James Lee Thinking is Just Scaled Up Liberalism?

Usually I don't like to blog about messed up individuals that do messed up things- their isn't a whole lot to read into when a crazy person acts in a crazy way. But I do want to comment on the recent incident involving environmental activist James Lee, who was sadly shot and killed after taking over the Discovery Channel headquarters. Something about this incident bugged me, and I was unwilling to simply shrug it off as the usual 'crazy people doing crazy stuff means nothing'.  It took Richard Fernandez over at the Belmont Club though to articulate what I was thinking:

But one way to detect logical fallacies is to see what happens when you scale them up. Those harmless ideas when projected onto a horizon ten miles high and fifty miles wide are so awe-inspiringly crazy that either you say “what the f**k?” or “why not?” James Lee said “why not”.

Scale up all my harmless ideas about freedom, liberty, protection of life, protection of property, founding principles, etc, and imagine the world that you get. It isn't really that bad, is it? But scale up the harmless ideas of the liberal left- promoting birth control in Third World countries, abolishing all advanced combat systems, ridding the world of the Judaeo-Christian heritage, fighting Climate Change, building down the US economy, handing out subsidized housing, increasing the power of the state, etc- and you get James Lee. Here is what he wrote at a site believed to be affiliated with the suspect, Save the Planet, where he set forth his creed as the “sayings of Lee”. Some of his demands were

•All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infant.
•All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease.
•Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed.
•Immigration … Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US.
•Find solutions for Global Warming
•Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy.
•You’re also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing.

These are simply scaled up versions of mainstream Leftwing notions. If you're going down that road, seeing what happened to James Lee should cause you to pause and reconsider.