Freeze-dry the (mostly imaginary) past, but hurry up and change the entire existing social and economic order, seem to be the two modes the left seems to operate in, sometimes simultaneously.
And he dug up this savoury, slightly aged delight by Radley Balko.
You know, you sometimes get the feeling the day after the polio vaccine was invented, today’s left would have run editorials lamenting the good ol’ days, when we were a little more cautious about what swimming pools we jumped into, and expressing sadness that we’d now have no new stories about the afflicted overcoming their disability to inspire the rest of us.
I’m not kidding. They’re that resistant to change. Every mill that shuts down is a “sign of our sad times.” No matter that the new mill will do things better, faster and cheaper than the old one. New farming techniques grow more food on less land. But dammit, if there wasn’t something romantic about the old-stye “family farm” that’s deserving of government protection. Innovation isn’t celebrated, it’s excoriated for displacing some idealized vision of the way things once were. In matters of progress and dynamism, the left is far more conservative than the conservatives are.
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And, I would add — having grown up in a steel town — the ex-mill employees never stopped talking about how much they hated their mill jobs anyway, and are pretty (if secretly) thrilled that they just got a year or two severance with benefits to finally start that small business they were too broke or risk-averse or conformist to ramp up 30 years earlier.
