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Bourgeois Culture Isn’t Coming Back
Two law professors, Amy Wax and Larry Alexander, recently stirred up some excitement when they published an op-ed arguing that America should return to bourgeois values. The position they presented was thoroughly conventional on the right, having been reiterated over the decades by Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Charles Murray, R.R. Reno, and many more. Naturally then, the liberal legal establishment went nuts, denouncing Wax and Alexander as racist xenophobes. A movement was started to take away Wax’s 1L course (because it’s really not fair to force entry-level law students to take classes from a racist xenophobe). It was exactly the sort of silliness we’ve come to expect from liberal academia.
Very little of substance was said by either side in the ensuing debate, with the left mostly repeating, “This is all very offensive,” and the right mostly repeating, “You are emotional and intolerant.” I don’t think the op-ed was offensive, and I agree that the left is emotional and intolerant. Nonetheless, I’m beginning to think that this particular piece of conventional (conservative) wisdom may have passed its sell-by date. It was good advice for someone, somewhere, but it may not apply to our particular time and place, for reasons that this incident itself helps to illustrate.
Whether it’s “protect the guardrails” or “preach what you practice” or “restore bourgeois values,” there is an underlying premise to this argument that may just be incorrect. We are presuming that most Americans (but particularly the prosperous and influential liberals whose behavior we most hope to influence) still share a substantive moral outlook of a sort that could ground healthy cultural mores. Here is what Wax and Alexander’s description of the sort of “guardrails” they would like to see rebuilt:
Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.
That all sounds very nice, but what sort of moral outlook grounded those norms in the period they remember so fondly? First and most important, there was widespread deference to a broadly Judeo-Christian and traditional morality. That supplied the basis for all kinds of derivative social and moral precepts, spelling out the obligations one had as a spouse and a worker and a citizen. Second, the hardships of the earlier 20th century (the Great Depression and the World Wars) instilled a sobriety and discipline in American culture, which helped bolster all those good, Franklin-esque bourgeois values. Prudent advice about working hard and saving money is much easier to sell when a society has fresh, painful memories of experienced hardship. Third, there was still a pretty strong sense of ethno-cultural solidarity among Americans … but especially white Americans.
The importance of this third item (historically) is hard to evaluate. Both the alt-right and the left are inclined to think it very important, while I am sure Alexander and Wax would dismiss it as trivial and very much dispensable. I used to agree with them, but of late I am more uncertain. That is, I very definitely do not wish to help forge an ethno-national sub-culture (and neither do Alexander and Wax!), but I worry that it may have been a more important factor than I previously believed in the rosily-remembered mid-century, and that there may actually be a non-trivial connection between collapse of a common bourgeois culture and the decline in racism. In any event, it would be interesting to see more liberals argue that case intelligently, instead of flinging accusations.
However we rank these three “sources of solidarity,” it’s clear that they’ve all declined dramatically since the mid-20th century. Liberals are offended (perhaps rightly) by the ethno-nationalism, but they’re scarcely less offended by traditional morals, and the foundation of shared hardship is simply a thing of the past. It’s fine to rhapsodize about a common culture with shared bourgeois values, but what if we just don’t have the necessary components anymore? We can’t expect liberals to preach things that they just don’t believe.
A defender of the bourgeois-values camp might object: Are we really sure that affluent liberals don’t have the appropriate beliefs? After all, their on-the-ground lifestyles look pretty bourgeois. What Robert Putnam calls “neo-traditional” marriage (contracted among affluent professionals who establish themselves professionally before marrying, then devote enormous energies to their offspring), is nearly as stable as the “Ozzie and Harriet” model of the 1950s. Affluent liberals love safety, security, and decency in their “safe space” neighborhoods and campuses and workplaces. Why can’t they preach the relevant values to the masses? In the eyes of someone like Charles Murray, affluent liberals just look like hypocrites, nominally holding to a more libertine and subversive moral outlook even as they hoard the goods of bourgeois living for themselves.
