Steve Clemons hits it, and hits it hard:

The myth of rural virtue and urban vice is an old one in this country, and it persists no matter what the changes in the landscape. And whatever questions Palin may face in her debate with Biden, her paeans to small-town virtue aren’t likely to be among them.

Most Americans, it seems, can tolerate hearing of the superiority of the small town, as long as they don’t have to live in one. You wouldn’t know it from listening to country music stations, or to the governor of Alaska, but four out of every five Americans choose not to reside in rural areas.

And there have always been good reason for that. Better economic opportunity; non-conformity has always been better tolerated in urban areas. Since at least the early 19th century, Americans have been deserting the farm for grimier pastures in America’s cities and towns; the resentment of rural American began to fester then, and has persisted - sometimes bubbling over - ever since.

I’ve cited populism on several occasions in recent weeks regarding Sarah Palin; populism was borne of rural discontent and anger at the urban “elites” who looked down their noses at the “hayseeds” and allegedly tried to tell them what to think and how to live. And there’s a strong evangelical component to populism; you don’t need no big city preacher/Washington politician telling you what to think; you have the power to figure it out for yourself!

And this does translate into resentment and defensiveness - and sometimes even the sense of superiority Chapman cites. Yet he makes a very good case that the country isn’t any more “moral” than the city; that in fact the rate of births to unwed mothers is higher in rural states, that rates of alcohol abuse among kids and drug addiction - think meth - are higher in “the country.”

I don’t personally have a dog in this fight, I think it’s good to live in an urbanized area close to the country (where they, you know, grow food that doesn’t have to be trucked in from five states away). I couldn’t imagine raising the kids in a place like NYC, and wouldn’t want to.

And modern populism, anyway, isn’t exclusively rural. It’s perfectly normal, now, for someone - most likely an evangelical - to live in a $500,000 McMansion and be angry at the “elites” who think gays ought to be able to marry. You can take the populist out of the country - but you can’t take the country out of the populist.