Why a liberal stays in the South [View all]

[MBS]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-i-m-staying-put

Thought-provoking read.

Nonetheless, in a lot of what I hear from my fellow liberals, there's a certain degree of turning out the lights and cursing the darkness, and it's annoying. Everyone is shocked and appalled at how wingnutty the red states are, but when the liberals continually congregate for generations in a fairly small number of places that already are liberal and are, for the most part, geographically concentrated at the edges of the country, what do we expect the places they won't live in to be like?
For several years, I've been mentally short-handing this phenomenon as "gated community liberalism." It's the kind that sits in a safe, comfortable place, surrounded by allies, and snipes at those outside the gates. It's the kind that talks about how much America needs to do for "the Global South" (I agree), but has nothing but venom left for the original. The kind that stresses how important it is that, contra conservative hawks, we remain constructively engaged with countries we disagree with, like Iran (a view I share), but can only crinkle its nose at half its own country.
. . .

But if my fellow liberals really want red America to stop being so infuriatingly red, then, sooner or later, they have to do what JR is doing: get out of blue America and invest their time and energy and money and talents and votes and lives in the rest of the country. For generations. That's what it took to build the places liberals concentrate in; it's not going to just magically happen in "flyover" country.