To Lead the White Working Class

Yesterday we looked at the Seven Habits of the Working Class, as tabulated by Henry Olsen. Olsen got his info from Patrick Muttart, "former chief of staff to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper."

The seven habits included: Hope for the future, Fear of the present, Pride in their lives, Anger at being disrespected, Belief in public order, Patriotism, and Fear of rapid change.

I wrote that conservatives differs with the white working class on two of those factors: Fear of the present, and fear of rapid change. Conservatives tend to be competent people that expect to come out all right in the future, but the white working class understands that it is economically marginal; that is why the white working class has, sensibly, voted for a big government safety net.

If conservatives want to get the support of the white working class we have to demonstrate that we have concrete, practical plans to provide a social safety net that is better than the government safety net provided by big government. That may not be hard to do in the near future because liberals have spent all the money and the welfare state will have to renege on its promises. It's a Fram oil filter problem. Do we renege now, or do we renege later?

Now let's look at another factor: Anger at being disrespected. Let's look at Olsen's take on that:

This is the flip side of their pride. Working-class voters are very cognizant of their status in American life. They rarely occupy executive positions in their jobs and are consumers rather than producers of ideas. They feel keenly this relative lack of control over important features of their lives, and resent being ordered about as if they were merely pawns in someone else’s grand plan. They particularly dislike having their lives belittled as unsophisticated or inferior to the lives of educated or wealthy folk.

Attention, liberals and President "Bitter Clingers" Obama! Yep, when liberals go around talking about "facts and science and argument" and people not thinking clearly when they are scared, the white working class is liable to ask "are you talking to me, boss?" There couldn't be a clearer demonstration of President Obama's little problem with the voters. It's the liberal presumption that liberals are more intelligent than ordinary people and that the most intelligent should rule.

OK, so President Obama and the liberal Democrats are impossibly patronizing and elitist. But what about conservatives and Republicans?

I have two words for you: Sarah Palin.

Say what you like about Sarah Palin (and liberals certainly have--thanks, liberals) but Sarah Palin is a successful politician whose shtick is pitch-perfect for the white working class.

If the white working class is now up for grabs, and the Democratic Party is hopelessly elitist and condescending, which conservative politician would be the perfect foil for 2012? Which conservative politician would be most likely to hammer out a platform that speaks volumes to the white working class?

OK, put it another way. Which politician will infuriate the liberals and provoke them into saying snobby and mean-spirited things that will speak volumes to the white working class and uncommitted moderates in general?

Yep. Sarah Palin.

What the Working Class Wants

In a powerful article on the failures of Obamism Henry Olsen lists the seven cultural indices of the white working class.

• Hope for the future
• Fear of the present
• Pride in their lives
• Anger at being disrespected
• Belief in public order
• Patriotism
• Fear of rapid change

Looking at that list, conservatives can say that we align automatically on most of them, but on two we have a problem: Fear of the Present and Fear of Rapid Change. For it is on those two items that the working class clings to the government welfare state. And it is there, it seems to me, that conservatives can and should work to prove to the working class that a non-government welfare state will help them and give them a better life: opportunity as well as security.

Let us bring this down to earth. If conservatives want to reform Social Security we must erect institutions that demonstrate to the working class that their savings won't be at the mercy of Wall Street. If we want to reform health care we must demonstrate to their satisfaction that the new system really will be safe and secure for them: that they won't be chucked into a second-rate nursing home for the last years of their lives. If we want to reform education then we have to persuade the working class that they will be able to afford a privatized system, one that values hands-on work as well as academic work.

Conservatives have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to develop a governing philosophy that converts our limited-government notions into practical ideas that communicate to the working class and also deliver for them.

It is not an accident, of course, that Sarah Palin almost seems to have been sent from central-casting to be the leader that can connect between conservatives and the working class. But you could say the same of Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) or even Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN).

Meanwhile I am still holding out for an 80-seat Republican pickup in the House of Representatives tomorrow.

The Educated Youth Movement

How do we understand President Obama and his curious life journey from semi-abandoned son of a Sixties girl to graduate of leftist Midwest Academy and Radical-in-chief? I believe that the best way is to understand the movement of the left as a kind of religious movement, a secular religious movement of moral renewal that ended up, as so many religious movements do, wanting to capture the political system, become an established church, and legislate its morality upon the populace--in their own best interests, of course.

But isn't this idea of a secular religious movement rather a stretch? Not really, not if you read Discovering God by Rodney Stark.

In Discovering God Stark puts his sociological theories about religion to the test. Mainly, he asserts that there is always a latent demand for religion in society. But usually the supply of religion is throttled by the ruling elite, because religious movements tend to upset the status quo, including the political status quo. The ruling elite prefers to capture religious sentiment into an elite-dominated state religion.

