Book of Virtues

[bluffmanxx]

Book of Virtues

Tremendously interesting article, expands on comments I made in another thread.

America "is coming apart at the seams -- not ethnic seams, but the seams of class." Culture, not money, divides the new upper and lower classes, which live in increasingly different worlds: one rarefied, walled-off, and at the helm of the country; the other dysfunctional, adrift, and hapless when it comes to the game of life.

Tracking white Americans to avoid blurring trends with race and ethnicity, the numbers Murray presents are startling: In the new upper class, which amounts to about 20 percent of the country, out-of-wedlock births are rare: around 6-8 percent. For the more dysfunctional working class, which accounts for around 30 percent of the country, the number is mind-boggling: 42-48 percent. The numbers also turn a few stereotypes on their heads: In the lower working class, for instance, the rate of church attendance has dropped at nearly double the rate as that of the supposedly secularized elite.

America's working class, Coming Apart argues, has increasingly forsaken traditional values like marriage, religion, industriousness, and honesty -- and, as a result, it is rotting from within. Happiness levels are down; participation in the labor force is down; television watching (an average of 35 hours a week) is up.

Your typical elite enjoys saying snooty things about cultural middle America (Obama's infamous "clinging to guns and religion" comment, for instance, or David Carr of the New York Times spouting off about "low-sloping foreheads" in "the middle places" of America). But when it comes to judging things like, say, rampant divorce, or having children out of wedlock, or being on welfare while also having children out of wedlock (just writing that, by the way, feels terribly judgmental) the new upper-classers tend to bite their tongues.

"If we ask what are the domains through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life -- achieve happiness," Murray writes, "the answer is that there are just four: Family, vocation, community, and faith." The advancement of the welfare state, he argues, results in the slow gutting of these domains, as well as personal responsibility, which are "the institutions through which people live satisfying lives." This cultural disintegration has had a disastrous human cost for the working class. It's a cost that many in the new upper class don't experience or understand.

Unfortunately, in today's political landscape, the idea that government "help" can sap human virtue is a radical concept.

In another instance, Murray points out that children clearly do the best with two married, biological parents, but also acknowledges that "I know of no other set of important findings that are as broadly accepted by social scientists who follow the technical literature, liberal as well as conservative, and yet are so resolutely ignored by network news programs, editorial writers for major newspapers, and politicians of both major political parties."

Sorry, but values do matter. If you make the wrong choices, chances are there are going to be real life consequences. The more government bails us out, the less we have to worry about making good decisions.

[billynomates]

Brits always use to look up to Americans cos A Brit would see a millionaire and be jealous and try and drag him down whilst An American would think- If I work I could be like him.

Seems like yr coming down to our level- people happy to be dependant on the state

[skyguy2007]

It's never been a right vs. left game, but a game of have and have nots with politics as the diversion, nice article Doug!

[bluffmanxx]

More food for thought...

The lessons of the fall of communism have still not been learnt

just a few quotes that stood out to me...

The failure of communism should have been, after all, not just a turning point in geo-political power – the ending of the Cold War and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact – but in modern thinking about the state and its relationship to the economy, about collectivism vs individualism, and about public vs private power. Where was the discussion, the trenchant analysis, or the fundamental debate about how and why the collectivist solutions failed, which should have been so pervasive that it would have percolated down from the educated classes to the bright 18-year-olds? Fascism is so thoroughly (and, of course, rightly) repudiated that even the use of the word as a casual slur is considered slanderous, while communism, which enslaved more people for longer (and also committed mass murder), is regarded with almost sentimental condescension.

We need to know why a system that began with the desire to free people from their chains ended by imprisoning them behind a wall.

We continue to long for some utopian formula that will rule out the possibility of inequalities of wealth, or even of social advantages such as intelligence and personal confidence.

The idea that no system – not even a totalitarian one – could ensure such a total eradication of “unfairness” without eliminating the distinguishing traits of individual human beings was one of the lessons learnt by the Soviet experiment. The attempt to abolish unfairness based on class was replaced by corruption and a new hierarchy based on party status.

Communism’s fatal error was in thinking that morality resided in the mechanisms of an economic system rather than in the people who operated them. There is no way of avoiding the need for individual responsibility, which lies with citizens, not governments – or with bankers as people, not with the “banking system”.

let me say again, that the reason i lean right is because conservatism is far more likely to include personal responsibility rather than "fairness" mandated by government authority. it's no surprise to me that "programs" that aim to deliver compassion so often deliver enslavement.

i guess i can sum it up like this - freedom must be earned, dependency is not.

[skyguy2007]

Less is always more when it comes to dependency.

[Moab]

More food for thought...

The lessons of the fall of communism have still not been learnt

just a few quotes that stood out to me...









let me say again, that the reason i lean right is because conservatism is far more likely to include personal responsibility rather than "fairness" mandated by government authority. it's no surprise to me that "programs" that aim to deliver compassion so often deliver enslavement.

i guess i can sum it up like this - freedom must be earned, dependency is not.

You may be confusing Socialism as Communism. The right when bashing Unions etc. they use the C word instead of the S word.

