JD Vance in The New Republic
On Tax Reform:
Tax "social justice" nonprofits, pay down their endowments
A principal target for GOP opponents of woke capital, Vance suggests, should be capital held by nonprofits like Harvard and the Ford Foundation "that are destroying our country." In a speech earlier this month before the conservative
Claremont Institute, Vance said, "All across the country we have nonprofits, big foundations, that are effectively social justice hedge funds." They should be forced to pay tax and to pay down more of their endowments, he said.
Source: The New Republic on 2022 Ohio Senate race
May 27, 2021
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: Vance explains the economically precarious white voter
J.D. Vance is the man of the hour, maybe the year. His memoir Hillbilly Elegy is a New York Times bestseller, acclaimed for its colorful and at times moving account of life in a dysfunctional clan of eastern Kentucky natives. It has received positive
reviews across the board, with the Times calling it "a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass." In the rise of Donald Trump, it has become a kind of Rosetta Stone for blue America to interpret that most mysterious of
species: the economically precarious white voter.Vance's influence has been everywhere this campaign season, shaping our conception of what motivates these voters. And it is already playing a role in how liberals are responding to Donald Trump's
victory in the presidential election, which was accomplished in part by a defection of downscale whites from the Democratic Party. Appalachia overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and Vance has since emerged as one of the media's favorite Trump explainers.
Source: The New Republic magazine on Hillbilly Elegy
Nov 17, 2016
On Government Reform:
No government solutions; stop blaming faceless companies
Vance isn't interested in government solutions. All hillbillies need to do is work hard: "Public policy can help," he writes, "but there is no government that can fix these problems for us--it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless
companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better."Set aside the anti-government bromides. There is a more sinister thesis at work here, one that dovetails with many liberal views of Appalachia and its problems. Vance assures readers
that an emphasis on Appalachia's economic insecurity is "incomplete" without a critical examination of its culture. His great takeaway from life in America's underclass is: Pull up those bootstraps. Don't question elites. Don't ask if they erred
by granting people mortgages and lines of credit they couldn't afford to repay. Don't call it what it is--corporate deception--or admit that it plunged this country into one of the worst economic crises it's ever experienced.
Source: The New Republic magazine on Hillbilly Elegy
Nov 17, 2016
On Welfare & Poverty:
We spend our way to the poorhouse
Hillbilly Elegy is little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class. Vance's central argument is that hillbillies themselves are to blame for their troubles. "Our religion has changed," he laments,
to a version "heavy on emotional rhetoric" and "light on the kind of social support" that he needed as a child. He also faults "a peculiar crisis of masculinity." This brave new world, in sore need of that old time religion and manly men, is apparently
to blame for everything from drug addiction to the region's economic crisis."We spend our way to the poorhouse," he writes. "We buy giant TVs and iPads thanks to high-interest credit cards. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more
spending money, and declare bankruptcy. Thrift is inimical to our being." And he isn't interested in government solutions. All hillbillies need to do is work hard, maybe do a stint in the military, and they can end up at Yale Law School like he did.
Source: The New Republic magazine on Hillbilly Elegy
Nov 17, 2016
Page last updated: Aug 06, 2024