Thomas Frank: What's the Matter with Liberals?

[dazzleman]

Well, at least he assigns some blame to liberals for their current predicament, unlike books like "What's Wrong with Kansas" that basically argue that it is all the fault of devilishly clever conservatives that ordinary people have been hoodwinked into voting Republican.

Still, I disagree with the major premise of this article - which implies that liberal policies really would be better for the middle and working class.

The situation as I see it is this.  In the 1960s, as the New Deal morphed into the Great Society, liberals crossed the line from seeking to help the ordinary person to targeting help at a smaller segment of society, and implicitly blaming the moderately successful for the plight of the poor.

As this took place, liberals became more and more elitist.  And while professing great concern for the poor, blacks, women, etc., liberal behavior never matched up to their rhetoric.

The liberal answer to the race issue was largely to attempt to impose, through undemocratic means, forced integration between the white lower middle class and the black underclass.  This would ease the liberal conscience about the race situation, while conveniently exempting more wealthy liberals from the actual results.

By the late 1970s, liberalism was a caricature.  Liberals supported and applauded US defeat in Vietnam, and were doing all in their power to undermine our national security at the climax of the Cold War.  Liberals, from their wealthy neighborhoods, defended criminals who preyed on those with lesser means.  And liberals supported ever higher taxes on the middle class via bracket creep - lower income people moving into higher tax brackets through inflation, not through actually accumulating greater purchasing power.

Liberal behavior, attitudes and policy have left "ordinary" people (as if there's really any such thing) no other place to go but the Republican party.  The idea of "ordinary people" is sometimes another form of liberal condescension, though conservatives use the term also.  But for those without the means to exempt themselves from the actual results of liberal policies, there really is no other place to go.

The issue is not just class jealousy, though there is a component of that.  It really is the accurate perception that the effect of liberal policies on day-to-day life is negative for most who are not wealthy.  The lower middle class has, in many places, has lost the ability to get a good education for their children due to forced integration with violent ghetto neighborhoods.  This is just a fact, though liberals would call me a racist for pointing it out, while sending their own kids to lily-white suburban public schools or expensive and exclusive private schools.  This is a practical result of liberal policies, and their resentment is not based on class jealousy, except to the extent that liberals have exempted themselves from what they have forced on others.  Liberal softness toward crime is another thing that has had a large negative effect on those who live on the front lines of crime, and not in far-off suburban neighborhoods or in places with private security of some kind.

I think liberals need to really take an honest look at what their policies have done to the working class before they keep insinuating that the working class is stupid for not supporting them.

[dazzleman]

It hardly seems fair to blame a political ideology or movement for being above the simple minds of the masses. 

Since you explicitly stated in another thread that half the motivation of liberalism was to punish lower class whites for their oppression of blacks, while exempting upper class whites from such negative effects, maybe it's just that the "simple minds" have finally picked up the animus directed at them by the liberals, and have pulled away.

It's delightful how your hypocritical political views are tailored to your own selfish interests, no matter what.

But you're right about one thing - if there was a greater level of intelligence among the public, liberals would have no support whatsoever.

[dazzleman]

Since you explicitly stated in another thread that half the motivation of liberalism was to punish lower class whites for their oppression of blacks, while exempting upper class whites from such negative effects, maybe it's just that the "simple minds" have finally picked up the animus directed at them by the liberals, and have pulled away.

Only when their behaviour and views are stupid and intolerant, which alas is frequently.  But I never said that half the motivation of liberalism was to punish lower class whites, I said that half the motivation of liberalism was to make the intolerant oppressors miserable, regardless of whether it helped the oppressed (though obviously it did do the latter as well).  You made the leap that the oppressors were lower class whites.  Personall I think this category included the vast majority of whites of all classes.

Well if it's the case that most whites are oppressors, why should only the poorer ones suffer?  That's the practical effect of liberal policies, and much of the aim of liberal policies, as you acknowledged.  The real goal of liberalism is to make poor whites pay the whole freight for the "historical crimes" of the white race, as you and migrendel made clear in your attitude toward busing in South Boston.  Thank you for explicitly confirming what I've been saying about liberals for a long time.

[dazzleman]

I know I'm going to PA 13-ize this, but I think the conservatives love the fact that focred integration and Section 8 housing is placed in working class white neighborhoods such as those in Northeast Philadelphia so they can garner votes from places never thought possible.  This also coupled with the socially conservative attitudes of white cops that have to make their homes within city limits plus the Catholic schools enforcing a strict "moral" doctrine, if you can call it that.  This is why I oppose school vouchers, though I went to Catholic school K to 12 myself.  I think the voucher idea is an excuse to ultimately destroy public education and underfund schools in underprivileged areas.  I find many white parents go into deep debt to avoid sending their kids to public school so they send them to these schools that are nowhere near as good as the suburban ones such as Abington or Council Rock and pay almost $5,000 per student with tutition and fees.  Is this fair?  Your "choices" are pay $5,000 for a school that is roughly in the 40th-50th percentile in overall performance or a run down public school.  IHMO, neither of these choices will prepare even a top student for a nationally ranked university.  Now, I could have probably went to Central or Masterman, which are magnet public schools and are pretty decent in terms of education.  At the time I was so used to the Catholic school system, I chose not to.     