I think this view fundamentally misunderstands the ethos of America’s prosperous classes. It’s not really right to call their lifestyles “neo-traditional.” It would be nearer the mark to describe them as “neo-Epicurean.” They don’t really believe in virtue per se; instead they find meaning in a widely distributed range of experiences. Highly-valued commodities include education, fulfilling careers, diverse cultural experiences, intimate relationships, and sex. These are not the highest priorities for tradition-minded Christians or Jews. Our upper classes have left that behind, and are now centering themselves around a kind of neo-pagan good-life philosophy.
Epicureanism has its attractive points, but it’s not great at ennobling the common man. In any given society, there will be relatively few people who have the wherewithal to live the good life, and to those who don’t or can’t, the neo-Epicurean doesn’t have much to say. It’s inherently an elitist perspective. Since the American ethos contains significant anti-elitist currents, that creates certain problems. Liberals also retain some neo-Marxist commitments that mix rather badly with their breezy affluence. That partly explains why they’re in such a tangle of moral angst, sweating bullets (and throwing temper-tantrums) over every variety of “privilege” and howling over every “microaggression.” They can’t really reconcile their personal philosophy with their broader social commitments.
Nevertheless, the neo-Epicurean ideal isn’t going away. It’s too important for giving meaning to the lives of upper-middle-class Americans. In light of that, urging liberals to “preach what they practice” just isn’t going to help anything. They are preaching what they practice, when they tell everyone to stay in school, do what they love, and explore their sexual identity. That advice just doesn’t work out nearly so well for people with fewer material and social resources. It certainly isn’t a promising foundation for a new bourgeois culture.
Affluent liberals have plenty to answer for, and working through the tensions in their current commitments will be a daunting task. Still, the charge of cultural hypocrisy may actually be ill-founded. They aren’t closet traditionalists who refuse to let the less-fortunate in on the secret. They’re silver-spooned bohemians who honestly don’t have any answers to the question of why non-elite life is still worth living.
I’m not sure how we’re going to navigate this deep cultural divide, but it might help to start with a better diagnosis. We may also need to accept that a common bourgeois culture probably isn’t in the cards for American society, at least not in the near future. Conservatives may still be hanging onto the bricks, but the mortar is just gone.
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I should have caught that! All fixed now.
I don’t think that was 100% cultural at all. There is huge variance in the natural preferences of people. I know many women who genuinely are constantly afraid that the current guy isn’t as great as the next guy. They aren’t single for cultural reasons, they are single because life isn’t scary enough for them to feel the need to settle down with a guy.
And I’m not sure you think it’s actually cultural, as you turn to hard consequences in the next part of your comment as well.
I think culture only really matters here to the extent that it creates hard consequences.
Here’s something you might find helpful. Culture in America is always the politics of the generation before, or the one before.
I thought it was done on purpose to refer to an actual social class’s habits rather than an abstract concept. This is somewhat deflating, but there it is-
Certainly does in SoCal.
You’re right, I should rephrase that … the cultural is downstream of economics, so if the economics of bastardy were to change, the cultural acceptance of it would change as well. Likewise with divorce … it’s one of the leading causes of poverty, but that poverty is softened by a hundred different programs to replace the missing husband with a government paycheck. Change the economics of family collapse, and we should see the culture change to stigmatize it.
But we’re currently in a world where the economic price of family collapse isn’t easily seen, particularly in our subcultures where family formation is practically non-existent. When 75% of black women will never marry, how is a young black girl going to be able to determine the income and stability she will lose by following in the paths of most of the women she knows? That’s where we get into culture.
Here is a more coherent thought from me about culture: It tends to be used the way politicians use the phrase “waste, fraud, and abuse”
Theoretically, there are savings to be found in every government program without cutting anyone’s benefits by simply reducing waste, fraud, and abuse.
Yet we all know very little such savings ever materializes. The inefficiencies of government ensures every program will carry a certain percentage of these, but politicians can offer it as a solution at no cost.
Similarly, we are tempted to believe that if we can adjust the culture, we can get cost free improvements in human behavior. None will ever materialize.
Here we totally agree. Where we disagree is that removing government subsidies can do that successfully. No one will be at risk of starvation in the US without food stamps. The modern world is incredibly easy to survive in by any historical standard. I honestly believe that it takes consequences on the level of “it’s a death sentence to have a child out of wedlock” to radically alter human behavior.
