Regular readers know that I’m not a fan of the proposed LA-San Francisco high-speed rail project, and as the projected costs have ballooned I’ve become even less of a fan. But lord almighty, stuff like this could change my mind:
The fast trains connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco would create new communities of high-density apartments and small homes around stations, reducing the suburbanization of California, rail advocates say. That new lifestyle would mean fewer cars and less gasoline consumption, lowering California’s contribution to global warming.
….Opponents, most of whom are political conservatives, regard the ambitious project as a classic government overreach that will require taxpayer subsidies. But they also see something more sinister: an agenda to push people into European or Asian models of dense cities, tight apartments and reliance on state-provided transportation.
….”It is a real movement in California of controlling the masses, controlling land use, deciding where people should live,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare). “I oppose that absolutely, because it is a form of left-wing social engineering.”
….”It has nothing to do with transportation. This is entirely social policy,” said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay). “It is all about the far left’s fever dream to get mother Earth back to a pristine condition by elbowing us into these dense urban cores.”
So who spilled the beans, anyway? Now the whole world knows that we lefties are drooling over the prospect of taking away everyone’s homes and engineering a forced march into modern-day high-rise concentration camps where the cable companies don’t offer Fox News. All the better to control you with, my sweeties.
Yeesh. But that’s the mindset we’re up against. Not we’re giving people more lifestyle choices but your lifestyle choice is inherently insulting to the one I prefer. And sweet reason will do little to change this. As Matt Yglesias, one of our most vocal proponents of denser lifestyles, says, “A lot of the time there’s genuinely no substitute for changing people’s minds.”
