There is a tremendous fountain of accumulated wisdom and common sense on farms and ranchs across America. Government officials and popular culture are fond of backhandedly dismissing rural America as lacking sophistication and modernity. They're constantly sending out government officials and social workers to help them and try to reform them, but somehow, some way the farms and ranches keep shelling out a surplus of food for Big City Americans year after year.
Storms, floods, blizzards and pestulence fail to keep them down for long. While Congress debates and dithers on a Farm Bill, trying to make farms "greener" and produce more "natural food," U.S. farmers just keep up the bounty at the supermarkets, with plenty left over to export to countries and peoples worldwide who are less fortunate.
You have to be tough to live isolated and lonely in rural America. You have to have a reservoir of strength, courage and resolve to overcome whatever comes along. There is a self-reliance and personal responsibility in rural America that has been the backbone of this nation.
Reality TV shows and other media try to play on the simple life and naivete of country folks, but the truth is that rural values and family life are a great example for city folks.
That's where many of them came from.
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