Beyond city limits

Falsehoods cling to Waynesboro like cobwebs in the corners of vacant buildings. Here’s one: so-called progressives are alone in thinking of downtown renewal and in their willingness to drive it. Here’s another: to be conservative is to shun a part for government in growth. Absolutes of this sort are easily enough shattered by the power of a few brain cells, but let’s wade deeper.

The Bay Center for Voting Research goes to the trouble of compiling a list of America’s most liberal and most conservative cities based on voting habits. The cities at the top hardly surprise. On the left, there’s Detroit, home to the Big Three carmakers, mighty workers’ unions and a city government layered in corruption. On the right, there’s Provo, Utah, home to Brigham Young University, where the school honor code prohibits among, other things, drinking, smoking and singles hooking up on weekends, or any other day for that matter. Gosh, what’s left?

A pattern emerges when the Bay Center lists are cross-referenced with some of the multitude generated by Forbes. A fourth of the towns in the liberal Top 25 are among Forbes’ Top 10 most miserable cities. Detroit is No. 7 just behind a sister in misery, Flint, Mich. Chicago is No. 3 followed by Cleveland. Buffalo and St. Louis round out the libs on the woeful list. None of the 25 most conservative towns makes the miserable Top 10.

Among the 25 rightie cities, a fourth appear on one of three Forbes lists – the Top 50 for best metro or small places for business and careers or the Top 10 most livable cities. Provo is rated America’s 40th best on the metro business list. Oklahoma City, Okla., makes it on the best business and most livable lists.

We could go on. But let’s stop at this: Cities dominated by liberalism tend to devolve over time. A sense of aversion to business, which girds liberalism in its extremes, turns once-productive, vibrant communities to dust, or something worse, poverty-addled jungles fled by companies which take with them jobs and opportunity, leaving people at the bottom without means of escape from the gloom.

Clutched in government’s hands, these cities become like the matted rodent in Lennie Small’s pocket in the Steinbeck classic “Of Mice and Men.” Cities die while government strokes, oblivious to carnage.

This does not mean elected officials should not be about the business of helping communities advance. Towns like Oklahoma City are not recognized as great places to live and work simply because of rock-bottom tax rates. Local elected leaders are the force that shapes communities.

Factions stretching beyond the City Council clash here. “Progressives” who call for more action from city leaders have a point. Conservatives who fret over the dangers of government overspending have one, too. Between those two poles ought to be a conviction around which all can unify. This city’s potential is vast, but limits of human devising persist, the lines defined by the failure of two sides to seize common ground and build on it. Let’s smash the boundaries.