Let me reflect on the two that seem to me most fundamental-marriage and books. As wealthy and sophisticated Americans show signs of becoming a kind of self-perpetuating “cognitive elite,” the lives of members of the lower part of our middle class become increasingly difficult or even pathological.īig Think essayist Pamela Haag very incisively described 15 purported human goods Americans used to share in common that are now becoming “elite customs.” They’re obviously not all equally good, and one or two, in my view, aren’t good at all. And we’re particularly concerned about the breakdown of what can loosely be called our common middle-class culture. We’re not that obsessed with the bare fact of economic inequality, but we are concerned about decreasing mobility. One thing that distinguishes us conservatives from libertarians is that we are actually worried about growing inequality in America.
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We can at least say that one sign of personal impoverishment is the inability to experience the emotional elevation that comes through reading “real books” in our free time. It has been through books that Americans have been infused with what loosely can be called a “common culture,” a common way of experiencing our world and our place in it.