The enchantment of country living and the permanent things
“Sometimes I have been asked why I live in a decayed village at the heart of Michigan, when (the inquirer suggests) I might live anywhere in the world that should please me,” wrote Russell Kirk in 1987. The question had been posed innumerable times, directly and by implication, by the puzzled urbanites at National Review. Why would someone of Kirk’s prodigious learning, wit, and curiosity choose to live amongst commoners instead of enjoying company as cultivated and refined as, well, as themselves?“ I answer that my home is Mecosta, Michigan; what strength I possess comes from old roots here; and some of us, in this age of purposeless mobility, ought to abide where they were born or reared, for the sake of the permanent things.”
Kirk’s decision to move from the Detroit suburb of Plymouth to his ancestral hometown (population 254) shortly after writing his magnum opus,The Conservative Mind, in the mid-1950s proved definitive for himself and Mecosta. History and community rooted him in the bedrock of tradition that conservatism seeks to preserve, even as the ghosts of generations past set his imagination ablaze.
Rather than stagnate, he caused a garden of letters to bloom in the desert, opening his sprawling estate to a rotating cohort of visiting writers, scholars, and artists, both foreign and domestic, whom he termed “refugees from Progress” and “refugees from Giant Ideology,” respectively.
After three generations of Americans followed their dreams into the cities, today’s young people are emulating Kirk’s exodus from cities, led by the enchantment of small-town and rural life. Decades of polling data have consistently shown Americans would prefer to live in the country over a city.
In part they are led by economic realities. Young people now purchase their first home a full decade later than their peers in 1991, and a majority of renters despair of ever becoming property owners. Rural areas’ lower cost of living and housing prices bring this milestone within their grasp. While young homeowners moving to the country may not aspire to the splendor of Piety Hill, with its three-story home and multiple cottages on the grounds, they expect to own one or several acres. The Pew Research Center found 25% more people prefer to live in communities where “houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away” than the inverse. Every age demographic over age 30 longs for the mirror image of the “15-minute city” promoted by social engineers.
Concrete policy choices widen the urban-rural affordability gap. A pro-business environment allows people to provide for themselves, and lower taxes allow families to choose how they spend their own money. The annual U-Haul Growth Index shows that four of the top 10 destination states also rank as the Tax Foundation’s most tax-competitive states; the bottom of each chart also aligns. Only Washington state, which has no personal state income tax, defied the comparison. Its new millionaires tax is already causing business to flee.
Yet young people also have a more fundamental concern: safety. Crime rates in rural areas are roughly half those in urban areas, according to the Justice Department. America’s small towns are not a haven for prosecutors intent on letting criminals go free in pursuit of a misguided sense of “justice.” Our pastoral landscapes feature no mass protests, street blockades, or riots. Generally, no one in local government seems inclined to tell their lifelong neighbors and friends that they deserve criminal victimization for the sins of their fathers. Today’s young people, too, are “refugees from Giant Ideology.”
But to treat people as exclusively or primarily economic creatures repeats Marxist errors and denies the laws of nature and nature’s God. “The real reason people are conservatives is that they are attached to the things that they love, and want to preserve them from abuse and decay,” wrote another National Review contributor, Sir Roger Scruton. “They are attached to their family, their friends, their religion, and their immediate environment. They have made a lifelong distinction between the things that nourish and the things that threaten their security and peace of mind.” That distinction draws people back to their native communities. Most young people tell pollsters they moved closer to home, because they want their parents to know and help raise the next generation, and they, in turn, want to remain near their aging parents. Familial safety, preferring the familiar, and a desire for a fixed and enduring homestead spring from the deepest wells of human nature.
Rural areas face a mortality problem of their own: While their population has rebounded in recent years and skyrocketed since the pandemic, deaths still outnumber births. Small towns rely entirely on migration to replenish their numbers. The economic challenge must be confronted and overcome.
The good news is the Trump administration, especially Vice President J.D. Vance, has made home ownership and family formation a political priority. Their amendments to managed trade agreements have led to some industrial reshoring and foreign investment. In 2019, President Trump and then-Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison personally attended the opening of an Aussie corrugated packaging factory in Wapakoneta, Ohio, creating 500 jobs in a town of 10,000. As the jobs go, people will follow.
Remote areas also benefited from remote work. As COVID-era employers demanded people work from home, employees flocked to “Zoom towns”: small communities that offered no new economic incentives except location. Yet government policy undermines the Zoom town boom. The number of remote jobs has contracted 20% since 2019, due in no small part to the Trump administration’s decision to mandate in-person work for federal workers.
Today’s young people, too, are “refugees from Giant Ideology.”
This may have been necessary to curb rampant abuse. Outside the public sector, requiring in-person work often veils the malice of micromanagers determined to replicate their mediocrity in others. As we learned during the pandemic, virtually every job can be performed remotely, virtually every meeting can be an email, and every meeting can be held virtually unless it requires the privacy of the SCIF or the confessional. In both public and private sectors, good managerial skills featuring defined deliverables and timetables, open sharing of targets and performance metrics, competent coaching, and diligent oversight can eliminate fraud and reward achievement. State or federal governments could lead the way in establishing these criteria and rewarding those who choose to live in underpopulated, undercapitalized areas.
Finally, the great migration now finds itself endangered through the encroachment of AI data centers, which consume farmland, water, and energy while raising electricity costs for those who can least afford it. It is likely needed reforms and protections will require nimbler action than the federal government can provide under the current moratorium on state AI regulations. The governor of one of the nation’s fastest-growing states, Ron DeSantis of Florida, sees no contradiction between economic growth and his proposed Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bill of Rights.
After enormous investment, experts remain conflicted about AI’s potential and whether its growth constitutes a bubble. Government policy must value industry, place, family, community, and memory as Kirk would. For the sake of the permanent things.
V. Rev. Benjamin Johnson (@therightswriter) is an Eastern Orthodox priest with more than two decades of experience as a conservative editor, commentator, and radio talk show host. His views are his own.
