Rob Henderson – The Cost of Luxury Beliefs
Episode description
PREORDER Glenn's memoir, LATE ADMISSIONS: CONFESSIONS OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393881349
0:00 What makes an “elite”?
4:37 Rob’s very rough early childhood
7:39 Rob’s experience with foster care and adoption
12:35 Why Rob joined the Air Force
17:23 The uses of military discipline
22:15 A 25-year-old military vet freshman at Yale
24:55 Luxury beliefs and cultural capital
29:56 Who bears the cost of defunding the police?
35:43 Two-parent households for me but not for thee
40:59 Revealed preferences and implicit understanding
46:57 Interclass resentment as a political weapon
52:45 How Rob became both the “token liberal” and the “token conservative”
58:02 Rob: Poverty doesn’t necessarily generate social dysfunction
Recorded February 19, 2024
Links and Readings
Rob’s memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class
Rob’s Boston Globe op-ed, “The SAT is pathway to more college diversity, not less”
Rob’s WSJ piece, “‘Luxury Beliefs’ That Only the Privileged Can Afford”
Robert Putnam’s book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
Charles Murray’s book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010
Thorstein Veblen’s book, The Theory of the Leisure Class
Pierre Bourdieu’s book, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste
Michael Knox Beran’s book, Wasps: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy
Rob’s NYT op-ed, “Why Being a Foster Child Made Me a Conservative"
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