives are simply rabid. They are so unhinged by the Obama presidency that they believe that routine U.S. military exercises in Texas are Obama’s secret plan to impose martial law on that state. Even the Republican governor of Texas succumbed to this wacky conspiracy fantasy and put the state’s guard on alert.

Given such blatant ideological buffoonery and the implacable policy positions of obsessive conservatives, it is easy to blame them for the nation’s political gridlock and dysfunctional government. But, they are not the only ones dispossessed of logic by seething political passion.

Liberals can display the same fixed ideological absurdities, ignoring facts and dismissing commonsense to support their self-convictions. One of those convictions is racial victimhood that presumes unfavorable conditions suffered by racial minorities are mostly, if not entirely, due to “economic injustice” and to limited opportunity perpetuated by lingering, latent racism. Racism is to modern America what witchcraft was to Medieval Europe and is used the same way to discredit and condemn those targeted by the self-righteous.

The issue of illegal immigration is approached by liberals as part of their crusade against racism and that approach was on full display recently when the Los Angles Times ran a front page story about Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), a non-profit conservationist organization. CAPS states the obvious mathematical reality that California’s current severe drought would not be so critical if the state had less people residing in it.

The organization dared mention such facts as each additional resident increases demand of scarce water by 140 gallons per day, and that nearly all of California’s whopping 25% increase in population over the past 20 years is from foreign immigrants and their children. It happens that most of those foreign immigrants are from Mexico and entered the state illegally.

But just as the growling dogs on the right ignore science and the facts to deny climate change, the smugly indignant canines on the left ignore the facts and logic about over-population, choosing instead to reduce the issue to a matter of racism. Making that calumnious indictment deflects attention away from the data and from reason while vilifying those who present it. CAPS was quickly labeled as racist by those offended, or perhaps frightened, by the fact based rational for CAPS’ position on population growth exacerbating the drought.

As a past board member of CAPS I know that the folks there are not concerned about where people come from or who they are. They are concerned about keeping human population at levels that do not exceed the biosphere’s capacity to comfortably and safely sustain all life. CAPS is concerned about all immigration, legal and illegal, and from anywhere. It does not matter if excessive population is European, Asian, Hispanic, or Martian. Too many is too many. Mexicans or Swedes, each still takes up space and sucks up finite resources.

But, in the heat of liberal passion that unavoidable reality evaporates like water from California’s disappearing reservoirs. So, is California doomed to desertification because liberal sensibilities cannot refuse admission to hordes of Hispanics because, well, they are Hispanics and turning them away would be racist? Is this anymore destructively asinine than devout conservatives opposing birth-control and abortion because they believe life begins at ejaculation?

Neither breed of ideological mad-dog is capable of objective thought or finding rational solutions to real problems. Neither is more interested in truth than in doctrine and neither should be allowed to dominate the nation’s politics and government as they have been doing.

California’s drought is serious and potentially catastrophic. To allow ideological mad- dogs to discredit objective analysis that factually identifies all causes of drought, and that impedes logical approaches to addressing it will eventually bite all of us.   

Randy Alcorn is a Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and can be reached at [email protected].