I just finished reading two books. The first was Bill Buckley’s “Up from Liberalism,” which was his critique of the Liberalism of the 1950’s and his staunch defense of Conservatism. I loved it, in part because Buckley was a master of language, in part because he infuriated Liberals, and in part because I believe in many of the Conservative principles he advanced.
The book’s last paragraph beautifully expresses how
I feel about individual liberty – “I will not willingly cede more power to
anyone…I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it
away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an
obedient man, but obedient to God.”
The other book, J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” has
had an even more profound impact on my thinking.
Vance is an anomaly. He was born Kentucky coal mining country and
raised by his grandparents in Middletown, Ohio. His early life was chaotic. His
mother was addicted to drugs and a series of men who drifted in and out of her,
and his, life. She was sometimes abusive. The Kentucky and Ohio landscapes of
his youth were in the throes of a downward spiral. The once proud coal country
of Kentucky and southern Ohio had been decimated. Unemployment, drug addiction,
and perpetual government dependence had become the norms.
Yet, somehow, Vance escaped that fate. “Hillbilly
Elegy” is the story of a man who clawed his way from desperate circumstances to
a law degree from Yale and a budding career as an author and contributing
opinion writer at the New York Times.
How did he do it?
While he was brutally honest about his family’s
problems, he also talked openly of his love for his mother and her love for
him. He heaped pages and pages of praise on his grandparents, whom he
affectionately called “Mamaw” and “Papaw,” and the powerful impact they had on
his life. While they were often crude and sometimes violent, Vance credits them
with teaching him the value of hard work and education that opened the doors of
opportunity for him.
So, J.D. Vance has clawed his way out of dire
circumstances. He’s proud of his hillbilly roots. He’s not bitter, but he still
casts a wary eye on elites and politicians, as he well should. They all too
often have this nasty habit C.S. Lewis’s master demon, Screwtape, described as “an
ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their
fellow men.”
Vance and I come from different parts of the
country, but there are some common threads in our respective experiences. My
father was a hardworking man, a chipper (ice man), by trade. He was also a
roaring alcoholic. He died when I was six. My mother was an uneducated
immigrant from Newfoundland. When my father died, she had a complete nervous
breakdown and was institutionalized for a couple of years, which meant my
brother, sister, and I became wards of the state during that time. Somehow,
propelled by her love for us, she clawed her way past shock treatments and God
knows what else to bring us back together. For years after that our lives were
lived in tenements or government housing projects, under the ever-watchful eye
of welfare department bureaucrats.
All these years later, I occasionally find it hard
to believe we’ve done as well as we have.
Vance is quite charitable when it comes to his views
on elites. I wish I could say that, but I can’t. I don’t like them and I don’t
like being around them. I don’t feel comfortable in their worlds. I feel far
more at home being around blue collar workers than I do being around movers and
shakers. I prefer the company of the powerless to schmoozing with the powerful.
I guess you can take the boy out of the tenements
and housing projects, but you can’t take the tenements and housing projects out
of the boy.
In his New York Times column this morning, Vance
wrote about Hillary Clinton’s recent comment about “baskets of deplorables.” It
was a very revealing Freudian slip. She later tried to temper her remark,
claiming that she didn’t mean to vilify millions of Donald Trump supporters or
other Americans who aren’t racists, bigots, homophobes, or xenophobes. But, the
damage had been done. Hillary’s contempt for millions of her fellow citizens
and her own brand of bigotry were exposed.
Vance finished by suggesting Hillary Clinton and her
elite friends consider Jesus’ words about specks and planks (Matthew 7:3-5).
It was good advice. We Conservatives and Donald
Trump’s “delporables” have our blind spots and prejudices, but so do Hillary
and her fellow elites. Maybe it’s time for them to concentrate on their own
sins rather than ours.
