Note that Rabbi Lapin generously employs the term Liberal. I of course use stronger terms.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/25/rabbi-lapin-explains-why-youre-instinctively-pre-primed-towards-liberalism-in-a-city/
"Rabbi Daniel Lapin of the American Alliance of Jews and Christians filled in on The Glenn Beck Program Friday to explain why he believes cities tend to vote Democrat, and rural areas Republican – and what it all means for the country.
After showing a county-based map of election results (Map taken from HotGates link is used here - the one in the TheBlaze article is the same but couldn't be copied), which is more indicative of rural vs. urban areas than a state-based map, Lapin asked three questions:http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/03/agenda-21-iclei-creation-and-purpose.html
"......Lapin asked: “Where are people in closer contact with their neighbors — rurally, or in an apartment in Manhattan?”
Overwhelmingly the audience noted that it’s rurally, despite the fact that the houses and living spaces are much further apart.
“One of the things the city does, paradoxically, though there’s so many of us packed into a smaller space, we have less communication with our fellow citizens,” Lapin said. “When we have less communication with other citizens, automatically you replace that with more communication with institutions…Government becomes more of your communication center.”
The second reason cities tend to lean left, Lapin said, is because in a city you “lose touch with reality.”
“Conservatism is linked to reality,” he asserted. “It is based in how the world really works. Liberalism is based on how the world would be if we could wish it was something else.”
Whereas in a rural area you are connected to how the world works at its most basic level — from the phase of the moon to how food gets on the table — in a city, your “reality” becomes your monthly water bill, whether the elevator is working, and the “artificially structured” institutions around you, Lapin said.
More than that, in a city you become accustomed to relying not on yourself or your neighbors, but on the “city systems.” Who cleans the sidewalk? Who provides clean water? Who gets you from point A to point B?
“Everything is taken care of,” Lapin said, “so much so that you relinquish your independence with things like transport and security.”
“When you’re detached from reality, you’re instinctively pre-primed to move towards liberalism, that’s what happens,” Lapin asserted. “…In a city you don’t have self-reliance; you don’t have freedom; you don’t have independence. All the things that are the cornerstones, you just don’t have anymore.”
In answering the first two questions, Lapin asked: “Where are people in closer contact with their neighbors — rurally, or in an apartment in Manhattan?”
Overwhelmingly the audience noted that it’s rurally, despite the fact that the houses and living spaces are much further apart.
“One of the things the city does, paradoxically, though there’s so many of us packed into a smaller space, we have less communication with our fellow citizens,” Lapin said. “When we have less communication with other citizens, automatically you replace that with more communication with institutions…Government becomes more of your communication center.”
The second reason cities tend to lean left, Lapin said, is because in a city you “lose touch with reality.”
“Conservatism is linked to reality,” he asserted. “It is based in how the world really works. Liberalism is based on how the world would be if we could wish it was something else.”
Whereas in a rural area you are connected to how the world works at its most basic level — from the phase of the moon to how food gets on the table — in a city, your “reality” becomes your monthly water bill, whether the elevator is working, and the “artificially structured” institutions around you, Lapin said.
More than that, in a city you become accustomed to relying not on yourself or your neighbors, but on the “city systems.” Who cleans the sidewalk? Who provides clean water? Who gets you from point A to point B?
“Everything is taken care of,” Lapin said, “so much so that you relinquish your independence with things like transport and security.”
“When you’re detached from reality, you’re instinctively pre-primed to move towards liberalism, that’s what happens,” Lapin asserted. “…In a city you don’t have self-reliance; you don’t have freedom; you don’t have independence. All the things that are the cornerstones, you just don’t have anymore.”
The article has a video for more on the talk.
The point is certainly clear and hard to contradict. As I have noted in previous posts, the city-dweller, and lo a lesser extent the suburbanite who lives in a densely-populated suburban area that have very small yards, are far more likely to live an insular lifestyle. They may say Hi and Bye to their neighbors, but their own worlds are spent in their little corners with little appreciable contact with others despite literately bumping into them throughout their days. Rural people and most suburbanites are moving inside and out of their homes regularly, and the times that they are out very often directed associated with local events that bring people together. Years of Little League games, school functions, Memorial Day parades, will create blocs of parents and children who literally grow up (and get older) with each other. A move by a family in either of these areas is a big deal - people hurry to be the first to say "Did you hear the Johnson's are moving to North Carolina?".... "Yes, Dave's work is relocating him".
The truly big difference between the two types is that the rural and most suburbanites live a lifestyle that is much more akin to the traditional American type. Many attend Church on Sunday, have cookouts and children's birthday parties in their backyards, attend summer fireworks displays and American carnivals (when amusement park rides come to town), make the daily trip to the town pool or lake, go fishing in local rivers and ponds, children ride bicycles and may disappear for hours (as kids, we came home for dinner when the local fire department blew the "five o'clock whistle" - actually one blast of the alarm siren), play with toy guns (oh, the horror!) or paintball in the backyards or woods, children later learn to drive and disappear for even longer, dogs run unleashed in yards. etc.
The difference gets even greater when we consider the marking of time by the seasons. This is obviously the most basic parts of the farmer's life, but suburbanites too live their lives by the calendar and -unless they pay landscapers for all of their yard chores (some are too busy with work but others are just Prima Donnas ), the suburbanite has to cut (remove weeds, fertilize, etc.) his lawn grass, open, maintain, and close the swimming pool at the weather-directed times, plant flowers and vegetables in the spring and bulb/tubers plants in the autumn, rake leaves and clean gutters in October-November multiple times, remove snow from their own and elderly neighbor's driveways and sidewalks, (in some regions this can be more than twice a week), clean the chimney for the winter, run the generator when a storm causes a power outage, (for many) split firewood throughout the year and stack it closer to the house when the temperature drops, prepare hunting gear when that season arrives, etc.
Don't forget children going Trick-or Treating on Halloween.
These tasks require tools and power equipment - lots of them. A rural suburban garage has several tool boxes of hand tools and related necessaries to tackle virtually any household and many home auto repairs, a lawnmower, lawn edger, "weedwacker", snowthrower, chainsaw, circular saws and other wood-cutting saws, pruners/shears, hedge-trimmers, other yard tools by the dozen, paint brushes and rollers, and - again, etc.; with many taken out and put away when the calendar says so. If you do not have the hand or power tool needed for a task, then one of your neighbors will lend you his - return it "whenever".
Neighbors will watch your house when you are gone, and when a person is driving in a suspicious manner on the street. He will take a long look at the guy knocking at your door and lingering for too long and question him before he even considers calling the cops. A chimney fire or other dangerous situation will bring him running to your house.
The house and yard will be decorated for Halloween (which includes carving pumpkins, either bought or grown in the yard), and Christmas, and even for other holidays. Flags will be put out on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.
The most telling anecdote that I have regarding the differences in mindsets between the urban and non-urban person is a conversation that I had with a coworker a few years ago. He was a transplanted New Yorker from the Bronx, and on one occasion he stated that the most pleasant sound that he recalled from his days in the city was the scraping of snow shovels by the employees who are paid to do such mundane tasks. I felt disappointment for him that he could not appreciate the satisfaction one gets from having yard work as a regular part of one's life. He would never have the feeling of truly maintaining his own home and property, with the connection to our past that naturally comes with having tasks that are dictated by the seasons.
Urbanites do certainly live lives that are quite different from the rest of us - and it shows in their voting patterns
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