Why The Right Shouldn’t Just Abandon America’s Cities To The Left

Conservatives need to address urban concerns and try to bridge the growing rural-urban divide, rather than just denouncing cities as the malign foil of real America.

Chicago, Illinois — Looking out over downtown Chicago on a bright, unusually warm Christmas Eve, I get why people love this city, even though I am not really among them. I’m not a city person, and even if I were, this isn’t my city.

This is not just a burst of Christmas cheer. Christmas Day will be over by the time I finish writing this article, let alone by the time it is edited and published. Rather, I am learning that the love for Chicago is not just about the amenities, the attractions, and the deep dish pizza. Rather, Chicagoans’ love for their city arises from the experience of a place providing a real sense of rootedness. Cities can provide identities and a sense of home as surely as any small town.

In this specific case, Chicago has personality and, for many families, continuity. To be from Chicago, or, more accurately, from a specific part or suburb of Chicago (Aurora isn’t Evanston isn’t the Loop), is to be from a distinctive place. It’s not my place, and by the end of any visit I’m eager to get home, but locals feel that they belong here as surely as I feel that I do not (I even put ketchup on hot dogs, which is practically sacrilege to some people here).

Conservatives should understand this, but instead we often treat cities and their residents with antipathy, as the opposites of “Real America.” One need not look far to find right-wing figures whose flattery for a rural “Real America” bleeds into scorn for cities. This is a mistake.

Maps of America tracking presidential vote results by county show a sea of red, but those blue islands have a lot of people. Except in the most rural states, conservatives need a lot of votes from big cities and their suburbs to compete in statewide races. We don’t need to win them outright, but our candidates have to keep the margins close enough for the rural vote to put them over the top.

Consequently, conservatives need to address urban concerns and try to bridge the growing rural-urban divide, rather than just denouncing cities as the malign foil of real America. Pointing out that hegemonic rule by left-wing Democrats has persistently failed the urban poor and the working class will not turn those voters rightward if they believe conservatives dislike them.

For example, right-wing discourse often uses Chicago as a symbol of urban violence, but it is misguided to compact the entire city into this caricature. Much of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs are safe, while a few areas, whose residents are overwhelmingly poor and black, are appallingly violent. A crude denunciation of Chicago as hopelessly violent may irritate some residents as ignorant and performative while also precluding more subtle and effective critique that might exploit the left’s fissures over race and class.

In many cities, the cultural obsessions of upscale, educated, and mostly white leftists are far removed from the priorities of working families of all races, which are often in tension with the interests of those in the well-off suburbs. Republicans have been hemorrhaging voters from the latter without sufficient offsetting gains. Some of this may be attributable to President Trump, who has accelerated the flight of educated professionals and suburban voters (especially women) from the GOP, while so far failing to win working-class minority voters in the way he won over working-class whites.

Regardless, the extent to which Democrats are poised to dominate every important faction in urban politics and in the surrounding suburbs is an inexcusable political failure. While policy matters, much of the problem is that too many on the right seem to regard cities and their inhabitants with a disdain that mirrors the antipathy many urban leftists show for rural voters. In each case, insulting voters is a sure way of losing them before policy even comes into play. “Why won’t you dumb-dumbs vote for us?” isn’t a winning appeal, no matter what policies are on offer.

There are, of course, many examples of urban dysfunction, but conservatives should critique them specifically, rather than dismissing entire cities, or cities entirely. We should not ignore policy failures and the pathologies of the leftist urban elite, but we should criticize them because we wish to see our cities and their residents flourish.

Conservatives should have a respect for cities that is grounded in more than political necessity, or a grudging admission of their necessity for civilization. We may love cities for their roles as repositories of culture and art, patronage of human excellence and achievement, and sense of place. Even country boys may appreciate grandeur, and in the loyalties and particularities of urban neighborhoods they may recognize something akin to their own love for a small hometown.

The best critiques of urban corruption and decadence require a love for urban excellence, and for human flourishing within it. Conservatives may therefore have a great deal to offer, as many American cities have become unaffordable for those who are not rich, or unlivable because of crime and grime, or sometimes both. For many families, middle-class life is increasingly impossible in and around many big cities.

From crime to education to housing, conservatives may provide policy solutions for urban residents. Even the much-maligned social conservatives should find an urban audience. It is not just that big cities still have plenty of religious believers, although they do—The New York Times might prefer to feature polyamorous deviants, but there are many more ordinary married couples in the city. Rather, social conservatives have been proven right about a great many things, starting with the importance of children being raised by their parents in a stable home.

Conservatives should respect urban homes and seek policies that will assist residents in forming and maintaining stable families and communities. Whether in the city or in the country, humans flourish in family and community.

dems have turned our cities into $hitholes. They promote welfare, crime and laziness. dems want it that way. They cry their tales of woe and get money from the state and the fed. The money is used to pay off democrat voters and does not help the cities at all.

The people who work have gone to the suburbs, and they are being made to pay to support the cities through taxes. Bad enough, but the dems demonize the people in the suburbs who are working and having their earnings taken and sent to the $hitholes, and call them racist and supremacist.

(Warning: did not read much of article)

Agreed, cities aren’t all bad just of themselves. It’s liberals and certain cultures that are bad. Believe me, they ruin small places as much as big cities.

