Sometimes Big-Housed People Are Good People Too
[NRO Staff  03/14 12:27 PM]

I’m on board with crunchy conservatism, but to suggest, as Stuart Buck does, that in choosing to live ideologically, we choose between family/community and big house that impresses people, is so offensive I don’t know where to begin. Yes, I believe we all live ideologically. Yet most folks aren’t even aware of it. I live in the Deep South, and I know well the neighborhoods north of Atlanta and south of Birmingham – middle to upper class, full of big homes and strip malls. I also know that many of those homes are full of good people who raise good families and are completely humble in their approach to life. I also believe that those good folks are inadvertently harming our communities by moving so far away from the city. They’re kind people contributing to urban sprawl and nasty traffic, but it’s not as though they sat back in the recliner and, after lighting a cigar with a one hundred dollar bill, decided “to hell with the traffic and the family...I want a big house to impress the neighbors.” To suggest as much is foolishly naïve. The point we should be trying to convey to our friends and families in these subdivisions is that however nice their lives might be, it is a dangerous thing for all of us to live that way, generation after generation.