From yesterday’s Tom Woods Letter:
Some people say a lack of jobs or insufficient government assistance accounts for why success eludes some people.
What’s usually overlooked are the deeply dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors among so many of America’s poor.
I’m “blaming the victim,” some will say. But when people are consistently surly, late for work, or stealing employer property to sell on eBay, is it really so wrong to observe that this might not be the kind of work ethic that will get them ahead?
J.D. Vance, author of the unlikely bestseller Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, speaks from his own personal experience growing up in a family whose roots were in the Appalachia region of Kentucky. (Weekend after next, Vance’s book will debut at #9 on the New York Times bestseller list.)
A key lesson: the problems such people and communities contend with aren’t likely to be solved by government programs. Far more than economics is at work in the pathologies Vance describes.
I stayed up pretty late last night reading Hillbilly Elegy. Vance, now 31, grew up in a household notable for addiction, physical and emotional abuse, material deprivation, and a revolving door of father figures.
At one point, Vance literally had to run away from his mother, who he thought was going to kill him. He finally managed to reach a complete stranger who protected him.
Even his grandmother, who encouraged him to focus on school and ignore people who would hold him back, at times reflected the worst of her culture.
She told Vance’s grandfather that if he ever came home drunk again, she’d kill him.
He did, so while he was asleep on the couch, she poured lighter fluid on him and set him on fire.
(Someone else put out the fire and he lived, but that’s still a bad idea.)
The whole story, not just of Vance and his family but also of their neighbors and their community at large, is something Americans ought to come to terms with, especially if they think helping such people is a matter of a few voucher programs.
It’s going to be a lot tougher than the typical sociology textbook implies.
Vance’s point is not to condemn or ridicule these people, for whom he retains a great affinity, and his tone is never condescending. His treatment is far too subtle and humane to make heroes or demons out of the people he chronicles.
Indeed, it would have been easy for this book to do nothing but repeat stereotypes. And Vance has no intention of doing so.
You’ll kick yourself for missing this, so click here:
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