What is it about those places that gives them greater immunity, and can it be scaled?

First thing that comes to mind is more farmland / more rural areas. Also more religion.

Imagine a dissenter from the Russian state having a brainwave. “Friends, if it weren’t for the KGB, this country would be much less communist! And imagine if the organs for state security were on our side!”

But I’m being too harsh. This is a real insight that suggests two different lines of inquiry.

First, it challenges or at least complicates the dominant neoreactionary account of the leftward ratchet. Either its not inherent but has been the result of a factional (Cathedral) capture of the instruments of opinion formation in the dominant world power, or else the ratchet is inherent but the dynamic isn’t culture wide. Instead, there is a mechanism in the modern world that somehow tends to concentrate the left around those instruments.

Second, it suggests the insight that Utah and Texas and Idaho and etc. are actually fairly progressive/left in the scheme of things. But they also seem to be doing fairly well. If leftism didn’t metatastize, there is probably a point up to which Progress is, well, progress. What’s needed is a leftist cowpox virus. What is it about those places that gives them greater immunity, and can it be scaled?

If this is true we should all cheer up massively — which can’t be right, can it?

That’s what I thought too. I have the “Left Turn” book around here somewhere on my Kindle and I’ve been meaning to read it. It really seems almost too good to be true, honestly. Which is why I’d like to see more academic research in this vein. Maybe I should read the book and email the author to see if there is any follow up data since it’s been published. (I’ve noticed academic authors typically respond to personal emails.)

If America would be as red as Texas from a LACK of bias, what would America look like if the media were flipped from liberal media bias to conservative media bias?

Those figures for TV influence are extraordinary, but — for whatever loose change intuition is worth — they make a lot of sense. If they didn’t, the plausible image of power wouldn’t look like the Cathedral (run by swipples with smart phones), but instead like something far more fangy and Leviathanesque.

Geo-political fragmentation needs pushing hard. The alternative is ruling over people who end up wrecking your society, breeding social chaos, and slurping up handouts. The more borders the better (it doesn’t have to be made at all hard for civilized people to cross them).

I didn’t mean secede like the Confederates wanted to. But the idea of maybe breaking the states up into smaller more manageable areas seems like a good idea. I’d also like to see some transfer of sovereignty from the Feds to the States so States can have more control over local laws so people can build voluntary communities perhaps similar to that book “The Diamond Age”.

The fact that these kinds of movements exist and seem to have some force at all makes me think that maybe more people would be willing to think outside the Cathedral’s box then the MSM propaganda machine would lead you to believe.

The Intellectuals need to exit from the Cathedral. The ones that can still think or who’s brains have suddenly just recovered.

That’s all the exit talk.

I am not running from THAT. By the way, where the Hell would we all go? The cloaking device on Galts Gulch [yes, it required one] would need Sol itself as an energy source.

The despair, the exit…the zombies [the zombies are the people or their avatar democracy, get ready, get set, get used to it] the doomsterism …all of this is knowing it’s over.

However in the thread of things I want to help. Here’s a brilliant idea from Slate:

Swipple Forced Busing . Well, actually it’s my idea.

No their actual idea is this idiot shaming peeps to get status, to makeup for the fact that he’s too damn cheap to send his kids to private school. And would rather terminate their existence than Homeschool.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/private_school_vs_public_school_only_bad_people_send_their_kids_to_private.html