Confession is good for the soul.  So let me start off by stating plainly: at face value, I was a carpetbagger.  It's undeniable.  Born and raised in Kent County, Delaware (technically a Union state, albeit a border one), with a newly minted teaching degree in hand, I took a position at Central High School in Woodstock, instructing Shenandoah County's young people in both American government and foreign language.  I refused to call the Civil War either the "War Between the States" or the "War of Northern Aggression."  It took me three years to correctly pronounce Staunton and Maurertown.  And to this day, I still disdain the Confederate flag, all the while acknowledging its display as a matter of free speech.  But unlike the carpetbaggers we see infiltrating our community today, who arrive with a desire to conform others to their supposedly heightened sense of rightness and superiority, I came for quite another reason: I was a political refugee.

Delaware comprises only three quite divergent counties: rural and agriculturally right-leaning Sussex, suburban center-right Kent, and urban left-wing New Castle.  Because the population of New Castle greatly overshadows that of the other two combined, its voters control the outcome of most statewide and federal elections, marginalizing the inhabitants of the other two.  Local taxes enacted in New Castle made property more costly and encouraged its liberal inhabitants to relocate farther south.  But rather than learn from their mistakes, they brought their tax policies with them.  As a result, with every passing election, I'd see taxes rising and freedom constricting.  Therefore, despite my love of the First State, I made the decision to move to the Valley — not because I knew better (I didn't) or perceived them as needing my Northern sensibilities (which I didn't possess) to modernize their supposedly backward ways (which weren't), but because it offered the freedom I was looking for.  To maximize that freedom, I would need to conform myself to the Valley, not the other way around.

The story of America is people leaving what they've known for the hope of something better.  But this past election, and the corresponding fallout related to the 2A Sanctuary movement, shows that there is a contingent of new residents who have come to our slice of heaven not to contribute to or glean from its already sound cultural fabric, but to reform it into a satellite outpost of Northern Virginia and the other "enlightened" centers from which they originate.  Like the carpetbaggers of old, they've come as malevolent missionaries of social reconstruction, intent on colonization.

Reading the comments of defeated leftists is quite telling.  District 3 BoS candidate Coe Sherrard was quoted on the Shenandoah County Democrats Facebook page on 11/06/2019 as having said, "The outward push from the metropolis near us is unavoidable and unstoppable.  The 'deplorables' in our county know this...and they hate it...but in our lifetime...they will be politically outnumbered.  You and our collective group of educated, intelligent, economically successful friends who already live here are sort of the 'pioneers' in advance of this imminent movement."  He later backtracked, stating that this was a private correspondence to a friend and supporter not meant for public distribution.  Not that he no longer believes this...he just regrets you knowing it.

The Shenandoah Democrats have continued their vitriol, stating on 11/27/2019, "The majority of ShenCo [may] want 2nd Amendment resolution.  The majority supported slavery, and Hitler.  That doesn't make it RIGHT."  In other words, not only are modern-day supporters of the Constitution appallingly lumped together with the Nazis and slaveholders of previous generations, but the will of majorities is apparently irrelevant if it gets in the way of their we-know-better agenda.  It must be great being so "educated, intelligent, [and] economically successful" that you know what's best for everyone.

Our community is not perfect, and like all places, it has skeletons that it has fought hard to overcome.  Through decades of internal change, it is a welcoming, honest, multicultural melting pot of a diverse and hardworking citizenry.  It has not only tolerated this former carpetbagger, but embraced me, resulting in my decision to make it my permanent home and contribute to its already strong institutions and traditions. 

If Northern Virginia is so great, please stay there.  If it's everything you think Shenandoah County should be, why leave in the first place?  There are others, like me, who came here precisely because of what it is, not in the hopes of making it a mirror image of the places we left.

Image: Karen Nutini via Wikimedia Commons.