Since his selection as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance has developed a reputation for being somewhat eccentric.
the news essay And social media is similarly puzzled by Vance’s strange comments: His belief that “Childless cat lady“Running America into the ground, her Hostility to no-fault divorce, and his choice to describe a neo-monarchist blogger as a significant intellectual influence. Even Democratic politicians are joining the bill with Illinois Governor JB Pritzker CNN says That he “has a weird view of America, really.”
An example of Vance’s alleged weirdness That went viral – his proposal that parents of under-18 children should have an additional vote – makes it particularly clear. This helps explain where Vance’s ideas actually came from and why they became such a problem for the Trump-Vance ticket.
Specifically, it makes clear that Vance’s intellectual disdain for queer segments of the conservative elite has led him to embrace a politics that is alien to the vast American middle.
“Additional vote for parents” came up A 2021 speech Sponsored by Institute of Intercollegiate Studies, a conservative organization that encourages college students to engage with right-wing ideas. About halfway through the speech, Vance said he wanted to “target the left, especially the childless left.”
He knows those comments will be controversial: He says “I’m going to get in trouble for this,” and then asks the hosts if he’s being recorded. But he went on to list prominent Democratic politicians who did not have children at the time — Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and then asks, “Why did we abandon the Democrat Party? Controlled by those who don’t have children?
Of course, it’s confusing: Harris has a stepmother and Buttigieg has one being a father From Vance’s comments. But the specific examples are less important than Vance’s general point, which is a moral one.
In his view, being a parent is the primary source of happiness and meaning in a person’s life, and those without children cannot be trusted to make decisions in the interest of society. Societies are good, to Vance, when they have children; If they don’t have enough, they rot.
So what to do about it? Vance suggests borrowing ideas from Hungary’s dictatorial Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has boosted Hungary’s birth rate. A centerpiece of his policy agenda. But Vance also worries that a Hungarian model may not be possible because families suffer from a “structural democratic disadvantage”: children cannot vote. So, he concludes, we should let parents vote for them.
“Let’s give all the children of this country the vote and let the parents of this country control the vote,” he said.
This is an old concept called “Deny the voteNamed after the 20th century Hungarian demographer Paul Demeny (a vocal champion of the idea). Generally, the rationale for Demeny voting lies in fairness. Children are people who, like anyone else, deserve political representation. Because they lack the maturity to make informed choices about their interests, parents should vote for them — much in the same way they make decisions about children’s treatment or education. To understand how this logic works, I would recommend A recent paper by two law professors Harvard and Northwestern make the case at length.
But for Vance, the policy isn’t just about ensuring fairness for families: It’s about punishing childless adults. Vance Demeny sees voting as a tool for creating a two-tiered citizenship, where parents have more and better political representation than other adults.
“When you go to the polls in this country, in our democratic republic you have more power to speak — you should have more power than people who don’t have children,” she said. “If you don’t have a lot of investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t have nearly the same voice.”
This is not the language of a liberal seeking to expand the field of people whose interests are represented in the system for children. Vance’s defense of Demeney’s vote reveals a belief that those who are not like him, who do not share his values about parenting, are social unequals: non-participants in the political project of keeping America alive for generations, and therefore deserve to be targeted. Political discrimination.
In short, Vance wants to turn the law into a vehicle for hard-right morality legislation.
This is not being unfair to Vance: he clearly identifies as a “postliberal,” a school of thought that believes it is the government’s job to push people toward morally upright living defined in conservative religious terms. In particular, he cites Patrick Dennin—a Notre Dame professor and leading postliberal theorist—as a major influence. He spoke at the book release ceremony of Deen regime changeVance described himself as an “anti-establishment” politician—meaning that he aimed to act on Dennin’s call for a fundamental transformation of American politics along postmodern lines.
The problem is that few Americans are passively liberal, while many Americans are actively turned off by its right-wing moral paternalism. They see ideology at work and it hurts them, strange.
Vance, however, seems to believe wholeheartedly in their ideas, or at least believes it is advantageous to be seen as the successor champion in intra-GOP competition. In fact, it helped him become a vice-presidential candidate: Tucker Carlson, the most prominent voice of liberalism in the media, Vance played a central role in pushing Trump to make the choice.
But whether out of earnest conviction or political opportunism, Vance finds himself trapped in speaking the language of postliberals. He shares their preoccupations and fears, their philosophies and ideals. His world is a handful of intellectuals whose values and thinking are in stark contrast to those of Middle America.
The great conservative populist Asha talks like a very nice intellectual elite creature – and Voters don’t like it.
