Mike Lux: Different Than My Small-Town Values

OpenLeft's Mike Lux who, like me, is from a small town in Nebraska, wrote an excellent piece today on how Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin most certainly does not represent the kind of small-town values we grew up with.

Here's Mike:

"I grew up in a family, church, and community where we were taught to look out for each other, to be kind to one another, to help out the families in our community who were down on their luck. The Sarah Palin I saw last night had a mean streak a mile wide. If me or my brothers and sisters would have been as sarcastic and demeaning to someone as Sarah Palin was last night, my mom would have sent us to our room.

"I know that Palin was just trying to be funny when she compared herself to a pit bull, but she was just about as nasty as one, and in the dog-loving families I know from small-town America, people generally prefer dogs that will play well with kids and neighbors. And the community organizers that Palin made so much fun of the folks who organized the potluck suppers at church and the Lions Club charities, the ones who really made those small towns go."

And Mike ends with something I have thought for a long time when wondering why people in small towns, where real community spirit still reigns, would continue to vote for a party whose official motto should be "you're on your own."

"The Sarah Palin of last night, who claims to be the ultimate representative of small-town America, is anything but, because the small-town folks I know actually look out for each other."

You can read it all at OpenLeft.