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The Pursuit of Knowledge
The Wilderness Obsession
The American concern for animal habitats has encouraged a vandalization of the habitats of people.
The environmental movement in America began as a defense of nature against man. But what we call "nature" is a human construct, and when Thoreau and John Muir set out to protect the unspoiled wilderness, they were really trying to create the unspoilt human being who would walk in it. All the most vigorous environmental initiatives in America, from the national parks movement and the Sierra Club to Earth Day and the Wilderness Society, have been dedicated to the wilderness idea. The motive has seldom been to protect or improve the human habitat, but to make trails into the pristine hinterland, where the American people can breathe the pure air of Eden, and cast off the burden of original sin, which is the sin of the city.
This wilderness obsession has had good results. It is good that America has large national parks, in which wildlife enjoys a measure of protection. It is good that Americans cherish their forests, rivers, lakes, and wetlands. It is good that they worry over the future of bald eagles, black bears, and bobcats. And it is only right that these concerns should be reflected in American vacations, in the romantic streak in American art and literature, and in the "lone ranger" image that recurs in American popular culture. The squads of easy-rider motorbikes that patrol the scenic highways, the troops of scouts on the mountain trails, the canoes and kayaks on the river rapids-all testify to a deeply implanted respect for the natural world, and a longing for a lost innocence. People who retain the idea of lost innocence are one degree better than those who have forgotten it and therefore believe that there is no such thing. And maybe the goodness of America depends, in the last analysis, on the cult of the wild.
But there is a downside to the wilderness idea and it is an important one. The American concern for animal habitats has encouraged a vandalization of the habitats of people. Man takes his fallen condition with him into the wilderness. He may reflect on it there, as Thoreau did at Walden Pond, but he cannot escape it. And by creating this illusory Eden he turns his back on his true habitat, which is the city.
The city is a crowded forum of strangers, where you are face-to-face with people whose company you never chose. It depends on social cooperation, which in turn depends upon the rule of law and the institutions of commerce. But it depends also on a primordial act of dedication, to the god or saint who will protect it. All the great cities of the world began life as sacred places, in which the life among strang- ers was given a redemptive purpose by the shared submission to a higher power. Modern cities have grown away from that primordial posture of submission. But they are still marked by it. Churches, public buildings, the facades of streets and squares -- all bear witness to an original act of settlement, in which a piece of earth was marked out by a community and dedicated to its gods.
The classical building styles that shaped the original towns and cities of New England derive from temple architecture. Their harmony stems from the devotion of their founders: when placing brick on brick or stone on stone they were building not just a home but an altar. The same is true of the Gothic style, praised in those terms by Ruskin, and put to such striking use in the industrial architecture of Victorian England.
It was Ruskin who launched the environmental movement in Britain. The greenwood had been felled to create the Royal Navy and nothing of wilderness remained. But Ruskin did not care. His concern was with the landscape made by man -- the patchwork quilt of old England, seamed by hedges and dry-stone walls, and buttoned to the earth by neat little cottages of stone. For Ruskin this man-made nature was contiguous with the city, to which he dedicated, in Stones of Venice, the greatest description in English of a place made sacred by buildings.
AMERICAN SPRAWL IS BOTH THE CAUSE and the effect of the wilderness urge. It comes from ceasing to care for the city as a sacred place and a common home. Throughways, junctions and flyovers, faceless tower blocks, loud fascias, adverts raised high on poles and childish logos -- all such things deface the city, turning it from a home to be lived in to a tool to be used.
The trashing of the American city didn’t have to happen. The idea that you can own land in a city and do what you like with it is a new and eccentric chapter in the history of human settlement. Religious edicts, building codes, and civic ordinances governed the appearance of the ancient city and ensured its continuity as a public space: this we witness not only in the surviving monuments of Athens and Rome, but also in those jewels of everyday urbanization like excavated Ephesus and the now mutilated Aleppo.
The crenellations on the facades of Venice have been legislated for 500 years. The heights of buildings in Geneva and Helsinki have been limited by law since the 19th century. The city of Salzburg now bans those who trade in its center from displaying their logos or altering the architecture to suit their taste. Thanks to the legally imposed boundaries of Vienna, you can look from the center of the city to a green horizon of protected woods. And so on. European cities have been loved by their residents, and have therefore adopted an aesthetic of settlement. Hence their residents have settled and stayed.