Following Marx, we educated moderns like to think of religion as the "opiate of the masses." But Stark asserts that religious movements are very often started by well-to-do youngsters. Rather than plunge into the hurly-burly of ordinary life they choose a life of asceticism and meditation. Take Buddhism:

Combined with the doctrine that life is inevitably a succession of sufferings and sorrows and that in addition one must strive to frustrate all desires, to become a true follower of Buddha or Mahavira [the founder of Jainism] is to embrace unrelieved pessimism. Such pessimism seems to have attracted some alienated members of the elite to become monks or nuns, but it surely "could not attract the minds of the laity."

Buddhism quickly died out in India, but thrived in China where it grafted on Gods and an afterlife.

The movement started by educated youth in the years after the Napoleonic Wars also embraced unrelieved pessimism, the notion that the lot of the workers would inevitably get worse and worse. It was also godless. And it was particularly attractive to sons of the prosperous middle class. Think Marx, Engels, the Fabians, the Progressives and of course our modern liberals.

This Educated Youth movement began with a moral critique of modern middle class society and then went on to propose a radical reform, to purify it of getting and spending, and to restore an ancient vision of the pure community. It was, of course, a community that had never been. But after the first efforts to found such communities failed, the Educated Youth movement realized that mere voluntary religious communities weren't going to work. They decided that their secular religious movement had to become a state religion. It had to take over the apparatus of the state and impose its moral vision on a society corrupted by "false consciousness" using the force of the law and government bureaucrats.

Of course, the awful rigidities of this moral system, when imposed in practice, results in untold horrors and religious wars. The proselytizing Educated Youth movement naturally faced opposition and it naturally decided that force was necessary where persuasion couldn't persuade.

President Obama is a complete product of this movement. You can call him a socialist, or a radical, or a Marxist. But these names really are the names of individual sects in the overall Educated Youth movement, the secular religious movement to purify corrupt democratic capitalism with a state religion of caring, sharing and, now, saving the planet.

With President Obama the Educated Youth movement is reaching its moment of truth. For its millenniarian promises are turning to dust. Its government-centric model of social cooperation is foundering on a mountain of debt, corruption, and injustice and the ordinary people are rebelling.

For ordinary people the godless religion of pessimism and asceticism doesn't really work. What ordinary people need is an optimistic religion to tell them that their work, their struggles and sacrifices, their families and their loved ones will all come out right in the end, and that virtue will triumph.

In the United States, most of the time, the Educated Youth movement has operated behind a veil, pretending to be moderates instead of extremists. President Obama has been an expert in this, hiding his radical past and his radical friends with the help of a complicit media.

But sooner or later we ordinary folks are going to have to challenge the Educated Youth movement. This challenge must begin, it seems to me, with a separation of the Educated Youth church and state. Let our liberal friends remain free to proselytize all they want. But let's stop them short of building a state church to their liberalism and using government power and taxes to force their belief system upon the rest of us.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: It's in the Constitution, chaps.

Let's curb the Educated Youth movement and close the doors of its established Church of Liberalism.

Watch Obama Split the Democrats

One of the consequences of a liberal mainstream media is that people are always quick to see potential Republican party splits. Everybody knows that the social conservatives hate the libertarians, and that the liberal RINOs from the Northeast hate the southerners. But what about the Democrats?

Here are a couple of items that came over the transom; they indicate that things aren't exactly copacetic in Dem-land.

Here's Kevin DuJan, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and supporter of Hillary Clinton. He ain't happy. He really isn't happy. Here is a quote from "An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh and his listeners."

I don’t think even you understand just how much damage Obama has done to the Democrat Party — to the point where formerly lifelong Democrats like myself, and everyone here at HillBuzz.org, are actively working to expose the party and literally burn it to the ground for the good of the country.

None of this is being reported in the media, but a Civil War in the Democrat ranks has been raging since May 31st, 2008…a date every Hillary Clinton supporter knows well, because that was the date of the Democrat Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting where Howard Dean (then-DNC Chair), Donna Brazile, and scores of other Kool-Aid slurping Obama flunkies took off their masks and revealed the full extent of the Leftist coup that had taken over the party. This was the day when the DNC took delegates Hillary Clinton won in Michigan away from her and handed them to Obama (despite the fact he wasn’t even on the primary ballot in that state, because he removed his name when his campaign realized he’d come in third in that race).

In other words, Obama stole the Democratic Party from the Clintonites and they ain't gonna forget any time soon.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that folks like Kevin DuJan are going to be all over the place after the earthquake on November 2.

But here's another indicator. It's purports to expose Obama's governing strategy after the midterms.

