Blog Post May 8, 2012
Well, I finally finished the semester. Papers and tests kept me from writing the last several weeks. I feel like I’m out of practice! So, before I finish my reflections on Hume and work, I’d like to stop for a bit and look at my students for the last week.
This semester, I noticed a distinct trend in my students’ answers and essays. We’ve been discussing economic and social justice for the last month or so in Ethics class, so I’ve read a lot of reflection papers and a lot of test essays on issues like wealth gaps, taxes, property rights and so on. Very few thought these were unimportant questions. Almost all seemed to think that there was something wrong with a society where the rich get fewer and richer, and the rest get poorer: not just mechanically wrong, but also morally wrong. In a sense, then, it seemed as if the Occupy Movement had gotten a discussion going. At the same time, though, most of them said the best way to close the wealth gap and to increase opportunities for poor people is to cut taxes for the wealthy, and let the wealth trickle down. Not one was an out-and-out socialist, and a handful at most thought that it was morally acceptable to simply let more and more wealth be concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. So in a sense, they rejected the Left and they rejected the Right. But in another sense, they accepted the Left and accepted the Right. They agree with the Occupy Movement’s diagnosis of the national economic/social/moral condition, but also agree with the Tea Party’s proposed solution.
A Marxist would say they had been co-opted and are all dupes. Given Marxism’s historical successes as a political movement, I don’t take their word for who is a dupe very seriously. But there is something schizophrenic in society. As I’ve mentioned, I teach community college. That means my students work for a living, for the most part. They don’t have trust funds and they don’t have dorms and meal plans and a Student Activities office to make sure they never have to leave campus ever if they don’t want to. They are a much more realistic sampling of society than any student body I was a member of. And from what I’m seeing, neither major political party in the U.S. should feel very comfortable. Republicans can take heart that their message of hard work and fiscal conservatism is resonating with many people. After all, my students are poor or middle class people who believe that if they work hard and get an education, then they will be able to get better jobs and move closer to achieving the American Dream. They are not looking for handouts. When the rabbi said, teach a man to fish and you’ve helped him for a lifetime, my students were listening. They want to learn; they don’t want to be dependent on someone handing them fish, and they don’t want the government taking fish away from someone else to give to them. It makes sense, then, that most of them would believe that the system basically works if you play by the rules; if they didn’t believe that, they wouldn’t be busting their keisters to take night or on-line classes to get college degrees while working full time during the day. My polling sample may be more inclusive than, say, a poll of the student body of New College or Union Seminary, but it is skewed to that degree I suppose.
Democrats should probably be discouraged that their message is not getting out. After all, my students are the very people who Democrats are trying to reach: the middle class and those poor with the ambition to become middle class. And when my students are told that the health care system needs reform, that the tax system is biased towards the rich, or that the wealthy should pay 50% inheritance tax (or any) to redistribute wealth back down to the lower and middle classes, many of them just do not buy those strategies. They don’t think they’ll work, and in many cases they don’t think they’re moral. Even when they’ve read Marx, Rawls, or Mill and understand their theories, they just don’t buy those; they do buy Locke or the libertarians. But when it comes to the analysis of the situation, there the Democratic message is winning out. My students do not want to see the current economic trends continue. They do not want to see the wealth gap grow, the middle class shrink and the 1% expand their dominance of the nation’s economic and political life.
In the short run, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Republicans continue to score big with my students, and with voters who resemble my students. Some of this is because they are convinced by the Republican economic message, and part is because of the Republican moral message. My students believe that hard work and personal responsibility matter greatly, and they hear those values echoed by Republican rhetoric more than by Democratic rhetoric. But in the long run, a moral commitment to those values probably won’t be enough to keep them voting Republican if Republican promises fail and Republican policies make the problems worse instead of better. If the wealth gap continues to grow and the only thing Republicans say to my former students is, “Well, you just don’t work hard enough or you’d be rich,” that could turn into a Democratic revolution.
I’m not just hypothesizing blindly here; Kevin Phillips has been saying the same for more than ten years. Phillips was once Nixon’s economic advisor, and is the man who predicted the Republican revolution based on his conclusion that the Democrats had failed the middle class and become the party of handouts, taxes and graft. In the 1990’s, though, Phillips began predicting a Democratic swing of the nation, based on his economic analysis and his belief that Republicans had become the party of plutocracy and kleptocracy. My belief is that people don’t just vote their pocketbooks. I know some people, at least, who become positively angry if told they should vote for X because it would benefit them financially. But if they are convinced that X is moral and fair, and that Y is somehow morally wrong, they will vote for X gladly. It matters to many people to see themselves as good and responsible; political rhetoric that does not appeal to their moral sensibilities will fall on philosophically deaf ears.
The day people start to feel shafted, start to feel the system is rigged, and start to feel as if their Most Trusted News In America is not telling them the truth, the voters could turn on a dime. But if it does happen, it won’t just be because people are voting for handouts for themselves. It will also be because they are convinced that the values of the Republicans are fraudulent and the values of Democrats are honest and worthy.