>>6192590 lb
Your liberal friends are, as you no doubt suspect, utter moranz. The number of stone masons possessing the skills necessary to restore historic monuments in keeping with medieval construction and stone dressing practices is tiny. The period of apprenticeship is long and arduous. There are too few master masons around to train up anything more than mere replacement of numbers, generation to generation.
These skills have almost been lost: not quite, but they are essentially on life support.
With renovation work around Europe, there are employment opportunities, for sure. But unlike the days when popes, kings, and princes funded the building of the structures now needing tlc, cash for renovation is in short supply and therefore even modest renovation projects are drawn out over years, if not decades. Everyone with the requisite skills is already busy on some project, somewhere.
So no quick fix. Renovating Notre Dame after today’s fire might take 50 years or more. And we haven’t even considered the woodworking and stained glass artisans…