The American city began as a creditable attempt to create a public space, but nothing public exists for long in a country where only the wilderness has a lasting claim to protection. New Brunswick, laid out with classical streets and squares, pinned to the sky by the clean stone spires of churches, was trampled to dust in a few decades: now it is a wasteland of parking lots and office blocks, with the occasional classical building marking the place of a vanished street like a loyal hound at the grave of its master. This aesthetic disaster—matched elsewhere only by the results of war and conquest -- is a lasting blemish on the American idea. But what can be done to rectify it?
The New Urbanists advocate centripetal rather than centrifugal cities, and argue vigorously for designs that will attract residents downtown. But even if they succeed, the rooted American belief that you can do what you like with your property and stick what you like in the face of passersby, means that the cities of the New Urbanists will very soon look like the cities of the old urbanists that we know— a jumble of signs, logos, and fascias, scattered along throughways in which buildings stand not beside their neighbors but against them. It is hardly surprising that those who work in such places should flee at the first opportunity to the unspoiled wilderness. But it is their love of the wilderness that caused the disaster.
It is not that Americans are unaware of the problem. Concern over the randomization of the American city was vigorously expressed by J. C. Nichols in the early years of the iron-frame skyscraper, and later by Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, from their very different points of view. The battle lines over suburbanization were formed between the wars, and hostilities have recently escalated with the writings of James Howard Kunstler, Joel Kotkin, and Robert Bruegmann. The fight against billboards, which had a success with the institution of scenic byways, continues on a small scale all over America. And here and there counties have succeeded in placing restrictions on the worst forms of light pollution and roadside sprawl. But, for good reasons as well as bad, Americans are reluctant to impose aesthetic constraints on the use of private property.
THE OTHER DAY, sitting on the porch of our publisher’s mountain cabin in Virginia, I confronted the distinction between owned and unowned America in its most vivid form. Across from us was the Shenandoah National Park, a dark mass of forest, exuding its primeval silence. And below it, in the valley, was the old village of Etlan, Madison County, an unspoilt clutter of whiteboard houses along the road. But among the old farms with their rust-red barns, the new horse farms are springing up, one of them vast, rectangular, its white-light sheen dominating the landscape and eclipsing the softened colors round about.
In Europe there would almost certainly be a law, telling the owner of that horse farm to blacken the roof of that barn and to paint its sides rustred—as there is a law requiring pan-tiles in Provence, slates in Brittany, Cotswold stone in Gloucestershire. But, as our publisher said, such a law would be received over here as a gross intrusion by the government and would be resisted by no one more fiercely than the good conservatives whom he has spent his life defending. And those conservatives would be right. For the American way of life is about individual sovereignty: take that away, invade the home and dictate the taste of its inhabitants, and the most sacred altar of freedom would have been surrendered to the encroaching state.
Still, I cannot help blaming that ugly horse-barn on the wilderness beyond. Nor can I help wishing that Americans had not invested quite so much of their aesthetic passion in the places where they don’t live, and quite so little in the places where they do.
About the Author
Roger Scruton is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book is The Uses of Pessimism (Oxford University Press).
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Jonathon| 11.5.10 @ 8:29AM
So, the environmental movement and a love of wilderness is the cause of all urban sprawl and decay? how do you people take yourselves seriously?
Petronius| 11.5.10 @ 9:32AM
A pleasant essay, but absolute tosh. People with the means to get out of Dodge and flee the cities do so because of other people in the cities who indulge themselves by violating their rights. And the destruction of our cities is not just the result of environmentalists ruining commerce which is their true mission, but Federal Judges doing the bidding of social engineers dictating where our children go to school and subjecting them to gangs and urban terror. My city once boasted a population of almost 980,000. Today it is less than 300,000 with empty blocks of urban desert, crumbling commercial spaces of all sizes, and all of our heavy industry gone along with the jobs they provided and the industrious men who did them because of the EPA ran them out. Congratulations are in order to them and Judge William Hungate for today this city is clean. It is also broke and disintegrating further. There is a sub rosa conflict of urban and rural in this country. It is driven by the spiteful Stalinist Left which owns nothing and wants us all to be as they are; impoverished and miserable to the point where we cease to marry and reproduce, just like Europe. Who is taking over their cities today? Look to the east.
Sheila| 11.5.10 @ 1:43PM
Well said.
