Why do young traditionalist conservatives leave home for cities? Having read Wendell Berry only once but being absolutely sure I never want to read anything else by the man ever again, I'm leery of any discussion that involves James Poulos writing, "For those of you not interested in hearing any more about Wendell Berry for the rest of your lives, steer away from these rocks." But here goes.
Patrick Deneen, an associate professor of government at Georgetown, started the conversation by reflecting on a talk he gave to a group of young, ambitious DC conservatives. He was a bit taken aback by how many had left behind their hometowns and moved to the city -- not a particularly conservative principle, one might think. He then asks, "A question comes to mind: how did it get to be this way? How did it come to be unquestionably natural for young people to abandon their home towns in order to move to the centers of power in order to seek advancement?"
Rod Dreher picks up on these comments and writes:
It's a good question not only for conservatives, but for all of us (especially for conservatives, though, given what we profess). Berry has written that we have to start educating young people for "homecoming," and that our schools today educate young people for export...There have always been people who couldn't wait to get out of their hometown, for all the usual reasons. But I think the more normal thing was for people, no matter what their intelligence or career aspirations, to assume that they would settle down back home, and ply their trade there. I think the standard changed for a variety of reasons.
Among these reasons, according to Dreher: (1) mobility has come to symbolize not only economic opportunity, but the very nature of American freedom; (2) after the '50s, Americans began emphasizing "satisfying wants, not honoring responsibilities," and started accepting "the idea that he or she has the natural right to want to leave one's family and heritage behind to follow one's dreams"; and (3) television -- MTV, in particular -- broadened young people's horizons and "created a new set of desires."
What's interesting here is not a debate over whether these are actually positive or negative developments, but how Dreher's list compares to a hypothetical liberal list. For the most part, I think it's the same, but without the implied negativity running through Dreher's summary. What's really intriguing is the degree to which individualism and, frankly, corporatism are key tenets in the standard young idealistic kid's escape from rural life into the more liberal city. It's usually based in the escapism of (very often major label) music, the allure of big skyscrapers of capitalism as opposed to tiny strip malls and farms, and somewhat conservative renderings of individual responsibility. All of these are positive things for market-oriented conservatism, but come directly in conflict with its traditionalist partner.
Dreher also recalls comments from Terry Mattingly that expand on the corporatism element:
From a more critical angle, Terry Mattingly, who is an accomplished musician and lover of bluegrass, talks about the heartbreak of teaching college students in Appalachia who wanted nothing more than to get away from their provincial lives, and live out the fantasies fed to them by MTV. Terry could see the beauty and richness of their traditional folk culture, but many of the kids wanted nothing to do with it. When TMatt told me that, I thought about how as a small boy, I believed that there was something wrong with us because our town didn't have a fast-food chain, only local hamburger restaurants. No kidding, it was as if we weren't validated in the eyes of the world. If you didn't have McDonald's or Burger King, you were nothing. Crazy, I know, but I think there's long been a powerful meme in our culture teaching rural and small-town people to hate, or at least devalue, where they're from, and ultimately themselves.
But why is where you're from the ultimate end-all, be-all of who you are? The "beauty and richness of their traditional folk culture" is likely incredibly stifling and limiting, and Dreher himself is smart enough to admit he'd never be able to be a successful journalist had he stayed in the small town he grew up in. For the liberal, this folk culture is regrettably socially conservative and it limits opportunity, but for the conservative, only the latter is necessarily a bad thing. Thus, again, the conflict of conservatism when its leaves "home."
Poulos makes another necessary point from a more sympathetic perspective:
Oftentimes ‘home’ is not a more comfortable, more rural environment, but in fact is a suburban environment (for example) freighted with mixed emotions and offering unattractive worldviews. Nothing wrong with leaving these homes behind…if, that is, we recognize that rebuilding the worth of home into our lives and those of our offspring is not a flimsy act of hypocrisy and aestheticism — and act accordingly.
But by criticizing the idealization of "home" by assuming the ideal of rurality, Poulos himself idealizes rurality in his critique of the suburbs. Rural environments aren't necessarily "more comfortable," and can likewise be "freighted with mixed emotions" and offer "unattractive worldviews." But part of this conflict comes from the conservatism underpinning the discussion -- which is partially why I find it so interesting. The idea of leaving home is an interesting one to me at least partially because I've kind of done that myself, but I usually think of it as a somewhat liberal act, not a conservative one. What this makes whole discussion so unusual is it's about escape as a conservative act, not a liberal one, and the inherent degree to which that act must be endlessly conflicted.
