The urban-rural problem waxes; it is like a bad marriage and the only solution is a divorce. But while the rural “man” would happily leave the marriage on reasonable terms and peaceably, the urban “woman” will never allow the “man” to leave.
It begs the question about consent of the governed – the supposed basis for legitimate government (assuming for the sake of discussion such a thing exists).
The answer to this question pretty much establishes the illegitimacy of the government.
In my home state of Virginia, for example, the rural (and geographic) majority of the state does not consent to being disarmed and criminalized by the government in Richmond – which represents Richmond and Northern Virginia.
90-plus percent of the state’s counties oppose the slew of gun confiscation/criminalization measures proposed and likely to be imposed upon them. The people of these rural counties did not consent to any of this. And they have no say in any of this – because the state government is controlled by the urban population centers, whose concentrated numbers give them a virtual lock on the state’s governing apparatus. The 90-plus percent geographic majority outside the urban hives of Richmond and Northern Virginia can vote but it’s becoming as meaningless a gesture as voting in the old Soviet Union, where there was one candidate on the ballot – and no option to say no.
But Saul Alinsky’s “rules for radicals” can work the other way, too. Use their (stated) principles against them by insisting they abide by them.
We do not consent. Yet you impose. This illegitimizes what you impose. We demand to be represented . . . by people who represent us. We will no longer accept being told what we must accept by you and the people who represent only you.
This applies just as logically – and morally – at the federal as well as the state level.
It is a mockery of the concept of representation to assert that the 15,000 residents of a rural county such as mine are “represented” by two senators elected by the millions who reside in Richmond and Northern Virginia and even more risibly by a president elected by millions of people who reside in other states and thousands of miles away.
Like sausage making, it does not bear examination.
And it all rests on the doublethinkian fiction of consent of the governed.
