New York metropolitan population – 19 million. In big cities like this, you cannot survive without government. It is needed everywhere – from security to sanitation to public transportation to education…you name it. Try libertarian-ism in these cities and you will have anarchy. On the flip side, take the case of Wyoming – population half a million. For anyone living in a small town or rural area, government is an abstract idea located in state capitals or DC which only passes restrictions and rules and takes away your money. And you do not even see much or any benefits coming out of government in your daily life. These people have known individualism most or all their lives and therefore government is just onerous. Same thing with conservatism vs progressiveness when it comes to cities vs rural areas. For someone earning minimum wage in NYC, you can work 80 hours a week and be barely able to pay rent. For someone in rural Montana or Wyoming, if someone is dependent on government help it means that person is lazy and not working hard. $40000 salary will earn a person some comfort in Pittsburgh. That same salary in NYC will make you choose between staying with your parents and buying a car, or renting your own place and commuting 3 hours each day. And conservatives are right to gripe about those who abuse government help, which truly exists but in a small quantity. And liberals are also right to gripe about social conservatism from people who have never met anyone different or experienced anything different. And these are two diametrically opposing ways of life and viewpoints and both sides feels that the other side lives in an alternate reality. But a harmonious society can only exist when both sides see the other’s point of view and see where the other side is coming from. For example, the city progressives can show their rural friends that being socially liberal is not immoral, but having learned to accept new ideas by being exposed to such people who are just as good as themselves. Similarly, a rural conservative can tell the city person that restricting deadly weapons in a densely populated area might make sense, but making it applicable to someone in a ranch or in the countryside is pointless. The best way to learn the other side’s point of view is by living in their shoes for a while. Have a conversation why the other side thinks the way they do. Do not demonize them. In the end, folks on both sides of an ideological debate are good people.