According to Progressive talking head Joy Reid, rural Americans are a threat to our democracy. Her tweet reads as follows, “This is the core threat to our democracy. The rural minority — the people @JYSexton just wrote a long thread about — have and will continue to have disproportionate power over the urban majority.” She follows this with a link to a tweet by an MSNBC fellow named Kyle Griffin.
This is the core threat to our democracy. The rural minority — the people @JYSexton just wrote a long thread about — have and will continue to have disproportionate power over the urban majority. https://t.co/fzBHaZ9kzR
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 26, 2017
Griffins tweet says, “By 2040, about 70% of Americans are expected to live in the 15 largest states. They will have only 30 senators representing them, while the remaining 30% of Americans will have 70 senators representing them. based his tweet upon a Wall Street Journal article.
The crux of complaint is that, given current demographics, most Americans will end up living in large, cities, while a minority will inhabit the rest of the land.
Reid is expressing a fear and loathing for the citizens of our Republic. Not the fear of the political mob that was expressed by the Founders. Nor Jonathan Swift’s distaste for people who were not as good as they could be. Reid’s is a self-serving contempt for the common people, for the bumpkins who dwell in flyover states, which don’t have large urban centers.
Reid, and those like her, treat American’s outside the major cities as foreign creatures, barely human, who are to be controlled, not treated as human persons. British philosopher Michael Oakeshott held that we can model civil society after a conversation. In a conversation, each participant gives of his best, for the benefit of the conversation, and is silent when others are speaking. All are respected as persons, all having a place in the conversation, albeit not always an equal voice.
For Reid, our society isn’t a conversation, and has nothing to do with treating fellow citizens as they deserve. For her, and other media elites, the denizens of low-density states, are a pack of troglodytes, clinging to God, guns and the Constitution.
We white, working-class folk aren’t worthy of being considered citizens, made in the image of God. We’re the ones who need to be scolded by people like Reid. Reid and her sort go to Harvard University, then go on to high-paying, white collar jobs, where contact with the daily life of Americans is mercifully avoided. There is no need to understand their fellows, because we’re not their fellows. We’re their inferiors. Sowell’s ‘vision of the anointed’ is clear in Reid’s post. She fears being governed by the ilk of the Republic, she’d rather be governed by the faculty of Harvard.
Common American’s aren’t to be trusted wholly, held in contempt or entirely feared. We are persons, like any other. We share enough things with people like Reid that, if they were willing, we could try to heal some of the rifts our Republic faces. We share the fear of what may happen if our widening gulf cannot be bridged.
