I saw the Lorax with my two older children recently and was struck by how utterly passive the Lorax was compared to modern day militant national socialist environmentalist-progressives. In the end, the Lorax turned out to be a modern day seed bank that people began to use once they realized Nature could for free, clean the air and provide a sustainable resource. Rather than waterboarding national socialism down our throats with artificially funded centralized government consumerism, all progressives should reaffirm or turn to their passive roots as exemplified by the Lorax. The movie aptly portrayed how corporations combined with greed can corrupt otherwise innoccent people. A song in the middle served to provide an artful portrayal of this process. However, in todays modern world, the song could equally be applied to progressives, who, in all honesty, are nothing more than greed but personified in a single corporation, the national government. If you are conservative, there is no reason not to see this movie. Yes, when you put corrupt and greedy people into corporations, you get things like deforestation and pollution. But the same can be said for electing corrupt, greedy and power hungry progressives into office where they can strip mine freedom from the people and utterly pollute a population's sense of value and worth of themselves.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the idea of a sustainable planet is not an EXCLUSIVELY progressive idea. Maybe a few ultra conservatives wants to hurry the second coming by allowing so much pollution that most of us die young, but even among Republicans that's a minority position. I haven't seen the movie, but I've read the book to my children about 30 times and frankly a lot that Lorax suggested is already public policy. Under federal mandate, municipalities spend million on better wastewater tratement and rivers that stunk now support abundant wildlife. Pittsburgh air is pleasant to breathe or at least it was the two times I was in the city. Deer and wild turkey are now abundant in areas of Texas where they were a rare sighting in the 1970s. Is this bad?
Actually living sustainably is a Conservative idea, that Conservatives label as Liberal, incorrectly. They are more bi-partisan than they know it! Sustainable living means living within one's means, or within a group's means on the resources you have. It is no different than spending money within the means or resources you have, a pillar of the Conservative movement.
I don't doubt that Seuss was liberal in his time but a lot of what he was teaching in his books is just common sense today. He was right and the ideas expressed in the book version of the Lorax are non-controversial and mainstream. Do modern conservatives think wanton wildlife habitat destruction is a good thing? Do conservatives think it a good idea to completely deplete a finite but renewable resource? Is thoughtlessly polluting our rivers so the fish can't live there anymore good public policy because it saves industries a little money ? Is somebody still mad because they had to give up killing all they wanted so beavers, bison, pheasants and wild turkey could return to the landscape or that lumbermen didn't get a chance to harvest all the valuable redwood in California? Are there stil conservatives who think Rosa Parks should have given up her bus seat for a white man? Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the "conservatives" on the losing side of those ideas are long dead and their ideas with them. A lot of ideas that used to be "liberal" are just common sense and accepted by everyone. Maybe the Lorax was part of bringing us all around to progressive thought that is actually uncontroversially good for us.
