I checked out the 'I Want a New Left' blog. Interesting. The guy is disenchanted with the left, but wants to remain a leftist. I wonder how much disenchantment he can take till he gives up. Here's a few interesting things there:
Rich People's Leftism vs. Poor People's Leftism
For too long, wealthy people have been in charge of leftism. Two hundred years ago when industrial workers had no education to speak of and were being heavily exploited, it made sense for the wealthy to dominate leftism because the workers had neither the time nor the learning to analyze their situation. Wealthy leftists did have the time and learning, and they decided that capitalism was the problem. Now I’ve already argued against this (here, here, and here), since the alleged evils of capitalism will arise even in the absence of capitalism. But there are other problems. For example, industrial workers were by no means the only poor people. There were also servants (especially scullery maids), peasants, and the unemployed. Exactly how any of these people were going to be helped by attacking capitalism and allowing the workers to “own the means of production” isn’t at all clear, since at least some of these people weren’t really under the control of capitalists. Finally, there were big problems with the solutions leftists provided: socialism or communism.
I want to start afresh by looking at this problem from the eyes of the poor, and I want to start by asking, What is it that poor people want? That is quite simple: They want to be rich. Since this often isn’t possible, poor people settle for something less: They want to get out of poverty. Now when we look at what actual poor people do, we see that poor people are willing to relocate in order to escape poverty, but they almost never go to the countries that are dominated by the systems espoused by rich people's leftism (RPL). They almost never go to communist countries or even socialist countries. Instead, they have gone to rich countries that seemed to have opportunities for them to get money. In the nineteenth century, my ancestors, who (as far as I can tell) were all poor, came to America in order to escape poverty, and all of them had the satisfaction of escaping poverty themselves or seeing their children do it. Today, we see many people from Latin America come to America in order to escape poverty. They could go to countries like Cuba, Venezuela, or Bolivia where Spanish is spoken, where the culture is similar to the culture of their own countries, and where the economic systems are set up to help the poor according to the ideas of RPL, but they prefer to come to America, where the main language is English, where the culture is very different from what they are used to, and where the economic system is capitalistic.
Elsewhere, poor Indians migrate to Saudi Arabia and other countries of the Persian Gulf, poor Filipinos go to Taiwan, and many poor Africans go to Europe. Only the last of these cases supports RPL, for the countries of Europe are more socialized than the other destinations of the poor, but this is the exception that proves the rule, since in this case what attracts poor Africans isn’t Europe’s socialism but its wealth. Let Europe suffer a severe economic depression, and most would-be immigrants from Africa would stay home or look elsewhere.
So, the basic goal of the poor is to escape poverty, and they are indifferent as to whether the system in which they achieve this is capitalistic, socialistic, or communistic. They simply want money, and it is much more likely that a capitalist economy will have that in abundance than that other systems will.
It also helps when the poor have a good education that expands their opportunities, as well as political powers (in the form of voting) that gives them a voice. Here in the United States, we long ago gave workers political power in the form of voting and an education that allows them to rise. Both of these have made the United States a more worker-friendly country than was the case anywhere two hundred years ago. The conclusion, then, is that America is far better for the poor than its critics make it out to be.
What, then, is the best way to help the poor? It’s to ensure that it’s fairly easy to get out of poverty. Generally, this means that there should be plenty of jobs available for poor people. Ideally, there would also be low-interest loans for any poor person who has a good idea for starting a business, and there would be some sort of help when setbacks occur, as they often do. However, none of this need be done through the government, or if it is, it would be done by local government rather than the federal government.
With this new approach in mind, let me contrast Rich People’s Leftism (RPL) with Poor People’s Leftism (PPL).
RPL thinks that its goal is to help poor people, while PPL thinks that RPL’s primary goal is to ensure that wealthy leftists dominate and get great jobs.
RPL favors equality and so rejects upward mobility. PPL favors upward mobility via capitalism, since it sees that “egalitarian” schemes never work and are really disguised hierarchies with wealthy leftists at the top.
