I was reading an interview with Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve and Coming Apart, done by James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute at their website AEIdeas. I don't agree with everything Murray writes - his guaranteed annual income, for example - but much of his work is rock solid.
Pethokoukis asks Murray:
Since you’ve written “Coming Apart” do you know of anybody one might call a “one percenter” who has decided to end their isolation? Have you gotten any feedback like that?Murray answers:
I was speaking to some students at Harvard, and this was at a dinner that was being sponsored by a couple who were in the room, who were one percenters. So I went over to introduce myself and to chat with them, at which point they said to me, well “‘Coming Apart’ really changed our lives. We decided to move out of Greenwich, we moved to this small town, and got a pickup truck.” And my face sort of went white, and I wanted to say to them, “It was only a book,” and it turned out that they really loved it out there.The other DrC and I are not one percenters but we live well. As retired professors, we're clearly members of Murray's "cognitive elite."
Almost thirty years ago while still working we moved to horse country acreage, bought a pickup truck, and have loved life outside the cognitive elite bubble. Our pickup - the fifth we've owned - is my favorite vehicle.
We spend 2-3 months a year living in RV parks, where the modal campers are successful blue collar workers. We have the education, the income, and the professional achievements to be members of the cognitive elite, but we don't share their stilted leftist values.
Rural America is where the real people live; it's where we spend nearly all of our time. Like Murray's one percenters, we love it "out there," as Murray admits he also does.
