Rod Dreher points us to this fascinating comment from John on Patrick Deneen’s blog:
The result–I live in a great neighborhood where I walk my kids to school and myself to work, but I have to drive to buy food, clothing, or gasoline. Church is 20 minutes away. When I tell people from the suburbs where I live, I am greeted with shock and misplaced pity.
I bring all this up to say that the Republican party, for whom I have voted most of the time, is the chief culprit in supporting an economic system that is the enemy of real places that are inhabited by people with roots in that place.
The dilemma for me is that the other side is not much better. If Republicans are guilty of bleeding traditional culture to death through their mindless support for the “global economy”, more oil drilling and the exurbs, Democrats seem to be militantly in favor of destroying that same culture albeit for different reasons.
I have real problems with some of the reasons that McCain nominated Palin (her inexperience, the loose ends that she has in Alaska, her lifelong membership in the NRA), but when those who identified themselves as liberal commentators mocked her family size, her pro-life stance, her faith, and her small-town origins, it touched a nerve. So much so that I will probably be voting for John McCain in the fall, despite the fact that I share most of Patrick’s concerns about the McCain/Palin ticket.
I am beginning to think that those of us who value places and connection and an unhurried family life are pretty rare or too silent. We have no natural political allies and we are unlikely to get any soon.
I live in a small county seat town in the Midwest where I can walk/comfortably bicycle for everything but medical care. But, like the author, I have to drive to get gasoline, although there are a several gas stations within a mile of my house…you need the car to carry the gas.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist when I read him complaining about having to drive to get gasoline.
A perfect expression of communitarian sentiment and one to which I incline. Where are those of us with strong cultural conservative convictions and mildly left-of-center economic ones to go? With the demise of Populism in the late nineteenth century and the New Deal’s embrace of the gospel of consumption in the twentieth, America has been left with few genuinely communitarian political options.
“I have real problems with some of the reasons that McCain nominated Palin (her inexperience, the loose ends that she has in Alaska, her lifelong membership in the NRA)…”
Why is membership in the NRA a bad thing? For decades they have been fighting to defend the 2nd Amendment rights of all Americans…decades. Just this year, the Supreme Court of the United States validated that position. The right to keep and bear arms is an individual right and always has been. It is a natural right that the constitution recognizes. It preceeded the constitution and is not “grantedâ€. Our rights are God given, not government given. Again, it is not a collective right or a right of the States, but an individual right.
The NRA stood, often alone, fighting for a right that is every bit as important as the freedom of speech or freedom to assemble or freedom of worship. The NRA is a civil rights organization. I am proud to be a life member and to have been part of the fight that ended the DC total ban on handguns. I am proud of the NRA and continue to support them. The facts are clear. The statistics are in. The areas with the most gun control have the most crime. We have an individual constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
#4, his problem with the NRA, I suspect (without knowing) has to do with a generalization of doing away with all guns. Where he lives in downtown area of Macon, GA has often been, until recently, a heavy crime area. Also, if he lives in that area, he is at least left leaning, most likely. So it is not surprising. Most “in-town” living folks in the South are left leaning, either because they are well-educated “enlightened” people, often from the North (until they have their first child and realize they have no public school to which the child can be sent safely or to receive a decent education – and they then move to the suburbs) or they are left-over hippies. (Note he says he walks his kids to school, but that may be a private parochial school, which is in the downtown area of Macon.)
This quote from the main article makes me smile: “Shouldn’t we create incentives and zoning regulations to increase settlement density and make a world of decreased cheap energy a decent place for our children?”
In other words — shouldn’t we try to get people to do what they do not want to do? How about — make a law? That’ll show ’em! We’ll make it a rule that people have to live in certain places that “increase settlement density” [a brilliant modernist choice of words for dealing with people].
To the letter, we have the same thing.
We have a guy that has chosen a certain lifestyle. He wants to walk his child to school and walk to work. Only thing is . . . there aren’t *markets* [read lots of people with money] for companies to put food, gas, and clothing stores in his area.
There are reasons why people choose to live away from “walking to work” opportunities. Sometimes people like to be *away* from “increased settlement density”. They like to be out, away from things.
But this letter writer blames the Republicans — even though its the Democrats who control the city and have *failed* to get in companies that deal with food, gas, and clothing, among other things, probably because as the letter writer states, the Democrats are fiscally irresponsible in that city.