Socialism allows the big greedy fat cats all the room they need in order to get fuckin filthy rich and also allows the working middle class a fair and decent wage, health care and short work weeks and ample vacation time.

In the real world however with one billion Chinese working under communist rule and the millions in N. Korea also communist I'd suggest they are doing real well as China receives billions if dollars for taking away good American jobs sent overseas to the commies in china by the rich "capitalist' here in America and thought the Western World.

This I can say with immunity .. no working middle class worker wanted to see his or her job go East, or that person single handedly did so what they did was trust the rich eliete to do what was right for them as in the Reagan Manifesto ... give your money to the rich and they will trickle less of it back down while they suck the cream off the top.

Yes it's true, the people who gave up their Socialist, Union, (what you confuse with communism) high paying jobs so the so the rich elites can piss on you and tell you that if you follow the dream you too can piss on people and be a "Capitalist"

[billynomates]

Glad you supported GM getting U.S. taxpayer dollars? Want to see GM survive, prattling on how America needs an auto industry?

Instead we get this, GM plans to shift overseas production:

General Motors Corp. will shift more production of vehicles bound for the U.S. market to China, Mexico, South Korea and Japan, but will keep total imports at roughly one-third of all sales here.

In a confidential 12-page presentation..GM said it will boost U.S. sales of vehicles built in those four countries by 98 percent -- or about 365,000 vehicles -- while shrinking production in Canada, Australia and European countries by about 130,000 vehicles.

GM also disclosed it will start importing vehicles made in China in 2011, reaching 51,546 vehicles in 2014. Imports from South Korea to the United States will jump from 36,967 vehicles in 2010 to 157,126 in 2014.

GM's plan to import more vehicles from low-wage countries raises questions about whether it should beef up its foreign operations as it is relying on federal money to stay afloat. It also puts the automaker at odds with the United Auto Workers, which is trying to protect U.S. jobs amid a dramatic restructuring of the domestic auto industry.

GM has faced strong protests from the union that its turnaround plan unfairly targets U.S. workers and plants for cuts. GM plans to trim 21,000 hourly workers and close 13 of its 47 U.S. plants by the end of 2010 as part of a tougher recovery plan sought by President Obama's auto task force. It will close three more U.S. plants by 2014.

Incredibly, between 2010-2014 GM's restructuring plan also calls for a 98% increase in the number of vehicles it will be importing into the United States from Mexico, Korea, Japan and China, with the number of imports from these countries increasing from 371,547 to 736,743. As a result, the share of GM’s sales in the U.S. market that will be imported from these countries will increase from 15.5% to 23.5%. The overall number of vehicles GM will be importing in 2014 represents the production of four assembly plants, the same number that GM plans to close in the United States.

Oh yeah, GM's claim they are not using taxpayer funds is pure bullshit. Without those funds they would already be in bankruptcy. There are previous reports of GM using our taxpayer dollars for operations in Brazil.

Last week you were standing up for Obama's bail-out!

[Nynus]

In the real world however with one billion Chinese working under communist rule and the millions in N. Korea also communist I'd suggest they are doing real well as China receives billions if dollars for taking away good American jobs sent overseas to the commies in china by the rich "capitalist' here in America and thought the Western World.

North Korea is "doing real well"?

WTF?

Millions have died in N. Korea of starvation over the last 15+, and it's looking like the next 3 years may be the worst episode of starvation in that country's history.

China may be heading in the same direction. It has to keep modernizing it's food production in order to keep up with its population. An economic glitch in the wrong place at the wrong time and China is going to be forced to look for a military solution in order to maintain food for it's population.

[Moab]

Say what you might N. Korea is still a world threat starving, or not they, could bring on the end of the human race.


Here is an American Virtue for you ....

A little 2-year-old boy came to the hospital hungry, not just for dinner, but every day of his young life. He is smaller than he should be and his organs, including his brain, are not developing fully. And he lives in Boston, one of America's most prosperous cities.
Doctors at Boston Medical Center's Grow Clinic, which provides assistance to children diagnosed with "failure to thrive," say they have seen a dramatic increase in the number of children they treat who are dangerously thin.
"What's so hard is that a lot of families are working so hard," said Dr. Megan Sandel, an associate professor of pediatrics and public health at BMC. "They are working jobs. They are earning money and their dollars just don't go far enough."
That is life for nearly 15 million children living in poverty in the U.S., according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.

Here in high and mighty America where Mitt doesn't care about the poor in N. Korea they have 23 million people so with our children some 15 million starving and their parents that could add up to a easy 25 million really hungry Americans. I guess the piss in the trickle down evaporates before it hits the last few economic levels..

[Nynus]

Sorry, an artificial "poverty" line in America to justify handouts isn't even CLOSE to being at a level of starving to death. "Poverty" in the U.S. doesn't mean starvation, it means not being able to afford a 2nd flat screen TV, a new automobile, and if there are four kids in the family, they might have to sleep two in a room.

In N. Korea, those in "poverty" share one room for the entire family, and most of those families starving to death are rationed to no more than two potatoes a day. That's it. No protein, no rice, nothing else. Two potatoes for the family.

Comparing the two is ignorant at the least.