The Pity Party (38 page)

38.
   
“Slate Votes,”
Slate
, November 5, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/slate_votes_2012_why_we_chose_obama_over_romney_stein_and_johnson.html.

39.
   
Shelby Steele,
White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era
(New York: HarperCollins, 2006), pp. 55, 58.

40.
   
John McWhorter, “Don't Ignore Race in Christopher Lane's Murder,”
Time
, August 22, 2013, http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/22/viewpoint-dont-ignore-race-in-christopher-lanes-murder/#ixzz2ck7IBhCB.

41.
   
Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith, “Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980–2008,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, November 2011, NCJ 236018, pp. 5, 10, 12, 16.

42.
   
McWhorter, “Don't Ignore Race in Christopher Lane's Murder,” comment by “fmoolten.”

43.
   
Corey Williams, “It's Not My Fault You Paid $250,000 and I Paid a Buck,” Associated Press, February 28, 2011, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41810267/ns/us_news-life/#.UcCXE-uE4XX.

44.
   
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “A Rising Tide Lifts Mostly Yachts,”
Atlantic
, September 17, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/a-rising-tide-lifts-mostly-yachts/279769/.

45.
   
Thomas Sowell,
Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?
(New York: William Morrow, 1984), pp. 20–21.

46.
   
Thomas Sowell,
Intellectuals and Race
(New York: Basic Books, 2013), pp. 10–18.

47.
   
Nicholas D. Kristof, “A Failed Experiment,”
New York Times
, November 21, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/opinion/kristof-a-failed-experiment.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0.

48.
   
Allison Benedikt, “If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person,”
Slate
, August 29, 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/private_school_vs_public_school_only_bad_people_send_their_kids_to_private.html.

49.
   
Matthew Yglesias, “It's Time to Tax America's Prep Schools,”
Slate
, August 29, 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/08/29/tax_private_schools.html.

50.
   
John Cook, “There's a Simple Solution to the Public Schools Crisis,”
Gawker
, September 13, 2012, http://gawker.com/5943005/theres-a-simple-solution-to-the-public-schools-crisis.

51.
   
Al Baker, “Gifted, Talented, and Separated,”
New York Times
, January 13, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/education/in-one-school-students-are-divided-by-gifted-label-and-race.html?_r=0 .

52.
   
Ibid.

53.
   
Kaus, “Up from Altruism,” p. 17.

54.
   
Vincent M. Miles, “Old-Age Retirement Benefits,” speech delivered November 16, 1936, http://www.ssa.gov/history/miles.html.

55.
   
J. Douglas Brown, “The American Philosophy of Social Insurance,” speech delivered November 28, 1955, http://www.ssa.gov/history/brown2.html.

56.
   
Kaus, “Up from Altruism,” p. 18.

57.
   
“Democratic Party Platform of 1972,” July 10, 1972, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29605.

58.
   
“Democratic Party Platform of 2004,” July 26, 2004, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29613.

59.
   
Joshua Green, “The Angry Middle Class,”
Atlantic
, September 23, 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/09/the-angry-middle-class/63417/.

60.
   
Mark Schmitt, “If Liberals Want to Help the Poor, They Should Focus on the Middle Class,”
New Republic
, February 23, 2012, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/100895/foreclosure-middle-class-economy-jobs-housing-crisis.

61.
   
Julia B. Isaacs, Isabel V. Sawhill, and Ron Haskins,
Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2008), pp. 15–17, 22.

62.
   
Scott Winship, “Our Misleading Obsession with Growth Rates,”
Breakthrough Journal
, Winter 2013, http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/issue-3/the-affluent-economy/#.

63.
   
Nicholas Lemann, “Stressed Out in Suburbia,”
Atlantic
, November 1989, p. 42.

64.
   
Matt Bai,
The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics
(New York: Penguin, 2007), p. 44.

65.
   
Lee Siegel, “Thank You for Sharing,”
New Republic
, June 5, 2006, http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=15d21968-03ba-437e-a5fd-f2712b592b21.

66.
   
Pamela Haag, “Death by Treacle,”
American Scholar
, Spring 2012, http://theamericanscholar.org/death-by-treacle/.

67.
   
Lawrence A. Greenfield, “Prison Sentences and Time Served for Violence,” U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, April 1995, NCJ-153858.

68.
   
Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Sense and Sensibility,”
New Republic
, September 30, 1996, p. 29.

69.
   
Jonathan Haidt,
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
(New York: Pantheon, 2012), pp. 85–86.

70.
   
Ibid., p. 91.

71.
   
Garrison Keillor,
Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America
(New York: Viking, 2004), p. 20.

72.
   
Dan Savage, “Better Dead Than Red,”
Portland Mercury
, November 11, 2004, http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/better-dead-than-red/Content?oid=32491.

73.
   
Jane Smiley, “The Unteachable Ignorance of the Red States,”
Slate
, November 4, 2004, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2004/11/why_americans_hate_democratsa_dialogue_8.html.

74.
   
Christopher Lasch,
The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy
(New York: Norton, 1995).

75.
   