Sounds as if the Republicans controlling the county oughtta be in charge of the city — as is the case in my neck of the woods. In our downtown, we have people living downtown, shopping downtown, going to watch baseball games downtown, going to the park downtown, going to symphonies downtown, and yes, going to work in various technology and other industries downtown. It’s all right there, and it’s beautiful, and it was done by . . . [gasp] Republicans. They took an absolutely stone cold dead downtown in the early 1980s and transformed it into a positive beehive.
I’m sure there are cases where the situation is reversed. Where Democrats control a thriving county and Republicans control a moribund city.
But the partisanship of this letter writer blaming the Republicans for killing his utopian small-town life, when it’s actually the Democrats controlling his small-town life, is simply amazing.
Billy @4 commented [i]Also, if he lives in that area, he is at least left leaning, most likely.[/i]
Don’t know Mr. Dreher very well, do you ? 😉 His column appears a lot more than I’d like in the Editorial section of our local paper, [i]The Dallas Morning News[/i]. And trust me, he’s a hard-core social conservative who very much shares the avg. T1:9 reader’s disdain for mainline Christian denominations, gay & lesbian people, feminism, and liberals. He’s just a “crunchy conservative” who believes in “environmental conservation, frugal living, & the preservation of traditional family values” (from the Wikipedia entry on Dreher). They also tend to be skeptical about some aspects of free market capitalism.
Well, at least he and I share some concerns… :/
I think Sarah’s analysis (of his statement about regulating) in #5 is brilliant. Thanks.
#6 – Rod Dreher didn’t write this – see Kendall’s first sentence above.
RE: “Don’t know Mr. Dreher very well, do you ?”
Don’t read very closely, do you? ; > )
RE: “the avg. T1:9 reader’s disdain for mainline Christian denominations, gay & lesbian people, feminism, and liberals. . . . ”
Lol.
I notice that Planonian mixed both *ideology* and *people* in his list of what “disdain [ful]” T19ers don’t like.
To be consistent, Planonian needed to say: “the avg. T1:9 reader’s disdain for [the theology of the leaders of] mainline Christian denominations, [progressive gay activism], feminism, and [political liberal ideology]. . . .
Or he could have gone ahead and stated that T19ers disdain all the people groups represented by the ideologies.
But consistency in construction of sentences is not a strong suit of some progressives, because it gets in the way of their pretending as if T19ers disdain “gay and lesbian people.”
But because of that lack of consistency in rhetorical sculpting — and the resulting transparency of effort — so many regular T19ers smile at the attempted insults, and end up being cheered, rather than insulted.
In the small city where my wife and I live, we have a very low crime rate, there is a rod & gun club which sponsors shooting sports such as skeet and trap shooting, youth football, baseball and basketball are BIG and widely attended, and the NRA is fairly well represented here. Law enforcement has the drug problem firmly under its thumb, we have an active Redevelopment Agency, downtown is undergoing a facelift, new businesses are moving in, the home market is beginning to show some signs of stability, and frankly, I’d say we’re doing pretty well for a town of 35,000 people.
for several years we lived within walking distance of our church (also the pre school our kids attended), and the grocery store, restaurants, etc. It could never last however, as once the kids had to to go to Kindergarten, it was a 50 minute bus ride or a 20 minute drive one way. One year of that and we were outta there. Not surprisingly, there are few school age kids in this area. The school board made just a terrible error in having one school for K-12, it houses ~ 4500 kids on a sprawling campus. That is no way to learn….
We lucked into a sort of small town suburb (Cloverly, MD) where we have a good elementary school and a nice shopping area (including a newly renovated Safeway) in walking distance. After that it goes downhill; the only church within walking distance is AOG (unless I want to be a Jain!), and my office is a half hour drive away. In fact, my office is in a huge office park laid out to maximize driving time; I can almost walk to the interstate as fast as I can drive to it.
None of this really has a lot to do with the political parties. The commercial developers belong to whatever party is in power locally, and at both ends of my morning commute, it’s the Democrats. And we really did simply get lucky. When we were house shopping, we looked in a large area based on travel (read, driving) time to our parish and to my (then) office, and it was simply by luck that we ended up where we did.
Ahhh you’re right in one respect, it was Dreher commenting on someone else’s writing. Mea culpa.
[i]…gone ahead and stated that T19ers disdain all the people groups represented by the ideologies.[/i]
It’s quite obvious that the avg. T1:9 commenter [b]does[/b] exactly that. To claim otherwise is, at best, pure sophistry.
