The Wisdom Of Rural Americans and the Founders

 It seems somewhat stupid to ask, but how many people do you think know from whence their food comes?  Traveling through North Carolina farm country, in the Eastern third of the state, I often ask folks what they think is growing in one or another field.  The answers I get is usually "I don't know."

Growing up in a large suburban home, we had a large garden, and tended a variety of crops such as green beans, lima beans, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, corn, squashes, and strawberries.  So I know what a lot of these crops look like, and I know where they come from, and I know what tries to eat them before we can.  Too many in America today do not understand just how fragile our food supply is.  What does it take to get food from farm or ranch to table?  What would the average urban person do if the farmers and ranchers decided to go Galt?

That is the message behind a piece at the American Thinker today entitled Rural America: Sweet Land of Liberty by Alan Harrelson. There is a reason the WEF wants us to own nothing (whether we like it or not, and we probably won't.) It is that land and property offer those who own it a certain amount of liberty. I remeber visiting my grandparents 200 acre farm in Ohio as a kid, and I remember the feeling of freedom there.

How the Founders envisioned the future of America still matters. Many of the leading Founders believed in a rooted lifestyle based on land ownership and saw the republic as a mosaic of individual families pursuing happiness as moral, capable, and independent-minded citizens. Owning land was once a dream that most Americans sought to achieve, and the driving force behind it was the need to be independent from the control of others. Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and Madison, farmers all, and all currently vilified, would have been appalled at the degree to which Americans have now forsaken the cardinal lesson of rural life: the need to be self-sufficient. From the voices of Big Tech, large corporations, wayward governments, and the modern consumer culture, Americans are told what to think, buy, and believe.

But it wasn't always this way. What happened?

In short, the 20th century happened. Until the early 1900s, the majority of Americans lived relatively quiet lives in the countryside, raising crops and livestock both for their families and for market. Prior to FDR's New Deal, Americans had little to no relationship with the federal government, save the Postal Service. Arguably, FDR did more to erode the independence of individual American families than any president before or since.

The 20th century also witnessed the rise of the modern consumer culture and salesmanship: the idea that one should work to pay for a good or service that he could very well live without. The Southern Agrarians, a group of Southern conservative writers whom most current conservatives have nearly forgotten about, believed that the development of modern salesmanship was dangerous and costly, a threat to self-sufficiency and independence. As the Southern Agrarian writer Andrew Lytle wrote in 1930, a farm is not a place to grow wealthy; it's a place to grow corn.

But the historical reasons why the country is now predominantly urban are not what matters to most readers. What matters is the current cultural and political divide between rural and urban communities. Urban places are the source of this godless woke ideology that now plagues the nation. This is a fact: one is far, far less likely to find rural families who are sympathetic to pride month, government overreach, the attempt to redefine truth, and the attempt to erase American history. You seek patriotism? Don't look for it among the majority of cities. Jefferson was right: cities are to democracy what sores are to the body.

I remember reading a number of the Southern Agrarians, particularly Robert Penn Warren in college. While I don't subscribe to the entire program, they have some important points. We do not need the latest gadgets, and frankly we should spend more of our time thinking about what will and will not serve our interests rather than just buying stuff. But I digress. The point is that when one tends to crops of animals, one is forced to take into account reality. Cows and chickens observe the fact that there are only two sexes. The livestock need to be fed, their diseases need to be attended to, and their quarters need to be cleaned. There is no escape into unreality. In turn, this constant reminder of what is real forces a certain conservativism on rural people. No time for green hair or long finger nails.

From what I can tell, the largest group of Americans who remain committed to the Constitution and a Scalia-style originalist interpretation are those who live in small towns and rural counties. So why is the perspective of these people neglected? Is rural America simply made up of families who are backwards, are unintelligent, and somehow can't keep up with the times? It would be asinine to answer in the affirmative, and yet the mainstream media would have us believe exactly this.

This brings us to Laura Hollis, at Townhall.com in a piece entitled The Founders Were Right. Hollis points to the some ways the Founders' Constitution is valid. The Founders were great students of history, and of human nature. And human nature does not change. We are as we have been since man first walked this earth.

In our politically contentious era, it's popular to claim that the Constitution is outdated, that it was drafted in a bygone era by men whose moral failings (like slave ownership) discredit every other contribution they made to the founding of our country. But each passing day only reinforces the wisdom of the principles the Founders chose as the basis for our nation...

Hollis goes on to list and discuss five things about the Constitution that most people today do not understand. One is that the United States is a Christian nation, but not a theocracy.

The United States was founded on distinctly Judeo-Christian principles. The Declaration of Independence states that among other "self-evident" truths, all men are "endowed by their Creator" with "certain inalienable rights," including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

...snip...

To say that a country is founded upon principles drawn from one or more religious traditions is not the same thing as saying that the country's leaders are gods, or are chosen by God, or that adherence to any given religion is mandated by the state. All these are characteristics of a theocracy, and none of them are among the founding principles of the United States.

Hollis points out that the Constitutional frame work specifies a democratic republic not a democracy I personally get tired of various politicians talking about "our democracy." We don't live in a democracy, and even those who screem the most about losing "our democracy" do not actually want that. They would be appalled if their positions depended on real democracy. In the same vein, ours is not a "majority rules" government. Certain things, such as the right to keep and bear arms, are not up for discussion. The founders had studied democracies in history, and concluded that these always ended up as tyrannies.

Hollis points out that under the Constitution, the states, not the people elect the government. The purpose of the Electoral College is to force candidates to campaign in every state, and to build an overwhelming consensus. Without the Electoral College, candidates could win with the votes of a few large cities, ignoring the vast majority of the country.

Even more frequent than complaints about the composition of the U.S. Senate are the demands that the president of the United States be elected by the so-called popular vote instead of the Electoral College. But, like the U.S. Senate, the Electoral College is set up to temper the political power of states with larger populations.

An important point overlooked by those panting for raw majority rule is that the United States of America is not merely a country; it is also a federation -- a voluntary aggregation of independent states that have ceded only certain limited powers to the federal government. Constitutional structures that give less populated states a legitimate impact in all three branches of the federal government were necessary to bring the nation into existence in the first place. Without a real voice in governance, why become -- or remain -- part of the United States at all?

In many respects, this is the battle that the European Union is fighting now. The citizens of Great Britain voted to leave the European Union ("Brexit") in 2014, tired of being saddled with unpopular policies imposed by Eurocrats they had no voice in choosing. Why give up national sovereignty for that?

Similarly, suppose less populated states find themselves bound by policies that they have little practical opportunity to influence. In that case, it will only be a matter of time before secession begins to look like a serious option.

Hollis's final point is that:

No. 5: Limits on power are features, not bugs.

Those frustrated with the slow way the Congress works and the limits on power believe they alone have the answers. They do not consider that there may be better ways to achieve their goals. I find this a lot with environmentalists who reach for national regulation first, when there are often ways that achieve the same goals appealing to private interests.

The disgruntled among us who push relentlessly for changes that would strengthen the power of raw majorities should know better. One need only look at the cities and states that have been under one-party rule for years -- or decades -- to see the results: increased crime and homelessness, collapsing educational standards, and the departure of residents and businesses. Without the need to consider alternative political voices, parties in the majority rarely depart from their pet policies, even when those policies produce disastrous results.

It would be better if our supposed overlords took a more humble approach to the task of governing.