I agree that if food stamps alone were removed, people wouldn’t starve. If a magic wand were used to get rid of every subsidy at the same time, there would definitely be some massive deprivation and even starvation for a generation or so until the culture could adjust. There are more Julias out there than we want to imagine.
I think you are wrong about this, but even if you are right, a free society requires us to take a live and let live attitude, to a great extent. People have a right to be wrong; in a free society, they have a right to make bad choices. They do not have a right to demand that others pay for their bad choices.
From a purely selfish point of view, I think upper class liberals are far more of a danger to me personally than poor people are. Poor people are not trying to take away my freedom of speech, they aren’t trying to take away my guns, allowing grown men into public bathrooms with our daughters was never their idea, I could go on and on. It seems as though some conservatives view the attacks on our freedoms by upper class liberals as minor foibles on their part: it’s ok that leftists want to destroy freedom because they like Shakespeare? I don’t get that.
I sometimes wish cultural institutions had nothing to do with politics, but how do they have nothing to do with civilization? Isn’t civilization made from overlapping cultural institutions? The little platoons, etc? (And if civilization isn’t, what is it?)
You want people to form associations. How do people do that without pastimes? Somehow I don’t see you as one of those people who thinks its a good thing for all social life to be centered in the workplace.
Isn’t it rather depressive for political contests to now be the contests over the dignity of the people in the first place?
What I hear Rachel, and myself, and several others in this thread saying is that it’s a good thing when people form associations and find personal dignity among their associates through means other than electoral contests. That is something I thought you would agree with.
Heck, I had even thought you’d agree that occasional brushes with “higher culture” – yes, even enjoying an impressionist painting – are valuable for regular Joes as well as the snooty. Which is not the same as saying, “You must enjoy this snooty pastime by this amount, or else you’re a worthless person.” Or expecting everyone to have the same appetite for “the finer things”. But some attachment to the good and beautiful, whether it’s a stable family, a church, an absorbing (and reasonably wholesome – so probably not a drug habit, for example) pastime, or an aesthetic delight – it hardly seems affectionate to not want others to enjoy this attachment, too. How are the better-off supposed to cultivate affection for the less-well-off in America without also desiring fulfilling attachments for them?
Everything I just said seems leadenly obvious to me, generally not even worth saying. But if you don’t dispute its obviousness, where does your disagreement come from?
I don’t think that’s correct either. I happen to live presently in an area with many many homeless people, so those literally with no income and not a dime of subsidy from the government. A majority are overweight.
I think you could cut off every dime of subsidy and you’ll find people only slightly less reckless in matters such as out of wedlock births. This is an example of where I think the right doesn’t have a real picture of how the world works, and is therefore looking at the wrong solutions.
There are facts that make this more complicated than what you have written and even my libertarian instincts would prefer, but it’s a can of worms I don’t want to open as the topic drives people crazy.
What’s a cultural institution? Lemme give you a joking example that’s dead serious. I’ve an American friend who’s teenaged daughter is doing a summer theater program. So far so good. I write about the great books & all that. Why am I not singing hosannas? Well, this is America, so kids don’t just do everything they need to produce a show. They also have to write it. At 13. Now, that’s a cultural institution. But from the point of view of doing Shakespeare, it’s an insanity. From the point of view of bringing people together for whatever benefits come from the association, it might just be great.
Now, let’s make a leap of suspicion. How many American cultural institutions that are doing Shakespeare (instead of having kids who never read anything serious write their own stuff) are actually destroying any chance of anyone really learning anything from Shakespeare? Maybe you can have all-American communities perpetuate the American ways without really involving any high culture. Americans should give some thought to Tocqueville’s remark that there is no higher education in America. Conservatives seem recently to have discovered a love for him, but I doubt they’d tolerate that kind of language from anyone, being that it’s not an anti-liberal partisan weapon…
The poor also have lower workforce participation than the wealthy.
But I don’t think this is at all the place for me to suggest to Americans how they might skip the pastimes & associate.
Partly, but partly it’s what politics is. Post-war Americans have ignored that at their peril.
