The High Cost of Luxury Beliefs | Peter Boghossian & Rob Henderson
The High Cost of Luxury Beliefs | Peter Boghossian & Rob Henderson
Writer Rob Henderson coined the term “luxury beliefs,” an apt description of empty slogans that signal high status among the elite. Proclaiming “Defund the police!” may confer status on students at Columbia, but do they understand the cost such a policy would inflict on the poor? (Spoiler Alert: No.)
Rob attended Yale, earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Cambridge, and served in the Air Force. His research interests include social cognition, prosocial behavior, and moral development and reasoning. He is a writer for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Quillette, and Substack and a Founding Faculty Fellow at the University of Austin, Texas.
Rob’s memoir will be released in February 2024, titled Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.
Trans and woke ideologies have convinced me of the existence of good and evil, and a Divine – that manifests in so many ways: a newborn infant and babies, a voice like Jonathan Antonie's, some works of art. An ideology that wants to mutilate perfectly physically healthy children is the definition of evil. That evil and the ugliness of destroying wholeness and beauty, desecrating priceless art (I'm thinking the tomato soup!), and creating chaos cuts at the core of one's being. This is not about politics, about Right and Left. It's about Right and Wrong.
I want to push back on Peter’s position on abolishing police.
Firstly, I want to say that I DO vote: Every. Single. Time. And that’s important, because there are many people in each city who consistently vote, but whose candidates are not elected. And you may say, “Well, that’s democracy”, (and it is, to some extent) BUT it’s also true that people elected to office should serve everyone they represent, not only those who voted for them. And you may say “OK, you can move away if you don’t like a city without police”. But can I? No. With that laissez fair approach, I can’t afford to move away because as soon as the abolition of the police is announced, property values will tank, which will prevent me from being able to afford to move elsewhere. Most people have a significant amount of their total assets tied up in their home. Why should those of us who were outvoted by stupidity be held hostage (literally!) because of other people’s luxury beliefs? And finally, the highest turnout voters are exactly those to whom the term “luxury beliefs” applies, whereas working class (esp. Whites/Hispanics) are generally low-turnout... Which may go a long way to explain why our political system is so messed up.
I live in a city with a Soros funded progressive prosecutor. Before the election, I read that person’s policy document, and as a lawyer, I was terrified. [Obviously, I voted for the other candidate!]. It was clear from their statement that, if they were elected, the penalties for criminal behavior in our city would be abolished or reduced, and crime would rise (which it has). When I tried to explain the policy statement to non-lawyers, they either would not, or could not, understand that those policies would likely lead to increased crime and violence. That’s why Soros’ organizations have targeted prosecutorial elections: people simply do not understand our adversarial legal system -- so they don’t think it’s a problem to essentially elect a defense attorney as prosecutor. In fact, that would be a great question for you to ask in one of your videos. I would be willing to bet that less than 10% of the population would understand that having progressive (pro-criminal) prosecutors is a form of systemic dysfunction.