THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA

An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 19, January 29, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
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THE NEW AMERICAN ELITE
By Alan Caruba

AMERICAN CULTURE:  COMMON VALUES & BELIEFS HELD BY AMERICA'S SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLASSES PRIOR TO THE 1960S -- VALUES & BELIEFS REGARDING SOCIETAL INSTITUTIONS SUCH AS MARRIAGE, RELIGION, & NATIONAL IDENTITY -- EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY -- RAPID EROSION OF AMERICA'S VALUES & BELIEFS DURING & SINCE THE 1960S -- FORMATION OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLASSES THAT ARE DIFFERENT IN KIND & IN THEIR DEGREE OF SEPARATION FROM ANYTHING WHICH THE AMERICAN NATION HAS EVER KNOWN -- ISOLATION OF THE NEW UPPER CLASS FROM THE REST OF AMERICA -- THE SYSTEM OF FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM UNDER ATTACK BY THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, LIBERALS IN CONGRESS, & A COHORT OF CIVIL SERVICE & INDUSTRIAL UNIONS
FULL STORY:   The only constant in the life of individuals and nations is change. Since the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the process or rate of change has accelerated with the invention and availability of a myriad of machines, technologies that have altered the lifestyle of Americans, as well as of millions around the world.

Let me put it in personal terms. When I was born in the late 1930s, my Mother washed the family laundry by hand and hung it out to dry on sunny days or in the basement of our home if it was raining. We were not poor. We were middle class. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and we lived in a spacious suburban home in an upscale New Jersey community. Mass produced washers and dryers would arrive after the end of World War Two.

The differences between lower economic classes, the middle class, and upper classes were well defined back then. All, however, generally held the same values regarding societal institutions such as marriage, religion, and national pride. Those values have eroded since the 1960s and Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, whose new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 ($27.00, Crown Forum) tells you how and why.

Murray takes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, as the starting point, noting, for example:

    “Not only were Americans almost always married, mothers normally stayed at home to raise their children. More than 80 percent of married women with children were not working outside the home in 1963.”

“Part of these widely shared values lay in the religiosity of America in 1963,” and Murray compares this to a 1963 Gallup poll in which --

    “Only one percent of respondents said they did not have a religious preference, and half said they had attended a worship service in the previous seven days. These answers showed almost no variations across classes.”

“The racial differences in income, education, and occupations were all huge, noted Murray. “The civil rights movement was the biggest domestic issue of the early 1960s….” By 1963, “Poverty had been dropping so rapidly for so many years that Americans thought things were going well.”

The changes in values that many Americans deplore today were coming. “The first oral contraceptive pill had gone on the market in 1960 and its use was spreading widely.” Murray points out:

    “The leading cohorts of the baby boomers were in their teens by November 21, 1963, and, for better or worse, they were going to be who they were going to be. No one understood at the time what a big difference it could make if one age group of a population is abnormally large. Everyone was about to find out.”

“This book,” wrote Murray, “is about the evolution in American society that has taken place since November 21, 1963, leading to the formation of classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything that the nation has ever known.”

The culture that Americans shared uniquely and in contrast to much of the world, warns Murray “is unraveling” as “America is coming apart at the seams — not the seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.”

Murray defines the new upper class “as the most successful five percent of adults ages 25 and older who are working in managerial positions, in the professions (medicine, the law, engineering and architecture, the sciences, and university faculty), and in content-production jobs in the media.”

    “As of 2010, about 23 percent of all employed persons aged 25 or older were in these occupations, which means that about 1,427,000 persons constituted the top 5 percent. Since 69 percent of adults in these occupations who were ages 25 and older were married in 2010, about 2.4 million adults were in new-upper-class families as heads of households or spouse.”

That’s a very small slice of 330 million Americans.

They are not the “millionaires and billionaires” that President Obama is always blathering about. They are the new “establishment” that determine much about the nation’s culture, economy, and future.

To boil down Murray’s extensive research and reporting, that top 5 percent are largely isolated from the rest of the population because they tend to live where their counterparts live and interact mostly with one another in all aspects of their lives. They are the new “elite.”

“Rolling back income inequality won’t make any difference in the isolation of the new upper class from the rest of America.” They are wealthy by most standards and Murray expects them to become wealthier over time. Thus, all the talk of “fairness” and “a fair share” is meaningless.

“Fairness” as many point out, is just another word for “class warfare.” It has always been the siren call of Communism.

Efforts in America and in Europe to create “fairness” in the form of our “entitlement” programs and the extensive European socialism have reached a point where they threaten to collapse our own and the economies of many European nations.

Murray says “We have been the product of the cultural capital bequeathed to us by the system the Founders laid down -- a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government’s job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the government’s job to stage-manage how people interact with one another. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we have loved about Americans will go away.”

The system, of course, is free-market capitalism, deregulation, and lower marginal income tax rates -- all within the context of the U.S. Constitution. It is under attack by the President of the United States and a cohort of civil service and industrial unions, along with Liberal members of Congress.

It is why the Republican primaries have been, in part, a desperate effort to educate Americans to the reason America is in peril and why Americans must strive to restore the values that were shared on November 22, 1963.


© Alan Caruba, 2012


LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Morality, Decency, & Traditional American Family Values

The American Nation & Its Common National Culture:
Political Culture, Patriotism, & American National Identity:
The Basic Values, Beliefs, & Traditions Characteristic
of American Society & Its Civic Culture

Religion, Secularism, & America

The American Political & Cultural Left:
Liberals, Statists, Socialists, Marxists, & Other Leftists:
The Democratic Party, Academia, & the Mainstream Media

Liberalism Versus Conservatism in American Politics

-------------------------

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY & POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES:
COMPETING SYSTEMS OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Conservatism

Traditional Conservatism: Questions & Answers

Conservatism: Attitudes, Types, & Present Status

Constitutional Conservatism: American & British

Liberalism

Classical Liberalism: Intellectual Foundations

Classical Liberalism: Conservative Liberalism

Manchester Liberalism & Social Darwinism

Modern Social "Liberalism": Statist "Liberalism"

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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA

An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis

Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor

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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity