Localism Remains Laughable

I could call localism "loco" to take advantage of the alliterative effect, but I think it's more important to highlight the hilarity of its constructs. The latest essay we have from Gracy Olmstead in TAC once again proves the total irrelevance and complete lack of self-awareness of the localist movement.

You have to look at the title first, "Wendell Berry’s cure for partisanship", and ask yourself why we are suddenly hearing about partisanship in a negative way. Is it because a certain party won a bunch of election races? I'm not sure that partisanship is as bad as some people, i.e., the losers, make it out to be. At any rate partisanship is as American as apple pie, and that shouldn't be forgotten.

What is “localism”? It’s a vision of civic involvement and community that, at root, is summed up in one phrase: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” As Katherine Dalton, a senior editor for the Front Porch Republic (FPR), puts it: “Our love of country is a very little, very local thing. You can’t love something or someone without knowing it well.”

I think we all agree with the second statement. Loving America doesn't mean loving 50 states in equal measure. I know more about Ohio and Pennsylvania than I do about Tennessee, so I love those states more. But her first statement, "Our love of country is a very little, very local thing," is one of those remarks that leaves me scratching my head as to the exact meaning. Certainly one can love America by taking care of the little plot of America which you own and treating with respect the Americans you run into each day. But perhaps more certainly, one can learn to love the Founding Fathers and the nation they framed through reading history and study even if one has never known them personally nor had the opportunity to visit Philadelphia or any one the other great American landmarks. They made your plot possible, after all.

I think these people suffer from a lack of "both/and" thinking, being rather stuck in the world of "either/or". Perhaps they are reacting to elite operatives in Washington who are the other side of that coin and dismiss them as "those people in flyover country." So their brand of politics is an over-reaction based on wounded pride. One gets the feeling that when they see, for example, a picture of an abortion protester holding a sign and shouting in Washington during the January march they cannot imagine that person visiting a sick person or attending a townhall meeting. But in my experience they are the same people more often than not.

“Knowledge of a place is multi-generational, passed down through families and communities,” says Jeff Polet, editor-in-chief of FPR and a professor at Hope College in Michigan. “In destroying regional community, we are asked to love a body”—that is, a country—“that has grown cold.” Simple things like cultivating relationships with local businesses are important politically, Mitchell says: good politics grow out of “civic friendships,” common affections that supersede rancorous partisanship. These foster a “political context” that is healthier and fuller than the “red-meat politics” we see on television.

Here's my main problem with the argument. The "red-meat politics" affects everyone in the country. You aren't going to be able to avoid the effects of Obamacare simply because you prefer local politics to national. Or name any of the other big, hot-button issues in the news: cap and trade, amnesty, how tough the US decides to fight terrorism, what policies the Federal Reserve enacts, etc. All of these things affect everyone in their communities wherever they are across the fruited plain.

Wendell Berry is an example of the way localists defy party structures and schismatic divides: he’s an outspoken environmentalist who often lambasts capitalists for their ruthless treatment of land and resources, yet he also upholds traditional family values and principles of conservation that are decidedly conservative.

Wait... what? Wendell Berry "upholds traditional family values"? I don't think so. Besides, it is pretty ridiculous to suggest that he angers people on the left. I will believe that when I see the evidence.

Rather than dealing in abstractions and global efforts, localism is about concrete realities and particular circumstances. [Wendell] Berry himself rarely leaves Kentucky: he’s grounded himself so fully in his farm and local community he doesn’t like to leave. His example answers the question of just what localism ought to be.

"[H]e’s grounded himself so fully in his farm and local community he doesn't like to leave." But it would be wrong to think that has always been the case. Wendell Berry is 80 years old so, and that enough to explain why he isn't traveling like he used to, except to ironically deliver lectures at prestigious national conferences as Ms. Olmstead mentions. Berry was quite the globe-trotter in his early days before settling down; this has always struck me as funny and ironic as I mention in that post.

This article is mischaracterizes Wendell Berry's true nature as being some sort of enigmatic non-partisan genius when he is actually a left-leaning environmentalist scold who made his money from a tobacco plantation. This article also makes dubious assertions about the political priorities of normal Americans in an attempt to portray one part of national politics as more important than the other parts. The use of the boogieman of partisanship right after the Republican sweep of a nationalized midterm election tips the ideological hand of this particular "Front Porcher", Gracy Olmstead. If this is the best she can do to attract people to the localist cause, I can describe it using the language of my kids: epic fail.