Claypoole| 11.7.10 @ 8:21AM
I live near Pittsburgh, a beautiful city with much to offer: the arts, sports, science, superb hospitals and universities. And every morning when I turn on the local TV news, I hear of at least one shooting/murder that has happened overnight. It is not unusual to hear even more violence reported. The city government is bloated with unnecessary bureaucrats (they are now closing libraries, rather than fire anyone), population declines every year (so taxes go up), and the last time I went to the city to shop--about 3 years ago--the city parking tax brought my tab for 2 hours of parking to $18. Need I add that the city government has been Democratic for decades? Why on earth would I want to move there?
Pelligrino| 11.8.10 @ 2:28AM
Petronius, do you refer in your writing (above) to Baltimore? Surely not. (If I could place the name Judge William Hungate, I would know. But I do not know this name.)
Baltimore was my re-introduction city to my homeland just last year. Right in the middle of a cold March snap.
What did I encounter as I sought to do the necessary things to get re-started in my own land?
Shiftless bums with zero compunction almost physically accosting passersby right at the Harbor Place at 2 p.m. Even if no physical contact, they missed few opportunities to do this verbally. Very aggressive panhandling.
(It is much better to be a male; I cannot imagine what a well dressed woman would have to endure going to work, walking at lunchtime, departing to go home.)
Just blocks away from the big city aquarium attraction: Very obvious, HUGE, no-go zones for anyone with a brain and a desire to not become a crime statistic.
I can tell you that many foreign tourists would cringe as they approach these Inner Harbor tourism sites and SPEEDILY adjust their itinerary to skip Baltimore.
There are a few signs of hope as you start the journey out to famed Fort McHenry. But just a few. There is much along that way that makes you wary, leaves you uneasy. (And remember, I am only talking about my views and perspectives during daylight)
The big city park just to the east of the tourist, visitor downtown (Harbor Place) is a mugging and rape scene even in afternoon daylight at that time of year. So I was told by many who saw me trying to do things by foot.
Wherever I went, always seeing MANY locks on gates in front of doors. Massive locks. Multiple locks. Huge black contraptions that a Caterpillar 15-ton piece of machinery might have difficulty busting open.
Litter so many places. Litter that clearly had been left to sit and accumulate for years. Everywhere!
And everyone would mention the "renowned" drug scene. Everyone talked of this. Every illicit drug to be had….just 7 blocks that way or 8 blocks that way….
A summary of my re-introduction city to my homeland after many years away: Ugly. Rundown. Many parts dilapidated. Many structures, stores, and old "blue collar" homes vacant and decaying. The exodus of thousands in the past 15 years.
There were preparations underway in a small area that was decorating for St. Patrick's Day. But everyone outside decorating in this extended block warned me to watch my step and to not go walking just a few blocks north.
I passed what surely appeared to be a K-5 private school. It was not a large school. The playground was slightly larger than two basketball courts, completely paved with concrete. At least three VERY LARGE bodyguards (really big fellows who looked like WWF types in better all-black clothes) observed everything while standing protectively to the side of the 150 playing kids. Yes, it was recesss. These brutish looked me over several times as I walked past.
Later, as evening came and the commuter time arrived, most people did not seem to notice as they whisked home in their cars from city jobs toward the northern suburbs of Towson and beyond on the elevated expressway. (The elevated expressway allows one to not have to see what is to the left, right, and beneath. Very helpful, to not have to see or be confronted with what surrounds you.)
If you walked anywhere in the downtown area that evening as a male, you were accosted by emaciated, latter stages of cocaine? and/or heroin? addiction women. They were ugly, thin, desperate, with eyes already dead. And it was all very sad. All of it just a block or two from what looked to be the main city police department and the larger downtown hotels.
As I walked those first few days (yes, I was used to walking a city as was my custom for years abroad), I was ashamed of my country, the people of Maryland, those responsible for Baltimore, the so-called leaders in Annapolis. I remain so today. ALL that I saw was an embarrassment.
Shameful.
Was I witnessing the results of who and how we choose to be?
What have we chosen?
Who are we?
We, yes all of us, have allowed this to be so.
Katievs| 11.5.10 @ 9:50AM
I blame the car. American life is built around it. Too many people who use cities don't actually live in them. And having to drive everywhere: to schools, church, shops, friends means there is very little of the kind of communal life in which an instituted local aesthetic makes sense and is duly consistent with individual freedom.
dc| 11.5.10 @ 11:31AM
So walk or ride your bike, hippie. Nobody forces you to own or use a car. And if cities weren't run by union socialists, much of the transactional crap that normal people must go to cities to do could be done electronically, without having to interface with the dead-eyed, angry pukes who populate municipal governments.
