It’s true! The pundits have just discovered that Republicans and Democrats really are different, after all. First, there’s the Kaiser Family Foundation poll that shows that Democrats want specifics from politicians and Republicans want principles. Then there’s the MSNBC campaign switch, reported by young Ezra Klein. He quotes Benjy Sarlin:I was caught off guard by how specific and personal Democratic voters’ issues tended to be. One woman told me she had lost a job because she had to take care of a sick relative and wanted paid family leave…
By contrast, Republican voters tend to be excited by more abstract issues: One of the most common answers I get from Cruz voters when I ask about their leading concern is “the Constitution.” There are fewer “I have a specific problem in my own life, and I’d like the government to do x about it” responses.
If young Ezra Klein wants to know why Democrats and Republicans are different, he should bone up on my “Three Peoples” theory, which explains the whole procedure.
On my theory, rank-and-file Democrats are People of the Subordinate Self. They are peasants and workers, as the Marxists used to say. When they have a problem they look to the lord of the manor, or the ward boss, or the politician to fix it; they do not imagine that they could fix it themselves, because they don’t have the power.
Republicans are different. They are People of the Responsible Self. They experience themselves as responsible for fixing things on their own. That is why they are interested in rules and principles. They just want the rules to be set forth, as in the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the U.S. Constitution, and they will do the rest using their God-given talents.
Liberals? They are the third leg of the triad, the People of the Creative Self, but we are not talking about them today. Go to my blog if you want more.
According to my understanding of history, 1,000 years ago most everyone was a subordinate peasant, grubbing for favors from his feudal lord. Yet today, the average American is self-motivated. He follows the rules, goes to work, obeys the law, and expects to solve his own problems. What happened?
What happened was the Reformation, the Puritan revolution that birthed the Mayflower, the Great Awakening that birthed Methodism, and the Second Great Awakening that birthed Mormonism. These religious convulsions taught peasants that they were responsible beings that could direct their own lives and thrive. The result was what Deirdre McCloskey calls the “Bourgeois Era,” the rise of the middle class.
But liberals don’t like that. Their whole shtick is to find another helpless class of victims, tell them how special they are, and make them into the “little darlings” of the ruling class. Because without the wise and compassionate help of the liberals, the little darlings would be helpless in the cruel hands of the one percent and the corporations and the global white patriarchy.
Only the opposite is true. You’ve heard tell, no doubt, about how the white working class is descending into opiate addiction and suicide? That, I believe, is the horrible fate that awaits any group that has been embraced as the “little darlings” of the liberal ruling class. There was a time that liberals loooved the working class. But then came Norman Lear with his cunning notion of working stiff Archie Bunker as the quintessential racist, sexist, homophobe of the secret patriarchal conspiracy. Every liberal piled on and it was soon curtains for the white working class, and liberals made blacks and women into their new little darlings.
People who resist the siren call of the liberals and refuse to become their pets and little darlings are what we call “Republicans”. They follow the rules, go to work, obey the law. And they wive and thrive.
Fast forward to 2016. Which groups are really pissed off right now in America, apart from the Republican base wanting to take the GOP establishment out to the woodshed? It’s the white working class that is rallying to Donald Trump and the Black Lives Matter enraged that with Obama nothing has changed. What do these two groups have in common? They are past and present little darlings of the liberals.
And that is why I want a president that respects the American people, who honors the responsible Americans who follow the rules, go to work, and obey the law. As a bonus, I’d like him to show the subordinate victims how to climb out of the hell of thinking that a politician is going to solve their problem. Because I believe there is still time to save the little darlings from a fate worse than death.