The White House plans to test Republicans’ unity and political resolve on three controversial issues: repealing the Bush tax cuts, implementing the deficit commission’s findings, and pushing immigration reform. Obama’s team says that these issues will make for good policy—and good politics, forcing Republicans elected in swing districts to choose between placating Democrats and independents and risking a possible Tea Party challenge in 2012.

Huh, asks Stephen Spruill? Aren't those issues that will unite Republicans and split the Democrats? Republicans are united on continuing the Bush tax cuts, and some Democrats are wavering, particularly the Democratic Senate class that's up for reelection in 2012. The Deficit Commission would be a problem for Republicans if the Democrats ran Congress next year. But they won't, so Republicans can pick what they want to implement. And, of course, they have Rep. Ryan's roadmap which is chock full of strategic ideas for spending restraint. Immigration is great for Democrats when they use it to ramp up the enthusiasm of the Hispanic vote. But it is poison for just about everyone else, including the black vote and the white working class.

I know. You are saying, how dumb can President Obama be? Surely he won't deliberately split his party right down the middle. Maybe he won't.

But we come back to the big hit on the Obama crowd from back in 2008. These guys only know urban politics. David Axelrod is a campaign consultant that has done Deval Patrick in Massachusetts as well as Obama.

The question is pretty simple. Can these Obama guys dig out of the hole they have got themselves into? Can they unite the Democrats and split the Republicans? The portents aren't too encouraging for Democrats.

The Lie of Liberation

The central theme of the left since Rousseau has been the theme of liberation. Liberals are going to liberate the secular from the judgment of the Church. They are going to liberate workers from the exploitation of the capitalists. They are going to liberate women from the exploitation of patriarchal marriage. They are going to liberate blacks from the legacy of slavery. They are going to liberate gays from--well it used to be the closet and the fetters of middle-class morality but now it seems to be that liberals are going to liberate gays into the joys of gay marriage.

It's all a lie.

Liberals promised to liberate us from the rigid judgementalism of the pulpit. Now we have the rigid criminilization of--get this--recycling. Some liberation, liberals.

Liberals promised to liberate the workers from the exploitation of the bosses. So they smashed the authentic safety net built up by the workers in the 19th century, the benefit clubs, the friendly societies, the mutual-aid associations, the labor unions, and replaced it all with a system of government welfare of liberals, by liberals, for liberals. And it's broke. Some liberation, liberals.

Liberals promised to liberate blacks from the legacy of slavery. Special privileges would accrue to blacks: affirmative action, multiculturalism, diversity: quotas by any other name. Now something like 70 percent of black children grow up in a single-parent home. The black family, that persevered through centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination, has been blasted to smithereens. Some liberation, liberals.

Liberals promised to liberate women from the sins of the patriarchy, to liberate them from unhappy marriages into the joy of personal fulfilment and career. Is that really what women want? To be turfed out of their homes and neighborhoods into the rat race of government health care and education employment? To leave their pre-school children in day care? To dump the fathers of their children for government benefits? No wonder conservative women report higher levels of happiness than liberal women. Some liberation, liberals.

Liberals promised gays to liberate them from the shadow of the closet and the stigma of marginalization. First gays were to be liberated from the confining rules of heterosexual fidelity, free to love who they chose. Then gays were to be offered all the joys of marriage because, after all, if you loved someone you ought to be able to marry them. What a lie. What a double lie. There is no law and no liberal cultural bullying that can liberate gays from the fact that homosexuality is a marginal "life-style." It is not, and can never be, the mainstream of life, however you dress it up. Some liberation, liberals.

The facts of life, said Margaret Thatcher, are conservative. And the facts are that every group that liberals have seduced with the promise of liberation has ended up, or looks to end up, like the proverbial victim of the one-night stand. Used and abandoned.

The lesson of history is clear. When the politician comes calling with a seductive story about your horrible exploitation and the wonderful vision of liberation available in return for your vote, don't believe him. All he wants is your vote so he can get his hands on the levers of power. He'll toss you a bone or two, but eventually he'll tire of you and go onto another lover.

And what will you do then, poor thing?

Reality 101 for Nov 3, 2010

Politics is always an argument about "reality," in the modern sense of the approved point of view. Let's get one thing clear, writes Timothy Dalrymple. The Tea Party isn't brand new, whatever liberals say.

Raise your hand if you’ve heard this before: “If the Tea Party activists were really upset about spending, where were they when Bush was running up the deficits?” The alleged inconsistency -- that conservatives were perfectly content with big government under Bush but are outraged now -- is a key component of the liberal argument that the Tea Party is actually driven by more nefarious motives.