The issue of gun control differs depending on where you live. If you are a rural resident, then having access to firearms makes you safer. Lifethreatening conflicts are relatively few, as the density of people are low. If you have a quarrel with your neighbor there is no army of helpful friends to turn anger into tragedy. Further, there is increased reluctance to make enemies with ones neighbors as police are less available. It will be 20 minutes (at least) before the police respond to your 911 call. Thus, the reason our farmers/rural residents can rest safely is because of the large vicious dog that patrols their home, and the knowledge that most would be burglars know that every child inside a rural home knows how to lock and load, and will do so.
In an urban area, the police can usually get there in 5 minutes, and their are neighbors within ear shot. There are also more minor conflicts due to the higher density of people, so a small squabble can escalate easily. In this situation, with a bunch of stupid people arguing, a gun in the home is a danger.
I am fortunate to live in a small city 49,000 people. Thus, although we are large enough to have a small university and reasonable public/private schools and a decent sized mall, the whole city is only 5 miles square. Thus I could (at need) bike to work, groceries, church and to my kids school, though I wouldn’t enjoy it, especially in winter. We have a gun/skeet range, many folks hunt and fish, canue on the local river (and eat what they kill). I hope to eventually learn these mysteries after I have finished getting a little more accurate with my 22 and 12 guage shot gun.
Sarah, do you actually know the community this writer is talking about. Given the choice of living in downtown Macon or the county surrounding it, I would be with this commenter in a heartbeat. And it doesn’t sound as if he is really complaining about the lack of service stations or shopping malls. It sounds as if he’s weighed the two and put his priorities in the right place. Coming from a far more rural place than Bibb County, here’s what I see around me: a Democratic city government that is fiscally responsible and has literally changed the face of our downtown, creating an active (active!) arts center, conference center and award-winning museum while keeping the city within its budget and keeping taxes down, and a county government that is fiscally responsible, perenniallly disorganized, incapable of making anything happen – and Republican. Reaching farther out, it is Republicans who would like to turn our beatiful coast to another Condomania. At the local and state levels, it is the Democrats who seem to care about citizens and how they live. The Republicans here are all about making themselves and their friends richer. There is corruption in both parties, I wouldn’t pretend otherwise. At the national level – the Democrats scare me. Even more than the Republicans do.
But I suspect that we in the South are in still in an unusual position – Southern Democrats have traditionally not been a lot like their northern and western counterparts. They have tended to be somewhere between Republicans and Democrats on the political spectrum, even though they are Democrats.
What I appreciate from this comment is that there are many people abroad in the land, like myself, who do not feel they easily fit on the partisan grid. And I for one am increasingly frustrated when partisans on either side try to jam us onto it against our will. “John” had severe criticism of the Democratic city government in Macon and the press reaction to Palin, admitted that he has voted Republican most of his life, and values what he describes as a “traditional” way of life. Yet the simple fact of his residence and his disdain for the NRA pegs him as “left leaning”, clearly not a label he himself claims, and partisan, though he clearly has no strong party preference, which is the entire point of his comment. This is one of the things I have found increasingly distressing about the growing polarization in our country, the ability of folks on the extremes to pick apart every little thing one says for proof of partisan perfidy. He votes Republican, values a traditional lifestyle, thinks the Democrats are corrupt and the media vicious, but he doesn’t like the NRA so he must be a flaming leftist! He has criticism for the Republican county government, so he must be a partisan Democrat! Even though at the end of the comment he says he’ll probably vote McCain/Palin. Make no mistake, idealogues on the left are no better, as seen by the likes Kos’ and MoveOn’s zeal to persecute any Dem who opposes a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, and by folks I have encountered on liberal TEC blogs who scream “right-wing bigot hate-monger” at even the slightest hesitation about the liberal agenda. You can have legitimate differences with the man, but why impute partisan motives where none necessarily exist. It’s frustrating and tiresome, and increasingly common, so much so that I’m considering abandoning all comment-sections on T19 and all blogs until after the election.
all i can say is i have never read commentary that so closely match my own views;except that i will be forced to vote democrat because of palin(imho she ain’t nothing but ‘dubya’ in a skirt), i will be checking that website out in detail. thanks so much for posting this!
Alta California, thank you for your post.
This is one of the things I have found increasingly distressing about the growing polarization in our country, the ability of folks on the extremes to pick apart every little thing one says for proof of partisan perfidy.
It gets worse with every election year, doesn’t it? And the Republicans and Democrats begin to seem like the Blues and Greens in Rome. Or the Bulldogs and Gators in the SEC.
