Making fun of liberal guilt

George Will:

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The incessant hectoring by the media-political complex's "consciousness-raising" campaign has provoked a comic riposte in the form of "The Goode Family," an animated ABC entertainment program on Wednesdays. Cartoons seem, alas, to be the most effective means of seizing a mass audience's attention. Still, the program is welcome evidence of the bursting of what has been called "the green bubble."

Gerald and Helen Goode, their children and dog Che (when supervised, he is a vegan; when unsupervised, squirrels disappear) live in a college town, where T-shirts and other media instruct ("Meat is murder"), admonish ("Don't kill wood") and exhort ("Support our troops . . . and their opponents").

The college, where Gerald works, gives students tenure. When Gerald says his department needs money to raise the percentage of minority employees, his boss cheerily replies, "Or we could just fire three white guys. Everybody wins!"

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"The Goode Family" doesn't threaten Jonathan Swift's standing as the premier English-language satirist. But when a Goode child apologizes to his parent for driving too much, and the parent responds, "It's OK . . . what's important is that you feel guilty about it," the program touches upon an important phenomenon: ecology as psychology.

In "The Green Bubble: Why Environmentalism Keeps Imploding" (The New Republic, May 20), Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of "Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists," say that a few years ago, being green "moved beyond politics." Gestures -- bringing reusable grocery bags to the store, purchasing a $4 heirloom tomato, inflating tires, weatherizing windows -- "were suddenly infused with grand significance."

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The column is more about the psychological aspects for some in the green movement.

It does not touch its the dark underbelly. That is the control freak mentality that wants to use the fear generated about global doom in order to control every aspect of your life. It wants to take fundamental decisions away from us and give it to greens who think they know better what you need. Thus we have market manipulation called cap and trade to make it more expensive to use cheap energy so you will pay more for less efficient energy.

The Democrats are pushing this agenda that people do not want. Hopefully, voters will remember that in the next elections.