Plenty of conservatives were unhappy with Bush's spending. But nobody gave them no never-mind. But we reality-based chaps are going to have to hammer this out, again and again. Because liberals will do anything rather than admit that the tide had turned and that they must now take a back seat in the political bus.

My version of reality aligns with Dalrymple.

Back in the 1990s under the Gingrich Congress, spending was not cut, but the rate of increase was sharply decreased. The result was a small federal budget surplus in 1998. But then the political tide changed. People started to think: wow, things are getting better. Maybe now it was time to open the spending spigots a little and do the things we couldn't do when the deficit was threatening to eat us alive. So when George W. Bush ran he ran as a "compassionate conservative," and supported big-government initiatives like No Child Left Behind and Medicare drugs. Conservatives hated this, and I hated it too, although I understood that any Republican would have to run like that. The stern budget-balancing politics of the early 1990s had run its course.

When the Democrats ran in 2006 and 2008 they ran as budget balancers. Nancy Pelosi vowed "no new deficit spending" in 2007.

So nobody can really be surprised that a conservative anti-spending movement got started in 2009 the moment that it became clear that the Obama administration was not going to balance the budget but simply open the spigots wide and pump money as fast as possible into the buckets of every liberal interest group in the nation.

Now, of course, we have the mother of all debt problems and the mother of all spending problems and the real problem of an economy that isn't expanding rapidly after the meltdown of 2008. Americans are frightened about big government spending like they have never been frightened in the past and they are right to be afraid.

The question is: what comes next. Do we really do something about spending, which means entitlements, or do we fudge one more time?

That is the point of this election and the election that comes after it.

It is a battle for the hearts and minds of women and minorities. White men have been persuaded about the follies of big government for some time. No surprise there. White men are the people expected to pay for a big government that counts women and minorities as its darlings.

There comes a time in the trajectory of every minority when it ceases to respond to the tune of big government and its patronage. It says I don't need the political machine to protect me from the big bad world any more.

This truth is the great truth of the modern city and the modern economy. The modern world is not a world of robber barons, whatever left-wing writers say. It is a world that has the least amount of robber barons in history. All you need to get along is to pay a little attention in school and get yourself a skill and learn to be trustworthy. Then you will thrive.

All we need to do in the years ahead is to unwind slowly all the entitlements and special privileges created in the century of big government. If we can do that America will thrive. If we don't unwind all those privileges then government will default on its debt and the weak and the poor will go to the wall.

Conservatives and the White Working Class

The white working class in America used to be the politician's darling.

First the Republicans had their votes, starting in the McKinley election of 1896. McKinley had helped out union members accused of rioting when a young lawyer and he was a tariff man, favoring high wages.

Then the Democrats won the working-class vote in the chasm of the Great Depression.

But there's a problem about being the toast of the men's club. Once you lose your youthful good looks the men look for fresher meat.

There's a saying that puts it well, and it's not a new idea: Put not your trust in princes.

The white working class has been wandering around in the electoral wilderness now for about a generation. In 1980 they abandoned the Democrats that had led them into a nasty recession and became Reagan Democrats. But somehow the Republicans didn't do it for them, and so they returned to the Democrats to try and kindle the old flame in 2006-08.

Last week The Economist took a look at the white working class and its fickle voting pattern. It is clearly back in the Republican column. But The Economist does not try to deal with the why of it.

The problem with the white working class is the old one. They exchanged their birthright for a mess of pottage. They threw away the authentic social insitutions they created in the 18th and 19th century, the benefit clubs, the friendly societies, the labor unions, in exchange for the promises of politicians.

The politicians told the white working class that they didn't need to do the hard work of learning to thrive in the city. Politicians would force economic justice for them out of the profits of the employers. They would lower the work week, end the competition of child labor, provide education, unemployment benefits, and pensions.

But there turned out to be one problem with all this. The workers didn't get to own these benefits; they were owned by the politicians.

Unemployment? Very nice, but the money all goes to the government. A worker can't save that unemployment tax and then invest it in his own business. Education? Very nice, but working-class people don't benefit much from a system that is oriented towards the professional classes. They would do better to work in their teens as apprentices and go to school occasionally to pick up the odd skill. Pensions? Very nice too, but the government owns the money. Unions? What good has pro-labor law done except destroy the steel industry and the auto industry?

There's an opportunity here for conservatives to work with the working class and get them out of the clutches of the government, to take the money out of taxes and benefits and give them back to the working class. There must be a way to structure this and sell it. There must be a way for the white working class to thrive again.

There's one thing as certain as death and taxes. Today's politician's darling becomes tomorrow's painted bar fly. Because a politician doesn't care about you. He just cares about your vote.