Collapse of rural culture

From the debate on last week’s Gay marriage in Iowa thread, a poignant exchange on the

state of rural America:

Kerner

I began my legal career as a prosecutor in a remote, rural, community. And I can tell youi from that experience, that the rural environment breeds wife beating and sexual abuse of children and substance abuse and loose sexual morality at a pace comparable (per capita) to any metropolitan area.

Cincinnatus

I don’t dispute that in contemporary terms, having grown up in a meth-ridden rural town myself. However, I think that has more to do with the fact that America no longer has a rural culture, characterized by virtue or otherwise. Most modern “rural” communities–at least the ones where I grew up–are largely aimless, characterized by a massive generational gap between the elders who remember and participated in the difficult life of the true farmer that demanded and nurtured an atmosphere of virtue, and the youth who are either degenerate alcoholics (for lack of anything better to do) or desperate to leave for more urban, sophisticated climes (such as can be found on the coasts). Such it is in my own hometown (in the South) and all across the formerly-rural Midwest.

What happened? So are small town rural communities NOT the best place to raise children? Can anything be done to restore the Jeffersonian, Wendell Berry ideal?