Growing Pains

Reposted as history. Originally posted in April of 2005

Kathleen Parker - April 22, 2005 - TownHall.com

I know I'm supposed to be happy as politicians reiterate the positives: the boost to local economies, an expanding tax base, jobs. But as a native Floridian, I've traveled this freshly paved path before and know where it leads. Put it this way: Where once there were oceans of orange groves stretching to the horizons, today there are salt flats of trailer parks and RV "resorts."

Now I read the terrific news that the South's population is about to explode.

This article is depressing, and wrong. Fly over Florida and there are still hundreds of thousands of acres of orchards. Florida keeps shipping more orange juice very year. Where does this lady think it comes from? Just because orchards near big towns have been replaced by housing, (which is, by the way, occupied by real human beings in far more cases than her whining about empty houses would acknowledge) does not mean that there are fewer orchards. They are simply created on land further from towns.

If conservatives are going to start spouting the anti-growth drivel that we have had from democrats for 60 years, this nation is finished. Every prediction that growth would destroy the world for the last 200 years has been wrong. Each hand wringing plea for laws to stop growth has resulted in the destruction of an economy and driven the middle class to ruin. How can Town Hall tolerate this? Have they joined the socialists?

Growth is simply life. Opposing growth is opposing life. Usually someone else's life, like say for your children?