I’ve nothing against all that, as I keep saying. But it’s worthless for the basics or survival of civilization. & it’s not happening among the lower classes that seem to be increasing in numbers and entrenching in their habits.
I’m not even against funding the NEA or NPR. Why not! I’ve got great things to say, at least about NPR!
But let’s don’t kid ourselves about what the real American problems are.
Again, I’ve nothing against any of this. I even said, in a specific sense, I think it’s good.
But culture is mostly a class superstition, as this discussion also shows. If educated Americans really learned their Melville or Shakespeare, they’d soon learn about the horrifying dangers that attend to government by consent. I don’t see much of that.
Here’s an example. Go on NROs podcast on the great books. Or the Great courses, or any of that. You pick whatever you find or whatever you know. Then come back & let’s talk about that. Then you’ll see what I mean about culture being a class superstition–if anything, an obstacle to facing reality, not a way to learn about it.
I agree it could be a great association. It’s obviously not Shakespeare but it doesn’t strike me as insane from that perspective, especially since trying something for yourself often sparks interest in those who have done it well.
I also feel slightly guilty as a conservative, because I’m not terribly put out by the notion of, say, a drama student who somehow never got around to Shakespeare. Or the notion of music education straying from the righteous path of always being about Western music.
There’s too much culture to go around, in a sense. Demanding all Westerners be familiar with a specific aspect of Western culture seems silly. But to keep alive enough interest in the best of the West to pass it down to the next generation? To share good things with those who crave having those good things shared? That seems good.
I’m unsure, but I suspect a person’s answer has to do with belief in how much bad pedagogy outweighs simple exposure.
Can have communities? Evidently. Restrict our culture to only those communities? I hope not! It wouldn’t be our culture anymore. I’ve never been an American Greatness conservative, but such a restriction would lose something great about America – and also something great about conservatism.
I’d describe that language as not intolerable, just confusing. But then, I’m under the illusion I’ve had some higher education.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. But does artifice obscure sight or help it?
Perhaps it’s not surprising, if culture is artificial or unreal, that, given my background I tend to think of artifice as something that helps us learn to see, even though it’s also useful for obscuring reality.
Any model of reality we have is a fantasy. We can hope and pray that we’ve chosen a less-wrong fantasy, we can work to discover better, less-wrong fantasies. Any one fantasy is an obstacle to reality in a sense, because it’s not reality, but no fantasies at all is an even bigger obstacle – that’s no perception. I sense I’m digressing, though… (Also, perhaps it’s about time I finally got my vision checked and got the artifice of glasses…)
Artifice & artifact are different things. Conservatives and liberals have both spent a long time obfuscating the difference between true and false arts. That’s one way to try to defend the true arts. Just like in America writers are said to do work. Just like culture is anything from playing Beethoven to gaming. But it also means there is an unusual effort required to even begin to have clarity.
I’ll add something. I know one book that makes much of what Tocqueville meant when he said Americans don’t do higher education. Washington square by Henry James. I think that’s more serious than the hippies’ complaints or silly liberal patter about authenticity, creativity, &c.
The way I’ve seen culture distinguished from culture is to call one higher culture. I’m not sure whether you mean false arts here as deceptive arts, or as occupations demanding craftsmanship that still fall short of art.
It is very common to say of someone, “He is an artist,” if he does something very well, whatever it is. And yes, we live in a time where you it’s no longer surprising to see more visual craftsmanship among cake decorators than in some museums. (There is also terrible cake decorating, the documenting of which one might be tempted to call an “art”.)
If one kind were called high art and the other low art, or fine art and (I guess) coarse art, I think Americans would understand the distinction being made, though probably wouldn’t be too happy about “low” or “coarse” used as descriptors. There are also high-church and low-church ways of worshiping. Most high-church American Christians seem OK with low-church worship existing (even the Catholic Church seems to incorporate both styles, when you consider a guitar mass might be a mass – but with a guitar!). What they fear is only low-church worship being available. Meanwhile there are low-church Americans who do consider high-church worship inauthentic. I don’t think it’s that common for Americans who prefer demotic art to consider what they regard as genuinely fine art corrupt rather than “not for me”, although a lot of Americans consider many self-styled fine artists alive today corrupt in the sense that they seem not to be doing fine art anymore.
