Posted on 11/19/2004 10:02:19 AM PST by dukeman
It's the Cities, Stupid.
It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.
.....
If Democrats and urban residents want to combat the rising tide of red that threatens to swamp and ruin this country, we need a new identity politics, an urban identity politics, one that argues for the cities, uses a rhetoric of urban values, and creates a tribal identity for liberals that's as powerful and attractive as the tribal identity Republicans have created for their constituents. John Kerry won among the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in common? They choose to live in cities....An urbanist agenda may not be a recipe for winning the next presidential election--but it may win the Democrats the presidential election in 2012 and create a new Democratic majority.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestranger.com ...
If you live in Seattle and you're looking for a sex partner who likes to....say....be tied-up and urinated on, The Stranger is where you place your Personal.
Basically, this is like being lectured to by the editors of Hustler.
Exactly. If people want to live in the 'burbs or in rural areas, go to church all the time and otherwise engage in activities that do not interest me, why should that bother me?
I'll bet there are more Republicans on Park Ave. than in the South Bronx.
I do agree that many who leave the cities bring their leftist ideas with them, however I think that more of the people leaving are doing so to escape the leftist ideas.
Leftists seeking to bring their failed ideas into the suburbs have to contend with ex-urbanites fleeing liberalism and largely conservative rural people who have followed opportunities into suburbia. Notice the culture clash of suburbanites who are attracted to coffee shops, wine bars and bistros vs suburbanites attracted to sports bars, steak houses and country music.
"John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000."
Jacksonville, the 15th biggest city in the nation, more populous than the cities of Boston and Atlanta, went for President Bush by about 60%. But the author probably didn't notice because Jacksonville is somehow "buried" in that red sea of "gay-hating, gun-toting, war-mongering, retard-executing, tree-chopping, Christian fanatics".
To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying towns, and soulless sprawling exburbs, we say this: F[edited] off. Your issues are no longer our issues. We're going to battle our bleeding-heart instincts and ignore pangs of misplaced empathy. We will no longer concern ourselves with a health care crisis that disproportionately impacts rural areas. Instead we will work toward winning health care one blue state at a time. Just oozes compassion doesn't he? Sure makes this lifelong resident of "red states" (and "red counties", even) want to be on his side.
Our new position: We'll fight to keep guns off the streets of our cities, but the more guns lying around out there in the heartland, the better. Yup. The criminals will leave us alone and bother y'all in the cities instead.
...And we've overwhelmingly supported the monorail, an inner-city mass-transit system that's paid for by one of the most progressive taxes available: an excise tax on the value of cars in the city. Want to buy a Hummer? Fine. But you're gonna pay for it--and help fund public transit. If you want to rely on environmentally friendly public transit, though, we'll make it affordable and easy to use. That's a truly urban value. This one just boils my blood. How can it possibly be fair to make people who buy a car pay for the transit system? Of course I guess soaking anyone whose lifestyle doesn't fit in with using metro modes of transit is worthy of being soaked in this twit's view.
Urban dwellers are cultural libertarians--we don't just tolerate a diversity of lifestyles and attitudes, we embrace it. Seattle, for example, has over 1000 churches, mosques, and synagogues. Just don't let what you learned there inform your voting, or you're a bigoted redneck not worthy of compassion or respect.
For too long now, we've caved to the non-urban wisdom that decries universities as bastions of elitism and snobbery. Guess what: That's why we should embrace them. Outside of the city, elitism and snobbery are code words for literacy and complexity. The phrase from a movie "You keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think it means" comes to mind. It's people like the author that have turned "tolerance" into meaning "uncritical approval of all value systems except Judeo-Christian ethics". Elitism and snobbery as the dictionary describes them fit the writer just fine.
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The skipper brave and sure.
John Kerry did set sail that day,
For a three medal tour, a three medal tour.
The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for a self-inflicted wound,
The medal would be lost, the medal would be lost.
The ship set ground on the shore of a northeastern liberal isle,
With John Edwards,
And the Skipper who
Has a millionaire for a wife,
The movie stars,
The professors and the media,
Here on Democrat’s Isle.
So this is the tale of the castaways,
They're here for a long, long time,
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.
The first mate and the Skipper too,
Will do their very best,
To make the others comfortable,
In their urban island nest.
No phone, no lights no motor cars,
Not a single luxury,
Like Robinson Crusoe,
As primitive as can be.
So join us here each week my friends,
You're sure to get a smile,
From all the stranded liberals,
Here on Democrats Isle.
And without food, that means?????
No, the "Blue States" are going to get redder, particularly as the Dems keep up their attacks on conservative blacks and hispanics.
LOL! I live in Gainesville, which is in the only "blue" county in North Florida - and which still went almost 45% for GWB, the greatest GOP vote in its entire history!
JAX is the fastest growing city in the nation, and the folks who are moving to North Florida are not doing so because they want to be in a blue state but can't afford it - they're fleeing to a red state because they can't stand the losers in the blue states anymore. They want to bring up their kids some place where people are normal.
One thing that surprises me (although it really shouldn't) is that when the Bills, Steelers, Bears, Browns and Redskins come to town, they have a lot of fans in Alltel Stadium- its mostly people who have fled those areas blue areas for better weather, lower taxes, less regulation, etc.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.