When people who don't like cities go to cities, by the way, it's usually to spend money at restaurants, sporting events or some other such revenue positive activity. So you should be happy cities still attract any non-city folk at all, or else most cities would be even worse off than they are. And, look at the election map--where are the "blue" districts? Overwhelmingly, in and around major cities. They are miserable places because they are managed by, and their constituents are, miserable socialist tools who wish to impose their misery on others, rather than trying to improve their own sorryass lives. The thought that people live free, own guns, hunt, work their own land, cut firewood, etc. short miles away drives them mad--and instead of making their own lives better (start by not electing thieves), they seek to ration the production of everything to their own advantage. Go to hell--never mind, you're already there.
Comenius| 11.6.10 @ 12:24AM
Well said!
John Navratil| 11.5.10 @ 11:10AM
Interesting and thought provoking are the two positive attributes I can give to this.
The notion of people congregating is as old as the written word. In every case, there was the strong man and the little people. Florence didn't become Florence without the Medici. It was great to be king, but if you were the little people it was servitude and genuflection before myriad rules and impediments. The classic conflict of Liberty and License, given relief only in such maxims as "A man's home is his castle."; the one place where he was king.
The article sees the best of one world and the worst of the other. Something to ponder, but not a great work.
Jenn| 11.5.10 @ 12:19PM
People make a city, not infastructure. It is the decline of community causing the demise of cities, not wild places.
roadmaster| 11.7.10 @ 3:36PM
I recently returned from a trip to MO, where I spent days visiting Washington, MO. This quaint little town on the bank of the Missouri River has done a fantastic job of preserving and renovating their historical district. It wasn't easy, but they had a good plan and stuck with it.
Our visit to Hannibal wasn't as impressive. Not as old as Washington, but with many blocks of once beautiful Victorian homes from it's heyday, the place looks more like a slum area, or even a refuse dump. All of their light industries have left or closed down and the unemployment is sky high, especially now that their tourist season is over.
From my perspective, the people of the former were motivated and determined to maintain the charming character of Washington, whereas those in Hannibal thought the good times were going to roll on forever - everyone loves Mark Twain, right?
I don't know the political makeup of either city, but just a brief glimpse of both indicates to me which is conservative and which is liberal.
Perusha| 11.5.10 @ 2:02PM
An interesting take on the city verses urban split.
Where are the lines drawn, and WHO draws them?
My hometown of Portland, Oregon, quite possibly, despite its middling size, provides a great lesson in one limit of federalism, or the chance to choose one extreme “intelligent” path for its inhabitants.
First, for the longest time I haven’t cared much about state and local elections in this dark blue state, because the city of Portland and most of the contiguous areas to it that make up Multnomah County have been in control of the political dance---and, don’t forget the most liberal Eugene, and the state capital of Salem.
However, this year, it looked like a Republican could finally become governor. Of course, it was close all the way. For a while, it looked like Dudley of the GOP was pulling away, and Fox TV even showed Oregon in red, meaning that he had won. I went to bed BELIEVING this.
The next day, though, the inevitable “late votes from Multnomah County” pulled the old creep Kitzenhaber over the top---surprise, surprise!
I live on Southern Oregon, which except for the extremely liberal Ashland, is very much like the reddest of areas in the heartland---Conservative. Indeed, Oregon, like probably most other majority blue states, resembles America, in that its heartland is as red as red can be.
So, a map of the square miles colored red is overwhelmingly dominant, and it’s those darned dense “cities” that are full of liberals, who continue to rule the rest of us!
Portland is dying. My old high school had 1,500 students in 1960 when I graduated. I went to its website, and was (not really!) shocked to find that it was down to around half that number. And the racial mix was stunning---mostly Latinos, next Blacks, and a minority of whites.
When I was growing up, I still remember seeing one Tom McCall in the ‘50’s as a TV newscaster and commentator for KGW, I believe. He used this as a springboard to become---GOVERNOR! And, you know he spread his liberal dung into the political system, creating a lot of the ongoing trouble, including, I think, many thrusts into the environmental and public lands area.
Also, it used to be an unofficial state motto, actually promulgated by higher elected officials---some governor or other, I believe---mostly aimed at Californians: come and visit (wonderful) Oregon (and spend your money) but don’t bother moving here, because it’s so rainy and gloomy so much of the year.
Well, the latter fact actually proved to be so obvious to me, after serving in hot and humid Vietnam AND California, that I happily exited Oregon to settle in the Golden State! Whenever I even talked about Oregon to new friends in the then glorious state of California about Oregon and its residents, I always had my stay-in-Portland brother in mind, and told them that it was quite true that most residents of that wet and green state WERE indeed most depressing in their mood.
