Michael Lind has released a new essay titled “The Coming Realignment” in The Breakthrough Journal, one of the most innovative magazines around today. He predicts that social conservatism as we know it will fade away, but that does not mean we will have political consensus; only that the terms of engagement may change.
Lind suggests will be two camps, one he calls “liberaltarian” based in the denser urban areas that he calls “Densitaria”; the other, “populiberalism,” will flourish in more loosely settled suburban areas he calls “Posturbia.” He contends that Densitaria will be primarily occupied by wealthy urbanites and their poor, often immigrant servants, while Posturbia, being dominated by the single family home, will occupy the middle ground. It may not be accessible to the poorest, and not very desirable to the richest; but it will be, however, racially diverse. In many regions already, suburbs are now more diverse than core cities.
Neither of these cultures will be hostile to the welfare state, but they will have different preferences about what to expect from it. Densitaria will support the means tested welfare programs that have been called “welfare” in American political discourse, but it will want to control their costs, and will want to put restrictions on things that damage the health of potential welfare clients, like smoking and getting fat. The Posturbians will favor the type of welfare that comes out of the New Deal, which in American political discourse has not been called “welfare”; non-means tested programs like Social Security and Medicare and other forms of social insurance, public libraries and schools, and other government programs available to all and not just the “poor.” The Republican Party could actually become representative of either camp, depending on how things go.
The Republican Party, as of 2014, could have become the representative of either camp, according to Lind. But with the appearance and rise of President Trump, that decision has now been made!
I would add that polls of Millennials seem to indicate that opposition to abortion and euthanasia continue to resonate with them, even as other forms of social conservatism, such as opposition to same sex marriage at civil law, fade. Pro-lifers will no longer be able to consider sexual abstinence as the only solution to unwanted pregnancy; they will tolerate contraception, especially Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives, or LARCs. I hope that pro-lifers will not automatically hook up with one of the two camps but will operate in both. But since Densitarians are so concerned with controlling the costs of welfare, Densitarians may be reluctant to accept restrictions on abortion and euthanasia.
Lind says “the property-owning majorities of Posturbia are likely to be more sensitive to restrictions on what property owners can do with their property” than Densitarians, who will mostly rent or live in condos anyhow, and largely live off Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate industries. I am not so sure. In most of Posturbia, as opposed to small towns or rural areas, “property values” are set not by what you can do with your property, but from what surrounds it; and because of this, and because of not wanting to be densified, the Posturbians will probably favor stringent regulations on the use of their neighbors’ property. Also, they will not be abandoning the automobile, but they will want restrictions on the use of land to keep too many other cars from crowding the roads that they use.
But not everything about the Posturbians will be restrictive. They are expected to be a lot more open to fracking and to other things that will enable them to have the affordable energy supplies that they need. I think the class divisions in Posturbia will be a little greater than Lind thinks; the 1% will probably not be there, but fair numbers of the top 20% will be there, and if not the poorest of the poor, fair numbers of the bottom 40%. I personally believe that class hatred in America is not between the poorest and the richest – class resentment tends to be directed mainly at the classes (or income brackets, often misunderstood by Americans to be classes) just above and below one’s own. The desire to “soak the rich”, except among the near-rich, arises not from resentment but from fantasy, the belief that “the rich” have enough resources to bear most of the burden of society without raising taxes on the rest. They do not, although I admit they have more than they used to.
I’m not sure where I would end up in such an alignment. My preference will be swayed most by which alternative is better for the poor and for the marginalized among us.
Howard Ahmanson of Fieldstead and Company, a private management firm, has been interested in these issues for many years.
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I do not know the real
I do not know the real definition of social conservatism. But I feel that we are losing rather than achieving anything. Conservatism might be essential.
Lind is wrong
There is so much wrong with Mr. Lind's thesis that it's hard to know where to begin. But I'll begin with birth control.
People who use birth control have fewer children than people who don't. Thus the secular liberals--who Mr. Lind believes will dominate both the liberaltarian and populiberal camps--will suffer demographic decline over the next few decades. People who don't use birth control--Mormons, Orthodox Jews, Amish, "Duck Dynasty" Christians, etc.--will increasingly dominate. So Mr. Lind is wrong that America will become increasingly secular.
The contrast isn't so much between densitaria and posturbia. Instead, it's between Utah and Vermont--the two states with the highest and lowest fertility rates, respectively. For example, the Orthodox Jews of Kiryas Joel grew (by natural increase) from 5,000 in 1950 to 30,000 today. On that trend, in another 30 years the group will number 60,000, or by far the largest, single voting bloc in Orange County, NY.
I mostly agree.
"People who use birth control have fewer children than people who don't. Thus the secular liberals--who Mr. Lind believes will dominate both the liberaltarian and populiberal camps--will suffer demographic decline over the next few decades. People who don't use birth control--Mormons, Orthodox Jews, Amish, "Duck Dynasty" Christians, etc.--will increasingly dominate. So Mr. Lind is wrong that America will become increasingly secular."
I mostly agree. Though I think you have the order backwards. People who are secular use birth control. People who are religious have a religiously inspired obligation, to reproduce. So they do use birth control, but only as a means to family planning, not to circumvent it entirely as the secular do.
The Secular believe that this life is all there is. And if this life is all there is, then this life is where you create your heaven, since there won't be that possibility awaiting you when you pass away. Very often, when pursuing heaven on earth, children get in the way of that. They very often keep you from going out and having the fun that you want, from going out when you want, from traveling when you want, from having as many sexual partners as you want, or from fully devoting yourself to a passion or a career.
By the way, I think Mr. Kotkin himself has also argued that it will be the Religious who inherit this country too. And that the secular will take all their dumb ideas to the grave. But not before having brainwashed a large swath of society, and breaking every branch of the tree of society, on their way down.