Observations from Flyover

Recently I read an article in the London Times about Obama not doing well in polling in the rural south. In fact they say Obama’s elitist campaign alienates the south. It is not just the rural south; it is all the rural areas of the country that people fly over going from major city to major city, the snobby like to call it “Flyover.”

In flyover we trust in personal responsibility, we believe government is usually more cause of a problem than solution and we believe the framers of The Constitution never intended it to be a living document.

We believe that government assistance should only get you through the rough times and not be a life style that last from birth to death. We don’t like our taxes supporting people that never work. At the same time most of us in flyover will come to your aid when you need it. We will help move furniture out of your house as the water rises; we will pull your car out of a ditch in the middle of a snow storm and an invite you in for hot chocolate. We are apt to have volunteer fire departments, not paid fire departments. We are members of Rotary, Kiwanis & Ruritan. We support the boy & girl scouts, the Food Pantry, the United Way and many other organizations. We loaded up food, clothes and blankets and drove to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Katrina before we were asked because we knew our neighbors would need help.

We are patriots. We volunteer for military service to defend the nation at a higher rate that other areas of the nation. Our volunteers don’t get stuck in Iraq; they volunteer to go to defend our way of life.

We are not bitter, but we do cling to our religion. We believe in God. We believe in religious freedom. We know there is no separation of church and state clause in the constitution. There is a clause in the constitution states the government shall not "prohibit the free exercise" of religion. We believe that clause allows us to put baby Jesus and the wise men on the courthouse lawn as long as we allow other religions a similar display. We feel the Christian religion is under attack.

We keep and bear arms because we like to hunt and by the time the State Police or Sheriff get out of bed in the middle of the night more than an hour may have gone. Lot’s of flyover doesn’t have 24 hr police coverage. The intruder could be a burglar or even a bear, but we are quite capable of holding whatever it is at bay until authorities arrive. In flyover we are well armed and crime is low. In the cities citizens are not well armed and crime is high. That correlation is not lost on us.

While Hollywood likes to portray those in flyover as hillbillies, country bumpkins, rednecks and extras from Deliverance. The facts are our rural schools tend to have higher test scores than those in the cities. Our colleges and universities turn out Rhodes Scholars.

We are tired of high fuel prices. In flyover high fuel prices affect us more than they do for the cities. In many of our areas the bus lines quit running in the 1950’s and we haven’t seen a passenger train in about as long. Electric cars have a limited range, a range that is shorter than the round trip to work and back. We too have hour long work commutes, but those commutes are at 60 miles an hour. We like the idea of drilling for our own oil. We recognize an increase in supply reduces price. We don’t drive cars as an option we drive them as a necessity.

We are not environmentalist, but we are conservationist. We don’t visit the mountains, the desert and the plains for a week or two in the summer, we live in the mountains, the desert and the plains. We enjoy their beauty everyday and we will protect it, but we will also use it. We know our nation needs coal for power, wood for paper and furniture, and oil for our vehicles and industry. We will provide it, but we live here and will not destroy our backyard. We have learned from our own history.

The London Times story got it right. Obama’s elitist attitude fails. We want a leader that understands that rural areas have different needs than those of the cities and neither should be accommodated at the expense of the other. We want a leader that is our equal, not our superior. We are a government of the people and by the people. We understand something the founding fathers understood; all men are created equal, even in Flyover.