A Glorious Century

America and the world had never experienced the kind of progress toward the benefit of the human race as the last century. Vaccines rendered then hitherto deadly diseases harmless. The production of the affordable automobile and the ready availability of cheap gasoline brought travel across the vast American continent within easy reach of the common man. The steady supply of electricity at low prices into the home gave us the safety of refrigeration and the comfort of air conditioning in the vast majority of homes. Now the environmentalists amongst us seek to reverse so many of those gains. They are pushing for electric cars that can be driven less than thirty miles in a day that must then be recharged overnight, rendering the type of travel we are used to impossible. The greens are also forcing us away from consistent inexpensive energy sources like coal and oil for the pipe dream of solar and wind generated power, obviously compromised by common events like cloudy days or times when the wind grows stagnant. Some cities are even turning off street lights for these three reasons: (1)cost-savings, (2)energy savings, and (3) most laughably of all, so people can enjoy the night skies and moon and stars with street crime bound to grow rampant in darkened places (the unintended consequence caused by these do-gooders). Even the life saving vaccines are under attack with parents believing rightly or wrongly that the administration of the vaccines will do more harm than the diseases that they are intended to prevent. I find it odd that a movement that calls itself "progressive" seems determined to reverse so much of the progress of mankind.