Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • Elizabeth Warren
  • My Rifles
  • How We Are Different
  • Foundation Principles
  • Your Security
  • The Swiss Way
  • About Us
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • Dick Young
  • Debbie Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Your Survival Guy
  • Your Health
  • Old Confederacy
  • The American Conservative
  • The Trump Economy

Can Small Town America Be Saved?

October 12, 2018 By Richard C. Young

The American Conservative recently printed a version of a speech given by Bill Kauffmann. He was speaking at “Revitalizing Jackson’s Main Street,” an event held by The American Conservative in Jackson, Michigan in September. Kauffmann is a prolific author, and in his book Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette, he focuses on small town America. In his speech he outlined the prospect for revitalizing small towns. He said (abridged):

In 2003 I published a book called Dispatches From the Muckdog Gazette, which is, megalomaniacally, a memoir about my repatriation to Batavia, but it’s also about the way that Batavia—and by extension all the Batavias from sea to dimming sea—has struggled to maintain a distinct identity, a character, rather than becoming just another formless wattle on the continental blob.

I don’t know how much anyone here knows of Batavia. Batavia was a prosperous little city, manufactory of combines and tractors and shotguns. English and Scots and Germans were the early settlers, coexisting uneasily with the late 19th-century polyglot influx of Italians and Poles.

In some ways we were a typical small American city but in other ways we were “Batavia”—our own place. We did not yet bow down before the new American royalty: Burger King and Dairy Queen.

Then, as Joseph Heller would say, something happened. Batavia tore out its five-block heart and filled the cavity with a ghastly mall….

So what do you do when your small city has been leveled by well-meaning but fatuous city fathers who can’t resist the lure of “free” federal money?

There are many ways of going, as a poet who lived in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, once said. In the new issue of The American Conservative, which you are sitting on, I write about my friend Tim Tielman, the charismatic urban geographer who has done so much to revitalize Buffalo.

Joseph Ellicott, who at the beginning of the 19th century founded both Buffalo and Batavia, remarked, “God made Buffalo; I will try and make Batavia. In any event, Tim and many others are now doing God’s work in Buffalo

As for Batavia….I am of the old Thoreauvian school that distrusts big political solutions. It was the federal government that demolished our little city, so I don’t turn first to the federal government to rebuild it.

DIY, as the old punk rock ethos went. Do it yourself. And across America, from Grand River Brewery to Front Porch Republic Books, people are doing it themselves.

Read more here.

Originally posted October 11, 2017.

The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts

Richard C. Young

Richard C. Young is the editor of Young's World Money Forecast, and a contributing editor to both Richardcyoung.com and Youngresearch.com.

Latest posts by Richard C. Young (see all)

  • Reboot American Families, Small Towns, Rural Areas - December 5, 2019
  • Trump Stops NATO from Making a Terrible Mistake - December 4, 2019
  • Build a Life Around the Place Where You Grew Up - December 4, 2019

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Related Posts

 

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • To Me There Isn’t a Better Way to Live
  • Boom—Your Life Changes
  • Trump Knows: Free Trade, Open Borders–a Recipe for Ruin
  • Progressive Liberalism Has Dragged America near Ruination
  • Rich Grandchild, Poor Grandchild
  • TAC’s Robert W. Merry Unveils Presidential War Lies
  • The Butterfly Effect and Chaotic Markets
  • Is Donald Trump Destined for an Historic 2020 Win?
  • The Simple, Elegant Power of the Retirement Compounders
  • Paris, The Palace Hotels: Part I

Our Most Popular Posts

  • How Has Gun Control Worked Elsewhere?
  • Impeachment's "Utterly Preposterous" Washington Witness Testimony
  • Impeachment What Ifs from Victor Davis Hanson
  • First Responders Say in a Big Disaster: "We're Not Coming"
  • Is Your Cash Safe? Probably not This Safe
  • President Trump, Compared to Whom?
  • Virginia Democrats Propose to Confiscate Residents' AR-15s
  • Ex Secretary of Navy vs. the Commander in Chief
  • Here's Why Trump's Polling is Stronger than you Think
  • Rich Grandchild, Poor Grandchild

Disclosure

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Vanguard GNMA Outlook 2020
  • Banks Are Selling Your Private Info to Strangers
  • Here’s Why You Should Treat Your Disaster Cash like Gold
  • The Biggest Problem for Warren’s Wealth Tax: The Constitution
  • You Must Find Investments that Fit Your Needs
  • Save Yourself! 92% of Wealthy Danes Want to Pull Their Money from Banks
  • Ginnie Mae (GNMA) Bond Yields
  • Junk Bond Yields
  • The Highest Yielding Dow Stocks
  • The Highest Yielding S&P 500 Stocks

From Anonymous: “I Am Part of the Resistance”

America’s Silent Army with 423M Guns

Reboot American Families, Small Towns, Rural Areas

Trump Stops NATO from Making a Terrible Mistake

The Real Sin of Donald Trump? Winning

Banks Are Selling Your Private Info to Strangers

Copyright © 2019 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives