Intellectuals Idolize Quaint Rural Farms… That They Never Worked On

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the elite have bashed capitalism for destroying community. You won’t find any of the rural folk who left dreary villages for jobs in urban factories criticizing it; most of it comes from the wealthy elite who owned vast estates while living in the city and who employed many of those who left. Others were intellectual with no understanding of rural life, such as G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, and Russel Kirk.

Kirk demonstrated in his book, The Conservative Mind, that conservatives have hated industry and revered agriculture since conservatism’s conception by Edmond Burke. They won’t say it, but conservatives want to conserve what they see as the idyllic villages of the 15th century. They think we could have achieved the wealth and health the West enjoys today without industrialization, unless they admire the poverty, disease and violence of that century. I’m not certain which posture best suits them because none have ever written about it.