]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]      THEIR BOOKS      [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ 
                                                            (5/29/88)
     In the late 60s, you were an unworthy worm and uncouth barbarian 
if you had not read "The Greening of America" by Harvard professor 
Reich. It was the rave of the day. It celebrated loafing, rejecting 
all civilized ("square") standards, and recommended watching the sys-
tem self-destruct. It was the Bible of the hippies.
     Where is it now? It has vanished even from the garbage piles into 
total non-existence. Nobody can even remember the author's first name 
any more (was it Charles?). When Malcolm Muggeridge was asked for 
comments, he quoted Samuel Johnson: ``You can't argue with unmitigated 
imbecility." Yet Johnson's and Muggeridge's writings live on; Reich's 
are gone without a trace. Why?
     Because Reich's book had the fleeting life expectancy earned by 
unsupported accusations of the old civilization and by his recommenda-
tions of a new and empty life style.
     It may well have been the accusations that made Reich's book 
popular, but the poisonous seed must have had some very fertile ground 
to fall on: resentment of the old civilization, or at least the old 
power structure. 
     Certainly it is these two components that make the anti-
scientific and sham-environmentalist literature bloom. The false and 
scary accusation, amplified by the media din, is always a sure atten-
tion getter: it's radioactive (that alone, today, constitutes an accu-
sation); it causes cancer; it leads to genetic mutations; it destroys 
the ozone layer; it causes acid rain; it destroys still more wilder-
ness; and so forth.
     But however persistently trumpeted by the media, the junk does 
not last. The absurdities put out by charlatans like Paul Ehrlich, 
Ernest Sternglass, Helen Caldicott, Ralph Nader and the rest of them 
must constantly be replaced by fresh drivel to be kept alive.
     Where is Ehrlich's "Population Bomb"? On the junk heap with 
Reich's Greening. Where is Commoners "Closing Circle?" Greening with 
mold. Where is Nader's "Nuclear Menace"? Molding with Sternglass' 
"Killing our own" and Caldicott's "Missile envy" and the rest of the 
garbage that never even has anything new to say, for it forever feeds 
on itself: there is no way to dispose of nuclear wastes, there is no 
safe level of radioactivity, there are pockets of increased cancer 
incidence round nuclear plants, and the other repetitious lies.
     Even the sham-environmentalist "classics," Rachel Carson's 
"Silent Spring" and E.F. Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful" are for all 
practical purposes dead. They are forced on students by the reactio-
nary fossils who still call the tune in Academia. But who else reads 
the emotional nonsense preached by Carson or Schumacher's embarrassing 
absurdities about Buddhist economics? 
     Indeed, Carson 's philosophy has got itself into a bind. No more 
chemical pesticides, let natural enemies do the work. Like plants with 
genes taken from the Marigold flower to repel insects the way Mother 
Nature does? God forbid! That's genetic engineering. Criminal! Bring 
back the chemical pesticides, then, or what? Or what nothing, you 
running dog of capitalist industry. Our mission is to put up road-
blocks, not to solve problems for the profiteers.
     And yet there is one book by the Green Bigots that is worth read-
ing, or at least browsing through -- walk up to the next floor to meet 
the neo-Nazi thugs in environmentalist garb.

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