To discover the U.S. and what the Founding Fathers meant, drive a state or two or three of the United States.
About the opening sentence, it’s not a trite tribute to the “Real America” that can allegedly be found outside its cities. The energy of its cities arguably define the United States like nothing else.
Just the same, what renders the U.S. different from the rest of the world is what Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane referred to as a “fierce individualism” that gives it life. Which explains the call for Americans to get to know the U.S. by driving it. In seeing how much of the U.S. is uninhabited, in seeing the frequently tiny towns that occasionally reveal themselves in drives through mostly empty spaces, we see the founders’ point about making the overwhelming majority of legislation local.
Precisely because the Americans of small towns are frequently so different from the Americans of the suburbs, and precisely because the Americans from suburbs are frequently so different from the Americans in the biggest cities (in a very real sense, city dwellers are “immigrants” within America), it’s essential that legislation not be hatched in Washington, and in one-size-fits-all fashion.
As our choice of different living conditions in wildly disparate locales indicates, we’re individuals first and foremost and in ways that national legislation can in no way reflect. Leave us be.
Why all the throat-clearing ahead of an opinion piece about Walmart? The answer is that Walmart makes it possible for Americans to pursue the fierce individualism that they cherish minus the occasional discomfort of geographical isolation. A recent drive from Minneapolis, MN to Pierre, SD vivified this truth.
Like all relatively densely populated South Dakota cities, Pierre is far from the others. Walmart is the constant within them.
The size of the Walmart Supercenter in Pierre was much greater than any grocery store found inside or even near most U.S. cities of any size, and the size of the one in Pierre was a reminder of how meaningful Walmart is to the American people. This is particularly true for Americans far from the cities that so much of the world associates with the United States.
These Supercenters are large exactly because they’re in so many ways a source of everything for the people for whom a visit to a “big city” is its own challenge. The drive itself (Pierre is nearly 400 miles from Minneapolis) is substantial, at which point the only major airline that serves Pierre is United, one flight per day to Denver. The isolation is real.
Yet it’s not stifling, and it’s not bereft of comforts. And that’s because Walmart literally brings the plenty of the world to U.S. cities that would in so many ways otherwise exist untouched by the rest of the world.
Is this an altruistic act by Walmart? No, and there’s arguably no such thing as altruism as is. But what Walmart does for its customers is heroic just the same, and miles in excess of what any charity could ever hope to do.
Most Americans don’t want charity as is, rather they just want to live as they desire and where they desire. Walmart makes it possible for Americans to enjoy the world’s comforts from quite literally anywhere, and that’s certainly compassionate.
