Living in Flyover Country

I visited a close friend last weekend and sat next to a Chicago native on my flight back into Kansas City.  A sweet older gentleman, he asked, “What’s it like living in Kansas?”  I answered that it’s great if you like small towns, and that while I know it lacks the mountains of Colorado and the beaches of California, I have never wanted to live anywhere else.  Because the best people in the world live here in “flyover country.”

The phrase, “flyover country” was of course coined by a “coaster” who can’t imagine why anyone would choose a life of wheatfields and combines.  But you know, every big movement got its start here, in flyover country.

The abolition movement.  Women’s right to vote.  Prohibition.  Populism.  And more recently, the New Leaders Project.

Over at the Washington Times, there’s a great editorial written about the movement by local, area grass roots tea party leaders to identify new candidates for local office- everything from city council and school board to county commission and state legislator.  At dinner with an admittedly liberal friend Monday night, I told her about this new initiative that we were partnering with local leaders on, and she looked at me with eyes wide and said, “You’re training an army.”

Yep.  That’s the plan.

An army of solid, strong conservative leaders who care about their communities, their state and their nation; who understand the constitution and value it still today.  These new candidates, identified by the local tea party leader and backed by the members of those groups, will not only work to return our government to its proper size and scope, but also will be held accountable, by those very tea party activists who worked to identify them in the first place.  As the editorial states, “Efforts like those of American Majority, local Tea Party campaigns and citizen-led ballot initiatives are what’s needed to limit government power, town by town and state by state.”

It’s a novel idea- and it’s one that could change the nation.  And where did it begin?  As the Washington Times points out, in the heartland.  That’s right- here in flyover country.