Two Americas Updated

So in a year that will probably go down as one of the worst Republican years ever, with a perfect storm of a financial crisis, war weariness, and 8 year fatigue, You can see the Republican future starting to take shape.

And yes, Virginia, there are Two Americas. There is Credentialed America and then there is Aspirational America.

Credentialed America is the world of our liberal friends. You get your credentials and that sets you up for life in tenuered work that can never be taken away. It may be that you get, on the top end, a Harvard law degree. Clearly you are marked out for the top jobs in everything, not excluding the presidency of the United States. Or you might be a dental technician. You go to school, get your credential, and work away in a safe job forever.

There’s an inverted credential culture too; it centers on the accredited victim. Yes, if you can be certified as a victim, from discrimination or disability, then you too can have an income for life.

Then there is Aspirational America.

The Republican Party has always been the party for aspiration, but recently it has forgotten this. Not any more. The explosion onto the national stage of Gov. Sarah Palin, (R-AK) has put paid to that. And if you didn’t get the message, Joe the Plumber makes it perfectly clear. There are millions of Americans out there who aspire to something. They want to live better, achieve more, and contribute more. They don’t just want to “get theirs.” They want to excel.

This type of American was profiled years ago in The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, two academicians who decided to write a best-seller. The millionaire of the book was a risk-taking businessman who maybe owned a couple of dry-cleaning establishments. He didn’t live high on the hog. Instead he saved his money, living in a modest part of town and driving a nothing automobile. He probably started out like Joe the Plumber.

What about the millionaire’s children? Good point. He sends his kids to college so that they’ll get credentials. The thing about a college degree is that it is is low-risk option. You pay your money, you go through the motions, get your credential, and you can get a well-paying job, a job without the downside risk of starting a business.

I’ve never been much of a risk-taker, but I’ve always honored those who are. And I’d hate it if the Republican Party ever turned its face away from aspirational risk-takers like Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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