RPL respects wealthy liberals for wanting to help the poor. PPL observes that these wealthy liberals ensure that they are well paid for what they do and prefers to support wealthy conservatives, who at least are honest about where they are coming from.
RPL thinks capitalism is horrible, while socialism or even communism is best. PPL thinks that capitalism is fine or at worst a necessary evil, while socialism and communism, since the best jobs in such systems usually go to the wealthy, are nothing but systems that allow wealthy leftists to assuage their feelings of guilt about being wealthy while not actually doing anything for the poor.
RPL thinks it’s a bad thing that America has never had a viable socialist party. PPL thinks it’s a good thing, since socialism does little to help the poor.
RPL likes the idea of a revolution that would throw out the wealthy capitalists. PPL doesn’t like the idea of such a revolution because it would mean that (1) a lot of people would be murdered, and (2) wealthy conservatives at the top would be replaced by wealthy leftists, while the poor would remain poor.
RPL thinks that huge inequalities in income and wealth are bad, while PPL thinks that a lack of job opportunities that allow the poor to escape from poverty is bad.
RPL thinks that poor people can be afflicted with false consciousness when they fail to see that RPL is the answer to their problems. PPL thinks that the concept of false consciousness applies when poor people accept RPL instead of PPL.
RPL thinks a redistribution of wealth is wonderful, while PPL thinks that the reason that RPL thinks it is wonderful is because a lot of that money gets diverted towards rich leftists.
RPL likes high taxes so that the government can form a lot of agencies to help the poor. PPL thinks that all those agencies will be staffed by wealthy liberals, and it is tired of paying taxes so that wealthy liberals can get great jobs.
RPL sees government as the solution, while PPL sees government as sometimes helpful, sometimes hurtful.
RPL claims to be against private property, while PPL thinks that this is hypocrisy since in any “egalitarian” scheme, those at the top will get to enjoy private property while those lower down will not.
RPL thinks that “profit” is a bad word, while PPL thinks it’s a good word.
RPL thinks nationalizing an industry is a great move to help the workers. PPL thinks it’s a bad move because it does nothing to help the workers and merely replaces one set of bosses with another.
RPL thinks that socialism is the world’s future and that capitalism is doomed to die. PPL thinks that, as Margaret Thatcher has observed, socialism will sooner or later run out of someone else’s money, while capitalism will continue to thrive, as is shown by the fact that it allows for a constant influx of poor immigrants who can be integrated into the system.
RPL thinks that regulation of the financial industry is good because it helps the little people. PPL thinks that regulation does nothing since new tricks can be thought up all the time and that the better solution is to educate people about finance.
RPL is soft on crime, since it represents an attack on an immoral system, while PPL is hard on crime, since it generally just hurts the poor more than it hurts the system.
RPL thinks that “rebelling against the system” is wonderful. PPL thinks that this is a wonderful game for rich kids, but that it can severely hurt poor kids, making them unemployable and otherwise screwing up their lives.
RPL likes trial lawyers, because they go after corporations, and hates McDonalds and WalMart, because they exploit their workers. PPL likes McDonalds and WalMart, because they offer low prices which help most of the poor, and hates trial lawyers, since the increase in prices they cause hurts most of the poor.
RPL thinks that voting Republican is going over to the dark side. PPL thinks that voting Republican is a useful way to keep the people who favor RPL in line.
RPL thinks foreign aid to poor countries is good. PPL thinks that foreign aid is bad because it takes money from poor people in the First World and gives it to rich people in the Third World.
RPL complains about privileged white males, but PPL complains that the phrase “privileged white males” ignores important class differences among white males.
RPL hates the military, while PPL likes it, since it represents an opportunity for poor people.
RPL hates guns, while PPL respects them.
RPL is enraged at Sarah Palin, while PPL likes her because she seems to favor PPL over RPL.
RPL thinks it’s terrible that so many black men are in prison today. PPL blames the whole situation on mistakes from the Sixties, which RPL is reluctant to acknowledge.
RPL thinks that the changes that have been made in the schools since the Sixties are wonderful. PPL thinks that these changes are awful and have made it harder for poor people to get out of poverty.
