Maslow and the Culture Wars

Back, y'all!

Here's a post from Matt Yglesias:

[Many liberals subscribe to an image] of low-income people hoodwinked into backing the GOP by culture war rhetoric. But Andrew Gelman and his coauthors in the excellent Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State mount a huge pile of data to suggest that this isn’t the case. Overall, low income back strongly and consistently back Democratic candidates. Where you see culture war voting is among rich people. They explain this, plausibly, in terms of the fact that privileged people are able to do more to express their cultural preferences — both in terms of lifestyle and in terms of who they vote for. Poor people need to spend their money on stuff they need and cast their votes for practical reasons. But the well-off can afford to indulge their preferences about where to live, how to vacation, and what recreational pursuits to follow and divergent tastes in these matters continues into the voting booth.

Quite true. It's all about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - once you have the basics, you start to worry about more important stuff. In Maslow's classic formulation, once you satisfy your "security needs" - job, house, personal safety - you start to worry about "love and acceptance."

Poor people want security, but the Culture Wars are all about love and acceptance. Abortion is about sex - conservatives think that if they're scared of having a baby, girls won't be such sluts (and might get with responsible, hard-working conservative guys?). Nobody really thinks abortion is murder (well, almost nobody). It's about the sex. "Abstinence education" is the same thing - trying to get people to form families by taking away the lure of promiscuous single sex. It won't work, of course, but that never stopped anybody from trying.

The role of religion in the public sphere is also about sex, and about families. Religion is something that people believe puts a brake on sex and encourages family formation instead. Nobody cares if humans evolved from monkeys (well, almost nobody). But if by denying science, they can empower religion and encourage family-oriented lifestyles, plenty of people are willing to throw Darwin under the bus.

The Culture Wars are also about acceptance. Our country's cultural roots lie in all-Christian farming communities. Cheap gas and open space allowed us to preserve some elements of that culture in modern suburbia. But this is a country based on religious freedom, mobility, and immigration, three things that are putting more and more pressure on the white, Christian, traditional culture that formed a warm bubble of acceptance for millions of Americans. And when their bubble is under attack, people fight back.

But Matt Yglesias is right. Culture wars are a luxury that only the middle-class can afford. If we let the Culture Wars divide our country they way they're doing now, we may not have that luxury for very much longer.