David French has a lot to say, none of it flattering, about a J.D. Vance interview on YouTube. Given my interest in all things J.D., I naturally took his advice and watched almost all of it. On balance, I would say you needn’t bother.
French is particularly critical of Vance’s comment that right-wing neoliberalism made sense in the 1980s because Christianity was still powerful enough at that time to put guardrails on its social impacts. French notes that Vance is too young to remember what the times were really like; it was, after all, the era of Gordon Gekko. Crime, drug use, and divorce rates were much higher then than they are now. Vance’s false sense of nostalgia about the strength of Christian guardrails during his infancy simply has no basis in reality.
What Vance really wants to do, as so many conservative politicians have in the past, is to make war on the 1960s. If he wants to take us back to the Godly Society, he needs to cite the 1950s, when the top marginal income tax rates were vastly higher than they are now, instead of the 1980s.