It’s clear that “manufacturing” is a symbol. For what? For the America of the Industrial Revolution to the 1980s and 90s, for the world of voters’ parents and grandparents and their struggle; for the fact of Rust Belt economic decline; a symbol of lament for the odyssey of the last 40 years for the American city; for unions, for European immigrants who found their work in factories more than anywhere else, just as much as it is for the African-American journey to Northern cities; a general symbol of America 1870-1990 which serves, in turn, as an even more abstract sign of a reverence, of desire for change from the uneasy 21st century, of conservatism in a certain Obama sense which I think we can all recognize intuitively.

It’s clear that “manufacturing” is a symbol. For what? For the America of the Industrial Revolution to the 1980s and 90s, for the world of voters’ parents and grandparents and their struggle; for the fact of Rust Belt economic decline; a symbol of lament for the odyssey of the last 40 years for the American city; for unions, for European immigrants who found their work in factories more than anywhere else, just as much as it is for the African-American journey to Northern cities; a general symbol of America 1870-1990 which serves, in turn, as an even more abstract sign of a reverence, of desire for change from the uneasy 21st century, of *conservatism* in a certain Obama sense which I think we can all recognize intuitively.

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Matthew Yglesias » Factories

I recognize, but do not share this conservatism. The dreams of old-fashioned factory workers, sweat on their brows, union cards in their hands, are dreams of a lifestyle neither their dreamers nor me would ever want to live through.