Some of the acceptance of big government has to do with population density, too.

I live in the city, the government is literally everywhere. It has to be. Government is the keeper of the grid of roads and pipes that enable urban living. I don't have fields and meadows to walk through, I walk on government sidewalks. We don't have streams, we have concrete drainage ravines. Trees come from the city after much begging, they don't just pop up on their own. We don't even have a horizon for the sun to set on, just buildings as far as you can see.

Perhaps the Boston-D.C. megalopolis leans left because partly because we're dense (no jokes, please).

Cities also push diverse groups of people together and force them to accept each other. Everyone in the city has a gay friend, or a few differently-skinned or non English-speaking neighbors. For me, abortion isn't a choice between 'do I like the idea of unborn babies being killed' or not, it's an effective (if ugly) remedy to high birth rates amongst the population least able to care for children. It's a lot easier to rail on 'welfare queens' and teen pregnancy when you live somewhere where you're exposed to neither. Here in the city it's a more difficult choice between increasing the welfare rolls or allowing society's worst parents to terminate their pregnancies*.

* I know it's a lot more complicated than that, but I don't want this to become Yet Another Abortion Argument. Just pointing out why denser areas might be more susceptible to social liberalism and bigger government.

It should be noted that NH's Democrat governor is way to the right on fiscal issues. The unions and progressives hate his guts.

Umm, Mangeek, I don't suspect many people who oppose killing unborn children would change their opinions if only they had to deal with too many kids running around. Indeed, a good number of pro-lifers go out of their way to interact with, typically to help, those children.

It's an interesting question, though: Do you city folk support euthanizing the homeless because you come into contact with the problem more?

I say this as cordially as I'm able: You really should reread what you've written and try to see why others might consider it dripping with arrogance... the diversity of more conservative states puts RI to shame.

Mangeek,

"I walk on government sidewalks"

They only become the government's after someone else paid to have them constructed. Try getting them repaired when it isn't an election year. Even then, they will frequently send you a bill for repairs.

Government shouldn't do anything that you can find in the Yellow Pages.

"Bigger Government"? In most states over 20% of the voters draw their paycheck from the government. That is 1, out of 5, to govern us. I think we have all we need.

Like I said, it's much more complicated than I feel like writing about.

Justin, we've discussed this subject before. Both of us have respect for life, we just don't agree on where it should legally begin.

Should we euthanize homeless folks? Of course not. Should we spend $400,000 taxpayer dollars to keep grandpa on the ventilator another six months? I'm still not sure about that; let the actuaries figure it out, or make people responsible for paying for 'extreme care' themselves.

Should we allow abortion? I think so, I think it's an overall win for society, with a terrible and eternally controversial cost. But I'd also like to see Roe vs. Wade overturned so it became a state issue, and I think it's ridiculous to expect taxpayers to subsidize it.

"the diversity of more conservative states puts RI to shame"

I'm not sure about that. Sure, if 'diversity' is measured as 'proportion of non-white people'. The neighborhood I'm in is thoroughly 'melted'. Just on my street we have Liberians, Portuguese, some Mexicans, some black folks, a few white families, and who knows what else; we range the socioeconomic scale from 'just scraping-by on social security and/or welfare' to 'shopping for a new BMW'. I think a lot of the 'more conservative' cities (read: south and west) are a bit more segregated into ethnic and socioeconomic enclaves.

But now you've changed your premise, which was clearly that people in cities have more diverse experience and therefore take a more liberal view. Bull. As if conservatives know no people of color or homosexuals. That's simply ruling-class pretension.

I grew up in towns of less than 20,000, I can recall a lot of "diverse" occurances. A pedophile ran the bicycle repair shop, prior to this he had been arrested for smelling women's underwear on clotheslines. A notorious "flasher" turned out to be a cop and shot one of the policemen who arrested him. In another case a teenage (15) prostitute, pimped by her father, was put out of business and 148 guys charged with "statutory rape" (few were actualy convicted). These events were widely spaced and perhaps gave us time to reflect and adjust our vision.

faust-that clothesline guy sounds like a wannabe-a real pervert would've been sniffing the shorts BEFORE they went in the wash.A bicycle shop,eh?Lots of bicycle seats.What a turd!!