James Lileks (whom I hate, because he’s cleverer than I am) posted an item today at buzz.mn about “Dead Trolley Day.” Today is the anniversary of the date in 1954 when streetcars went out of service in Minneapolis. Since then a folklore has risen in our community (supported by at least one local TV special), a tale of how the wicked bus promoters acquired the trolley lines and proceeded to drive them into the ground, so that they could replace them with smoke-belching buses, although they were better in every way, and everybody loved them. The truth is a lot more complicated, of course. As Lileks notes, the trolleys were hot in the summer and cold in the winter, they blocked traffic, and they required the streets to be overhung with webs of ugly electric cable.

It occurred to me to wonder—why are liberals so nostalgic about artifacts? If you try to tell them that the people who built, operated and rode those trolleys were wiser than we in some areas having to do with personal morality, they’ll be outraged. But they generally cling to the objects themselves—trolleys, old buildings, etc., with fierce devotion.

I came up with a theory. Chances are I’m theorizing through my homburg as usual, but I’ll share it anyway, because I like to hear myself type.

We’re all familiar (most of you more than I) with the phenomenon of the child testing parental limits. A child is sometimes disobedient for no apparent reason, simply because he wants to check where the limits are. Because if there are no limits—no “fences”—then he knows he’s not being protected. Even when he ends up being punished, there’s a certain comfort in the punishment, because it affirms that he still has that safe fence around him.

The Baby Boomers, it seems to me, are the first generation in the history of the world to be raised, to a large extent (there are, of course, many exceptions) without safe fences. They tested the limits and found none. Their doting parents, who’d internalized Dr. Spock, indulged them, denying them the security they craved and needed. As a result, many of the Boomers have never grown up. They’re still acting out, waiting for some grownup to tell them, “Stop! That’s it! No TV tonight!”

(And it’s no good telling me I’m immature myself. What makes me different is that I know I’m immature, and factor that fact into my thinking. I became a Conservative when I realized I couldn’t trust my emotions.)

Perhaps most of the social upheavals—the dramatics of the feminists, the abortionists and the homosexuals—are in fact tantrums, an appeal for adult supervision.

Adult supervision that will never come.

And just as the disobedient child is deeply insecure, clinging to his “bankie,” the liberal clings to the landmarks of the past, the closest thing to security he can find in a world he himself is kicking to pieces, yearning to be stopped.