Roy links to a piece by Rod Dreher endorsing David Brooks's nonsense from the other day regarding Occupy Wall Street and the crisis of inequality in "red states" and "red regions." Dreher posits, not for the first time, that liberals routinely manifest disdain and a lack of concern for the white working class. Naturally there is no link or cite to back up this assertion.
As someone who has spent his entire professional life fighting for working class people -- most of whom, by virtue of my representing primarily building trades unions, are white men -- I find this kind of thing exasperating. I routinely read or scan almost every major lefty blog out there -- along with a number, that like this one, don't quite attain that status -- on a nearly daily basis. I am pretty confident that I would notice routine expressions of disdain for the white working class and I can't say that I have seen them anywhere. What I have seen expressed -- and have expressed myself on many occasions -- is sadness and puzzlement that white working class voters so often support politicians and policies that are directly contrary to their own interests. This is not the same as having disdain for people. So I would like to challenge that God fearing man to back up his claims or apologize for the calumny
More importantly, if Dreher cares so much about the fate of the white working class, what does he propose be done for them? I can easily rattle off a dozen or so policy suggestions that would make working class life in this country better, including labor law reform that would make organizing and joining a union much easier, increasing the minimum wage, providing universal single payer health insurance unlinked to the work place, adding a supplemental benefit to Social Security to make up for the loss of pension plans, promoting monetary policies in which full employment is considered as important as inflation prevention, mandating paid maternity and paternity leave, and greater financial support for state colleges and universities so that economic barriers to higher education are mitigated. All of these things would promote economic stability or mobility in the lives of working people. And yes, they would be paid for by higher tax burdens of the wealthy, particularly by increasing taxes on capital gains and dividends, i.e. money earned by means other than working as well as eliminating the income cap on Social Security, and adding a couple of higher brackets for those who earn extremely high incomes.
I have previously commented on the negative affect of "red state" political mores on the prospects of those who are unfortunate enough to fall under their sway -- and it is disproportionately the working class who find their options narrowed by early child bearing. I would also include free or subsidized access to contraception and ensuring that women have access to abortion services so that young people do not find themselves saddled with family obligations for which they are not yet ready. Dreher and Brooks lament out of wedlock births, but neither suggests any solution to such problems beyond some ridiculous notion of returning to Victorian sexual mores.
In the end, Dreher's sympathy for the working class is empty. (Brooks's is even more so -- they are just a cudgel with which to beat liberals when it is convenient.) He has aligned himself with the Republican Party, an institution with literally nothing to offer working class whites other than appeals to resentment and tribalism. He (and ideological soul mates like Douthat) care far more about futile appeals to chastity than they do about actually improving the lives of working people. Evidently the working class can await their reward in heaven, because Rod Dreher and his ilk certainly aren't going to lift a finger for them in this life.