I had the chance this morning to read a speech given by Dr. Michael Crichton, a name that, I trust, is recognizable. His theme was that environmentalism had, at some point, gone beyond the social-responsibility level and had turned into a new religion.

There were two things about that speech that, in combination, proved to be paradoxical:

1. Dr. Crichton’s personal philosophy is that of a John F. Kennedy type of professional liberal. All the identification points are there: a disdain of religion which shows the influence of Lord Bertrand Russell; fear of a resurgence of the religious impulse based upon the assumption that religions kill people; an inextinguishable hope that good science will keep the Dark Ages at bay. This was very much part of the Kennedy mind- set: their anti-communism dovetailed with the above by identifying Communism as another religion.
2. Dr. Crichton’s position with respect to the Greens is damned similar to that of the Henry Lamb kind of conservative. He sees them as mostly well- meaning but also containing a hidden misanthropic side.

The combination of the two really says, from the perspective of conservatism, “unconvertible.” Dr. Crichton, I can say with confidence, will die a liberal: the best we could hope for from a person with his view of religion would be a kind of Margaret Mead among the Samoans.

But there is a portent in the above, one which I brought up earlier. The new neo-conservatives might very well be the JFK liberals.

Those of you who know the history of the modern conservative movement know that the “Reagan coalition” has as a loyal faction within it a group of disgusted ex-liberal intellectuals, many of them with radical pasts. Whether they were full socialists or not, they had one thing in common: they shared the ideal of social planning as set out by the New Deal.

I’m sure you’ve come across the maxim that a neo-conservative is a liberal that was mugged. What this symbolizes is a certain kind of New Deal liberal that got repulsed by liberalism’s increasing tolerance of the law-breaking mentality. I suspect that there was more than a little confusion among them as the ‘60s turned into the ‘70s, along the lines of: “Wait a minute. Wasn’t Earl Warren a Republican? Why didn’t we just bring out Hubert H. Humphery to tell him and his ‘fellows’ to move along?”

(I should note that, the more and more you look at the influence of Earl Warren on American politics, the more and more the word “leprechaun” pops into your head.)

The Kennedy liberals seem to be undergoing the same confusion as a result of the Greens. The above can be easily paraphrased into “Wait a minute. Isn’t the ‘party of religion’ conservatism? When is (Liberman/Clark) going to step up and tell the anti-rationals that they’re just right-wing nut-cases with good press?”

For that’s what the viros are according to modern liberalism. Their version of the myth of Paradise, as described by Crichton, does not involve Adam and Eve’s discovery of the knowledge of right and wrong, but their discovery of science itself. This kind of antiscience has been traditionally associated with hard-core reaction in France – the conception of reason as a “trembling [candle] light” (Joseph de Maistre’s phrase) which, if pushed or moved around too quickly, will start a conflagration that will burn the town of civilization down.

In Europe, it is well known that the American’s use of the term “liberal” does not square with the use of the term on the continent: an American liberal holds a perspective that’s similar to what a European would call a “socialist” – meaning social democrat. (The comparative rigidity of European institutions and traditions means that radical rhetoric and beliefs are accompanied by policy measures that are comparatively mild, even if consistent with those beliefs.) In Europe, “liberal” means Milton Friedman type.

Given that the Greens are now a left-liberal faction in good standing, the annoyance over the “misuse” of the term liberal is now going to turn into a type of confusion in Europe. What they will see will be a political movement in the United States called “liberal” which has a real philosophical similarity to secular Jansenism. It’s as if the old isolationist spirit in America was asserting itself through the mutation of previously stable political philosophies.

If this goes on, then the type of person William F. Buckley, Jr. loved to stigmatize as a “Kenndymanic” will be knocking on our door and asking to be let in, basically as themselves. It makes you wonder what label would be coined for them: myself, I can’t think of one.

But I can, using Crichton’s own testimony, suggest a definition: “A [?] is a liberal that bumped into barbarians who called themseves ‘post- modern’.”