"Born Again Patriot"
As a kid I moved when my parents did - obviously. We moved a lot; I went to 14 different schools. When I was ten I made my first choice about where I wanted to live. A friend of mine was being sent to the Marist Brothers' (a Catholic Order of monks) boarding school. I wanted to go too. I was tired of changing schools every few months. I decided I wanted stability and boarding school would provide that. That decision led me to join the Marist Brothers Order later in life which in turn led to all the other things that happened to me for the next couple of decades. I let circumstances dictate where I lived. I was a liberal "go with the flow" type. The "flow" finally landed me in San Francisco. After 25 years there (and the growing realization that I was not nearly as "liberal" as I thought I was) I made the only other conscious decision about where to live instead of just drifting with the tide.
It took me nearly two years to research where I wanted to live. I studied the politics, culture, crime statistics and climate of every state in the Union (including Alaska and Hawaii) as well as Australia and New Zealand and I even considered returning to South Africa. I wanted the politics to be equally balanced between left and right. I like to be in the middle of trends not pulling or pushing in one direction; I trust debate and disagreement rather than consensus. I was sick of San Francisco's totalitarian one-party politics but I also knew that I was more liberal than most conservatives so that ruled out the Bible Belt. It also ruled out the Northeast because they're just as bad as San Francisco with their supercilious goose-stepping political correctness and pie-in-the-sky socialism. I was also sick of multi-culturalism, moral relativism and the concommitent crime that is engendered by the liberals' sneering disregard of ethical standards and traditional values and I was fed up with the liberals' lack of patriotism and disrespect for the American Revolution and the miracle of enlightenment and civilization that the Founders had accomplished. I also knew that I wanted to live in a place which respected my Second Amendment rights.
The other consideration that loomed large in my mind was climate. Never before had I had the luxury of considering where to live based on climate. I had been forced out of South Africa by the injustice of apartheid and driven from the UK by its class-warfare culture and Big Brother socialism. I had always had to live in cities before because that's where the jobs were but now I was free of that constraint and could live where I pleased. For the first time in my life I felt like a free person - free to chose where I wanted to live based on something other than politics or mere necessity. By now I knew what sort of climate I liked - cool foggy summers and mild wet winters tempered by ocean breezes.
The other major factor that determined my choice of where to live was the crime rate. I knew that I no longer wanted to live like prey constantly on the alert for predators. I no longer wanted to kow-tow to the criminal barbarians and the other subhuman ghouls who crawl around like cockroaches in all cities.
The Northwest coast fit the climate and the low crime rate but it was mostly artsy-fartsy eco-fascists who lived along the coast - except for one small area which was a "red" island in a "blue" sea; a little blue-collar enclave of loggers, fishermen, real farmers and rural rednecks. It had my perfect climate and the crime rate was so low that I could hardly believe the statistics until I made a trip to check it out.
Politically the area is traditionally working-class Democrat (70% registered as Dems) who had voted for Reagan and Bush - my kind of town - independent-minded patriotic folks. So I moved here 3 years ago but I feel as if I have lived here all my life. It's good to be back in the USA. It's like arriving in the Promised Land after wandering for 35 years in the wilderness - 25 of which were spent in the Sodom and Gomorrah of San Francisco and Berkeley.
Which brings me to the title of this post. I originally called this blog "Born Again Redneck" because I wanted to blog about living in small-town America and because it was catchy and described the cheerfulness, confidence and cockiness that I felt at the time but, now that I have lived here for a while, I see that I can never aspire to be a redneck. I would be pretentious if I tried. So, I am thinking of changing the name of this blog to "Born Again Patriot."
It took me nearly two years to research where I wanted to live. I studied the politics, culture, crime statistics and climate of every state in the Union (including Alaska and Hawaii) as well as Australia and New Zealand and I even considered returning to South Africa. I wanted the politics to be equally balanced between left and right. I like to be in the middle of trends not pulling or pushing in one direction; I trust debate and disagreement rather than consensus. I was sick of San Francisco's totalitarian one-party politics but I also knew that I was more liberal than most conservatives so that ruled out the Bible Belt. It also ruled out the Northeast because they're just as bad as San Francisco with their supercilious goose-stepping political correctness and pie-in-the-sky socialism. I was also sick of multi-culturalism, moral relativism and the concommitent crime that is engendered by the liberals' sneering disregard of ethical standards and traditional values and I was fed up with the liberals' lack of patriotism and disrespect for the American Revolution and the miracle of enlightenment and civilization that the Founders had accomplished. I also knew that I wanted to live in a place which respected my Second Amendment rights.
The other consideration that loomed large in my mind was climate. Never before had I had the luxury of considering where to live based on climate. I had been forced out of South Africa by the injustice of apartheid and driven from the UK by its class-warfare culture and Big Brother socialism. I had always had to live in cities before because that's where the jobs were but now I was free of that constraint and could live where I pleased. For the first time in my life I felt like a free person - free to chose where I wanted to live based on something other than politics or mere necessity. By now I knew what sort of climate I liked - cool foggy summers and mild wet winters tempered by ocean breezes.
The other major factor that determined my choice of where to live was the crime rate. I knew that I no longer wanted to live like prey constantly on the alert for predators. I no longer wanted to kow-tow to the criminal barbarians and the other subhuman ghouls who crawl around like cockroaches in all cities.
The Northwest coast fit the climate and the low crime rate but it was mostly artsy-fartsy eco-fascists who lived along the coast - except for one small area which was a "red" island in a "blue" sea; a little blue-collar enclave of loggers, fishermen, real farmers and rural rednecks. It had my perfect climate and the crime rate was so low that I could hardly believe the statistics until I made a trip to check it out.
Politically the area is traditionally working-class Democrat (70% registered as Dems) who had voted for Reagan and Bush - my kind of town - independent-minded patriotic folks. So I moved here 3 years ago but I feel as if I have lived here all my life. It's good to be back in the USA. It's like arriving in the Promised Land after wandering for 35 years in the wilderness - 25 of which were spent in the Sodom and Gomorrah of San Francisco and Berkeley.
Which brings me to the title of this post. I originally called this blog "Born Again Redneck" because I wanted to blog about living in small-town America and because it was catchy and described the cheerfulness, confidence and cockiness that I felt at the time but, now that I have lived here for a while, I see that I can never aspire to be a redneck. I would be pretentious if I tried. So, I am thinking of changing the name of this blog to "Born Again Patriot."
posted by Joubert at 12:01 AM
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