| > Idaho has a small fraction of the population and diversity of those other places. That's a weird statement. By your logic, diversity makes people's lives worse, and folks in Idaho are justified in wanting no part in it. > Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor. But, on objective metrics, those dumbfucks in Idaho are doing a better job teaching their kids to read than those in California--and for a lot less money. It's not just reading scores. Conservatives have greater well-being on various objective measures: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand.... That includes their kids: https://www.foxnews.com/media/conservative-teenagers-general.... Utah has the kind of flat, egalitarian society liberals say they want to create: https://www.deseret.com/utah/2023/12/28/24017943/best-state-.... ("A 2014 article in The Atlantic pointed toward two strengths that Salt Lake City has that make it a positive environment for upward mobility: 'A strong middle class and a less extreme gap between the rich and the poor.' ... Based on data from 2020 to 2022, the Gini Index from the U.S. Census Bureau ranks Utah as having one of the lowest economic inequality scores across the country."). > European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list. In America, religion is pretty much the only check on "extreme forms of individualism." Silicon Valley and Wall Street are the places where, more than anywhere else in America, people worship money rather than God. Are those models to follow? |
That's only part of the problem in blue states though, and does not explain the full discrepancy.