THE CONSERVATIVE LEFT

Forgive me, please, for chuckling a little at Radley Balko’s new meme, but he’s definitely onto something:

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 dyanmism, the left is far more conservative than the conservatives are.

Radley’s far from the first guy to notice that the left are far more reactionary these days than the right ever was, but “the conservative left” is a great way to phrase it.

UPDATE: Let’s look at the election from the point of view of the ones now standing athwart history and yelling stop (to coin a phrase). A narrowly-elected president who’s spent the last four years toppling the Taliban, putting Al-Qeada on the run, arresting Saddam Hussein and getting Libya to allow inspections of its nuclear program, not to mention making the Tranzis of “Old Europe” look like fools, even has he enlarges several of your social programs has got to drive you absolutely, totally insane.