RPL blames the high cost of college on the right, while PPL blames it on RPL because the inevitable increase in bureaucracy that is needed to implement their vision adds to the costs of college.
RPL wants affirmative action for race and gender, but not class background. PPL thinks that if there should be affirmative action at all, then it should include class background as well as race and gender.
RPL loves newspapers like the New York Times, while PPL thinks they cater too much to wealthy leftists (and what they think about the poor) and not enough to the actual poor.
RPL loves the idea of tenure in academia, while PPL thinks it’s just another way that RPL guarantees that wealthy liberals will get great jobs.
RPL thinks being green is important and good, while PPL thinks that being green often means small or no sacrifices for rich people but big sacrifices for poor people.
RPL likes mass transit, because it’s better for the environment. PPL is lukewarm about mass transit and wants to help poor people escape it and get cars.
RPL hates offshore drilling because of the potential environmental problems. PPL likes offshore drilling because it helps the poor by keeping the price of gas low while at the same time providing jobs for poor people.
When RPL sees an environmental problem, its first instinct is to restrict people’s freedom. When PPL sees an environmental problem, its first instinct is to look for a technological solution.
PPL is like the main character in the movie Bedazzled (the 1967 version). After selling his soul to the devil and getting a bunch of wishes which don’t turn out well, he manages to escape from the devil’s clutches, and when the devil comes calling again, he says basically, "Thanks, but no thanks." PPL says to RPL, “Thanks, but no thanks. We’ll do things our own way.”
iwantanewleft.typepad.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reactionary Tendencies on the Left
Leftists divide the world into themselves and those further to the right, who they sometimes call reactionaries. Accordingly, they often use the term “the reactionary right.” This blog is dedicated to being leftist in a self-critical way, and I want to expose the reactionary tendencies on the left. For whatever reason (and I leave this to the psychologists), these tendencies are ones that somehow today’s leftists cannot see. Anyway, I want to expose their tendencies to coddle the privileged or the wealthy or the powerful against those who aren’t privileged or are poor or are powerless.
It may seem strange to leftists that this could be possible, but it is not only possible, but likely if one isn’t self-critical. I don’t intend to explore this topic in depth or to trace its history, though I should mention Kathleen M. Blee’s Women of the Klan, in particular, the following quote: “Some of the women I interviewed who participated fully and enthusiastically in the Klan, expressing few regrets, were active in progressive politics, favoring peace and women’s equality in the decades after the Klan collapsed” (p. 6). Meanwhile, here are several areas in which I’ve detected reactionary tendencies among today’s leftists.
1. Multiculturalism. The idea behind multiculturalism is that we ought to respect other cultures. The trouble with this is that some other cultures are reactionary or at least have reactionary practices, so it is rather strange for leftists to want people to respect reactionaries. Yet, that is what leftists today are demanding.
2. Islam. The left today, though not in any way forced to, insists upon allying itself with the most reactionary elements in Islam. (Obviously, this is connected with what I just said about multiculturalism.) These are the elements that promote sexist and homophobic policies, as well as having dangerous theocratic fantasies that are diametrically opposed to the secularism of today’s leftists. People on both the right (such as Daniel Pipes) and the left (such as Paul Berman) have pointed out that there are liberal Muslims with whom the left could ally itself and who find themselves frustrated by the lack of support from Western leftists. But this hasn’t made any dent in leftist policies. I’ve already explored the reasons for this curious behavior here and here.
3. Poor whites. With the advent of the Sixties, the left changed its focus from poor whites to blacks, women, homosexuals, and the environment. Poor whites were left behind. In 1960, a poor white male could consider himself the main focus of the left, but by 1980, he found that leftists considered him as privileged as any rich white male. Poor whites do not benefit from affirmative action the way that other groups do. It’s as though being poor and white simply doesn’t count in any way as being a disadvantage in the eyes of leftists.
