Stigall: Liberalism Isn't Sustainable
By Chris Stigall
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- There's an often-used buzzword of younger generations today, meant to evoke a feeling of responsibility, concern, and conscientiousness. "Sustainability." You hear it tossed around by environmentalists, chefs, farmers, and teachers. You see it in ads for Whole Foods and restaurants. "Is our food supply sustainable?" "We only serve produce using 'sustainable' growing methods." And so on.
Of course, another word for this is "conservation." To conserve. Root word of conservative. Which I am. Proudly. But most people who use the word "sustainable" would sooner choke on a non-GMO, community farm raised root plant than identify with a "conservative."
Why? It is what they say they're all about, right? Unless, of course, they aren't what they say they are.
When I buy a trout tag from Pennsylvania during the season, or hunters tag their game, or tree farms plant saplings as they dig up and cut down older trees – that's conservative. That's conservation in practice. That's also sustainable behavior.
Yet, when it comes to government – such simple concepts are either not applied or are willfully ignored. Specifically, those who show up chanting for socialist Democrat Bernie Sanders – the oxymoron of "sustainability."
These are people who simply don't know or care to understand the basic structure of government. They don't know its purpose. They don't know the virtue of free markets. They are indoctrinated. They are in a bubble. If they understood the virtue of dispersed power and voluntary transactions, they would not say utterly absurd things about wealth and business while cheering authoritarian government action.
Sustainability is the opposite of what they say they want. They vote against their own best interests. Their pursuit of happiness is stunted and they think they are voting for Utopia. They think voluntary transactions are bad.
They desire a government to tell them what's best, what health insurance they must buy and at what price. Forced tax hikes, forced purchases, forced regulations, forced hiked wages – all of which kill jobs. And of course, a shrinking work force kills inflows to a government that produces nothing.
Yet, along comes a man who promises ever more "virtuous" government action – like more "free" college, while never discussing the cause of outrageous, ever-rising costs associated with higher education.
This was never the purpose of our government. Its purpose was to make liberty sustainable. To guard it. To conserve it.
Continued promises of caring for our every need – shoveling the cash of a shrinking workforce into the money-burning furnace of government – isn't sustainable.
Think of it this way, you Bern-feelers. If the United States is a forest, the government is a logging company, stripping us of every tree while never planting another. If the United States is a trout stream, the government continues catching limitless fish, never releasing them, and never raising more in the hatchery.
If sustainability matters to you, it seems to me it should matter in all facets of our lives. Not just in nature, but also in our liberties. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton may appeal to the "sustainability" crowd, but their ideas of government are the furthest thing from sustainable.