It's very easy for comfortable people to become complacent and pathetic. Enlightenment principles aside, I think the American obsession with independence largely stems from our frontier days when we had to build an entire country from scratch. The more gaps on the map we fill in the less independent we need to be. Hard times create hard men, etc etc etc.

I expect we've got some very hard times coming. When push comes to shove the people best equipped to survive, say, a global economic collapse, are rural, and they don't have much patience for liberal bullshit. Their kids are the future.

It's very easy for comfortable people to become complacent and pathetic. Enlightenment principles aside, I think the American obsession with independence largely stems from our frontier days when we had to build an entire country from scratch. The more gaps on the map we fill in the less independent we need to be. Hard times create hard men, etc etc etc.

I expect we've got some very hard times coming. When push comes to shove the people best equipped to survive, say, a global economic collapse, are rural, and they don't have much patience for liberal bullshit.