4. The jobs crisis in academia. In the late 1980s, there were many articles in newspapers such as the New York Times claiming that there would be a professor shortage in the 1990s. Alas, that shortage of professors never materialized. Instead, there was a shortage of jobs. How to deal with this problem? To begin with, the basic reaction of nearly everyone in academia was to do nothing. Liberal and leftist professors who have denounced the harshness of the free market nevertheless chose, by their inaction, a free-market solution. But there was worse. One of the few who realized that there was a terrible crisis was Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois, who wrote about his fellow leftists’ failures in a book entitled Manifesto of a Tenured Radical. The worst incident occurred at Yale in 1995, when grad students were so frustrated at their lack of job prospects that they formed a union. This union at one point decided, as a way to get the administration to do their bidding, to withhold grades. And how did their leftist professors respond to this?
“Sara Suleri, a brilliant postcolonial critic whose work I have taught in my own courses, urged disciplinary action against one of her teaching assistants who joined [the union's] 1995 decision to withhold undergraduate grades.... Nancy Cott, a widely admired labor historian, spoke out against the union, and David Brion Davis, a distinguished historian of slavery, sought college guards to bar his union-identified teaching assistant from entering the room where undergraduate final exams would be given...." (page 143).
Nelson said that he would have preferred not to name names, but the action was so egregious that he felt he had to. Unfortunately, the left simply ignored this incident. Just as unfortunate is the fact that conservatives seem entirely unaware of it or of its significance.
5. Deadbeat dads who aren’t dads. Every now and then a case emerges of a man who owes child support even though he isn’t the biological father of the child in question. The mother has named him as the father, and that is all that seems to be required. Here is the latest such case. Obviously, for the government to demand money from a man under such circumstances is unjust and unfair. Leftists, who insist that they want fairness, should be screaming about this. Instead, they are unmoved and indifferent.
6. Environmentalism. Leftists want to push the price of gas up to five dollars per gallon, yet it ought to be perfectly obvious that if leftists push the price of gas up that high, then poor people are likely to be hurt. Even if they don’t own a car, they will be hurt by the resulting rise in the prices of just about everything else. Yet, most leftists do not even think about this possibility. Apparently, they think that if a policy is good for the environment, it doesn’t count as hurting the poor. Or they think that that money will be used in a way that will somehow help the poor. But that the poor will be hurt is a certainty, while that they will be helped is at best a probability and at worst an unlikely possibility.
There are all kinds of other ways that environmentalists hurt the poor. Sometimes their policies can destroy jobs. Nicholas D. Kristof, in a rare instance when a liberal actually figured things out, wrote a column (Nov. 4, 2004) in which he pointed out that in his hometown in rural Oregon, the locals looked with disdain on Democrats because they “empathize with spotted owls rather than loggers.” Worrying about spotted owls will impose costs on the logging industry, and that ultimately means either lower wages for loggers or less jobs.
More often, however, environmental policies impose needless costs on the poor in their everyday lives away from work. The other day I mentioned an incident when my wife and I were poor and we had to pay to get our car “fixed” because it failed to pass a vehicle-emissions test. This is the sort of environmental demand that hurts the poor more than the rich, because rich people are likely to have the newest cars that will always pass such tests. Plus, fixing it doesn’t cost them very much in terms of the percentage of their income. Why hurt the poor this way?
Another example is that of endangered species, which has given rise to a saying, one that is seldom heard by the environmentalists, but is common in conservative circles: If you find a rare mineral on your property, you will become rich, but if you find a rare species, you will become poor. The reason is that if you find a rare species, suddenly the feds will swoop in and demand that all kinds of actions be taken to protect that species, actions that will cost you money.
A few years ago, some conservative legislators tried to address this issue by demanding that the government offer compensation to property owners. Predictably, the environmentalists were angry. One of them, Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, said that the effort sets a “dangerous precedent that private individuals must be paid to comply with an environmental law. What’s next? Paying citizens to wear seat belts?” (Columbus Dispatch, 9/30/05, A8) This must be one of the few times in history when the right has been more generous with the government’s money than the left. I suppose that leftists will maintain that all property owners are rich, and so don’t need any government handouts. This is just plain naive, but anyway, the obvious liberal solution would be to give a handout that is inversely proportional to the property owner’s wealth.
