The eternal conservative argument against social progress

Most everybody has probably already heard that Jamie Lynn Spears had a baby girl today. So I won't do a separate post on that quite yet. Congratulations, Jamie Lynn!

Carolyn Jones and Charles Burress of the San Francisco Chronicle reported today on the latest turn in a battle between tree-huggers and the University of California-Berkeley over a new athletic center: Cal, tree-sitters both happy after judge rules 06/19/08.

I happened to be driving by a different part of the campus today and saw that the tree-sitters were perched on Piedmont Ave not far from the frat houses, for those who may know the area. It was a pretty tame scene. Several police were standing around and for some reason they seemed to have closed off a parking lot.

I knew the tree-sitters were protesting but I don't really have any strong opinion one way or the other on this particular issue. It's fairly specific to the particular campus. But I can still appreciate the creative protests on behalf of the environment.

Also in today's Chronicle is an op-ed about tree-sitters (A message to the destroyers by Doug Kaplan 06/19/08) that caught my attention mainly because it uses about the stalest conservative argument in the book: we live in the best of all possible worlds and how can you criticize any part of it? Or, we the stodgy-minded led by the greedy are the true friends of goodness, truth and health and you dirty hippie tree-huggers want to destroy it all!

I guess it's such a popular form of argument because even someone who has, say, pickled their brain in OxyContin can manage for formulate it.

Tags: conservatism, environmentalism, jamie lynn spears

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