Editor’s note: This commentary is by Ed Morrow, who is co-founder of the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center.
[P]lastic bag ban is totalitarian? It may be a sign of the times, but it was nevertheless unsettling to read Rob Roper’s most recent commentary propagating an extensionhttps://vtdigger.org/2019/06/24/rob-roper-the-authoritarian-totalitarian-plastic-bag-ban/ of newspeak.
George Orwell exposed this perversion of language, designed to diminish the body politics’ range of thought, back when totalitarian Nazi Germany had just been defeated and the Cold War with the totalitarian Soviet Union had just begun. He pointed to the troubling growth of propagandistic doublethink: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. Now, it seems the Ethan Allen Institute wants us to believe the banning of plastic bags is a totalitarian act.
We are governed according to the rules established by a document that has long been recognized around the globe as a miraculous monument to the continuing effort of communities to live together in peace — to join together in continuing compromise to the benefit of the greater good, while protecting individual freedoms.
The laws we enact, democratically, are not authoritarian fiats. The laws and regulations governing disposal of human waste, sewage for example, are designed to protect all against the harm that will result from everybody disposing of their sewage willy-nilly to the detriment of the commonweal. It is the rare citizen who deems these regulations as totalitarian oppression.
Roper hasn’t declared as “totalitarian” the laws and regulations that prohibit the use of poisonous substances in a manner that will harm neighbors, or the public at large. He needs to expand his knowledge base about how plastic bags are harming the world and its population’s ability to live off the bounty it provides. The fact is that the simple little plastic bag dispensed in millions of enterprises around the world has proliferated to a degree that it is proving harmful to life on earth.
“Don’t soil your own nest” is a polite version of an ancient saying found in almost all languages. Roper needs to read up on the dire effects of plastic bag proliferation and the effect it will have on our grandchildren if not curbed.
But quite apart from not understanding the environmental harm being caused by plastic is the distorted civics lesson that Roper is attempting to propagate.
I have thought of the Ethan Allen Institute and its articles as a valuable resource for double checking my own views about public policy issues. It seems to me that Roper has veered off course. This commentary, equating the plastic bag ban with totalitarianism, or even authoritarianism, veers into the realm of irresponsible propagandism, undermining legitimate legislating. World War II was fought to defeat two totalitarian states, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Today we have Russia, China and especially North Korea as prime examples of states seeking total control over their citizens. Mr. Roper, do you really mean to imply that Vermont lawmakers are taking us in that direction?
Equating a relatively minor, legitimate piece of legislation, enacted by a democratically elected legislature, with the kind of violation of citizens’ rights that occurred in Nazi Germany or the Communist Soviet Union is either innocently sophomoric or it is insidious propagation of alternative facts in the vein of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. If it’s the former, tsk, tsk. If it’s the latter, for shame!