Sohrab Ahmari, “The Crisis of American Self-Government,”
Wall Street Journal
, November 30, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323751104578149292503121124.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop.

76.
   
Walter Russell Mead, “Do Soldiers Drink Tea?,”
American Interest
, February 21, 2010, http://www.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/02/21/tea-party-off-the-rails-or-straight-to-the-top/.

77.
   
“How the Race Was Won,”
USA Today
, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/graphics/elections-2012/how-race-was-won/index.html.

1.
     
1988 Democratic Party Platform, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29609.

2.
     
Joe Klein, “Time to Ax Public Programs That Don't Yield Results,”
Time
, July 7, 2011, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2081778,00.html.

3.
     
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Press Office, “HHS Accelerates Head Start Quality Improvements and Submits Impact Study on 2002–2003 Head Start Programs,” January 13, 2010, http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/01/20100113a.html.

4.
     
Andrew J. Coulson, “Head Start: A Tragic Waste of Money,”
New York Post
, January 28, 2010, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/head_start_tragic_waste_of_money_L7V5dJC333RDC8QT8UEWaO.

5.
     
Lindsey Burke, “Head Start's Sad and Costly Secret—What Washington Doesn't Want You to Know,” Heritage Foundation, January 14, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2013/1/head-starts-sad-and-costly-secret-what-washington-doesnt-want-you-to-know.

6.
     
See, for example, “Democratic Party Platform of 2000,” August 14, 2000, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29612.

7.
     
Barack Obama, “Remarks at the Yeadon Regional Head Start Center in Yeadon, Pennsylvania,” November 8, 2011, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=97012.

8.
     
James Fallows, “Markets Can't Do Everything,”
Washington Monthly
, January/February 1996, p. 27.

9.
     
Alan Wolfe, “Why Conservatives Can't Govern,”
Washington Monthly
, July/August 2006, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.wolfe.html.

10.
   
Mark Hemingway, “Mitch the Knife,”
National Review
, June 8, 2009.

11.
   
Daniel Shapiro,
Is the Welfare State Justified?
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 5.

12.
   
Joe Klein, “A Feast for Fat Cats, A Project for Liberals,”
Time
, June 13, 2011, http://swampland.time.com/2011/06/13/a-feast-for-fat-cats-a-project-for-liberals/.

13.
   
Harry G. Frankfurt,
On Bullshit
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 16, 18, 47.

14.
   
Matthew B. Crawford, “The Case for Working with Your Hands,”
New York Times Magazine
, May 24, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all.

15.
   
Frankfurt,
On Bullshit
, pp. 33–37.

16.
   
Ibid., p. 65.

17.
   
Siegel, “Thank You for Sharing.”

18.
   
Daniel J. Boorstin,
The Americans: The National Experience
(New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 296–97.

19.
   
Frankfurt,
On Bullshit
, p. 67.

20.
   
Michael Kelly, “The President's Past,”
New York Times Magazine
, July 31, 1994.

21.
   
Obama, “Remarks at the Yeadon Regional Head Start Center.”

22.
   
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Oglethorpe University,” May 22, 1932, in
The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt
, vol. 1,
1928–32
(New York: Random House, 1938), p. 639, http://newdeal.feri.org/speeches/1932d.htm.

23.
   
Nathan Glazer, quoted in Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty
(New York: Free Press, 1969), p. 5.

24.
   
Joe Klein, “Obama's Head Start Reform,”
Time
, November 8, 2011, http://swampland.time.com/2011/11/08/obamas-head-start-reform/.

25.
   
E. J. Dionne Jr., “The Noise Around Obamacare,”
Washington Post
, November 3, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-jr-the-noise-around-obamacare/2013/11/03/1b6f8e6c-4352-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html.

26.
   
Franklin Foer, “Obamacare's Threat to Liberalism,”
New Republic
, November 24, 2013, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115695/obamacare-failure-threat-liberalism.

27.
   
José Ortega y Gasset,
Meditations on Hunting
, trans. Howard B. Wescott (New York: Scribner, 1972), pp. 110–11.

28.
   
“Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Jay Carney,” July 22, 2012, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=101546.

29.
   
Barack Obama, “The President's News Conference,” December 19, 2012, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=102775.

30.
   
Margaret Talbot, “Shots in the Dark,”
New Yorker
, April 15, 2013, http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/04/15/130415taco_talk_talbot.

31.
   
Barack Obama, “Remarks at the Sandy Hook Interfaith Prayer Vigil in Newtown, Connecticut,” December 16, 2012, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=102767.

32.
   
Barack Obama, “Remarks on Senate Action on Gun Control Legislation,” April 17, 2013, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=103499.

33.
   
Barack Obama, “The President's News Conference,” February 9, 2009, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=85728; Michael D. Shear and Anne E. Kornblut, “Obama Paints America's Choice as His Plan or Nothing,”
Washington Post
, February 11, 2009, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-02-11/politics/36818709_1_stimulus-package-george-w-bush-president-obama; Helene Cooper, “Some Obama Enemies Are Made Totally of Straw,”
New York Times
, May 24, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/us/politics/24straw.html.