I wonder if J. D. Vance is preparing to seek elective office. Read his introduction to the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Culture and Opportunity, reproduced at Daily Signal, of which this is a snippet:
We speak about education and workforce development, the skills gap, automation and offshoring, and trade deficits in part because these things are easier to measure. We can put a number on the time necessary to retrain a worker and the productivity gains of doing so.
It is harder to measure culture and how it affects the people who occupy it, and judging by much of our recent discourse, it is harder still to talk about culture.
But talk about it we must, because the evidence that culture matters should now overwhelm any suggestion to the contrary.
We know, thanks to the work of experts like Nadine Burke Harris, that childhood trauma and instability make it harder for children to concentrate at school, deal with conflict successfully, or form stable families themselves later on.
We know that two of the biggest factors driving regional differences in upward mobility are the prevalence of single-parent families and concentrated poverty, indicating that both family and neighborhood structure matter in the lives of our nation’s working class.
We know that declining participation in civic institutions like churches destroys social capital and eliminates pathways to the middle class in the process.
We know that the expectations that children have for themselves can drive their performance on standardized testing and a host of other endeavors.
Acknowledging these correlations does not discount the importance of a vibrant economy or wise public policy, but these realities should inform our debates about policy, both its promises and its limitations.
and tell me it doesn’t sound like it. While the sentiments expressed in it may be deemed “dog whistles” by some and even considered offensive in progressive enclaves in New York and San Francisco, they’re also probably popular far outside party Republican circles, especially among those who think they’re being ignored and left behind by the Creative Class.
Maybe he’s just one trick pony, reading the jacket of his book’s cover.
Social conservatives love his book. Provides for a lot of sympathy and empathy for poor white people who are OD’ing in record numbers. (Just found out that even in our county we are seeing about a a death a day. Had the drug people in to talk with my team and some new meds and treatments they will be introducing.)
Steve
I’ve never heard of him before or his book but I agree it sounds like something a budding candidate would write.