I come from a long line of farmers and timber people, folks who made their living from what grew out of the ground. Men who had a great and abiding respect for the soil and water, who harvested the timber with an eye on selective cutting, for leaving seed trees to replenish the woodlands, for never leaving the dead trimmings next to a standing tree to keep the bugs who attack dead wood from going into a live tree and killing it.

The unadulterated darling of the media these days and the prototype of Democrat idealism is a slight, outspoken, would-be social engineer and international mover and shaker named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a former barkeep from the Bronx in New York.