You have just outed yourself as a leftist.
The policies of the U.N. (i.e. encouraging and fostering socialism, fascism and "benevolent" dictatorships like Castro's cuba) has done more to lessen the quality of life worldwide than any other movement or organization.
Your reference to children is classic. If I have to give up one more thing "for the children", I'm going to start throttling the little trolls.
The only people that can possibly stake out their little piece of ownership in this country near their work, keep it and keep that job are government employees-specifically "Planners", architects,retirees, or aging trust fund babies. Which are you?
I have spent the last 20 years fighting the "Smart Growth" advocates, and will hopefully be able to spend the next 20 years doing so.
They are dangerous in the extreme, and must be stomped down in order to preserve the spirit of this country.
Live in your beehive, ride your bicycle, walk to whatever you need if you wish; just leave the rest of us alone to fend for ourselves without you and your central planning apparatchniks.
By the way, and finally:
Ok, I believe that the reason we need to win the election next year is so we can appoint a Supreme Court that will undo everything Earl Warren did, and somehow, you accuse me of that?
We are just going to have to disagree on this one. And incidentally, I don’t live in an area that in anyway adheres to smart growth. This area was developed in the 50’s, except for our street, there are no ditches, the only sidewalk is on the main boulevard, and these two previous things make this area very prone to flooding.
And your line about how the only people who can “live near their work” is just a bunch of complete crap. Before the real estate boom, the average price of a house in the city limits, of the average, middle class home, was just over $100,000. Ours was considerably higher, because we’ve been somewhat successful, and my desire to be able to go fishing in my backyard overrode my wifes desire to live with a bunch of yuppie snobs in the richest district in town.
My school board seat and my state house seat are both represented by black Democrats. Because I don’t vote in my primary, I effectively have no voice in who represents in those offices, because in districts that have those demographics, general elections don’t really mean anything. In our old neighborhood, it was the exact reverse, as it was the most Republican area of the city. But, same Republican area of the city didn’t have waterfront property on the cheap 5 years ago. I will say this, we do have a Republican state senator now, where we didn’t before last year’s election. The problem is, because of black population growth in areas to the north of here, we’re going to have a supremely hard time holding that.
The only thing that seperates in city neighborhoods, and out of city neighborhoods is public school composition, and I’ll be the first to admit, without the private schools, there’d be no whites left in the city. We certainly wouldn’t live in this neighborhood if we were forced to use public schools, because all of the schools this area is districted for are among the states worst. Thus is the advantage of success in this country, you don’t have to rely on the government to educate your children. And I personally don’t think anyone should.
The average private school tuition at the elementary level, in most of our Catholic schools, is $350 a month. Now, I’m not saying that’s not alot of money, but I kind of think that’s something most people can actually afford to pay. But, they depend on the government to do for them what they can do themselves.
Once again, you don’t have to live in the city limits, and our city is not the exact poster child for smart growth, in fact, it’s the exact opposite. But, we also know that if we are going to gentrify areas that have been abject slums for 40 years, we are going to have to try to incorporate a smart growth aspect or else, these areas will remain slums.
And as for your argument of leftism. I’m not the one who is using class warfare to make their point, of the poor “average” person, against the well-heeled powerful. A man named Marx actually made that idea the basis of his political philosophy, a philosophy that has led to the death of millions. I’ve never advocated class warfare. And class warfare, the idea that you should resent someone because they’ve been more successful than you, that is the archetypal belief of leftism. And populism is nothing more than a disguised form of leftism.
But I’ll just agree to disagree with you on this point. We’re obviously from different parts of the country, where different social mores prevail. I taught my kids that the South was right in the war, many people teach the exact opposite. It’s all part of what makes the country great.