For the record, I grew up in a neighborhood like the one you were just talking about.  I find a fair number of people get an automatic penchant for a conservative attitude including many of my own friends and family.   

I don't deny that Republicans have picked up votes from conservative Democrats as a result of forced integration in urban areas.  But that is not the same thing as developing a bad policy, and forcing it on a group of people, from without, through undemocratic means.  That is what liberals have done to the white working class.  Republicans would be stupid not to try to capitalize on this situation, and working class whites deserve some representation, having been abandoned by the party to which they previously gave their loyalty.

I am well acquainted with the urban education situation that you described.  Forced integration effectively brought all or most city schools down to the level of those in ghetto neighborhoods.  It has been a bad policy which has been directly aimed at the working class white population, and forced on them by liberals through undemocratic means. 

I notice you didn't disagree with my main point on this.  In fact, you went out of your way to present facts that say I'm right about the urban education situation.  You just seem to somehow equate Republican attempts to translate the effects of this bad policy, which they did not support, into additional votes with the guilt of those who conceived and executed the policy in such an incompetent and hateful manner.  That is, sad to say, typical liberal logic.

[dazzleman]

When you say 'pay the whole freight' you obviously don't mean financially - you mean suffering the deleterious effects of the proximity of black people.  That viewpoint is racist, but I won't object to it, as I understand that poor whites are themselves in a desperate situation, and highly vulnerable to crime and so forth regardless of whether the cause is (as they seem to think) some innate bad qualities of blacks, or in fact what is being done to them by their oppressors.

Yes, it is somewhat racist, but realistic.  While there are ignorant people who dislike blacks just because of their race, that's not the whole story.  Proximity to UNDERCLASS blacks has a huge deleterious effect on anybody's quality of life.  Everybody knows this, including blacks who don't fit that description.  People of all income levels and races perceive - correctly - that proximity to underclass blacks will make their lives much worse.

The difference between well-off white liberals and poor whites is that well-off white liberals will never admit this, since they have enough money to exempt themselves from the forced integration that they advocate.  I don't think that those of us who are able to use financial means to escape the effects of forced integration with underclass blacks ought to be critical of those who object to that which we ourselves would never accept.

Your logic that somehow white "oppressors" force the black underclass to act the way it does is tiresome.  With friends like you, they don't need enemies.

[dazzleman]

Unfortunately for the "working class" is the sad fact that one of the biggest preservers of the wealth disparity in this country is that the upper classes have successfully divided the "working" classes based on race. As long as people put racial prejudice ahead of their economic interests, they won't progress, but they seem perfectly happy with that.

I really don't agree with that line of reasoning.  There is definitely a greater degree of racial animus among the lower classes, but that arises largely from objective conditions, not as a result of upper class manipulation.

The working class is not as mobile as the upper class, and can't necessarily afford to move if their neighborhoods become infested with crime, or their local schools become violent.  The associate blacks - not totally without reason - with this threat of crime and violence.  Their lack of mobility creates a sense of vulnerability that makes them much more hostile to any perceived threats to the modest degree of success they have obtained.

I think you make a mistake to equate the white working class with non-working underclass blacks.  This is the mistake many have made, and it is an explosive combination.

One thing I have noticed is that other minorities - most notably Asians and Puerto Ricans - are increasingly openly hostile to blacks, in the same way working class whites have been accused of.

Upper middle class whites don't express the same hostility toward blacks, but are they (we in my case) really any better?  We just have the money to live far enough away from crime-infested neighborhoods and to avoid violence-plagued schools.  Upper middle class liberal whites would be singing a very different tune if they actually had to deal with these things.

Even though I am of Irish descent, I never knew much about the history of the Irish in America until recently because my parents discouraged identifying with any heritage other than American.  But I have discovered that the history of the Irish is remarkably similar to the history of blacks.  The Irish pulled themselves out of the poverty that afflicted them for so long, and the lack of acceptance from the larger society that plagued them for so long, by taking upon themselves to ostracize the members of their own group who were bringing them down.

This is something blacks will have to do in order to improve their position.  By embracing and defending what is worst about their community, they allow what is worst to define them in the public eye.  Many blacks know this, but are afraid to say so, for fear of being called "Uncle Toms."  It's a very sad situation, and it's not being helped by liberal condescension on race, or theories that somehow absolve blacks of any responsibility for their problems, or finding a solution to them.

[dazzleman]

so you're a disaffected closet democrat?  that's cool.  I used to be.

Dude, I like that....disaffected closet democrat.  That's what many in my family were before they decided there was no point in it, and switched to Republican.  Actually, what they were closeted about was the level of their disaffection with the party.