Bright and shiny they were not, for the most part. Living in Eugene while at the University of Oregon from 1962-1966 absolutely made it inevitable I’d leave, eventually. The dreary winter months were so bad that usually you could go for a whole month, and never even see the sun, AND the streets almost never had enough time to even dry out, since the rain was so prevalent!
By the way, guess where my brother retired to? Mexico!
Finally, the spiral of death that the NOW welfare state of California has long been going down has definitely impacted Oregon, even where I now live, because a lot of the escapees are STILL liberal! In numbers, they are spreading the entitlement disease! Even though lots of winners, too, are leaving---witness the Intel branch just west of Portland.
How about them Oregon Ducks, though---what a football team! Number one for NOW.
When I went to that school, it was known as the University of California at Eugene, because most of the athletes were from California. And, now?
Oregon, meet Texas! (Two of the key starters on the football team are “from” Texas)
Indeed, one of the realizations that helped me get over the election of another Democrat as governor of Oregon was that all boundaries are arbitrary. Merely conventions meant to keep ongoing order. Okay, as far as they go.
And, so, if I’m going to play the identification game, I can at once simply be the king of my own “castle”, to wit the bubble of my mental and physical and emotional being, AND a member of the free world = the America paradoxically inside lines on a map, but truly an IDEA that each human aspires towards.
Pat| 11.5.10 @ 5:48PM
Sort of a rambling Thoreau type essay but not remotely “real world”. National Parks are “money makers” similar to all other businesses. You pay to feel close to nature. Even the 2 million acre Denali Park in Alaska isn’t the “protect animals from man” sanctuary they would have us believe. You pay to ride their comfortable buses through the park being sanctimoniously lectured all the while on how important it is to protect nature, except from tourists of course; they even have the ubiquitous souvenir stand located midway through your journey. Park Rangers, bus drivers and souvenir sellers get paid by you and depend on you for their livelihoods; they’re not compensated by the grizzlies or the caribou.
The nearby town outside the park’s entrance, tourism companies, railroads, cruise ship lines, hotels, outfitters get paid. Nature photographers pay for permits to film these natural wonders and mountaineering guides will take you up Mt. McKinley – for money. The only difference between Denali and Disneyworld is the weather and the availability of lattes. Even those taxpayers who will never visit Denali pay and pay solely for the mental comfort of knowing it’s there.
And cities are machines, machines designed for a specific purpose, they’re not natural wonders. Machines get old, they break down, they are replaced by newer machines or even alternate forms of machinery. Visit a junkyard, see the ultimate fate of old cars, visit Detroit, see what happens to old cities. Cherishing old cities because they’re “old” is nothing more than the irrational within us taking a leisurely stroll through our thoughts.
bob alou| 11.5.10 @ 6:34PM
The Park Service is an over-protective group of narrow minded old ladies. In the west you can go to a million acre park that has a few dozen, at most, camp sites and severe restrictions on where, when and how you can travel. This is hardly the exception but rather the rule. However, on the other side of the ledger; I am generally in favor of wilderness simply because once it is gone it is gone. During the sage brush rebellion I was generally in favor of selling off surplus federal lands, but having seen the cronyism that goes on in such transactions it seems to me that what was being sold was the jewels not the junk and then parceled off or otherwise sequestered to the extent that the average american was excluded. I lived in Texas, with arguably the lowest percentage of publicly available access to land/hunting without paying a fee or a lease. Now I live in New Mexico where public land is everywhere and available to everyone. New Mexico is better. For those who want to sell off public/surplus land my standard is simple--let me make the decision about what should be sold. I see no reason to trust anyone else with my children's inheritance.
SPaquet| 11.7.10 @ 8:15PM
bob alou, If your ousted governor has his way before leaving office, he wants to designate millions of acres of grasslands as national monuments, unhappy hunting if you live near there unless your newly elected one can overturn this; otherwise you'll pay or not be let in at all. The ex-governor is either a sore loser, a loser, facsist, or all the above; I'm of the thinking that he is all of the above. The people of California said no to added fees to register our cars, so the goverment here has a new tactic,pay the fee(tax) or we will have to cut drastically the hours opened and close some parks to the public entirely.
