FT political columnist Janan Ganesh writes that cities are disliked by anti-liberals – both those on the political right and those on the left.
The city has moral enemies. In ancient times and modern, among religious warriors and secular ideologues, urban life has been scathingly equated with sexual licence, denatured materialism and free inquiry. Babylon was condemned. The Khmer Rouge emptied out Phnom Penh. Al-Qaeda tore into a man-made skyline. ….
If the city is liberalism incarnate, anti-liberals will define themselves against it. This includes the scrupulously peaceful conservatives in modern democracies, whom voting patterns show to be strongest in rural areas and small towns. In their demonology, the opponent is never just the