Class-based Politics Destroys Human Potential

Among the most troubling features of the American left’s message is its incessant, thoughtless, class-based demagoguery.

A common liberal view of the American Dream includes invidious narratives about who’s been cheated, by whom, how badly and why. Much of the essence of the liberal agenda is divisive, context-free, emotion-arousing grievance and envy.

Real third-world poverty is rare in America. So is extravagant wealth. Nonetheless, left-wing messages propagandize the polar extremes.

Absolute terms – haves vs. have-nots, 1 percent vs. 99 percent – allow no middle ground, yet most Americans live somewhere in the middle.

Most older Pennsylvanians were raised in modest circumstances in communities or neighborhoods housing working families supported by service businesses, builders, retailers, manufacturers and/or agri-businesses.

Typically, the Commonwealth’s older “99 percenters” reject the politics of envy.

Class-based politics poisons public discourse, but, more importantly, it damages young people, often irreparably.

In 2008, candidate Barack Obama said, “I simply believe that those of us who have benefited most from this new economy can best afford to shoulder the obligations of ensuring that every American child has a chance for that same success.”

Obama wasn’t urging successful Americans to mentor young people or take measures to improve failed schools. Obama meant to confiscate and redistribute the assets of the “more fortunate” to provide benefits for others, including able-bodied recipients. That may sound fair, but it’s wrong.

The seeds of class envy are often sown early in life, an unanticipated outcome of progressive intrusion into public education where liberals’ professed concern for building and nurturing children’s self-esteem has had negative consequences.

Strategies meant to enhance self-esteem – positive reinforcement, poor discipline, grade inflation, unearned grade-level promotions and participation trophies for all competitors – ultimately fail, because adulthood disillusions youngsters who falsely believe they had effortlessly mastered everything.

Successful Americans still rely on others who share their lives – families, friends, co-workers, communities – but taxpayer-funded government handouts give recipients a false sense of independence without the spiritual anchors of work, personal satisfaction, mutual obligation and social responsibility.

If income inequality is a problem, it’s not that some people are wealthy, but that others are struggling – struggles often created by a government that has institutionalized both dependency and parental neglect.

Public welfare policies have encouraged neglect by creating multitudes of parents unprepared for the role. Many children have suffered since welfare effectively made “unwed mother” a career choice and “deadbeat dads” common.

Victimized by lousy schools, harmful social engineering, job-killing policies and political self-interest, people who have been failed by progressive governments are those most likely to turn to government to sustain them.

Politicians oblige because government dependency provides large, demoralized voting blocs for elected class warriors who promise to redistribute wealth.

Ironically, the greatest income disparities are in Democrat-run cities and states where progressives’ vision of governance has reached its fullest expressions.

President(ish) Joe Biden, his administration and party still entertain the notion that, rather than reducing inequality by elevating the people at the bottom through improved education, economic growth and greater opportunity, equality can be somehow achieved by punitive confiscation and redistribution of top earners’ assets.

Politicians who promise to solve problems of inequality by expanding social welfare programs and redistributing wealth aren’t serious about solutions. They’re part of the problem.

History, economics and social experience show that the best ways to realize human potential, reduce income inequality, raise the living standards of the middle class and those at the lower end of the economic scale are not with partisan political spectacles or government handouts, but through policies that have grown our economy before.

The real solutions are education, work, marriage, personal responsibility and economic growth.

Growth, along with the broad opportunities it engenders, discredit the notion that individual success is a zero-sum game.

Equal opportunity is built into the American system. Though the equality of outcomes is not guaranteed, every able-bodied, sound-minded person who receives a meaningful education, lives a responsible life and works hard has a chance to do well.

Generous Americans will always look after those who genuinely cannot help themselves, but responsible, intrinsically-motivated citizens understand that the things that enrich life, generate the most pride, last in people’s lives and sustain them are the things they achieve for themselves in an American system that provides them every opportunity to realize their potential – or would, if politicians and bureaucrats encouraged it.

https://www.pottsmerc.com/2023/10/30/jerry-shenk-class-based-politics-destroys-human-potential/