I grow weary of pundits who assure us that government will surrender power — say, over salaries in private businesses — once the current crisis is over. That is hardly, if ever, the case. It’s easy to surrender freedom, hard to gain it back … easy to nationalize a bank, not so easy to privatize it again.
I was reminded of this truth by this AP article discussing the end of the South’s “epic drought”:
The epic southern drought has bid most of the region adieu after sucking reservoirs dry and shriveling crops for three years.
Only about a third of the South faces moderate or worse drought conditions, roughly half the area that was dry a year ago, and less than 10 percent is in severe drought. In hard-hit South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia, homeowners are getting more leeway to water their lawns as utilities relax restrictions.
An unusually wet March that flooded homes around the region also had a silver lining: Forecasters say the drenching helped refill parched lakes and dry water tables, capping a monthslong drought recovery.
Check out the N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council’s drought map for the Tar Heel State to get an idea of how much conditions have improved.
Now harken back to last summer, when General Assembly lawmakers were in a tizzy over the, supposedly, devastating drought (and it’s all because of global warming, don’t you know). They took some significant freedom-reducing steps to fight the dry spell. There was much rhetoric about having to do something or else we might never see rain again. Now that conditions have significantly improved, are legislators going to lessen the restrictions?
Reminds me of some recent rhetoric about the economy.
