Quote of the Day (One More from Geoghegan)

"At the SPD headquarters, I met people on the left, the best and the brightest, who can at least think in this framework. They grasp what their job is: to protect the way of life of a largely high school-educated middle class. That way of life is what constitutes the crown jewels. The protection of the crown jewels is a fiduciary responsibility. I hate to say so, but Democrats and Kennedy School-types (with honorable exceptions) -- certainly Democratic politicians -- really do not think seriously about how, in a practical way, to raise the standard of living of non-college grad population, who happen to be, well, 73 percent of the adult population. Look, I like Larry Summers in some ways: at least he is wiling to blush about the shameful number of people we have locked up in prison. But he would never be in the SPD. He could never relate to the striking kids under twenty-seven rapping in German on YouTube. If I ask most Democrats and their think-tank minions how to help the middle class, they have no real answer except to tell them to go to college. But for most Americans that's no answer, so essentially we Democrats are telling them to pound sand. If they didn't go to college, their lives are over. ¶ And it is symptomatic that, when they look at Germany, everything that holds up the German middle-class way of life, the U.S. Democrats would tear down."

Thomas Geoghegan, Were You Born on the Wrong Content? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life. New York: The New Press, 2010. From chapter 6: "After the Krise"