Saying It Better Than I Could

Nothing About Everything points out what I've thought for quite a while now, that progressives are the real conservatives:

The progressive movement has always been one of obsessive conservatism, despite their rhetoric and their demand for “change.”  You see, their goal is comfort and safety; assurance, as it were, that they can remove all chance and uncertainty from the world, and live comfortable, safe lives, removed from risk and chance.  Any “change” that they ask for will be to further those goals, and therefore, any “progressive” change will actually be regressive to all of mankind.

My thoughts along these lines usually occur in the early fall, when we take a vacation down to the Outer Banks [1] in North Carolina.  While we're down there, we inevitably encounter - in magazine, in newspapers, on the radio, on television - some mention of environmentalists who have a desperate, urgent need to keep the Outer Banks exactly as they are (or, even better, return them to the Way They Were (TM) 300 years ago).

Keep in mind, these folks aren't just advocating that human development be halted or rolled back.  They want the natural forces at work on the island to be countered.

A hurricane blows through and creates a new inlet?  Fill it!  The islands are shifting inland - as barrier islands naturally do?  For the love of Gaia, man - pin them down!  Drifting sand is starting to dry up an existing wetland area?  Get the Army Corp of engineers in here to excavate that sucker!

Keep everything just the way it is.  Static.  Unchanging.  Perfect.

Progressives love that sort of thing.  Beloved Communist Leader dies?  Can't have that!  Embalm him, give him a nice top coat of shellack, and put him on display!

Your grandfather was a mill worker, your dad was a mill worker?  Obviously, you should be a mill worker too!  There should always be a mill to work at, and your family should be working there, part of the proud proletariat!

Let an automobile manufacturer go out of business because they were Too Stupid To Succeed?  Nooooooo!  You can't let that happen!  Give that dead corporate entity a nice top coat of taxpayer money, put it on display, and now you can pretend that everything is perfect, it always has been perfect, and it always will be perfect!

Forever.

You know, when people do that to their kid's bedroom, we think it's kind of creepy.

When progressives try to do that for everything?  Um.  Yeah.  Majorly creepy.

[1] God's shore, y'all.