Modern Activism 101

Today’s “affluent activists” are “condemning the world’s poor to lives of squalor,” says Knight Ridder columnist Paul Driessen in Tuesday’s Biloxi (MS) Sun Herald. Driessen argues that modern activism’s focus on “corporate social responsibility” programs, so-called “sustainable development” policies, and the much-maligned “precautionary principle” are rooted in “socialist agendas.”

“The U.S. has shipped African countries thousands of tons of genetically modified corn,” Driessen writes. “The same corn that Americans have been eating safely for years. But environmental radicals and the European Union are screaming ‘genetic pollution’ and threatening to withdraw aid and ban agricultural exports from any countries that plant or distribute the grains.”

“It’s time to ask the eco-activists, bureaucrats and media elites,” he concludes, “exactly how their anti-energy, anti-biotech and anti-people policies are moral, compassionate, sustainable or socially responsible.”