I blog from Prague, where the beer is good and the architecture better. I just took in a photographic exhibit, "Forgotten Prague," which detailed the lost architecture of the city. Prague seems to have done a better job than most cities in preserving ancient strcutures--a 750-year-old bridge, a 1200-year-old castle, a 650-year-old church all blend into the surroundings. But, as "Forgotten Prague" demonstrates, too much has been lost. We just don't notice because we never knew it was there in the first place.

Three forces have destroyed beautiful architecture throughout Europe: war, weather, and socialism. Prague thankfully avoided the aerial bombardment that destroyed the charm of many European cities during World War II. It has not, unfortunately, eluded weather or socialism. In the 19th century, for instance, floods swept away much of Charles Bridge. Czechs mindful of history restored the span, which now stands as a footbridge. During the 19th and 20th centuries, state planners bent on urban renewal succeeded in urban destruction. Save for five synagogues, virtually nothing remains from Prague's Jewish Quarter. Nazis murdered many of the inhabitants; city planners had earlier obliterated their old and beautiful dwellings, commercial buildings, and meeting spaces. Vienna and Budapest suffered similar indignities at the hands of modern do-gooders. In the case of the former, a 19th-century socialist mayor razed the entire center of the city; in the case of the latter, the utilitarian architecture of the Communists uprooted structural links to the past. As an American visitor used to "old" meaning 100- or 200-years old, I am grateful for what remains.

Conservatives revere the past. Progressives despise it. The progressive gives no deference to history. He favors theory over experience. He imagines his ancestors as troglodytes incapable of moral or intellectual sophistication. He tells adversaries to "change with the times" and dismisses arguments with such put-downs as "medieval," "relic," "neanderthal," "backward," and "stone-age." He would bulldoze the pyramids for a shopping mall. Real progress is not destroying links to the past.

Prague is good, but I love LA !

Hey, you two...in return for the awesome backpacks (sorry about the little hole in one of them), if you can pick up a small bag of sweet Hungarian Paprika for me, I'd be very grateful.

Have a great holiday!

Funny you should mention this. It struck me a couple of days ago that "rolling back the clock" is a progressive projection. It is quite human, if you see yourself as pulling in one direction, to imagine that your opposition wants to pull in another. Thus if you are going "forward in time", they must be going "backward". And if you view the future as open-ended, and you never stop pulling your society (more future is better), then you view your opposition as endlessly pulling into the past.

But all of this avoids the question of whether or not the proposed change is a good one. Some progressives would do well to remember how happy they are with what the term "Manifest Destiny" accomplished. Couching something as "progress", or "the wave of the future" does not make it a good thing.

The progressive is quite ironic, though. They believe that progress is moving our society to a point where it's anyone's guess what is what---whether or not that is your guess. To establish their nihilistic creed, they will try throw terms around it like "progress" whether or not "progress" lies in a direction where we all want to go.

I like the way C.S. Lewis responsed to the phrase "you can't turn back the clock." He simply said, of course you can, "if the clock is wrong it is often a very sensible thing to do."

I for one turn my clocks back at least every Fall for daylights savings (although I am not sure I understand why I should).

But as Sea King points out the rhetoric of progress expresses an attitude, not an argument. Even if the "you can't go back" attitude is logical from w/in the progressive worldview it doesn't suffice for making a case on any contested issue at all. One thing that is interesting about it is that the progressive is capable of styling themselves as hard realists with the "can't turn back" assertion. Take any issue, like abortion, and the progressive would say it is unrealistic to reverse course on it. "What, are you going to criminalize it? You want to *lock up* women who are determined to get an abortion?!!" So they see the conservative as living in a fantasy world, as an idealist.

This was all demonstrated just tonight on that miserable NPR show "On Point" as the host interviewed a "Feminists for Life" spokeswoman. He asked her that very question in the standard guvt radio liberal half-shocked/half-condescending tone. She actually gave a hem-haw answer that frankly did sound oddly utopian.

"He would bulldoze the pyramids for a shopping mall"

So would a capitalist. Capitalism has destroyed all sorts of links with the past -- sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Of course a capitalist has no sense of the past, all that matters is increasing profits. Capitalism, like Libertarianism, is not wrong in the same way Socialism or Communism is wrong, but it is incomplete on its own.

I agree with your point completely, Eric, but isn't it only the dumb capitalist who would bulldoze the pyramids? I would charge admission. :)

Dan,

Why did I get this impression that you would be tooling around Europe by way of high speed luxury rail and/or limousines whilst porters and chauffeurs moved your belongings?

Backpacks?