The Green New Deal of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has gotten plenty of mockery, but that ought to be balanced out with a healthy dose of scorn. The plan isn’t just idiotic. It’s also immoral.
The idiocy has been well-established in the first 24 hours. Calling for an end to air travel, or free economic support for those “unwilling” to work, or claiming that tens of trillions of dollars in new costs are actually benefits, the deal is intellectually unsustainable.
But as I say, it’s also immoral.
Fiscally, the “deal” is deliberate deception of the electorate. Lying to people is wrong. Democrats frequently condemn President Trump for his flexible relationship with the truth. And often, they have a legitimate argument in doing so. Pretending the Green New Deal has no costs is a colossal lie.
But let’s dig deeper into the details here. Because even if we assume that Ocasio-Cortez and her growing base of Democratic Party supporters are serious about moving America off fossil fuels within 10 years, their assertion that doing so would be easy is equally outrageous. Again, basic reality suggests that reconfiguring every building in every town and city in the nation would be both impractical and incredibly complicated. Let alone extortionate for families. But that’s just one example of the deal’s defining disingenuousness.
For another, take the deal’s claim to offer “high quality” government-provided healthcare, without the need for middle class tax hikes. The reality of every socialized medical system on Earth suggests that the deal’s contention here is utterly unrealistic. The same concern applies to most of the deal’s inordinately — indeed, absurdly — large pledges of government beneficence. When it comes to domestic policy, conservatives must constantly challenge Democrats where they claim that their policies are inherently moral. Like icebergs, their appealing exteriors often hide very dangerous realities.
