As Asheville continues on its current downward slide to soon transform from (reputedly) one of the best places to live in the United States to one of the worst, the song “Tradition” from the Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof” springs to mind as the contrarian antidote.

For sure, Asheville’s “roof”  (along with its foundation) is shaky, and a one-party political machine with no checks and balances that has run the city for years continues to control nearly every aspect of Asheville, and increasingly Buncombe County, to the point where one wonders just where all of this is going to end, given the time-tested wisdom of Lord Acton’s fateful dictum: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

We have a city filled with self-proclaimed social-justice warriors afflicted with groupthink and addicted to their cellphones who constantly are striving for meaning and signicance in lives that are simply empty — having hardly ever read a book or, like Henry David Thoreau, marched to the beat of their own drum (as thinkers or through faith) —  who feel emboldened to erase and rewrite history and change (or try to) everything, even law enforcement, through a process they call “reimagining.” (Others, cynically, might say, “Try reading a book. There are many proven ways of doing things that have been gleaned through the ages that shouldn’t just be tossed aside. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.”

As for Tevye in “Fiddler” — who sang so strikingly about “Tradition” and stressed its importance throughout the play — this, folks, is a milkman who knew tradition was something he had to follow, hold onto and instill into his daughters, as over the centuries of humanity’s existence, it has contributed a sense of comfort and belonging, particularly in troubled times ... such as these times.