Another example appeared in a column in The Washington Post that was written after the 2004 election (1/16/05, p. W12). The author, David Von Drehle, wanted to find out what people outside the Beltway were thinking that made them vote for Bush when it clearly wasn’t in their own self-interest to do so. He recounts the story of a town in Nebraska where, during the Clinton administration, the Environmental Protection Agency demanded that the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water be lowered from 50 parts-per-billion to 10. As one resident put it, “Now all over Nebraska, villages are having to build new water treatment plants to remove a naturally occurring element.” This costs a lot of money, money that residents believe is wasted, since arsenic had always been in their water. Plus they now have to worry about how to dispose of it since it is considered hazardous waste. The federal government will loan them money to pay for all this, but it would make more sense just to refrain from doing it.
Finally, we come to global warming. Almost certainly, whatever the environmentalists propose to do about this nonexistent problem will wreak havoc on the economy, and this will help the poor not at all.Another leftist who agrees with me is Alexander Cockburn, who points out that the new car in India (the Tata Nano), which is the cheapest car in the world, is great for poor people, but predictably environmentalists are against it because it will simply add greatly to carbon emissions.
However, instead of discussing all the dirty details of how any given policy is likely to hurt the poor, I want to talk instead about the foundation of belief in global warming: peer review. Whenever we skeptics raise our voices against global warming, we are told that global warming must be happening, because the science is backed by peer review. As a victim of peer review, I’m the last person in the world to accept such nonsense. Peer review is rich people stomping on poor people, those with the majority view stomping on those with a minority view, the people in a subfield that has the most numbers stomping on those in subfields with fewer numbers, and the well-connected stomping on the poorly-connected. At one time it was anti-Semites stomping on Jews, sexists stomping on feminists, and probably whites stomping on blacks. Basically, peer review is the powerful stomping on the powerless. As such, it is reactionary to support it in its current form.
Not only this, but believing that peer review is reliable means listening to those at the top only and not also to those at the bottom, which is a practice that leftists claim ought to be done. It also goes directly against the skepticism that leftists have about the criminal-justice system. Leftists are suspicious of our criminal-justice system, despite many checks and balances such as a judge, an independent jury, defense attorneys, carefully defined procedures, and an appeals system. Yet, they implicitly trust peer review, which has no checks and balances at all. Why?
Finally, those of us who complain about peer review face a Catch-22 situation, namely that those who think peer review is reliable will listen only to those who have been treated well in the peer-review system, but such people have no reason to complain, so they don’t. The rest of us do have reason to complain, but we are thought of as not very bright, because if we were bright, we would have gotten our articles published (and so would have been treated well in this system). And since we aren’t very bright, our criticisms can be dismissed because they aren’t supported by those who are bright. This mentality cries out for leftists to go on the attack, but instead they praise it. It seems that the only other leftist who is skeptical about peer review (and global warming) is Alexander Cockburn, who has sneered at peer review as follows: “Peer review is usually a mode of excluding the unexpected, the unpredictable and the unrespectable, and forming a mutually back-scratching circle.”
These, then, are some of the reactionary tendencies that one can find these days on the left. They are by no means all of them, but the fact that there are any at all will be shocking to most leftists.
iwantanewleft.typepad.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Self-critical leftism
This blog was created to develop and promote self-critical leftism. All leftism up to now has been "half-critical." By that I mean that leftists have been very critical of others, but seldom or never critical of themselves or of leftism. Needless to say, this isn't very consistent. If the point of being critical is to see things not usually seen, such as hidden injustices, then there is no reason to believe that leftists will somehow avoid such things, so self-critical leftism becomes necessary. There is a tendency among leftists to believe that leftists can avoid such things, simply because by being critical of others and of our society, we have become attuned to injustices not seen by others, so surely we can see (and avoid) hidden injustices that we may inadvertently engage in. However, in practice that turns out not to be the case. For those who are skeptical, all they need to do is to contemplate the difference between the old left that championed communism, and the new left that emerged in the Sixties, which has a very different emphasis. If the old left was as sensitive to the concerns of women, minorities, and gays and lesbians as the new left is, then there would have been no need for a new left. So self-critical leftism becomes meaningful and important.
