Mr. Wilson, thank you for your comments. They were spot on and hilarious.

And finally, Mr. Origer, aren’t you PLS ‘06 (I’m philo ‘07)? Can you really call yourself a hick with a $120,000 education?

Dear Bob, That’s always been true. But we only recently acquired a “meritocracy” so such truths did not matter the way they do now. Surely the most profound and successful threat to the life of contemplation in our age has come from those who are “credentialled” to engage upon it.

“Ultimately, with a plan and a vision the undoing of Middle America is not preordained. The rural crisis has been ignored for far too long, but, we believe, it isn’t too late to start paying attention. The residents of rural America must embrace the fact that to survive, the world they knew and cherished must change. And, on a national level, rural development must be more closely linked to national economic growth priorities, and policies must be created to help these communities prepare for a future that is already here.”

It may simply be that I have a closed-minded (I’m right there with you, Prof. Wilson!) view of the matter, but doesn’t suggesting that “rural development must be more closely linked to national economic growth priorities” in fact ordain the purportedly not preordained undoing of Middle America? Have not these priorities — to wit, the ideology of unrestrained “growth” — already taken their toll on us hicks, whose brothers (and nowadays, sisters, to boot!) die in disproportionally high numbers fighting the wars of a soi-disant cowboy who is really nothing more than third-rate dreck descended from a clan of nomads with fewer connections to any one plot of soil than even the most Lone-Ranger-esque equestrian and a purportedly peace-loving man who refuses to admit to the gross failures of his predecessors tomfoolery? Us hicks, who were told that the giant grey-and-blue box-looking store on the edge of town was our saviour — until the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker found themselves on the dole and our jobs at the washing-machine factory ended up being held by the heirs of the Cultural Revolution and Santa Anna’s wars.

Prof. Peters writes “[T]he authors have only the dimmest sense of what they’re talking about.” Well, they’re a) sociologists, b) stupid enough to marry sociologists, and c) both on the East Coast, far from living in in the Flyover States. I’d say that your language is exceedingly kind.

Prof. Wilson, with sentiments such as “I like my neighbors to cherish the same conception of the good I do, and to be intolerant of that which compromises it. Such a neighbor can thus actually become a friend rather than a novelty”, you’ll never be the cool kid on the playground. You may as well just spend recess in the study hall.

As for “tolerance,” may we presume this is just a code word for the anonymity of the crowd that makes possible supernumerary sexual liasons with poor odds of having to confront one’s hour-long-Aphrodite on the way to the grocer the next day?

I like my neighbors to cherish the same conception of the good I do, and to be intolerant of that which compromises it. Such a neighbor can thus actually become a friend rather than a novelty.