Posted on 12/09/2018 2:29:57 PM PST by Blue House Sue
Conservatives do not do well in the cities. We assume, strangely, that this indicates a problem with the cities rather than a problem with . . . us. We may as well be trying to sell New York City and Los Angeles Edsels full of New Coke — and cursing the consumers for being too thick to appreciate what we are offering.
New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia — as far as conservatives are concerned, these may as well be so many Sodoms upon which we are all too happy to call down fire and judgment. But it’s not only the coastal dens of sin that we have written off: In Texas — Texas! — Republican office-seekers (a reasonable if imperfect proxy for conservative political tendencies) are largely shut out of the cities: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso — all are reliably Democratic. There is no Texas city larger than Fort Worth that routinely elects Republican mayors or that can be relied upon to support Republican candidates in state and national elections.
And if any American city should have a prestigious institution of higher education in it, it may as well be Pyongyang.
But if there is something conservatives hate worse than American cities, it is European cities. On cable-news shows, on talk radio, and at conservative conferences, conservatives talk about London and Paris as though they sit on the lower circles of Dante’s hellscape. Oslo? Helsinki? Zurich? Madrid? Lisbon? They may look like perfectly nice, cultured, thriving world cities on the outside, but conservatives are sure that they are prefigurations of the coming caliphate.
We prefer the “Real America,” which apparently means depopulated rural areas and moribund Rust Belt mill towns, outer-ring suburbs, declining mega-churches, Idaho, Oklahoma, Utah, Wyoming. We aren’t even very sure about Montana these days. If by the “Real America” you mean the parts of the country where the people and the capital are, we are not quite so sure of ourselves.
Who are you calling “we”, Williamson?? I don’t recall you and the rest of us being on the same side of much of anything; go off to the Dems with the neoconservatives, please. Plus, Trump won the last election with the support of the people you cast aspersions at - tell that to Presidents Romney and McCain.
So, what’s his solution?
Large cities are cancers on the land.
Hey, Ft Worth has TCU!
“—— conservatives talk about London and Paris as though they sit on the lower circles of Dante’s hellscape. Oslo? Helsinki? Zurich? Madrid? Lisbon? They may look like perfectly nice, cultured, thriving world cities on the outside, but conservatives are sure that they are prefigurations of the coming caliphate”
I’ve been to many of the above cities——and love them.
Would visit any one of them again.
.
http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/jerusalem.htm
...It cannot be accidental that Cain, the first murderer, also founds the first city. In some respects, this can be seen simply as the linkage between urbanization and violence upon which many have commented.
But the Biblical story is more subtle than that.
Cain murders out of passion. He is not a reasoned killer, not cold-blooded nor one who murders for the love of it. He simply cannot control his passions at a particular moment or in a particular situation.
Significantly enough, cities are places where density and the pressures related to it lead people into uncontrollable acts of passion, acts which are often violent in character, far more so than rural areas. That is one dimension of the Biblical account.
Another is that people who commit violence need to protect themselves against retribution.
The earliest cities in the Bible are primarily places of protection. Historians of the ancient Near East generally agree that cities originally came into existence for defensive purposes, as places where the inhabitants of a region could come together to collectively defend themselves...
“I’ve been to many of the above cities——and love them.”
Same here; Fort Worth, Abilene, Lubbock, OKC, Mentone....
He has none.
He just sees that cities have some things that are positive.
I am all for figuring out how to capture cities.
I just do not see how to do it.
They are leftist bastions. It is hard to get out our message there. They have large immigrant populations that have it much better than where they left, so are happy to vote Democrat.
So... Solutions have to be our own long march through the institutions, and we have a hard time with that, because we are not totalitarians at heart.
I’ve been to OKC too,and Houston,San Antonio,and Galveston-——loved them also.
I LIKE cities.
.
“So, what’s his solution?”
If current growth trends in Texas continue with expanding populations of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin continue and couple that with massive growth is those those suburban areas, there may be nothing that can be done.
It is not that only Democrats move to cities, it is that people move to cities and become Democrats.
So, if urban dwellers aren’t interested in constitutional government, there is something wrong with constitutional government?
“They have large immigrant populations that have it much better than where they left, so are happy to vote Democrat.”
That’s not where the primary problem exists.
The cites and suburban areas in Texas are not growing because of immigrants, they are growing do to migration from other parts of the United States.
Williamson, Hays and Ft. Bend counties are trending Democrat, and they are suburban counties.
Sir Kevin, Vanquisher of Straw Men.
I saw Joe Henderson, with Charlie Haden and Al Foster at the Caravan of Dreams in Ft. Worth.
What percent of those cities residents were born outside of the United States?
24% of residents of Dallas were born outside of he U.S.A.
29% of Houston residents were born outside the U.S.A.
San Antonio, only 14%
El Paso, 25%
Overall in Texas, it is 20%
I love Ft. Worth. Our son works for the city of Ft. Worth and we’re dang proud of that. Hub was sure right all those years ago when he said he wouldn’t raise his family in Houston (he worked for them for over 30 years) and moved us to the country. God blessed us and put us in a bastion of conservatism.........;)
May he be awarded according to his works.
Fort Worth is insolvent.
We won’t always have it because it will collapse under the weight of it’s inadequately funded pensions.
A topic discussed on these forums frequently.
Most growth of those cities is from other parts of the United States.
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