Near the end of an Ezra Klein podcast, at about the one hour and twelve minute mark, when asked to name three books that have influenced him, Yuval Levin lists works by those three authors. He is careful to say that Specialization and Trade is not in the same class as the other two, but still. . .
My favorite part of the podcast begins just before the 18-minute mark, when Levin recites his view of how a typical Baby Boomer would have experienced the decades starting from the 1950s. I think his take is both accurate and interesting.
Klein’s response is also interesting. He says that what Levin has just presented is the white male view of history, and his generation is more attuned to women, ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities. I think as a representation of Klein’s generation, that, too, is spot on. I get the same take from my daughters.
Previous generations of young people were insufferable because they thought that they invented sex. Klein’s generation is insufferable because they think they invented social morality.
Given that Yuval Levin was born in 1977 in Israel, I would take his description of how US Baby Boomers experienced the 1950’s and on with some skepticism.
Funny, there is no “white male view” of cancer metastasis, etc. I just don’t come at everything from an interpretive framework and “yeah you do!” doesn’t make it true. My view of history is “well, that happened.”
The typical boomer *is* a white man. In the 50’s the country was over 85% non Hispanic white, and roughly 50/50 M-F. And without listening to the podcast I’d bet what Levin described applies best to a married couple.
Probably the worst thing about people remember the 1950s is we all assume everybody lived like Leave It Beaver style and not as the Ralph Kradems from the Honeymooners (with kids). Those were in a sense boom times compared the 1930/1940s, but still the average house was ~1,500 square feet and most families had modest incomes. (Also check out the beginning of the Deer Hunter for terms of the white working class lifestyles.) Additionally, that certainly was not the reality of the South even for white populations most of whom were poor as well.
Ok, but here’s another statistic I’d like to see a chart of (insert bleg). What fraction of a years 18 year old were raised from birth to maturity by the same married parents, and broken down by the usual social science subpopulations? I’m confident that the line points way down from 1946 to 2016.
That’s more important than square feet. One isn’t being falsely nostalgic about some fictional Leave It To Beaver era to assert that critical foundations of traditional family and community have eroded significantly. Upper Classes use their smarts, wealth, and conscientiousness to buffer the gales, and either hew to the old ways in practice while preaching non-judgmental tolerance for any ‘alternative lifestyle’, or by discovery of novel patterns of culture, new social equilibria that are, alas, only sustainable by a top fraction of folks.
What is really insufferable about Kline is that evidence-free reflex to imply that whatever has been lost is somehow more than compensated for by what, in his view, has been gained by the crusades for his own dogmas.
That’s like one of those old Communist jokes that, yes comrade, we are all starving, but at least we are all doing so equally, and there are no evil rich capitalists to oppress us now.