Has the author spent any time in rural America or are they just imagining what they think it’s like? Or, in a city for that matter?
Have they visited a large church or a county fair? The countryside is full of inequality, drug abuse, drunkenness, etc.
Also progressives are trying to solve addiction? Really? My experience is that living in a city just trains you to tolerate it.
I think it has to do with more emphasis on physical labor as conviences one would find in an urban environment are not available. Traditional gender roles are more prominent. A healthy culture will mean more peace, happiness, & coexistence with these rules. There are certainly strong women in rural areas, but men have a biological advantage for physical labor.
> drug abuse, drunkenness, etc.
I'm not sure if it's better or worse than urban environments, but a healthy culture & economy certainly helps.
Progressives tend to favor redistribution, which makes sense for high population densities. High population densities tend to rely more on inputs from the outside to support the population. Rural areas tend to be more self sufficient & even net producers of food, raw resources, & non manufactured products. The survival of the people in high population densities requires these resource inputs. A bit less so for rural environments. Rural populations do benefit from urban centers, but there are also costs in supporting high population densities. So rural areas are incentivized to take progressive policies with more of a cost/benefit analysis rather than requiring such policies for its survival.
I think the Hank Williams Jr. song exemplifies the attitude of many in rural environments. Note in the song, he befriended an urban finance professional, who was murdered at a convenience store. If he met the murderer he would "love to spit some beech-nut in that dude's eye"...where even justice is a self-reliant responsibility, rather than delegation to institutions. This attitude would be seen as an anathema to progressive ideology which has more faith in delegating justice to institutions.
"A country boy can survive" -- Hank Williams Jr
I would argue that this idea of rural areas being independent is a remnant of a bygone era, an era where frontiers yet unsettled still existed. Now, with our desire for modern infrastructure, lifespans, and education, rural areas are kept alive through the very redistribution they claim to oppose.
[1]: http://archive.today/2017.09.16-013424/https://www.theatlant...
I don't think that data supports the argument 'require massive amounts of monetary support from the more population dense' especially given the majority of population of those states strongly desire lower federal taxes and lower spending, even if it means less transfer of wealth to their states. 'require' is a high bar of evidence. I think 'adapt to changes' would be a better argument if we decided to allow states and private citizens to have more control of how their wealth is deployed (by not taxing and spending as much at the federal level). Those states would not go bankrupt or worse if federal spending decreased, but yes they would have to adapt. Maybe poor people in those states would have to move to areas where they had higher productivity and/or better welfare, which is not exactly a bad thing compared to paying them to stay in a state with low productivity?
Addiction is a health issue, not a criminal issue. It should also be noted that the War on Drugs was never about "protecting people" -- it was a tool to oppress the people (people of color, counter culture (anti-war)).
We've collectively agreed that it's ok to allow dangerous and addictive drugs (alcohol and tobacco). We need to stop being hypocritical about that.
The answer to the problem:
1. Legalize all drugs
2. Tax them
3. Regulate them
4. Educate and assist in minimizing the risks.
5. Treat addicts in a medical context rather than a criminal one.
I agree that addiction is first and foremost a health issue. However, relying on addicts to voluntarily enter treatment isn't working. We're seeing very few enter treatment - last I heard it was well under 10%. I think in the case of highly addictive drugs like opioids/fentanyl, and meth they should be made illegal again (Remember, Oregon essentially did your #1 above) however, instead of incarceration in a prison, we need some kind of treatment hospitals that are involuntary - something between a prison and a hospital with emphasis on treatment.
We need to take a much more nuanced approach: some drugs are highly addictive (fentanyl, meth) - people can get hooked on them after only 1 or 2 uses, you want to prevent that as much as possible and that requires that they be illegal. Other drugs are not addictive: marijuana, LSD, shrooms, etc - making those legal is fine, but in the cases of the psychedelics you really want to encourage people to have guidance as much as possible.
I agree on the involuntary institutionalization (both on the need and the fact that current treatment plans aren't working). When we talk about addicts in the area, we're pretty much talking about the homeless population.
I've yet to see any census of sorts, but I'd wager that a significant portion of the homeless population is mentally ill. That also need to be revisited in the context of involuntary institutionalization.
As far as opioids and meth go, making them illegal has been an abject failure. Let the addicts have their drugs (a la methadone clinics) but minimize the the dangers as well as the organized crime that thrives on their criminality.
Because the emphasis has been on punishment not on treatment as a health problem. They have to be illegal if you want to be able to involuntarily hospitalize the users. Dealers of the addictive drugs should be punished (if they're not users and thus not addicted - if they're dealer/users they need to go through treatment first, punishment later if they continue to deal).
If you live in the PDX area I don't need to tell you that our current system which relies on voluntarily submitting to treatment isn't working. Yes, mental illness plays a part, but in many cases it's tough to tell which came first: the mental illness or the drug use - the drug use makes the mental illness worse and the mental illness often leads to more drug use.
That's not true. People are confined all the time for being a danger to themselves or others, even if they're not using drugs.
Which is why I'm saying the highly addictive drugs need to be illegal - a court can then order treatment.
My mother was an alcoholic and in and out of psych wards. They'd let her out the moment she could charm them and say she was ok. Fun times. But no illegal drugs involved, just plain old alcohol.
And it's looking that alcohol has no "medical benefits" and is flat out bad for you. In the interest of the people wouldn't you agree that's reason to make it illegal?
Sadly, just look at the god awful “linkage centers” in SF for how your ideas play-out in reality.
These “harm reduction” ideas are more like life-support for addicts. Yes maybe there are fewer deaths but I think there probably is more suffering.
>"For example, if you were told about two conversations – one about guns, taxes and crime and the other about gay marriage, animal rights and abortion – you could guess with confidence which took place among progressives and which took place among conservatives – even without knowing anything about the content of either conversation."
Was written by a real human being. Like... I know plenty of church going Catholics who are happy to talk about gay marriage, animal rights, and abortion, and they aren't conversations that anyone is going to call "progressive".
I grew up as a Roman Catholic & studied it's history, including the schism from the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church centralized it's authority to the head of the Church of Rome (the Pope) while the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church kept the more decentralized governance structure of synods of churches & the founding theology from the Council of Nicaea commissioned by Emperor Constantine in AD 325.
The Roman Catholic Church is an Imperial Church, founded by the Council of Nicaea during the reign of Constantine that later consolidated influence to a single prominent urban area...Rome. The Roman Catholic Church "innovated" it's theology over ~1700 years while the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church strove to stay true to the original theology.
With that being said, I would consider the Roman Catholic Church to have urban imperial tenancies & was among the major centers of power from it's founding, through the middle ages, to current times.
Also note that "progressive" is a comparative term of progression...meaning it is compared against current norms. As the norms change, the definition of "progressive" changes. A large institution such as the Roman Catholic Church has inertia & will usually not be at the vanguard of the current form "progressive" ideology. There are elements of vanguard progressivism within the Roman Catholic Church, but that is counterbalanced by others in the institution.