A lifestyle of addiction, promiscuity, and chaos comes with a hefty price tag. Sadly, our elites are exporting those values to the people least capable of sustaining them. If you don't believe me, just watch MTV.
via theweek.com
It's all too true. And not only that, but the political class throws many obstacles in the way of people making better lives for themselves and lives off of the chaos they create. --ts
I find both the original article and Lewis' take on it baffling. The WaPo article was a typical condescending liberal tale of small-town working-class Americans as helpless victims leading pathetic, degraded lives because of a lack of government programs, or something like that. Lewis' take was its conservative mirror image, a condescending tale of small-town working-class Americans as helpless victims leading pathetic, degraded lives because of a lack of traditional values, or something like that.
But the story as I read it was an inspiring tale of a young girl who saw the moral failings of those around her, imagined better things for herself, and appeared destined to work her way to achieving them. Assuming that she makes it through her EMT training, she'll no doubt get a good job, work hard at it, make a good living, eventually start a healthy family with an equally serious-minded person, and raise children who will have fine role models on which to pattern themselves.
Lewis' column is a sobering reminder that urban sophisticates tend to look down on the working class irrespective of their politics. The truth is that there have been dissipated people, dissipated families and even dissipated communities since time immemorial, and modern Americans have as good an opportunity to escape their surrounding dissipation as anyone in history. But when it comes to combating human vice, no top-down social ordering, whether liberal and government-driven or conservative and religion-driven, will ever substitute for individual human good sense and initiative.
Posted by: Dan Simon | December 16, 2012 at 07:04 PM