Recessions, Sprawl, Homeowners and the Left: Part 1

(Editor's Note: This piece has been changed slightly since being first posted)

According to this very interesting article, some Leftish thinkers are blaming the recession on individual homeowners. You ought to read the article, but the gist of it is that the desire to own a home, and the fact that it is part of the American Dream, led banks to make bad decisions, which led to all the excesses that caused the Great Recession. And, beyond that, individual home ownership is bad because it makes living in high-density urban areas seem unappealing. Which means people leave cities as soon as they can and move to suburbs. And that is bad.

You see, they believe that if we all just lived in tightly-crammed apartments in cities, then we could all ride the bus or walk to work and there would be less pollution. Our Energy Secretary also thinks it would be great because lots of people in a small apartment would keep it warmer which would save money on heating bills. Since Secretary Chu is much smarter than the RC, the RC must assume he also has a plan to keep things cooler in the summer in the middle of all that concrete, asphalt, and body heat.

These folks would really like there to be less sprawl. Sprawl is a word progressives use often. It means: "homes and neighborhoods outside of decaying cities where families can live in a reasonable degree of privacy, autonomy and security."

So, if these folks get their way, this is the future: more of us crammed more tightly into urban areas. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

The RC has a few thoughts about this liberal utopia because it seems to him that this one issue neatly captures a whole lot of the progressive agenda

First of all, it seems to the RC that there is something about people having freedom and choices that drives progressive/liberal/leftists of all persuasions crazy. The first President Bush paraphrased H. L. Mencken's quote that a puritan is someone who can't sleep at night worrying that somehow someone somewhere is having a good time.

It’s like that with progressives. The fact that someone somewhere is going to choose to do something they don’t like, something of which they don't approve is like an itch in the middle of their back they can’t reach. It keeps them awake at night and it incites them to madness.

To be sure, they don’t say that it’s a matter of not liking choices people make. And possibly they don’t even realize that themselves. Rather, they find specific operational objections to cite, for example, they say they don’t want you to drive a car to work because of global warming; they say they don’t want you and your doctor to choose your healthcare because it’s wasteful and inefficient; they say they don’t want you to eat out at McDonald's because it will make you fat which is unhealthy. The list goes on and on but underneath these specific reasons, there seems to be a consistent philosophy: "We, the enlightened, the educated, the intelligent--we will choose for you."

If you scratch beneath the surface deeply enough you realize that many on the Left just have a fundamental mistrust of people and doesn’t like the choices that they make. Thus, there is an elemental desire to control, compel and regulate every aspect of life.

More later.