The Party Of The Middle Class - Road to the Middle Class

AT THE RECENT Democratic National Convention the nominee for President of the United States, John F. Kerry, told Americans of his devotion to the middle class. “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty,” he said. And then he pointed above him to the flag of the United States: “Old Glory, we call it.” He talked about “family values,” “faith,” and country. Whatever happened to the Democratic Party that we know and love?

What happened to abortion, the holy sacrament of the modern Democratic Party? It got shriveled to an oblique reference to women’s equality. What happened to the ritual denunciation of Christian fundamentalists? What happened to gay rights, diminished to a coded reference to the constitution? And what happened to fighting for the people against the powerful, a theme that went down so well in the Democratic National Convention of 2000?

We all know what happened. The Democrats did their polling and focus-grouping and determined that Kerry couldn’t win as if he ran as a Democrat. The United States of America is unique among the nations of the world: Ninety-five percent of Americans consider themselves middle-class. So most Americans support their middle-class armed forces. They love their flag. They believe in “family.” Over 60 percent adhere to a church. Unlike many Democrats, most Americans are deeply troubled by abortion. Unlike many Democrats, most Americans believe that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. Unlike many Democrats most Americans, even entry-level workers cleaning McMansions, believe in the American Dream, according to left-wing writer Barbara Ehrenreich.

All this poses a bit of a problem for the Democratic Party. Democrats feel that we should have evolved beyond the “cycle of violence.” They are embarrassed by flag-waving patriotism. They sneer at the middle-class “nuclear family.” They hate Christian fundamentalists. They insist on the “right to choose.” They quietly cheer the unelected judges legislating gay marriage from the bench. And their voting base believes that the “little people” can’t make it without a heavy subsidy from the government.

Today, in the United States, the Republican Party is the party of the middle class, and the Democratic Party is not. In fact, it is worse than that. In the great War on the Middle Class that began in the aftermath of the French Revolution with Babeuf and his Conspiracy of Equals and continues today with Michael Moore and Islamofascism, the Democrats are enlisted with the enemies of the middle class. Talk to a pony-tailed twenty-something here in left-coast Seattle and you’ll find a young man who believes in creativity and caring, but no quarter for the rich and the corporations. He’ll believe in spirituality, but will scorn “organized religion.” He’ll believe fervently in global warming, “fair trade,” and political activism, but know little of climate science, economics, and the history of Anglospheric constitutionalism. He’ll believe in Peace and also in class warfare. And he votes for “Baghdad” Jim McDermott.

Why has his party chosen to war upon the middle class? What could anyone have against the people that brought us the rule of law, the written constitution, and that remarkable engine of prosperity and livelihood, the limited liability company? Amazingly, because many people find the middle-class ethos too hard.

For the newly arrived immigrant from the feudal countryside to the city, this attitude is understandable. Learning to live by the clock instead of by the sun is hard, desperately hard. So we could expect the exploited Irish and the recently emancipated African slave to rally to those that blamed the bourgeoisie for all their travails. But the wonder of the age is that the sons and daughters of the middle class join in the war against the middle class. Do they find the life of the middle class too hard?

Many of them do. They object to the trajectory of middle-class life. Instead of the rigors of education to literacy and numeracy they prefer the comfort of positive self-esteem. Instead of the commitment of marriage they prefer the easy pickings of relationship. Instead of the creation of children they prefer the creativity of the artist. Instead of the yoke of career they prefer to follow their bliss. Instead of the judgment of society they insist on authentic self-validation.

So when John Kerry offers himself as the candidate of the middle class, extolling military service, the flag, the family, and faith, we may well rub our eyes in confusion.

Perhaps we should call his bluff, and make him president. Then we shall see whether he and his Democratic Party will knuckle down to the last great task of the world-historical middle class, the turning around of the House of Islam from honor and tribe to the middle-class ethos of contract and team.

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

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

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

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

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

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

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

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

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

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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