Are Poor Rubes Free To Subordinate Economics To Culture?

James Taranto makes a very good point:

Underlying [Obama’s] criticism is a curious normative premise: that the nonaffluent ought to prioritize their material interests over moral and cultural concerns. “Workers of the world, unite!” meets “The Virtue of Selfishness.”

Unlike Ayn Rand, Feingold and Obama see selfishness as a virtue only for bitter-off cultural conservatives. The well-heeled San Francisco Democrats Obama addressed on Friday stand to pay much higher taxes if he is elected. Many of them no doubt back Obama because they like his liberal positions on subjects like guns, abortion and same-sex marriage. If you think Obama criticized their priorities, we’ve got some change you can believe in. In Barack Obama’s America, rich people who vote on cultural issues rather than economic self-interest are principled and self-sacrificing. People of more modest means who do so are credulous and bitter. [Emphasis added]

When Feingold and Obama refer dismissively to cultural and moral issues, it is not because they do not take those issues seriously. It is because they would rather not take seriously the arguments on the other side. It is much less intellectually demanding, as well as flattering to oneself and those San Francisco Democrats, to caricature opposing positions as the products of poverty, ignorance and bitterness.

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  1. Anita April 15, 2008 at 9:27 am | | Reply

    there are nations or cultures in which people bitterly resent anyone who attains more than they do. they don’t resent the aristocracy. they resent those who worked and achieved, so much so that people are discouraged from doing so. that is one reason such nations remain terribly poor. the efforts that lead to wealth creation, to jobs, are despised, to the point of murder, not just social ostracism. if I felt the way obama wanted, i would go burn down my neighbor’s house because they have a boat and we don’t. Or I would vote that my neighbor be taxed so much that he could not buy a boat. would the money my neighbor did not spend on his boat then come to me? no, it would not. but this is what obama wants people to believe, rob your neighbor. he would have it that I am stupid because I don’t resent people having more than I do. if I was smart like him, I would somehow arrange for the richer ones to be deprived and their wealth given to me. that is the thrust of all liberal thinking. they don’t seem to notice that it has never worked. and obama thinks this about the US, where as the writer said, the poor are fat and have houses and cars and cell phones and color tvs and never went without a meal in their lives.

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