WHEN PURPLE STATES TURN BLUE: Coloradans getting first-hand taste of progressive squalor.

Have you noticed recently how trash-laden the Denver-area highways have become? It never used to be that way. It’s a sign of social and governmental breakdown. The last time I saw anything like it was in Greece in 2015 when the country was in the midst of a debt crisis brought on by socialist overspending. The last time before that was in Oklahoma in the mid-1980s, when government corruption coupled with an oil price crash devastated the state’s economy.

Colorado started on a pretty high plane, so thus far the rot is not as visible as in Bolivia, or as it was in Greece or Oklahoma. But the incipient signs are everywhere. First, of course, soaring taxes—oops, I mean soaring “fees” and “enterprises” (labeled that way so the people don’t get a chance to vote on them). Drugged-out zombies wandering around. Unsafe schools, with teachers who don’t dare to enforce discipline. Crumbling roads and traffic jams from projects that seem to take forever—projects of repair and showcase schemes of “progressive” virtue like the ongoing Colfax Avenue mess.

No wonder stores in Wyoming are selling bumber stickers that announce: “COLORADO — WYOMING’S MEXICO!”

If you have any doubts about how bad Colorado’s roads are, drive from our state into Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, or Utah. (I haven’t been to New Mexico or Arizona recently.) Once you are over the border you actually can drive around smoothly. Your teeth don’t rattle and your tires don’t fall into potholes. It’s really nice.

When I told a lady at the Kansas Welcome Center that their roads were a lot better than those in Colorado, she responded, “That’s the most common thing we hear from people who just left Colorado.”

And did I mention the highway trash? Oh, I see that I did.

When Bill Whittle dropped by from Los Angeles on his way to a conference here about a decade ago, he marveled at how clean our highways are.

But that was a decade ago.