‘Progressive’ California At War With Progress
By I & I Editorial Board, Issues & Insights | October 16, 2024
Much has been made, as it should have been, about the stark differences with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the once-great NASA’s pathetic woke-DEI-politically correct existence. Musk wins on merit, but in California, that’s not what counts. So Musk has been vilified because he dared to leave the progressive plantation.
SpaceX has been launching rockets from the Vandenberg Air Force base in Santa Barbara County for more than a decade. It wants to increase the number of annual launches from six to 36, and maybe even more. The Air Force has no problem with the plans. The California Coastal Commission does. It voted 6-4 last week to block the increase.
As one would expect, the opposition was based on Musk’s political transformation. He also has the temerity to be successful in a society that has increasingly come to devalue success and deem failure and the amenability to be offended to be virtues. That will get him nowhere in California.
- “We’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race,” said Commissioner Chair Caryl Hart.
- “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” said Alternate Commissioner Gretchen Newsom.
- “This company is owned by the richest person in the world with direct control of what could be the most expansive communications system in the planet,” Commissioner Mike Wilson said. “Just last week that person was talking about political retribution.”
The “official” reason for the commission’s decision is due “concerns that all SpaceX launches would be considered military activity, shielding the company from having to acquire its own permits, even if military payloads aren’t being carried,” reports Politico.
But it’s obvious that was concocted for public consumption.
California is clearly the most progressive state in the country in terms of politics. It elevates the administrative state over private affairs. It pursues a political society at the expense of civil society. Progressives prefer the rule of men, not the rule of law; elites over Mainstreeters; dependence rather than independence; coercion instead of cooperation; taxes instead of economic freedom; revolution (or a fundamental transformation) when what’s needed is greater freedom.
In truth, there is nothing progressive about any of that. Musk has figured this out and abandoned California, taking his SpaceX and Tesla headquarters to Texas with him. Others have learned the same lesson. That’s why companies and residents have been fleeing the state as if a wildfire were licking at the seat of their pants.
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