REB| 11.5.10 @ 8:16PM
We have to get back to where a mans home is truely his castle and where he is truely a sovereign! Most(not all)eviromentalists are frauds and kooks...in it for money and power and not to protect nature,most landowners do not destroy their property because it is theirs...and these cities...make them become almost self sufficient and not in control of all the votes,mob rule is what they represent,and consuming the lives and land of peoples beyond their borders for their own survival and profit is what they do best,sad!
Yosemeti Sam| 11.6.10 @ 11:23AM
" ... All the most vigorous environmental initiatives in America, from the national parks movement and the Sierra Club to Earth Day and the Wilderness Society, have been dedicated to the wilderness idea...."
Personally, I want to see the BOTTOM LINE accounting for these wildlife champions as to their salaries and perks!
Sort of SUNSHINE their shunning of capitalistic 'interests'.
Toko baju online| 11.7.10 @ 9:10AM
hmm .. Well said !!!
Toko baju online
John Bailo| 11.7.10 @ 12:44PM
"Sprawl" is a myth...we Americans are compressed into "reservations". 90 percent of us live on 66 million acres our of 2.3 billion acres! 100 years ago, the split between urban and rural populations was 50:50. Back then, people would routinely live on plots of land measured in acres. Now something that would barely fit a good sized barn is considered "Sprawl". Right now, we are at the point where our technology should let us re-populate the towns and counties of the interior. High Speed Rail means I can live 300 miles from work, and commute in. Wimax means I don't need wires for information or entertainment. And soon, home energy units that use hydrogen, already being deployed in Japan, mean that I don't need to be on a "grid" or "smart grid" or "intelligent grid" or any of the other code words for "more taxes for urbists".
alsyd| 11.7.10 @ 4:15PM
Americans like new things, Mr. Scruton. They have no interest in beauty and its power to invoke a deeper truth. Especially aging beauty with its poignant inference to passing time. That's for sissies. There's something in the American character that is defiantly reverse snob. They truly don't like exalted good taste but prefer safety in the profane. In today's fast-food world that means the suburbs, which conservatives worship; and I say this as a conservative (as in conserving the past). The best Americans can hope for is a kind of ersatz quaintness, it seems. Although in the small town on the Chesapeake where I now live there is a dawning recognition that maintaining tradition (which includes architecture) can be useful to combat the more destructive dimensions of progressivism.
SPaquet| 11.7.10 @ 5:22PM
Reminds me of the wind energy proposal off the coast of New England where Teddy lived: not in my back yard it would ruin the veiw of our Boot-legging dad's house I didn't earn. It seems to be ok for others to sacrifice but none of that for the elitist---the ocean is not a national park but some fools fell for it anyway. Here in California because the voters balked at yet another tax on registering our cars said no. So now they are threatening to cut park hours or elimitating people from entering some parks all-to-gether.The great state of Ca. is now run by the worst govener in recent history & boxers here for another 6 years so she can help shut the water for the sake of the delta smelt. Our country if run by insane un-American miscriants
PattyMor| 11.7.10 @ 5:31PM
Rubbish, what a lot of rubbish. Environmental laws and zoning laws are all elements of central planning. Urban sprawl is an artificial construct. People flee the cities because they are overrun by over taxation, crime, graffiti, uneducated and violent people. When did property rights go out of style?? After "progressives" breached the walls of the constitution.
alsyd| 11.7.10 @ 6:10PM
PattyMor, interstate highways are centrally planned. So are telecommunications systems and air traffic control. Also, the white middle class voluntarily left the inner cities in the 50s for Levittown.
Kingofthenet| 11.7.10 @ 8:16PM
If you want to blame anything for the 'ugliness' of cities, how about unrestrained CAPITALISM? People billboard and change building to try and gain a competitive edge in business. Europe ALSO cares for it's land and natural spaces, but Capitalism in controlled.You know my bank recently sent me a letter about how much they try and protect my Identity, and how much they value my privacy, they give me all sort of options to 'Opt out' of stuff EXCEPT one, and that is marketing efforts for the bank, I have no choice but to accept them. You can also blame Republicans and their Love affair for total unregulated lazzie-Fair Free Markets at ANY cost.
Marc Jeric| 11.8.10 @ 1:32AM
Yes, komrad - let us have a single government bank, like it was and still is in various communist hells. I should know, having escaped from it.
Marc Jeric| 11.8.10 @ 1:30AM
Environmentalism today has nothing to do with environment. It is led by eco-nazis, marxists, socialists, and other misfits looking for absolute power over us.To them to kill a malaria-carrying mosquito is a crime; to kill a man on the other hand saves the planet.
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