Chief de Blasio to Ambush Skyscrapers

Classic glass and steel skyscrapers ... have no place in our city or our Earth anymore. -- Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City

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If the recent blackout in Caracas, Venezuela reminds one of New York's blackout in Atlas Shrugged, the latter city's mayor just gave us all reason to ponder another of Ayn Rand's works, Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution.

How?

On Earth Day, Bill de Blasio declared war on the skyscraper, the very same symbol of human achievement a different tribe of savages attacked in his city nearly two decades ago:

Image by mpewny, via Pixabay, license.

"We are going to introduce legislation to ban the classic glass and steel skyscrapers that have contributed so much to global warming," de Blasio said.

"They have no place in our city or our Earth anymore."

Despite Hizzoner's insistence on repeatedly using the word "ban," he later admitted his legislation would actually just tighten the city's energy code to make it prohibitively expensive to develop glassy high-rises.

I submit that such a proposal will more surely and thoroughly, albeit not as dramatically (at first) accomplish what the atrocities of September 11, 2001 accomplished, and on a wider scale than any Islamist could ever hope for, if enacted and enforced.

I have already expressed my moral opposition to the nationwide version of this proposal, rooted as it is in the unquestioned and savage morality of altruism. But Rand always expresses such sentiments and unites ideas and their consequences so thoroughly that I will quote her on the matter. The following is not from the book I just mentioned, but it is in the same vein:

Americans have known how to erect a superlative material achievement in the midst of an untouched wilderness, against the resistance of savage tribes. What we need today is to erect a corresponding philosophical structure, without which the material greatness cannot survive. A skyscraper cannot stand on crackerbarrels, nor on wall mottoes, nor on full-page ads, nor on prayers, nor on meta-language. The new wilderness to reclaim is philosophy, now all but deserted, with the weeds of prehistoric doctrines rising again to swallow the ruins. To support a culture, nothing less than a new philosophical foundation will do.

Without that philosophical structure, we are seeing a large segment of our population morphing into a savage tribe hostile to industrial civilization. Don't believe me? Just consider the fact that even if the entire (national) "Green New Deal" supported by so many Democrats were enacted, it would have zero effect on the emerging economies around the world rushing to catch up with our standard of living by building coal plants. I do not endorse holding the world to the same irrational standard; rather, I point this out to underscore the fact that something other than concern for the earth or American lives is behind these efforts. As morally bankrupt as environmentalism is, capitalism will not survive unless we, its beneficiaries, make a positive stand for it; it will lose by default, as it is even now.

It is incredible that the mayor of one of the world's greatest cities could say something like this in all seriousness, but he has indeed.

-- CAV