Once I began looking at leftism from a self-critical standpoint, many new insights came my way. Communism and socialism looked much less appealing than before. In fact, communism now seems to me the worst scourge ever that the human race has inflicted upon itself, and while socialism seems much less evil, it doesn't really do much for the poor. Another insight was realizing that the left, in spite of its championing of the poor, has actually been engaged in an unconscious war against the poor. Part of this involves environmentalism. As a result of the Sixties, leftists unconsciously decided that it was more important to help the environment than it was to help the poor. Accordingly, we now have environmentalists saying that they want the price of gas raised to $5/gallon, seemingly unaware of and indifferent to how much this will hurt the poor. This kind of cluelessness, along with many other tendencies within the left, leads me to say that all leftism up to now has basically been Rich People's Leftism. It has been leftism by the rich and mostly for the rich (that is, it has been by and for guilty rich people). It hasn't done a lot for the poor, who haven't really had much of a part in creating and developing it. This blog is going to develop a leftism by and for the poor, Poor People's Leftism.
By now the reader should be able to see that although this blog is leftist, it is not going to be like other leftist blogs. This isn't going to be a blog that bashes America and champions Castro. It's not going to fawn over the reactionaries of the Middle East. It's not going to treat environmentalism as a religion, and in fact I'm going to say right now that I'm a skeptic about global warming (a position that, as readers will see, comes out of Poor People's Leftism). What this blog will do is to start from the leftist principle of egalitarianism, especially egalitarianism as it relates to the poor, and to start all over in terms of deciding which policies to choose.
All I can promise at this time is that many beliefs and policies dear to the hearts of other leftists will likely be jettisoned on the way to something better, and that it is better will be seen to be true by any leftist willing to be self-critical.
iwantanewleft.typepad.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advice for the Democrats
It may be too late to help the Democrats win this November, but I’m going to give them a piece of advice anyway, which is this: Don’t mistreat your own supporters.
I first became aware that the Democrats were mistreating their own supporters when I considered how I myself had been treated in academia. When I got my Ph.D. and went into academia, I was a socialist. Since academia is now filled with liberals and leftists, I ought to have fit right in, yet I was treated shabbily. Why? Why treat one of your own supporters shabbily?
Being treated shabbily in academia by my fellow leftists made me wonder about other people, and after looking at the situation with self-critical eyes, I realized that the Democrats had been mistreating their own supporters ever since the Sixties. This has led to a string of election losses that probably could have been wins, if the Democrats had realized what problems they were creating for their own supporters.
Those problems emerged when the Democrats tried to expand their agenda in the Sixties. I had been part of all this, and had never noticed what was happening, nor apparently had anyone else. After all, it seemed perfectly reasonable, even obligatory, to expand the agenda to include helping blacks, then women, and then gays and lesbians. It also seemed important to worry about the environment. The trouble was that none of us paid much attention to how this expanded agenda was supposed to fit together with the original agenda, which was helping the poor.
For example, which was more important, helping the environment or helping the poor? None of us thought about this, but the vast majority of leftists today have tacitly made their choice, and their choice is for the environment over the poor. Choosing the environment over the poor leads to policies that hurt the poor, and the poor respond by not voting for the Democrats, who are taken completely by surprise but who soon enough start vilifying them. Another question is, who should the party help more, a rich white female or a poor white male? Once again, the vast majority of Democrats have made a tacit choice in favor of the rich white female over the poor white male. Then when those males vote Republican, they are denounced as “angry” by the Democrats, which doesn’t help the situation at all.
Let me consider some of the decisions that Democrats have made that have hurt their own supporters. To explain why these decisions have hurt their own supporters, let me compare them to the Democrats’ idea on taxation, which is that taxation should be progressive. It should be structured so that poor people are hurt the least while rich people are hurt the most, because they can afford it. Now consider the following.
1. Being soft on crime. Poor people who become criminals seldom pick on either the rich or the middle class, who have plenty of resources for dealing with crime, so they pick on other poor people. The result is that the people hurt the most by the soft-on-crime policy are the poor rather than the rich.
