Why does flyover country breed patriots?
Thought someone from Texas might know. :>)
"Why does flyover country breed patriots?"
Great question, and you'll get better answers than mine!
Maybe it's because we spend more time looking up...not just at those planes flying over...but at the weather (which is more important to our work than it is to citydwellers), and at the stars and clouds (more visible to us than to citydwellers). That gives us a bigger canvas than others, a sense of freedom and a feeling that, as they say in Midland, "The sky's the limit."
People in flyover country spend their days doing the work the elites take for granted, producing the food, fiber, goods and fuel that the rest of the country depends upon...
the dirty, hard work that's not "important" or glamourous, just absolutely essential to the lives we lead. No matter what lofty ideas come out of those planes and skyscrapers, their implementation gets done on the ground by "ordinary" people in flyover country. And when it's time to do the dirty, hard work of fighting and dying for freedom, here or elsewhere, they know the job must be done so they take up arms and look to the heavens for the strength to do it.
Flyover country has more flags, more churches, more parades and hometown heros, more courthouse war memorials.
The flag and the national anthem are part of every ballgame and rodeo. The VFW hall is a landmark and the faces in the 4th of July parade are people you know. In flyover country people not only know their neighbors, they talk to strangers. There's a sense of community, and when someone leaves or joins that community, it's noticed.
Most people in flyover country wouldn't care to trade places with anyone in those planes or big cities or other countries, but when their community and this country is threatened, they will go anywhere and do whatever is required to protect the freedom they know...those faces and places at home. In flyover country, patriotism is about people, not politics.