Re: Charleston
[Caleb Stegall  03/14 12:11 PM]

Stuart Buck emails me this:

Podhoretz says: "People live where in some proximity to where they work, and they want as much home as they can afford. They're willing to brave traffic and, yes, even some appalling aesthetics to have the kind of home they want. Once again we see the key contradiction between the contributors to this blog and the vast majority of ordinary Americans. You guys live ideologically."

*Everybody* lives ideologically. Unless you make decisions at random, you're going to live your life according to your ideas about what is important.

For some, the ideology is, "Get as big a house as we can. If it's far from where I work (hence less family time due to commuting); if it puts us in a stressful situation due to the size of the mortgage — all of that is of no concern. It's big. The granite counters will impress guests, if we ever have any. And the neighborhood is prestigious. That's what matters."

And for some the ideology is, "Time with family is more important than getting as much home as we can afford. That means being openminded towards older neighborhoods that are closer to my workplace, prestigious or not."

Or perhaps the ideology is, "I want a more genuine neighborhood. A real community is much harder where most of the people are never home (always working or commuting), and are just living there temporarily until they find something better — another neighborhood, or a job in another city. I want a neighborhood where the residents have been and will be there more permanently."

None of these values are absolute, of course, and they might come into conflict: Maybe the closest neighborhood is the most expensive or doesn't feel like a genuine community. But it's always a good thing to search our hearts and ask whether we are truly living our lives with the proper emphasis on family and community, or whether we are too often motivated by greed and prestige.

Podhoretz, however, effectively claims that it is "the sheerest snobbery" even to ask whether some people value greed and prestige too highly. This description is bizarrely Orwellian.