I mention crime first because it seems to have been the first break in the control of politics that the Democrats had had since 1932. In the mid-Sixties, people began complaining about crime, and Republican politicians responded by running law-and-order campaigns. Democrats thought all of this was a coded way of being racist, and it is probably true that there was a racial element in all of this. But was it racist? When poor whites were complaining about the criminal activity of their black neighbors, the Democrats decided to stop listening to them and to listen to blacks instead. The result after forty years? Poor whites aren’t likely to vote for the Democrats and poor blacks live in crime-infested neighborhoods.
2. Environmentalism. By choosing to help the environment over the poor, the Democrats often make big mistakes. They count it as a win if they close a polluting factory, while the workers count it as a loss. They want gas to go to $5/gallon, and they never think about how this will probably hurt the poor. In general, their policies impose costs randomly rather than in a progressive fashion. Enough poor people have figured things out that they will vote against the Democrats, or else not vote.
3. Affirmative action. Democrats promote this for race and gender, but not class, and so it is now about, as one cynic observed, what color skin the rich kids have. It either doesn’t help the poor at all, or else hurts them, for poor white males who used to be able to get jobs are now elbowed aside in favor of richer women and blacks.
4. The Schools. Ambitious poor people depend on adequate schools to help them get out of poverty, but over the last forty years the Democrats have ruined our schools with all sorts of nonsense, such as the promotion of self esteem. (Today, the results of poor schooling mean that some people think the term is either “self steam” or “self of steam.”) Even poor blacks want vouchers. Meanwhile, the wealthy liberals and leftists aren’t affected by these policies since they send their children to private schools and hire expensive tutors to help them.
5. Busing. In order to defeat racism, Democrats began pushing for busing to desegregate our schools. What is significant is that in most cases, the busing programs were for cities only and not also for the surrounding suburbs. The message couldn’t have been clearer: You poor whites living in the city are going to have to pay for this, while rich whites in the suburbs won’t. Once again, the costs fell mostly on the poor rather than the rich.
6. Colleges and universities. As with our primary and secondary schools, the Democrats have so tampered with our colleges and universities that there is no guarantee of a good education. But what’s more important is the increasing cost of going to college. And no matter how much Democrats may blame the Republicans for this, they are at least partly to blame. New departments, such as women’s studies, have been added, and these cost money. New administrative positions have been added, such as those dealing with environmental issues and affirmative action, and they cost money, too. In order to have “fairness” in hiring, nationwide searches must be conducted according to certain rules, and these cost much more money than the old, informal system did. Accordingly, the various requirements that the Democrats impose on our colleges and universities cost money, and the people who are hurt by this are the poor since it becomes much harder to get through college without becoming horribly burdened by debt after graduation.
These, then, are some of the ways that the Democrats hurt some of their own supporters, in this case the poor. The poor are the victims of what might be called the left’s war on the poor. The left is always talking about the right’s war on the poor, but the left has its own war, one that they are oblivious to. Some of the policies I’ve mentioned hurt all of the poor, some hurt poor whites only, and some hurt poor white males only. (One of the most striking indications of this war is the change in status for the Democrats of poor white males: in 1960 they were the focus of the party, but by 1980 they were lumped together with the wealthiest of white men as “privileged white males.”) When all these policies are considered together, what they add up to is lost elections for the Democrats. To paraphrase the late Senator Dirksen, you throw away a few million votes here and a few million votes there, and pretty soon it’s real elections that you are losing. It’s true that the Democrat’s policies don’t hurt them among poor blacks, but they do hurt them among poor whites, who used to be very reliable about voting Democratic.
What has been the response of the Democrats to the loss of poor whites? They either vilify them as racists or patronize them as “victims” of far-right propaganda, as if somehow the far right controlled the best places to use propaganda, our media and our schools. So what should the Democrats have done since Obama’s election? They should have worked on jobs and not health care. Having lots of jobs available makes the health care problem bearable, but having health care and no job makes people desperate.
Hey, Democrats, stop hurting your own supporters, and you will do much better.
iwantanewleft.typepad.com |