I agree we’re likely to treat these distinctions as not particularly meaningful in themselves, but more as social markers for who’s the underdog, with it being rather important to appreciate underdog art (whatever it happens to be) in order to be regarded as a true underdog, rather than a member of the perfidious elite keeping the underdogs down.
In an earlier comment, Rachel referred to “populist rage” and she seems to be under the impression that this is related to relatively well off working class people who are upset about the very poor in our country? I very much doubt that concern for the poor is the cause of this “populist rage”, which doesn’t mean that people aren’t concerned about the poor, just that the two things are not necessarily related.
Upper class liberals want to take away our guns. They want to take away free speech. They want to teach our five year olds about transgenderism, and they have taken lately to saying that anyone who disagrees with them for any reason is a bigot. Yet, I rarely hear anyone addressing their elitist rage at the lower classes, or pondering the issue of why they are so hostile to lower class people. There are lots of reasons for “populist rage” that have nothing whatsoever to do with blaming upper class people for the fact that there are poor people. I dislike upper class liberals because they will not leave me alone, period and end of story. I don’t understand why anyone would be mystified by this. I don’t understand how anyone can witness the constant attacks that upper class liberals wage on working class/red America and then wonder where “populist rage” comes from.
As far as preserving civilization goes, upper class liberals are far more of a threat than poor people are. Upper class liberals have been praised at length in this thread for being patrons of the arts. But when it comes to things like appreciation of the arts, no country in the history of the world was more into high culture than Germany. That didn’t prevent from from descending into barbarism, and they listened to classical music all the way down. That doesn’t mean that art and classical music are bad things, but neither is a guarantee of a civilized society. Upper class liberals are also praised for their relatively low divorce rates; Nazis had low divorce rates too. I am as much against divorce as anybody else is, but if the only really good things we can point to about upper class liberals are their low divorce rates and their patronage of the arts, that should concern us. Those things do not make up for the bad they do, and even if we don’t hold them responsible in any way for poverty in America, they are still doing plenty of bad things. Upper class liberals display all of the trappings of a civilized society, but they aren’t actually civilized, at least not in any way that is conducive to maintaining a free society. That is why us populists are terrified of them and enraged with them.
Pretty much what I meant by, “They took our jobs and guns and now they’re taking our Shakespeare, too!” It’s about feeling culturally dispossessed, like the blues are hellbent on taking our culture away from us. I’ve drafted a response to @rachellu, whom I should thank for provoking me into it: I’ve been musing on some matters for the past two weeks myself, but in thinking about what Rachel said, I’ve pulled much of it together.
To quote my future self,
I also mention that blues have been cruel to reds, especially angry reds. I think conservatives are split on whether this cruelty is inadvertent (the result of insufficient love) or the result of active hatred. I happen to think it’s mostly inadvertent, mostly a result of not-going-out-one’s-the-way-to-love-and-understand rather than going-out-of-one’s-way-to-hate.
After I’ve given the draft another pass or two, I will post it, and leave a link to it here.
@midge: I look forward to reading more of your thoughts. You speak of blues and reds showing contempt for each other, and quibbling over who started it first: I don’t care if blues have contempt for me. When I speak of attacks, I am talking about attacks on the Constitution and the rule of law, which many blues do not really believe in. There was never a time in America were everybody loved everybody; various groups have always had contempt for various other groups. But in the past, the various groups usually shared a respect for the Constitution and the rule of law, and were basically willing to live and let live, even with people they considered immoral and contemptible. Slavery and everything that followed is the exception to that rule, obviously, but it’s the exception that proves the rule. Americans have never been one big happy family-we have always had contempt for each other :) But we have made it this far because no matter how much contempt we may have had for each other, most of us loved the Founding Fathers, and the Constitution and the rule of law, all things which many blues and their children want to throw on the ash heap of history.
This is not about bruised egos or hurt feelings; those things have always existed, nothing new there. What is new is people who think that speech which hurts their feelings ought to be illegal. Those people are not reds, they are blues. People who want to silence those they disagree with are a threat to a free society.
