Say it ain't so KD!

Kevin Drum, usually the most acute of political bloggers, set my teeth on edge with this post.
Why is it that blue states are so much richer and more culturally vibrant than red states?
His answer, more or less, is that it's because blue states are inhabited by diversity loving liberals while people who live in, say, Kansas, are evolution hating hicks. This drew a lot of comments from liberals patting themselves on the back for living in States that voted for the losing side in recent elections, but I hated it. There is a scintilla of truth in this but it's hidden in a mountain of folly.

First, it reeks of the smug, self-congratulatory distain of the urbane elite for the rest of America. Liberals are never going to be anything but a chattering nuisance until they stop sneering and talk to America.

It's also nonsense. Los Angeles and San Francisco are in California instead of Kansas for lots of reasons, almost all purely geographic. Stanford, Caltech, and Berkeley aren't where they are because their founders spotted the ideal liberal diverse community, but they did play major roles in creating those communities.

Orange County, Kevin's back yard, was famously conservative not so long ago. The economic vibrancy we see there now didn't come for the liberal diversity, but it did transform the place.

If Kansas had a deep water Pacific port and a city of millions, it might become a whole lot more liberal and diverse too - but just becoming liberal won't give it either.

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