Jeb Bush on family breakdown: "My views on this were shaped a lot by Charles Murray's book." He means the more recent one, not Bell Curve
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) April 30, 2015
Oh, hmm.
That would be Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010, in which Murray explains how LBJ's Great Society and the Civil Rights movement didn't elevate black communities up to where white ones were, they just dragged white communities down (and dumped black ones into the abyss.)
Focusing on whites to avoid conflating race with class, Mr. Murray contends instead that a large swath of white America—poor and working-class whites, who make up approximately 30% of the white population—is turning away from the core values that have sustained the American experiment. At the same time, the top 20% of the white population has quietly been recovering its cultural moorings after a flirtation with the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, argues Mr. Murray in his elegiac book, the greatest source of inequality in America now is not economic; it is cultural.
He is particularly concerned with the ways in which working-class whites are losing touch with what he calls the four "founding virtues"—industriousness, honesty (including abiding by the law), marriage and religion, all of which have played a vital role in the life of the republic.
He simply assumes that any communities of color are already lost, and that he's effectively writing a lifeboat manual for white America to try to save itself, very much at the expense of everyone else.
If George W Bush represented "compassionate conservatism" where a rising tide lifts all boats, then Jebby represents "pragmatic conservatism" where the rising tide drowns the weak, so you'd better be willing to step on some heads to stay above water.
He perfectly represents the coming post-Obama GOP ideal of "Austerity will cull the weak". And a lot of poor white voters will correctly interpret that as "It's time to jettison anyone darker than ecru."
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It'll play well with poor whites, as well - nothing like being able to blame THOSE people for your woes. After all, it would be rude to blame Ronald Reagan for the inevitable result of his policies...
i bet the book never goes into the how and why of the decline of the white family over the last 40 years, which just coincidentally corresponds to the rise of the far right GOP and the "greed is good" ethos on Wall street and the C-level executive office floor. Why would poor and middle-class families abandon their traditional cultural values of hard work, honesty, marriage, and religion? Maybe because their kids realized that parents and grandparents played by the rules and got tossed around like rope toys by the financial pit bulls in the 80s and beyond.
When you play by the rules and still get robbed, why would your kids play by the rules? I always think of Christopher Walken in Catch Me If You Can when he tells Frank to not stop running from the Feds, not stop kiting checks and living the high life on other peoples' money. "You can never stop, Frank".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=somTiTv8WxM
That's everyone's grandad talking about the hose job they went thru in the 70s and 80s.
If George W Bush represented "compassionate conservatism" where a rising tide lifts all boats, then Jebby represents "pragmatic conservatism" where the rising tide drowns the weak, so you'd better be willing to step on some heads to stay above water.
I grew up near the Irish ghetto, where people had legitimate complaints about government help never filtering down to give them any help. But in so far as they went racist and turned to the Republicans to get ahead, they really just shot themselves in the face. The 0.1% don't give a damn about the poor or the middle class, and they would starve everyone's grandmother just to make a nickel.
The only nice thing I have to say about Jeb is at least he doesn't move his lips when he reads, and maybe if he had become president in 2001 instead of his idiot brother then maybe the implementation of Republican policies might not have been such a hideous disaster. Maybe. Might. The one thing certain is that no decent and civilized man has anything to do with that contemptable racist Charles Murray. Fun fact: Tory blogger and all around racist upper class twit Andrew Sullivan gave Murray his big break into popular culture by publishing his incompetent attempt at analysis the New Republic - damaging our nation and damaging that once proud old journal in conservative twofer.
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