Post by cantanima on Jun 7, 2008 18:34:40 GMT
James,
I enjoyed your post today on how the Left stifles Social Mobility. I think you're onto something: Reading the Guardian, there seems to be nothing the left likes more than denigrating the middle classes. They are blamed for taking up the best school places, clogging up the health service and causing pollution with their people carriers.
However, there are a few other things you are missing.
(1) The Left mocked and ridiculed middle class values on marriage and sexuality for decades until their social values became the norm. Despite the fact that it has been clear for decades that the new values on sexuality are dangerous to human health*, they continue to maintain that these values are normal, and people who do not exhaust themselves in lascivious entertainments are unhealthy. Married couples who create more than one or two children are attacked as irresponsible or even "gross".
These days marriage is considered by more than the Left to be temporary, optional, and irrelevant for raising children, even though numerous studies have shown that an important factor in a child's long-term success is whether he lives with both parents. (Here I am thinking of articles I've read by moderate African Americans like William Raspberry. I have no intent to impugn your many, well-documented posts on the effects genes have on personality here. I am thinking rather of long-term behavioral trends such as avoiding jail and finding a stable place in society. That said, I am curious whether you think living in a home with stable, married parents is important for a child's future. I'm leaving the term "future" vague so you can take it wherever you like.)
*For "dangerous to human health" one can cite numerous statistics on the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases (something like 1 in 5 Americans carries "the bad Herpes", which helps explain the huge number of ads for medicines on Herpes) and the refusal of many subcultures to use "protection" because health insurance (preferably nationalized health insurance) will pay for their treatments once they contract AIDS.
(2) Today the Left peddles "structural conspiracy theories" to the effect that public educational systems are set up with the aim of teaching poor people that they deserve to be poor. The implication is that poor people shouldn't even bother trying, because someone up there (THE MAN, say) is trying to keep them down. Many poor people take this attitude to heart.
I, for example, have personally met people who implied that, since I am a professor of mathematics at a university, I must have been born in a rich family and don't know what it is like to sweep a floor for a living or to work a difficult job under a stupid boss!
Having said all that, I look forward to the day when you write a story about how advocates of neoliberalism (or pure free-market policies) denigrate the disadvantaged.
I enjoyed your post today on how the Left stifles Social Mobility. I think you're onto something: Reading the Guardian, there seems to be nothing the left likes more than denigrating the middle classes. They are blamed for taking up the best school places, clogging up the health service and causing pollution with their people carriers.
However, there are a few other things you are missing.
(1) The Left mocked and ridiculed middle class values on marriage and sexuality for decades until their social values became the norm. Despite the fact that it has been clear for decades that the new values on sexuality are dangerous to human health*, they continue to maintain that these values are normal, and people who do not exhaust themselves in lascivious entertainments are unhealthy. Married couples who create more than one or two children are attacked as irresponsible or even "gross".
These days marriage is considered by more than the Left to be temporary, optional, and irrelevant for raising children, even though numerous studies have shown that an important factor in a child's long-term success is whether he lives with both parents. (Here I am thinking of articles I've read by moderate African Americans like William Raspberry. I have no intent to impugn your many, well-documented posts on the effects genes have on personality here. I am thinking rather of long-term behavioral trends such as avoiding jail and finding a stable place in society. That said, I am curious whether you think living in a home with stable, married parents is important for a child's future. I'm leaving the term "future" vague so you can take it wherever you like.)
*For "dangerous to human health" one can cite numerous statistics on the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases (something like 1 in 5 Americans carries "the bad Herpes", which helps explain the huge number of ads for medicines on Herpes) and the refusal of many subcultures to use "protection" because health insurance (preferably nationalized health insurance) will pay for their treatments once they contract AIDS.
(2) Today the Left peddles "structural conspiracy theories" to the effect that public educational systems are set up with the aim of teaching poor people that they deserve to be poor. The implication is that poor people shouldn't even bother trying, because someone up there (THE MAN, say) is trying to keep them down. Many poor people take this attitude to heart.
I, for example, have personally met people who implied that, since I am a professor of mathematics at a university, I must have been born in a rich family and don't know what it is like to sweep a floor for a living or to work a difficult job under a stupid boss!
Having said all that, I look forward to the day when you write a story about how advocates of neoliberalism (or pure free-market policies) denigrate the disadvantaged.
