Pat McCrory’s Weird Science

This was published in the News Observer

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/04/30/2860925/denrs-new-mission-takes-wrong.html

By Scot Faulkner & Jonathan Riehl

There was a time when Republicans embraced Earth Day, established the Environmental Protection Agency, and considered stewardship of the environment a cornerstone of assuring America’s future. Those days now seem very far away as Republicans, including Governor McCory, are increasingly rejecting environmental protection and empirical science.

Prior to McCory becoming Governor, North Carolina had a solid reputation for environmental stewardship. This stewardship was grounded in constructive engagement between two co-equal state agencies. The Department of Commerce (DC) is the welcome mat and advocate for new and expanding businesses. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is the enforcer of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), and the advocate for those impacted by the externalities of new and expanding businesses. Each agency has a noble mission that benefits the state now and into the future. Pure environmentalism can hamper the creation of economic opportunity and job growth. Pure economic development can permanently scar a landscape, cause harm to people’s health, and eradicate qualities of life and community that attract business.

Therefore, a balance must be struck between competing interests and missions. The role of the EC and DENR are to prepare their best briefs and constructively engage interested parties, and the public at large, to help determine this balance, while articulating the trade-offs that inevitably occur when competing interests interact.

The DENR, prior to Governor McCrory had a straightforward mission statement that supported this effort: “To conserve and protect North Carolina’s natural resources and to maintain an environment of high quality by providing valuable services that consistently support and benefit the health and well-being of all citizens of our state.”

When McCory became Governor the DENR revised its mission statement to fundamentally change its role. The changes are significant and deserve attention from anyone, regardless of party, who cares about science and conservation. This revision, by new DENR Secretary, John Skvarla (McCrory’s appointee), marks a terrible change in direction for a state department, but has received only limited media attention.

The new mission statement alters the very definition of science. The DENR document now tells us that science “contains diversity of opinion” and “all public programs and scientific conclusions must be reflective of input from a variety of legitimate, diverse and thoughtful perspectives.”

Not so. Science is not based on “opinion” or “thoughtful perspectives.” Science contains a body of knowledge arrived at through testing and experimentation. Ironically, this is what conservative thought -- in politics and policy in general -- has always emphasized. Now we are told any perspective, regardless of its having been tested, deserves equal time.

Second, the new mission statement emphasizes “cost-benefit analysis” in environmental policy. The damages caused by bad environmental policy are not calculable in immediate terms in the same way an actuary determines how much a new car depreciates when it leaves the lot. Environmental damage is long term and affects not only the resources available to future generations, but also our national heritage. There can be no “cost-benefit” consideration of the Great Smoky Mountains, Outer Banks beaches, or Civil War historic sites protected from mining, foresting, or other development. How many dollars is it worth to take your family to these parks? What is the true value of sites that define our state and national identity?

Third, the McCrory administration redefines the DENR as a “service organization.” It is not. The Department is a regulatory body charged with enforcing laws, including the federal rules of the Environmental Protection Agency. The clear implication of the McCrory version suggests nullification of federal law -- that the DENR will “service” the political choices of the Governor, not enforce the law. Governor McCrory and Secretary Skvarla should remember that the DENR’s environmental regulatory powers are delegated to them by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 2001, EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, President Bush’s Republican appointee, stripped this delegation from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, and directly managed the state’s enforcement process, to prevent the state agency from becoming a doormat for developers. This could be the remedy in North Carolina should the McCrory/Skvarla vivisection of environment law and science continues.

Pat McCrory -- who has portrayed himself as a moderate -- is sending dangerously extreme signals to the new conservative radicals who want pander to anti-conservationist extremists.

The two authors here have different political perspectives, but value the real conservative legacy of responsible governance and custodianship of our planet. These new radical “conservatives” (we use quotation marks intentionally) should not be allowed to highjack that legacy. In the words of this new DENR mission statement we detect a highjacking in progress, emblematic of the larger self-destruction of the real conservative movement.

Scot Faulkner was Personnel Director for Reagan-Bush and the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Jonathan Riehl, J.D., Ph.D., is a communications consultant for political campaigns and national nonprofit organizations and former speechwriter for Luntz Research, and instructor in Communications Studies.

