What are some of the most liberal rural areas ever? (farmers, outsiders)
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Tired of hearing stereotypical stuff of cities being liberal and rural areas being conservative. What are some of the most liberal rural areas ever? I imagine most would be northeast.
Any town with a 4-year university. Laramie, WY and Bozeman, MT come to mind as being more rural than most and Vastly more liberal than surrounding areas.
North of Northampton, MA. Towns like Conway, Shelburne Falls. Fairly rural, not too isolated though and extremely liberal due to all the colleges in greater Northampton like Smith, Mt Holyoke, Amherst, University of Mass. Beautiful area too. Also continues up to include Brattleboro, VT.
I can tell you that Vermont is considered a liberal state in the northeast, but if you were to scratch Burlington off the map, and perhaps Weston and Brattleboro, it would go right back to being conservative. Even the area around Goddard was conservative, but with a live and let live attitude.
Just because you are tired of hearing that rural is conservative, that doesn't make it false, any more than being annoyed that cold water turns to ice will keep it from freezing.
Trace back to the roots of what is now called liberal thinking and you'll find that labor unions made inroads in the cities but not the countryside, that higher education rarely happened in East Podunk, and that even today most residents of the country have no idea that the founders of the country had what amounted to a classical liberal education - which used to be a requirement for high governmental positions.
Much of the country does have forms of liberalism, but it is introverted and hidden to outsiders. The concept of a "church family" is socialist, but on a small scale and not inclusive. HOAs are a buying in to a particular type of socialism, where appearances are uniform and proscribed. Farmers gathering together in co-ops, or the Granger movement, are a type of socialism. All these hide under the conservative facade, as created by those who would divide the country into warring factions.
If you are looking to find groups of people as stereotypes, you might be influenced by talk radio and pundits who know the inside of a studio and a toilet and little else.
Tired of hearing stereotypical stuff of cities being liberal and rural areas being conservative. What are some of the most liberal rural areas ever? I imagine most would be northeast.
Based on his posting history, we might substitute "post modern progressive"
for liberal, as liberal has a fairly wide variety of meanings.
Then we could try again, to answer the question.
(Most of the above answers, like NewEngland towns that have four year universities, would still fit.)
Any town with a 4-year university. Laramie, WY and Bozeman, MT come to mind as being more rural than most and Vastly more liberal than surrounding areas.
I can tell you that Vermont is considered a liberal state in the northeast, but if you were to scratch Burlington off the map, and perhaps Weston and Brattleboro, it would go right back to being conservative. Even the area around Goddard was conservative, but with a live and let live attitude.
Just because you are tired of hearing that rural is conservative, that doesn't make it false, any more than being annoyed that cold water turns to ice will keep it from freezing.
Trace back to the roots of what is now called liberal thinking and you'll find that labor unions made inroads in the cities but not the countryside, that higher education rarely happened in East Podunk, and that even today most residents of the country have no idea that the founders of the country had what amounted to a classical liberal education - which used to be a requirement for high governmental positions.
Much of the country does have forms of liberalism, but it is introverted and hidden to outsiders. The concept of a "church family" is socialist, but on a small scale and not inclusive. HOAs are a buying in to a particular type of socialism, where appearances are uniform and proscribed. Farmers gathering together in co-ops, or the Granger movement, are a type of socialism. All these hide under the conservative facade, as created by those who would divide the country into warring factions.
If you are looking to find groups of people as stereotypes, you might be influenced by talk radio and pundits who know the inside of a studio and a toilet and little else.
I don't disagree with your assessment of Vermont, except that Vermont always had a history of electing liberal or moderate conservatives. A fire breathing southern Conservative would of gotten nowhere even in old Vermont. Sen. Aiken was the first Republican Senator to condemn the Vietnam War. Jeff Jeffords and others were always on the moderate side.
Northeastern Minnesota, known as the Arrowhead Region, or more commonly "The Iron Range", is very sparsely populated and rural, and also EXTREMELY Blue politically. The reason for this is simple: dominance of very strong unions associated with mining occupations.
It's a fascinatingly schizophrenic area. While the people there will ALWAYS vote Democrat/Farm/Labor (the Party in Minnesota is known as this, or DFL) on both the state and Federal level, the strongest sociocultural views there are much more like those associated with conservatism/regressivism/the republican party.
For example, native born Iron Rangers are mostly very pro gun, anti education, very racist against African Americans, and (naturally) pro exploitation of natural resources.
It's a fascinating region, of which most Americans know absolutely nothing. If you ever have a chance, go to Duluth then drive northwest and tour some of the many enormous iron and taconite mine sites. Hibbing is a good home base for exploring The Range. It really is an amazingly interesting part of America.
Yep, blue collar union laborers defy a lot of the Democrat stereotypes.
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