Class Will Tell

weeklystandard ^ | Sam Schulman

[flyfree]

Why is Bill Ayers a respectable member of the upper middle class and Sarah Palin contemptible?

Pour yourself a Johnnie Walker Black and remember. The presidential campaign was going to be about sex--the sex of the inevitable winning candidate. Then it was going to be about race. We dreamed we would atone for slavery and the Berlin Airlift, impress Europe and charm the Arab world. But the undecided voters who will determine the winner are no longer interested in race or sex. They are looking at social class. Which ticket best expresses the values and tastes of the upper-middle-class--and captivates the rest of us who follow the lead of the upper-middles?

The class argument is why the Bill Ayers strategy won't do. In the sex and race eras, it would have worked nicely. Obama's longtime working collaboration with the radical educational theorist and retired terrorist would dramatize his carefully but hastily discarded political radicalism. But no longer. The anti-Ayers publicists are quite right about Ayers's malignity and Obama's connivance. But when they try to explain what Ayers has done in the past and still wants to do--turn schools into nurseries of revolution, make leftist views a condition for becoming a teacher, promote dictatorship, and glorify violence--they injure not help their cause. Class will always trump politics. Being the first in one's family to adopt liberal political sentiments or move to New York City means a step into the middle class, for most Americans, and an increase in social status. More extreme political radicalism lifts one a step or two higher.

[yankeedame]

....the upper class, whether European, British, or American, lives principally on inherited money. The upper middle class or bourgeoisie was historically defined as the people who were rich, maybe in some cases richer than the upper class, but they earned all or most of their money. This would include successful physicians, attorneys, and business people, those who might have inherited some money but had to work hard and acquire quite a bit of education in order to be successful....

With all due respect, I question this. The aristocracy, et. al. are the "upper class" you spoke of,does not gain statue from inherited wealth -- more particularly from the mid-19th century onwards. Originally aristocracy was based on feudalism, and with it lineage; it maintained by land, specifically renting land for agriculture. Today, it's pretty much based on nothing...or anything.

The haute bourgeoisie is the upper middle class. The doctors, dentist, lawyers, owners of large companies, etc. In short, folks who work with their heads more than their hand. The petite bourgeois are the middle-middle class. They work equally with both head and hands. The proletariat work chiefly with their hands and, well, don't much think about work when that 5 o'clock whistle blows, esp. on a Friday afternoon.

[Jim Noble]

What makes you think that? There certainly is an upper class in this country. They just tend to stay out of sight.

Drive through Harrison, NY or New Canaan, CT.

What do you see, compared with driving through Beverly Hills or Grosse Pointe?

Nothing, that's what. THAT'S upper class.

[ottbmare]

Drive through Harrison, NY or New Canaan, CT. What do you see, compared with driving through Beverly Hills or Grosse Pointe? Nothing, that's what. THAT'S upper class.

Quite so.

[Jim Noble]

Drive through Harrison, NY or New Canaan, CT. What do you see, compared with driving through Beverly Hills or Grosse Pointe? Nothing, that's what. THAT'S upper class. Quite so.

These are people who lived through 1929-1941 and kept their money.

They understand damn well that if you show it, you can lose it.