Is the Unabomber and Ecobomber; A. Caruba

THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Is the Unabomberan Ecobomber? by Alan Caruba T he assault-by-mail terrorist known as the Unabomber is likely to kill again despite the decision of the Washington Post and the New York Times to publish his manifesto. The decision, prompted by the U.S. Department of Justice and the F.B.I., will only delay the inevitable. Lost amidst the controversy surrounding the decision to publish under the threat of renewed killing, is the fact that the Una bomber's views and actions reflect the true agenda of those who, since the 1970s, have been the driving force behind the environ mental movement. The Unabomber's crusade is the logical end result of a movement which holds a deep distrust and contempt for humanity, tech nology, and what is generally understood to be progress in diverse areas that include agriculture, the science of genetics, medi cine, computer technology, and just about anything that contributes to a thriving econ omy.

In a letter to The New York Times, he said, "Through our bombings we hope to pro mote social instability in industrial society, propagate anti-industrial ideas and give en couragement to those who hate the indus trial system .... The people who are pushMr. Caruba is the founder of the National Anxiety Center, which monitors "scare cam paigns" in the media. All rights reserved. ing all this growth and progress garbage deserve to be severely punished." To any participant or observer of the environmental movement, it's fairly aston ishing that anyone could have failed to notice that views comparable to the Una bomber's have been appearing in print for more than two decades, since the inception of the environmental movement. In a 1970 book, Ecotactics, which fea tured an introduction by Ralph Nader, state ments comparable to the Unabomber's can be found on every page. An unidentified writer for a group called EeOS rants against "an aggressive technology and economic system, which, in a rush to provide for and to profit from the human population, de stroys other forms of life and contaminates our environment to a degree unprecedented in human history." The writer rejects "a world in which the individual is victimized by the impersonal machinery of his technol ogy." While decrying violence, the writer concludes that "The only natural resource left on this planet that man seems unable to reduce to the disaster level is the capacity for discontent. Our organization, Environ ment!, is designed to harvest this resource and apply it to the complex problems of survival. "

The ECOS writer was right at home with Nader's introductory view that Americans were living in a society of "oppression and 726 suppression" by business and industrial entities. Thus, Nader's first priority was "to deprive the polluters of their unfounded legitimacy. " In a New York Times article on June 30, reporter Robert D. McFadden hinted at the contents of the Unabomber's 35,OOO-word manifesto. It "sketches a nightmarish vision of a deteriorating society and a future in which the human race is at the mercy of intelligent machines created by computer scientists .... Out of the chaos, he ex pressed the hope that a return to 'wild nature' might prevail." In contrast, writing in his book, No Turn ing Back: Dismantling the Fantasies of Environmental Thinking, Wallace Kaufman says, "Our progress has been the result largely of Western science and technology. Unlike cultures that have only feared and revered nature, industrialized cultures have pursued dominion over nature and subdued most of its dangerous tendencies, achieving what no other culture has done. No other tradition has developed a sophisticated technology capable of feeding six billion people and monitoring the condition of the environment. " While the Unabomber was selecting his victims, Kaufman wrote, "A movement that rejects this tradition is dan gerously out of touch with reality ... "

Fellow Travelers Who shares the Unabomber's view of industrialized society? Paul Erlich, the pop ulation doomsayer; Lester Brown whose Worldwatch Institute has been predicting worldwide environmental disaster for de cades; and even our Vice President, Albert 727 Gore, Jr. In his book, Earth In the Balance, Gore says, "The edifice of civilization has become astonishing complex, but as it grows ever more elaborate, we feel increas ingly distant from our roots in the earth." Since the 1970s the U.S. environmental movement has imposed a huge matrix of laws that have gone beyond setting reason able standards for the environment. As a result, whole sectors of the economy have been impeded. Environmental laws cur rently represent thirty percent of Washing ton's entire regulatory budget. But the bur den of the economy is only half the story. Disaffected, though dedicated, environmen talists have raised voices of alarm and warn ing concerning the beliefs that drive the Unabomber. Called "Deep Ecology," the Unabomber' s philosophy fuels groups like Earth First! and fanatical animal rights ad vocates. In his book, Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Envi ronmentalism, Martin Lewis noted that deep ecology is a philosophy best labeled "antihumanist anarchism."

In fact, there are several "schools" of deep ecology or environmentalism. They include primitivism, antihumanist anar chism, and eco-Marxism. Lewis notes that "primitivists advocate not merely the return to a small-scale social order proposed by other deep ecologists, but rather the active destruction of civilization. " "Primitivist" may be a good description of the Unabomber, but it really doesn't matter what label is attached to him. His actions represent the goals that ultimately emerge from the core values shared by those who seek to direct the environmental move ment worldwide. D THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY MaverickMark Twain's Exhilarating American Individualism by Jim Powell N obody expressed rugged American in dividualism better than Samuel Lang horne Clemens-Mark Twain. This might seem surprising to those who think of him only as the author of children's classics like The Adventures of Tom Saw yer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connect icut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. But adults going back to the books are soon reminded how they passionately affirm the moral worth of individual human beings.