#5
The sarcasm is, as always, effective. But one should not overlook the fact that government subsidies (for roads, infrastructure, etc.) helped make suburbs more attractive places to live than central cities. In retrospect, this seems like one of the most wasteful uses of resources in all of human history. So I don’t see what is especially sinister in trying to make use of an existing, if decayed, infrastructure in urban areas through state-sponsored incentives.
RE: “It’s quite obvious that the avg. T1:9 commenter does exactly that [disdain the people groups which believe the ideologies].”
Well, then, in order to be consistent in your sentence structure you should have written this: “And trust me, he’s a hard-core social conservative who very much shares the avg. T1:9 reader’s disdain for mainline Christian[s], gay & lesbian people, [feminists], and liberals.”
See how neatly that works?
We’d all still smile — and end up being cheered rather than insulted, at the silliness of the statement — but at least you would not have added to the unfortunate inconsistency in construction of sentences and logic which seems to bedevil so many progressives.
RE: “But one should not overlook the fact that government subsidies (for roads, infrastructure, etc.) helped make suburbs more attractive places to live than central cities.”
But as there were government subsidies for *city roads and infrastructure* as well, I’m afraid that’s apples and apples there. The subsidies for both equal out, unless you are morally privileging “downtown city life” over all else.
RE: “And it doesn’t sound as if he is really complaining about the lack of service stations or shopping malls.”
Sherri — I took it that way, for sure: “The result–I live in a great neighborhood where I walk my kids to school and myself to work, but I have to drive to buy food, clothing, or gasoline.” The result of the Democrats ruling the city failing to bring those services into the city was that he had to drive.
You say that you see “a Democratic city government that is fiscally responsible and has literally changed the face of our downtown” and “a county government that is fiscally responsible, perenniallly disorganized, incapable of making anything happen – and Republican.”
I’m not certain how that differs from my point above, which was that both parties can screw up whatever they’re responsible for. But in the case of the writer of that letter, he’s complaining about [i]the Republicans screwing up the city of which the Democrats are in charge!!![/i] Like I said, I think that’s frankly crazy.
RE: “At the local and state levels, it is the Democrats who seem to care about citizens and how they live.”
Well, I don’t know where you live. But what I’ve noticed of the Democrats around me is . . . they want the cultural arts, and the downtown amenities, and the comfortable life — and to heck with the folks who actually need jobs, from businesses, and less expensive housing, in suburbs.
It’s a catch-22. I often decry the rise of the suburbs — while at the same time acknowledging that it’s the housing developments with houses on small plots of land that are actually inexpensive enough for folks to buy with their lower incomes than the beautiful people walking downtown to the symphonies and the ballet, all the while decrying subdivisions.
And people — business people — develop those pieces of land into the evil suburbs because they themselves wish to make money — by creating a large patch of less expensive houses that people would like to buy. Otherwise, those people aren’t able to buy large beautiful old houses — the kind that I like to view while driving.
Businesses move away from downtown because . . . people move away from downtown — the people who buy their products — and because rent goes up, and thus the cost of doing business goes up, and crime goes up, and on and on and on it goes. It’s not like businesses make decisions because they are deliberately and maliciously avoiding the wonderful downtown.
I’m the kind of person that likes a lot of quiet, rural living, and lots of land, and public radio too.
But the fact is that things are often a trade-off. Businesses often choose ugly strip malls to locate in — they go cheap on the location because they’re spending money on R&D;or marketing or employee benefits or whatever else they’ve decided to spend money on. Businesses can’t all be located in old lofts with wood floors and red brick in the middle of downtown. And as long as we want people to be able to get jobs, there must be businesses, and where there are businesses, there is nasty suburban development on the fringes of the city rather than in the center of the city.
One of my greatest dreams in all of life is to someday live on the undeveloped Edisto Island.
When I do that — I will have to drive 40 minutes to the ugly Charleston area to have a job.
Or . . . I’ll be super rich and won’t drive anywhere for something so proletariat as a “job”.
[blockquote]1. KevinBabb wrote:
I live in a small county seat town in the Midwest where I can walk/comfortably bicycle for everything but medical care. But, like the author, I have to drive to get gasoline, although there are a several gas stations within a mile of my house…you need the car to carry the gas.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist when I read him complaining about having to drive to get gasoline. [/blockquote]
Cars aren’t the only things that need gas. I’ve walked to the gas station with a gas can to fill up for the mower. I’ve also walked to the gas station with a gas can when my car ran out while sitting in the driveway.
Sorry, I had to be a smartass 😉