Leftists want power. They want to control every aspect of human life, destroying liberty and replacing it with central control of all things. The essence of Americanism is that the people are superior to government, and the reason for government is to "secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity." The Constitution's Preamble lays out this and the other purposes of our government. Our Declaration of Independence lays down the natural laws of man's inalienable rights, which include, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
California has arrogantly considered itself a bellwether state, at the leading edge of social experimentations. Sadly, in the area of state control over the individual, California may well be leading a very evil experimentation. Berkley has become the first to formally implement what is being considered by about 50 different Californian cities, which is to ban the use of natural gas in new homes and businesses. The outrageous excuse offered is to promote the environment.
This is entirely illogical. Natural gas is among the cleanest of fuels, producing the fewest pollutants in its use. If one wishes to reduce carbon emissions, then one would wish to encourage the use of natural gas, not eliminate its use. But, since when have leftists allowed facts to sway their pursuit of naked power! The object lessons of life in Cuba, the Soviet Union, China, and most recently Venezuela, haven't done much to curb the enthusiasm among California's elites to pursue the same kind of dominion over the people. Somehow, these elites feel that despite socialism failing everywhere else its been tried, they are a special breed of people, who will make it work! In California today, the elites will tell you how to live, what to buy, drive up the costs for everything, and bring in thousands of illegal immigrants each month to take the place of all the middle class Californians who've had enough and left! The rich land barons have been buying up these vacated homes in speculation deals, while at the same time crafting new laws that make it extremely hard to build new middle class housing. That's called rigging the real estate market, and they do it very well.
The aggregate population of California has been on the ebb for many years now as more and more people in the middle class have decided that the artificial costs are too much to bear. These cost increases are entirely due to government restrictions, mandates, taxes, and fees. New laws recently passed require the installation of solar panels on all new homes, increasing their costs by an average of $10,000. This despite the reality that home prices throughout California are already among the highest in America. Studies have concluded that the median price of a home in the San Francisco area is over $1 million, and it isn't much less throughout the rest of the state. The amount of annual income required for someone to afford even a modest private home in California is about $100,000. That level of income is substantially above the average Californian household income of under $72,000. Simply put, this means home ownership in California is beyond the reach of the average family, and the state government keeps making it more expensive!
California has all but destroyed its once thriving domestic energy industry, its timber industry, and practically all forms of commerce even slightly considered unfriendly by the new eco-obsessed leftists. Many are trying to put agriculture out of business through onerous environmental regulations. Instead, California's baron class imports its electrical power from neighboring states, which further drives up the costs for the middle class struggling to make ends meet.
California now wishes to follow the path of European nations like Germany, which has driven up the costs of energy to the point where it is three times the cost of energy in the United States. And like Germany, California wishes to make itself entirely dependent upon others for that energy. While Germany wishes to put its future in the hands of Russia, at least California can count upon the goodwill of states like Utah and Arizona. Still, the lack of real concern for middle class cost of living mirrors the same, "Let them eat cake," mentality that's the root cause of the homeless plight, ongoing in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Located well away from the gated enclaves of the ruling class, the horrible filth of the homeless tent cities on the sidewalks of these two cities isn't a daily impact, nor concern, for those who's policies caused the mess.
Decades in the past, I lived for two years in California and enjoyed it, but those were the days when Ronald Reagan was President, and before that a two-term governor of California. Reagan dominated the electorate in the state in all four of his gubernatorial and Presidential elections. In California today, someone like Reagan wouldn't receive more than 25% of the vote. California's plan today is to replace the departing middle class with illegal immigrants, who will count in the census for Congressional apportionment, but who cannot legally vote. If that sounds eerily familiar, it's because it should. California is doing one better than the plantation owners of America's distant past, with an estimated five million illegal immigrants already in California, giving the elites unrepresented power, without even the compromise of three-fifths status for census tallies!
In California today, millions are counted as though they are citizens, when in truth they are not, and likely never will be! Primarily in Democratic controlled Congressional districts, there are millions of people who's numbers create Congressional seats reserved for Congressmen who's constituencies include large numbers of adults who cannot vote in federal elections! Not since slavery has such widespread disenfranchisement of American citizens' real control of federal government existed.
Reagan's presumed lack of political success in today's California illustrates the immediate and long term danger, as he thoroughly rejected the idea of the state telling the people how to live their lives. He would also reject the undercurrent of California's maniacal push toward authoritarian government, its destruction of the middle class, its import of millions of unrepresented illegal immigrants, and, most of all, its push toward a feudal state, more in keeping with the Spanish territorial era, where a handful of land barons owned most of the state and dominated the lives of the serfs. At least the Spanish lords made no attempt at pretense by calling itself a Constitutional Republic!
In their zeal to enact such foolish laws, making life hell for the middle class and impoverished, the Californian elites are providing a modern day example of the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah. Health experts now expect outbreaks of the plague, and are already seeing many examples of once eradicated diseases, like typhoid and dysentery, run rampant in the many homeless tent fields that saturate downtown Los Angeles and San Francisco.
There is only one solution left for California's rational middle class -- leave immediately! Abandon California to its fate and ensure that you don't bring these leftist philosophies to whatever new state you choose to live in. In the meantime, California's nobility is already planning to replace you with even more cheap import labor, in the form of new waves of indentured servants, whom the elites call "undocumented immigrants." They are actually known as illegal immigrants, who will join the five million or so of their contemporaries in earning paltry incomes serving the barons, and likely live in even more homeless shanties outside the eye of the masters they serve.
If you want to know what it was like to live in the Middle Ages of Europe, under the capricious and frequently crass edicts of the monarchy, then travel to California and take a look around. Be sure to tour the gated communities of the Californian elites -- if they'll let you in -- and then compare that with the squalor and suffering of the homeless, as well as the extreme difficulty of the once vibrant middle class, trying desperately to maintain their previous lifestyles. That once great middle class is quickly disappearing, replaced by a modern class of humans more akin to the peasant class of a once bygone era. That sad era is returning in a society where the power is concentrated in the hands of a few leftists, who long ago foolishly concluded they were qualified not merely to live their own lives, but also the lives of everyone else in the world around them!
This new breed of California aristocracy call themselves Americans, wholly oblivious to what being an American is supposed to represent! The beauty of the American model of government is that it appreciates a core truth. The only way for a diverse group of people to live in harmony with each other is through liberty. The American model is that each person is free to pursue one's own definition of happiness, as free as possible from centralized control. The proper role of the state is to protect liberty, to ensure no individual, or state entity, lords over anyone. California violates that basic American philosophy. In California, the state will tell you how to live, and then lyingly call itself a republic!
This column is copyrighted under provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and all rights are reserved. Please do not re-transmit, host, or download these columns without my written permission.