I&#39;ve even raped and killed a mountain panda in the hills of Shaanxi.

I think you're the exception, not the rule.

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how many people do you know in seattle who came from small conservative towns?

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Not many? I dont know actually. I could ask around.

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Tons, dude. Everyone you know who didn't grow up in Seattle grew up in a small conservative town.

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are you being serious? I think most of the people I know that didn't grow up in Seattle either grew up in Eugene, OR (which is most definately not a conservative town), Portland (which is not small), SF, or Vancouver BC? I know a couple guys who lived in Northern Idaho, but I'm reaching.

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Hmph. Okay so my sweeping uneducated guess was a tad off. But yes -- I am being serious inasmuch as almost everyone I know grew up in a small conservative town. Including me. Take that, exception finding bitches!

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EVERYONE ON THIS THREAD

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heh.

I barely know you and

mxtx

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being a damn liberal myself, I think my associates are a poor sample set

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kaaaty.livejournal.com

me!

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where?

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i did, even if it was still in washington.

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which town?

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Marysville. its pretty suburban and kinda the tip of the I-5 metro area, but its still a cowtown.

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girlstyle.livejournal.com

me.

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candid.livejournal.com

I think you're the exception, not the rule.

If you think about the "apostates" that you know, they probably all come from the top, say, fifth of the IQ distribution. That leaves something like 80% of the apples falling close to the tree.

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http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Population/Popchange/map.htm

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kamakhai.livejournal.com

i have to say i find it hilarious that the map classifies the 45,000 person town i'm from in north dakota as "metro" (it's the upper of the two white counties on the eastern border with minnesota). also amusing that ND is by far the reddest state on the map, the only growth displayed being in southern indian reservations and a northern county known for having about the only pleasantly hilly lake resort area in the state.

ANYWAYS, i'm definitely in agreement with your main point. i can't say it's true for everyone, but i rejected the conservative ideals i was brought up with as soon as i was old enough to form an understanding of what was going on in the rest of the world (and the knowledge that the people trying to get me to accept these things were dumb enough to voluntarily stay in north dakota probably meant something). i know i'm not exactly typical and that most people are a lot less analytical, but the majority of the kids i grew up with followed a similar path. i think the greater percentage of people really aren't stupid... they just don't care about anything but themselves, which has mixed implications for the issue of religion.

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ernunnos.livejournal.com

Still, many of the midwestern states are barely hanging on when it comes to population growth. And losing your best and brightest while keeping all your welfare cases isn't exactly a great plan for progress.

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yeah, i've had this same discussion in regards to conservative veiwpoints that islam is going to take over europe for the same reason. aside from economics, its all about free-flow of information. people dont really want to stay ignorant and repressive, but if that's all they know, then they do. in a westernized society (with free and abundant access to information) this is particularly difficult.

and despite the obvious fact that conservatives and religious types (be it in this continent or some other) tend to have tons of children, even if they cant support them, and concientious free-thinking liberals might have few to none, it sure looks like society continues to get more and more progressive overall as the years go by.

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this I agree with, but I doubt it's a direct result of the migratory habits of small-town folk.

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altamira16.livejournal.com

Let them keep having kids, then we can strip medicaid and social security. They'll be screwed. And we'd be conservatives. Nevermind.

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crasch.livejournal.com

Unfortunately, I suspect we're in the minority. I read somewhere that the percentage of apostates who later return to religion is quite high. (Can't find the reference though, so take the assertion with a big grain of salt).

However, I do think that religions can become less virulent. Christianity has become much less aggressive, in general, in the last 400 years or so. Same with Judaism. Same with Mormonism (Although Smith's assassination was deplorable, I find it amusing that the Church never discusses *why* J. Smith was in that Carthage jail. I guess they decided that story of how his goons destroyed the presses at the Nauvoo Expositor wasn't such good PR).

So even if religious folk have more kids, it probably doesn't matter much, since most of the religious don't really take their religion seriously anyway.

(Unfortunately, Islam doesn't seem to have decreased in virulence much. If anything, Islam appears to have become more virulent since the middle ages. I'm not sure exactly why that is.)

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Sorry, you're the exception, not the rule.

I moved from the conservative suburbs of Baltimore to ultra-liberal Boston. I've lived here for over six years. In that time, I've met a dozen or so people who moved from Maryland as well. But they all moved from liberal southern Maryland (Silver Springs, Columbia, Montgomery County - the "inside the Beltway" stretch) to liberal Boston. Very few people made the transition from conservative northern Baltimore County* to liberal Beantown.

Though migration is becoming more feasible as the world gets smaller, people tend to stick where they grew up. So high conservative birthrates mean more conservatives in 20 years.

* Seriously, you should see my parents' property.

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Yeah but your anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything. Most of my friends are actually from small conservative areas in Washington.

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Your anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything either!

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yeah but you don't expect me to not bring it up, do ya?

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You don't make a whit of sense! Not one whit!

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you're upsetting the baby with this kind of talk

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That baby is the future of our country, as are its nine brothers and sisters, its thirty-four cousins and step-cousins, and its future employer, the DQ.

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as long as none of them vote

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Read Cyril M. Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons." Hell, read any C.M. Kornbluth, but read that first.

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What gets me about this is that people like that still believe that size matters. I say go ahead -- populate the shit out of the rural wastelands in this country. Go ahead and sap your small town resources feeding your 13 bratty kids and lock yourself into a perpetual state of poverty and stunt social progress to the point that your existence loses all relevance to anyone beyond a five-mile radius. They're not taking any of my resources, so fuck 'em -- overpopulate and rot inbred bitches!

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Oh Michael, you're such a sensitive sap.

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I just really miss the rage that fueled my youth. Is it so wrong to try to recreate the glory days of high school?

come skiing!

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bewing.livejournal.com

I agree with the basic premise, but not your logic.
Young, naive kids tend to be idealistic, and impractical -- and therefore more likely to be liberal.
As they age, and discover that liberal theory does not actually work in the realms of, say, economics and foreign policy -- they become more conservative.

So my theory is that the red/blue areas of states and the country are simply age maps. The red areas have disproportionate numbers of old people, because many of the young liberal kids leave. And the blue areas are full of those young liberal kids who have left.

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I agree that older people tend to be more conservative, but I think that has more to do with people staying roughly the same and the times themselves changing.

as far as your geographic spread, san francisco for example has a much older population than you might expect, mostly because you have to be somewhat older and successful to afford living there, yet its still one of the most (if not the most) liberal cities in the country.

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