This column is not written to offend anyone’s sensibilities or political beliefs or even to make them think. I am old enough to know that people become rigid with their beliefs and opinions that differ  are cast aside as being uninformed, ignorant or just plain mean. This is an age of “he hurt my feelings” as if this is an unnatural  condition. Love and hate are human emotions. This is a personal social conflict. I mention this because I feel threatened as a citizen with all the social engineering going on involving my very thoughts. If I don’t like something or someone it is sometimes suggested that I take “sensitivity” training. In the former Soviet Union it was called “brainwashing”.

Why this preface? Today I heard social activist Jim Green and a panel on the Bill Good Show on CKNW talking about some of the latest social engineering plans for the city. Green defended the $20,000 reserve for chickens that are abandoned or go astray. He also defended bees at City Hall, the veggie garden where a lawn once ruled, and bicycle paths on the bridges  (expanding as I write this). It is all so civil and “progressive”. Every time I hear that I can’t help but think of the word “regressive”. If keeping bees, having chickens, more bicycle paths,and veggie gardens on all vacant lots is “progressive” in a city of 2 million people where prepared food is bad, vehicles are evil, and only organically grown food is acceptable I am certainly out of touch and need some “sensitivity training” right away.

Jim Green mentioned that much of this is going on in San Francisco. He would have to compare us to America’s birthplace of nuttiness. Life in the last century is where these people want to return us.  Can you imagine 1 million horses on city streets and the disease from horse dung?

I wonder where it is all going to end? Daily bulletins from city hall on how you should dress, think, dine, and travel might be next on the agenda. Don’t laugh, George Orwell saw it coming and my friends it is  here. My grandfather used to say “Son, if you don’t stand for something, you are just taking up space.”

Today I still have the right to say it is all baloney.

So far.