I have a certain love for Baltimore. It is not just 15 min from me but it is my mother’s hometown. She loved it so and it was a wonderful place when she grew up and lived there, both in tiny row homes and a wonderfully big Victorian.

Oh, and she and her family were as conservative as anyone. Even when barely employed through the ‘30s my grandparents were anti-Dem.

Then the rotten culture was allowed to take over, starting with the Riots of ‘68.

I know there are exceptions, but the sad fact is that people who live in the cities want to be dependent on government. There are degrees to this, of course, but if they wanted an independent life, they'd move.

The Dems pander to, manipulate, enable and insure this dependence, thus guaranteeing the votes of the populace.

Repubs don't do so much pandering. Heck, sometimes I wonder if they're even on our side, but those of us who don't want the dependent life also don't have much use for politicians - we get the pubbies by default and they're not nearly as bad as 'rats would be.

I'd be fine with all of the above if we had a way to limit the influence of cities to their geographic area, or if they were content to keep their governance to themselves. The fact is, the cities and the politicians therein aren't content with limiting power to the cities and their citizens. They want to rule the rural areas around them and that's where most of our conflicts lie. I would argue they not only want to rule the rest of us, they demand deference to their enlightenment. That is never going to end well.

If they'd just stick to the cesspools they created, most of us in the in-between wouldn't give them a second thought.

As a practical matter, it looks like we are heading for civil war.

You don’t want any more of your own people to be collateral damage than you can avoid so if conservatives want to live in cities they should wait until new ones are built after the war.

I agree with the article. We don't need to pull a Romney and write off huge sections of the citizenship. Instead we need to educate on:

Capitalism
The evils of socialism and communism
The Bill of Rights
Checks and Balances in the Government
Respect for Democracy

There was a Supreme Court ruling in the 1960s that greatly expanded the power of high population areas i.e., cities over the rural countryside. (I think it in some way diminished the power of state senates but I can’t swear to that!) Everett Dirksen then Senator from Illinois made a comment on it and said it would financially devastate his state as well as others. I think we are seeing that now. Maybe some FR legal beagle can find the ruling and post it.

As someone who has lived a good part of his life in and around cities. I would not want to return to the 1950s. We need a better agenda for the 2020s centered on more effective/responsive government, privatization of services where effective (airports are a good start), effective policing and lack of tolerance for sleeping and defecating in our streets.

The one counterexample I can think of is Detroit, where bankruptcy got them off the hook for a lot of these pension costs. This freed-up money for them to do things like turn the streetlights back on and demolish abandoned buildings.

That's a good point. Bankruptcy may be the only thing that can break the toxic political stranglehold the Democrat politician/municipal worker cabal has on so many cities. Detroit didn't elect a Republican, but they did elect an outsider white mayor from the county that wasn't part of the city worker cabal.

They will always lean towards the democrats, but Trump is going out of his way to push for policies to increase job opportunities in the urban cores.

And it looks like it's working, which is why unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades for minorities. This probably helps to explain has Trump has better support in the black community than any republican in a couple of generations (yes, it's still a low level of support, but higher than what others have had).

> The one counterexample I can think of is Detroit, where bankruptcy got them off the hook for a lot of these pension costs.

The generic term used by Chicago residents I know is “The Reset”. It must happen sooner or later because the math just does not work. The can has already been kicked down the road many, many times. When the next recession hits, somebody is not going to get paid.

Encouraging marriage and discouraging out of wedlock births would help many inner cities.

Is it now a conservative mission to explain basic common sense to inner city dwellers? Maybe conservatives would have better success training the San Fransisco homeless to use indoor toilets.

In response to Detroit’s bankruptcy many blue states rushed to pass amendments to state constitutions to prohibit such bankruptcies in the future. So Illinois is pretty much scrooooood.

In Pittsburgh the city’s finances were under a form of state receivership similar to Chapter 11, until the uber-Liberal Tom Wolf got elected Governor. He quickly ended the oversight and they are free to make non-viable pension commitments again.

I can tell you the end game for Illinois.

The City of Chicago will run out of money along with the state.

A crisis will be declared. They will go to Washington, DC, demanding a bailout and making their best Chicken Little case that the sky will be falling if they don’t get one.

Congress will capitulate and they’ll receive one. It’s the lesson I learned in 2008. If you go to Congress with a sufficiently butt-puckering tale of impending doom, you WILL receive a bailout.

I’ve lived in large cities most of my life due primarily to the fact that I can make a hell of a lot more money (even considering cost of living) than I could in the hinterlands.

I’ve found plenty of like minded people, most of my colleagues fall into the same top1 or 2% and in the same boat..... and The 10 years I lived in BFE I saw firsthand how dependent the majority of the populace was on disability, county and state contracts, etc and little of anything was created or produced that didn’t have govt money of some sort behind it

Where I live we know we build business, provide value, and can find the people we need to do so. Tried it in the country and it was nigh on impossible

Don’t get me wrong....love rural USA but the lack of skilled people, meth and opioids everywhere, and the education systems (and lack of private educational opportunities) in most of the country is a real thing

One day I’ll retire and move back to the hills but until I have finished what I want and my kids have finished their educations it ain’t happening

“As a practical matter I don’t see how the Right re-establishes any significant influence in these places.”

They don’t and shouldn’t. Cities are liberal by their very definition. They are a Ponzi scheme where growth and more congestion is necessary to keep them afloat. Cities enrich those that control the city but few else.

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.