Pat McCrory's College Comments Betray Conservative Principles

By Jonathan Rielh & Scot Faulkner

Published in http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/01/30/2644321/pat-mccrorys-college-comments.html

Gov. Pat McCrory has made news with his recent comments on conservative talk radio, attacking liberal arts education in general and UNC-Chapel Hill in particular. In doing this, he has lit the fires of progressive academics and riled up the Fox News tea party base. With the governor’s star rising in the GOP, his comments no doubt were strategic.

They also represent a total betrayal of conservative principle.

The meltdown of the conservative movement in recent years has many causes, including an addiction to the media echo chambers of the blogosphere, talk radio and Fox News. Anti-intellectualism is another part of this new, destructive ideology. A spokesperson for this anti-intellectualism was, of course, Sarah Palin, who famously could not identify what newspapers she read. To be conservative means not reading newspapers?

Not so. As a political philosophy, conservatism is grounded in intellectual thought and deliberation. The governor’s statements about education are therefore not only counterproductive but also anti-conservative.

Ironically, the notion of colleges and universities as factories for job-performance smacks much more of leftist, socialist societies where individuals were not valued for their knowledge or perception but for their ability to perform tasks. As a philosophy, conservatism has in fact battled this idea for hundreds of years. The governor is apparently not familiar with this history. Perhaps his education was not liberal enough.

Is it not practical, in preparation for entering the workforce, to have read deeply in philosophy, cultural history, politics and literature? Those 3 a.m. debates with college roommates about these ideas produce individuals better able to obtain rewarding positions in the ever-more competitive global marketplace.

The point of a liberal arts education is to make those debates possible, to give young students a broad-based knowledge that allows them to think about matters widely and deeply, to form their own opinions and find their place in society. Only an environment that teaches the value of knowledge, not just “information,” will allow them to decide what path they wish to take and what identity to choose: liberal or conservative. Choices cannot be made without perspective.

We are proof positive. We benefited from superb liberal arts educations, one at the University of Virginia, the other at Lawrence University. In both cases, we were able to explore wide-ranging topics and were required to read deeply in topics we knew little about and have little involvement with now (from geology to astronomy). We were taught to think about matters that had little to do with the careers we would map for ourselves and to consider ourselves better for it. We also would like to think we have given back, as educators, political activists and private sector businesspeople.

We find ourselves voting for different parties, but we share a deep admiration for the conservative movement and its heritage. Not just in recent times, when intellectuals like William F. Buckley Jr. forged the coalition that produced a revolution under Ronald Reagan, but in history dating to our founders Madison, Adams and Jefferson, and tracking from there to Burke, Montesquieu and even Plato.

Would the governor have students in North Carolina schools reading technical manuals rather than these thinkers, not to mention contrarians from schools of Marxism and postmodern deconstructionists? Young conservatives need to understand the ideas they might oppose.

Turning colleges into trade schools is counterproductive as well as anti-conservative. If there is to be a revival of conservatism, which is today moribund at best, it will happen only if an educated new generation can converse with its opponents in well-informed terms.

Technocratic specialization is the enemy of democracy, which asks us to have a wide lens – a “liberal” view not sequestered within our own limited perspectives. Conservatism, properly understood, asks us to engage, not disengage.

That is the purpose of a liberal education.

Sadly, our hypermediated age leads us to place too much attention on superficial labels. Identities are formed by talking points, not principle. Leaders on the left and the right flock to media outlets whose viewers already agree with 99 percent of the “news” they are delivered. The governor is playing to that crowd.

Conservatism is grounded in a very different heritage. Democracy was founded on the principles of rhetoric – reasoned debate and exchange among citizens. This cannot occur if we eliminate liberal arts education in our public schools.

North Carolina has a proud history of supporting broad-based liberal arts education, thanks in large part to the leadership of a popular Democratic governor, Jim Hunt, who eschewed partisan politics in favor of consensus. Hunt understood that economic growth depends upon broad education, and the job growth in the Triangle is testament to this strategy.

Conservatism is in freefall. We have no successors to William F. Buckley Jr. in our midst. We will be able to nurture new conservative thinkers only if we teach our young people about the intellectual legacy that produced intellectual leaders like him.