Future Midge sounds smart. Ask her for some winning lottery numbers.
From what I remember of American history, slavery was very far from the only exception to prove the rule. Despite a live-and-let-live attitude being part of the American character, American factions have generally not been too shy about wanting to use government power to whack a group they found contemptible: the live-and-let-live attitude has very often not been the part of the American character that won out.
That said, when there was less centralized government power, there were fewer ways for Americans to actually achieve a good whackage of a group they found contemptible. Or, if they achieved it, it was at the state or municipal level so the bulk of America could choose not to whack if it wanted to.
Many blues are fairly firmly convinced they love these things, too. We reds assert our way is the right way to love these things, making other claims to love not real love. We reds perceive correctly that we’re more zealous about these things – but to use Rachel’s language, an Epicurean love of these things is bound to be more detached.
There once was a time where a father could challenge a daughter’s lover with, “You must not really love her if ____,” where ____ might be not being serious about marrying her, or failing to wait until marriage (or at least engagement) to bed her. The daughter’s lover could disagree, but would at least understand where the father was coming from. What are the odds of a modern boyfriend even understanding that kind of talk?
What are the odds of the boyfriend concluding that he doesn’t really love his girlfriend because her father has conservative standards about what constitutes really loving behavior and he failed to meet those standards? Slim, I think. More likely, the boyfriend would conclude he loves the girl alright, he just doesn’t share the father’s “bizarre” understanding of what love is. In older times, when those conservative standards held more sway over common culture, a boyfriend failing those standards would likely still disagree with the father, but would have difficulty avoiding the admission that the father’s standards were not bizarre but understandable.
Reds and blues have differing ideas of what it means to love America’s Founding, and perhaps it’s not so farfetched to analogize the difference as the difference between a girl’s sexually-liberated boyfriend and her conservative father in what really loving her entails. Some blues are intentionally disdainful of the Founding, but many are not, instead pursuing an idea of that love which reds find disdainful.
Midge, they are attacking free speech. They are raising children who do not believe in free speech. I realize that they have wonderful intentions-we all do-but we cannot ignore the reality of what they are doing because they don’t perceive it as being wrong.
I tend not to agree with overbearing fathers; my own father met very few of the men I dated before I got married. I didn’t get married until my mid thirties, and was living on the other side of the continent for several years, plus, my Dad is pretty laid back, and I appreciate that. But I tend to think that the overbearing father in your analogy is correct, and the clueless young man you describe has no clue what love is. Of course, he thinks he does, and he believes his intentions are good, and perhaps they are, but he is still wrong-in today’s society, a lot of women are wrong too, most women get abortions with the best of intentions. They also become single mothers with the best of intentions. The vast majority of us, no matter who we are, are nice people who have good intentions. Most conservatives do not give single mothers a pass for being nice people who have good intentions; why should we give upper class liberals a pass for being nice people who have good intentions? Especially when upper class liberals are far more of a threat to freedom than welfare mothers are.
I agree we cannot ignore the reality of what they are doing. I don’t see myself as ignoring the reality
I tend to agree with the father, too: it’s how I saw it, as a Christian woman, when I was single.
I’m not talking about giving upper-class liberals a pass. Merely pointing out that, if you want them, or those caught between the red and blue tribes, to understand us, “blues do not love the American Founding” may strike them as obviously false or incomprehensible. Whereas “the way we see it, blues aren’t loving the American Founding in the right way” might at least be comprehensible.
I realize not all political persuasion has to be comprehensible, but people do sense what kind of permission lurks in claims that “they disdain what we love” – the permission to disdain them right back, which can in turn give them permission to disdain us right back. I don’t presume we can abolish this dynamic from politics, not even internally among conservatives, but that there may be advantages in reducing it. (I don’t dispute that some find advantage in inflaming it, either – evidently they do, but I’m not sure how helpful it is for those whose passions they inflame.) Populism, which relies on this dynamic, is risky. Risky isn’t always bad, and naturally our populists have tried to frame now as one of the times when risky is not bad, hence the “Flight 93 election” trope, where the choice is risk or certain death. But often the choice isn’t between risk and certain death, but between one risk and another. And it seems that, if it is important for Americans to share an identity – if part of what’s currently wrong with America stems from us losing a shared sense of identity, and that has to be fixed in order for America to be fixed – this dynamic is unlikely to achieve that.
