Posted on 08/03/2018 12:00:16 PM PDT by beaversmom
When asked about a popular restaurant, Yogi Berra put it like only Yogi could. “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
Well, Colorado has turned into that restaurant.
A fascinating recent report by The Denver Post’s Aldo Svaldi (which I’m pretty sure is the name he made up to start a budget winery) details the demographic shifts happening to our once ruggedly individualistic state. More people are still pouring into Colorado than sneaking out, but the gap is narrowing.
Last year was the first drop this decade in people moving here from other states. At the same time, more people were leaving Colorado than ever before. There were still 30,000 more coming than going, so don’t think our population is shrinking. They’re still flooding in like the Chinese into Korea during the war, and destroying what Colorado used to be.
People have always come here, that’s not news. The real story is people are escaping at record numbers to get away from what the state has sadly become.
Most anti-growth types yap about how all these out-of-state transplants hurt the “character” of their communities. To the point even traditionally sensible places like Lakewood have turned tribal in attempting growth limits, foolishly thinking it will reduce traffic and give them back some elbowroom. Elitist Boulder proves it does just the opposite.
“Character” of communities always changes and we’ll always long for what they used to be like in our younger years.
People are fleeing Colorado not because there’s too many people here or a box store replaced a mom-and-pop shop (don’t worry, the box store will be replaced by Amazon drones, and later something will replace that). They’re bolting because what it is to be a Coloradan has changed.
Deep down in its soul there has been a seismic shift in the spirit of Colorado, in its people. It’s not the change in the physical “character” of our town. It’s the change in the character of our people.
You feel it. You’re reminded of it every time you roll your eyes when you’re stuck behind a California license plate in traffic. You feel it with the growing “triggered” society, ready to riot over a sign at a coffee shop. You feel it with every proposal to raise “fees” on grocery bags or drinks with sugar, force green roofs, municipalize power companies, raise sin taxes on smoking, build city-owned internet, growth control, gun control, healthcare control. Control, control, control. You feel it — we are becoming California.
More than ever Coloradans want to make decisions for other people and engineer how others live. This is wildly antithetical to the Colorado I grew up in.
The personal stories in Svaldi’s report echo this Californication as the reasons our escapees are fleeing: “The growth of our beautiful city has brought nothing but increased traffic, angry entitled transplants who have no respect, and a cost of living that is through the roof.” “Colorado had become very liberal, anti-religion, anti-gun and way too sensitive about stuff.”
Colorado has always been a destination state, perhaps THE destination state in THE destination nation. Why? Because people were drawn to Colorado because it was the place where one could write his own biography.
People who craved the freedom to make their own decisions were pulled to this state by some unseen magnet which created the Colorado Character.
Miners, farmers, ranchers, brewers, artists, techies and businessmen all were drawn here and had one common denominator: a fearless desire to take on risk. They directed their own activities, made their own calls, and through the power of freely associating with others built the greatest state in America. The tales of their failures and successes only powered the magnet more.
The magnet that seems to pull today’s new Coloradans are pretty mountains, a job, and home that somehow costs less than the one they’re selling in California.
The new Colorado character craves the illusion of security and certainty of outcome.
It’s time to rename our state East California.
Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.
Alcohol...and oldie and not a goodie.
It took my paternal grandma at age 42 and left my dad on his own at 16 years.
It took my dad’s brain in the end.
It nearly killed my brother a few times.
What a wonderful legacy it leaves.
And it gives kids a WONDERFUL foundation for life and esteem.
But that’s a different story, isn’t it?
I’ve seen that CO Spgs housing is still relatively low compared to the Denver metro, but that will change. Beautiful area down there, but it won’t be long before it’s busting at the seams. For you it already was nearly 20 years ago.
Geez, that’s a recipe for success!
Saw a PBS report last year that Garden City, KS has been actively courting Muslims for years.
I wonder how many people in Garden City knew that was going on. It was sure a surprise to most of us in Iowa and I still don't know who put up the billboards in Chicago.
The left does that regularly to other states, colonizes them. The right cannot do that. When those who can’t deal with California any more emigrate they take California with them. Their beef is with what happens to them in a socialist utopia state, not with the policies that made the socialist utopia. They think they are conservatives and maybe even voted for Trump but at street level they want all the social and land use controls and services of the state they run from.
‘The magnet that seems to pull today’s new Coloradans are pretty mountains, a job, and home that somehow costs less than the one they’re selling in California.;
I was in Colorado last summer; very nice, however, not a place in which I would wish to live...
Then you helped create the homeless/street bums problem.
There are parts of California that are still good Conservative areas. The others, I’d just visit.
I grew up here. It’s my home. It’s very painful to watch what has taken place.
California was publicized as the place where you could come and live some form of ultra American Dream. A lot of decent people came here, but unfortunately far more crazies made the trip and settled down.
The federal government moved in hundreds of thousands of immigrants, illegals, and people called refugees who were anything but.
Fairly large moderately sized towns were flipped upside down in a matter of a few decades. They are now foreign national enclaves.
Gone is the ability for the normal societal support for typical American cuisine restaurants. Gone are a number of businesses that used to cater to traditional Americans.
Our institutions have been taken over. It’s like someone picked you up and dropped you on foreign territory.
It goes beyond the obvious. People from foreign nations think differently than we do. To them it’s not considered a problem to cut in line. It’s not considered a problem to pull out from a business onto the street without even looking. It’s not considered an insult to demand the flag of your former nation be flown on top of the American city’s flagpole on days important to them.
These people DO NOT come here to become a part of us. They come here to occupy territory and take over, building THEIR old country right here.
Not just my town, by my entire region is inhabited by foreign nations of one sort or another.
This is what has been ushered in by our masters in Washington, D. C.
If this diversity is so important, why are no Southern Hemisphere nations being demanded to do it?
Name one nation other than predominantly White, that is being forced to relinquish a long standing majority.
In South Africa, where diversity had been ongoing, the immigrants are being trashed and told to get out. Laws are being changed to confiscate their property.
This is a globalist effort, pure and simple, and our Congress is behind it lock stock and barrel.
I imagine the meat packers want them for cheap labor.
This reminds me of Vermont also. It got all the New York City and New Jersey folks coming into the state and changing what Vermont was. Really sad!
I love Wyoming. I have been up there quite a few times. Last time was a couple of years ago in August 2016...my daughter and I went up to Devil’s Tower. Coming back on I-25, I couldn’t believe how open the roads were. This was summer and we were often the only ones on the road. After driving in frustrating traffic in the Denver metro, it was like paradise. The only thing...too darn cold up there and windy starting in Fall. We get cold here, too, but there are so many sunny days even in the winter. I’m spoiled with that.
‘I think it is some kind of door way to the demonic realms’
hyperbolize much...?
That’s a big part of it, I do believe. Same in Grand Island, NE and Greeley, CO.
Our fore fathers were right , and wise , to see the dangers inherent in marijuana use . We rejected them eventually and we shall pay the costs . Welcome to the Rastafarian States of what used to be America
Yes, demonics...
There were plenty of homeless/street bums in Colorado long before marijuana was legalized. In any case, blaming the problem of the homeless and bums on marijuana being legal is no different than blaming the repeal of Prohibition.
The fault lies overwhelmingly in the homeless and bums themselves for the choices they make.
‘It’s all about marijuana in Colorado- it has taken over the culture in many places there.’
that’s merely due to its relative newness...
The Mexifornians have turned Colorado into the same shithole they were going there to escape from. Idaho is next.
Liberals destroy everything everywhere they go.
It damn near killed me. 28 years of a better life now. One day at a time.
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