\u201cthe Poverty Pulse poll taken by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development asked the general public: \u2018How would you describe being poor in the U.S.?\u2019 The overwhelming majority of responses focused on homelessness, hunger or not being able to eat properly, and not being able to meet basic needs.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here, however, is that the actual CCHD document says about the question they quoted:<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing poor in the United States is described by low-income people in terms of not having things (a home, job, food, money, health care), but also in emotional terms. Housing continues to be a significant determinant of being poor. Almost one quarter (23%) of low income respondents say that not having a home or adequate housing is what is meant by being poor in the U.S. Lack of jobs and money are also high on the list. But many respondents continue to describe being poor in terms of how they feel. They describe being poor in the U.S. as depressing, degrading, being looked down on, ignored, hopeless, lonely, powerless. For many, being poor has less to do with what they do or do not have than with how they are treated\u2026.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The question \u201cHow would you describe being poor in the U.S.?\u201d was not asked of the general public, as HF claims, but of poor people. In other words, the Heritage Foundation told me \u201cthis is what the American public means when they say \u2018poverty,\u2019 as opposed to what the government calls \u2018poverty.'\u201d But the CCHD isn\u2019t saying that at all. They\u2019re saying \u201cthis is how poor people themselves describe their personal experience of being poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is simply amazing to me that anyone is taking this study even remotely seriously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I had not heard of this study, but then I\u2019ve been underwater with work and have missed a lot. It is, alas, part of the general trend of the Thing that Used to be Conservatism that it now regards \u201cfacts\u201d as more or less malleable props for maintaining Unit Cohesion and not as things which should guide our prudential judgements based on reality. And it certain has little interest in facts when they favor the claims of the poor and weak on the consciences of the rich and powerful. So this sort of manipulation, while sad, is not surprising. The wondrous thing about our post-modern culture is that even conservatives have almost completely adopted the Identity Politics methods that so characterized the Left in the 80s. What matters, for huge swaths of the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism is not what is said, but who is saying it. For many people, it is sufficient argument to say, \u201cWell, the CCHD! There you are! Buncha damn libruls!\u201d to prove that, somehow, the Heritage Foundation\u2019s twisting of the CCHD analysis is \u201cmore accurate\u201d than the analysis they are twisting. Increasingly, many in the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism navigate reality not by asking, \u201cWhat is true?\u201d but by asking \u201cWhere does my kinship lie? Who are the foreigners to my tribe? Who are the Tribal Elders and what do they allow me to think?\u201d It reminds me ever so much of the Democrats back in the 80s with their stupid identity politics.<\/p>\n
And not just me. Here\u2019s a reader of my blog, an intelligent and decent fellow hailing from what I think of as the Sensible Old Left as distinct from the Crazy Left, concerned about the weak and dispossessed as a Catholic should be, not ideological and willing to engage with conservatives and see the merits of their side of things. He writes:<\/p>\n
I started reading conservative blogs to resume what had been a strong suit for me in the past-reading conservative literature, and explaining the opposition to left-wing folks. (And again, Obama is no where close to left wing.) The right wing since the late 1980\u2019s had been a fascinating read, with a lively intellectual life while the left decided to just focus on emoting over thinking. <\/p>\n
The right wing had discipline in thought and message (it may argue within its clan but it presented a unified front to the opposition) and dominated government since Reagan.<\/p>\n
This collapsed somewhere around 2005. Conservativism was also its height- it had control of nearly all arms of the US government and had created tax\/fiscal\/regulatory policies that would shape the nation in a way the New Deal had shaped the nation for decades. It structured the Defense Department\/Intelligence apparatus\/Homeland security infrastructure in a way that the 1950\u2019s shaped the next two decades of the Cold War. It had the NYTimes promoting its war in Iraq just as it wanted it too, and one of its reporter went to jail protecting a conservative source. It was the right wing\u2019s world.<\/p>\n
Intellectually, the right wing had begun to cease deliberate thinking and instead developed philosophies of justification of the GWBush years, while talk radio began to feed the serotonin-starved limbic systems of the Red States. Since then \u201canger\u201d and paranoia replace thoughtful considered speech. Gone is the more interesting intellectual development of thought. <\/p>\n
Part of this problem stems from the same group that promoted its development. The right wing think tanks need to fund their stables of highly-paid conservative super-stars and the think tank funders are not interested in hearing \u201cthought\u201d that develops into something like Alan Simpson\u2019s more recent interview in which he thinks their needs to be a taxation policy that supports our infrastructure, which currently at 15% of the GDP is inadequate. I point out often that Australia is has revenues around 30% of its GDP and has a healthier economy, but other nation\u2019s successes or failures seem to be ignored by American exceptionalists, left or right. The think tanks want to fund viewpoints, not thought anymore. This may be a flip-flopping of right vs. left, with left wing periodicals doing more thoughtful \u201cwork\u201d finally. <\/p>\n
In short, the right wing is where the left wing was in the 1980\u2019s- angry, splintered and eating each other. The left wing at that time had splintered into a dozen affinity groups with environmentalists vs. poverty-advocates vs. feminists vs. african-american advocates vs. civil rights groups, etc. There was no party discipline and little thought.<\/p>\n
Catholic conservative thought has moved past orthodoxy=Republicanism, but just barely. This however, has created a series of litmus tests for the conservative Catholic, who for years ran with the CINO title for anyone who voted Democrat. The conservative Catholic movement is fractured also, and the Colorado mess in which 3 different bishops (or in the case of Chaput, archbishops) all insisted in three varying ways which vote for whom would put someone in the confessional demonstrated this. (This has done nothing for conservative Catholicism which has been part of the back-bone of pro-life activities in the US.) Conservative Catholicism has become increasingly rigid too, harkening back to an era (usually the 1940\u2019s and 1950\u2019s) and a series of reputed virtues in that era that never existed. Couple that with its disappointment of Benedict 16th, who has turned out to be closer in thought and theology to churchgoing Commonweal readers than to George Weigel, and one finds conservative Catholics unmoored, seeking new sources of \u201cdisciplinarians,\u201d since its presumed Vatican Dobermann turned out to be a happy, bouncy sheepdog.<\/p>\n
Conservative Catholic thought is now, in general (I am not speaking of anyone specifically or you at all, just in general), reactionary, \u201ctouchy,\u201d and rigidly incapable of entertaining arguments or thoughts beyond its own reflexive stances. As such, folks like Andrew Bacevich will find more of a future on the pages of Commonweal, than in NRO or First Things.<\/p>\n
This is just what it looks like from the outside looking into conservative writing, thinking, and commentary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I find it hard to argue with a lot of this. Is anybody else feeling the constriction and ossification and growth of factionalism and party spirit?<\/p>\n