@Midge: everything you say about upper class liberals could also be said about single mothers. Single mothers do not perceive that what they are doing is wrong; they do not believe that raising a child without a father is especially harmful, and they believe that adoption is unspeakably cruel. In other words, just like upper class liberals, single mothers have a different world view than we do. But no one seems to care about communicating effectively with them, even though, in many cases, they would probably be easier to reach than upper class liberals. In the op, Rachel described upper class liberals as the people she would like most to convince and influence. Why? What makes upper class liberals so special, that some think they deserve different and gentler treatment than everyone else?
It’s possible @amyschley and I might get involved in a project to promote adoption.
The blue elites have a lot of access to social capital, and hence a lot of social power. And political power to do things like make life miserable for the red tribe. That’s reason enough for conservatives to have an interest in influencing them.
@judithanncampbell, is it possible you’re conflating diplomatic treatment with gentle treatment? Their power is, for better or worse, what makes blues politically special, making them a natural target for some types of conservative diplomacy. (There is obviously need for diplomacy among factions of the red tribe, too.) Moreover, blue Americans are also Americans along with the brightest of red Americans. Often, here on Ricochet, our argot suggests that blues are inhuman monsters, and I think sometimes the effort to treat blues as people and fellow citizens rather than inhuman monsters comes across as “special treatment” when it’s just the absence of special bad treatment.
As for why so much mention here of what blues are like rather than reds or single moms, well, @rachellu had this interesting idea of neo-Epicurianism to lay out in her OP. That one essay puts forth a theory about blues doesn’t preclude other essays from addressing reds, or single moms, or another group.
@midge: I agree with you that we should always be trying to communicate more effectively with everyone. Most of the time, that means being as gentle and diplomatic as possible with everyone-something I definitely need to work on :) However, I question whether it is a good idea to advocate shunning, ostracism, total abandonment, etc… for lower class people we disagree with, while at the same time bending over backwards to be diplomatic with upper class people we disagree with. I am not willing to extend more effort to be diplomatic with rich people because of their various resources; I am just not. And I think those who do are making a huge mistake.
I seems as though some conservatives have very little problem with upper class hostility towards lower class people, but when lower class people become hostile towards those in the upper classes, they start to fret about populism and class warfare. Something is wrong with that picture.
I agree that single motherhood is a bad thing and ought to be discouraged, but in the final analysis, from a totally selfish point of view, the poor have always been with us and they always will be. Considering this, I don’t understand why some conservatives are so vexed by the poor and so hostile towards them. But when the same conservatives who want to unleash fire and brimstone on the poor become concerned about populism, well, it’s just kind of weird.
The most obvious answer to why some conservatives are more concerned with communicating effectively with liberals than they are with single mothers is, simply, that they already know and have relationships with liberals, which they may not have with people who live in the Bronx. I get that, and it is totally understandable. Whether we should devise a political strategy around that is another story.
Donald Trump actually visited at least a couple of Black churches on the campaign trail, and he did better with African Americans than Romney did. Also, as far as I know, the people in those churches were very polite to him. What would happen if Donald Trump attempted to visit a liberal college campus? In a world where resources and time are limited, we should spend our resources and time with people we have some chance of reaching. To my way of thinking, that means focusing more on Black churches and less on liberal college campuses.
It has taken this thread a long time to grind its way to what I suggest is the evil that underlies the unpleasantness; the answer to the question, “How does this persiflage differ from that which occurred previously?”
It is that the Blues either do not acknowledge or have forgotten that which got us here (and are certainly not passing that which got us here along to their children) and, frankly, the Blues have convinced themselves that where we are is an incredibly blessed and fortunate place.
Now, add the second paragraph, which doesn’t really go far enough: It is not the legality of feelings-wounding speech, it is the larger issue of defining respect for that which got us here — and/or the goodness of where we are — as hateful.