JD Vance Quotes

As a teacher at my old high school told me recently, “They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves.

Trump's biggest failure as a political leader is that he sees the worst in people and he encourages the worst in people.

Progressive politics, it’s not about uplifting minorities, it’s not about healing our planet, it’s not about looking after the poor. Progressive politics is a language, a language used by our new oligarchy to do two things: On the one hand to rob the American people blind, and on the second hand to tell them to shut the hell up about it if they dare complain. That is the purpose of American progressive politics.

President Obama came on the scene right as so many people in my community began to believe that the modern American meritocracy was not built for them. We know we’re not doing well. We see it every day: in the obituaries for teenage kids that conspicuously omit the cause of death (reading between the lines: overdose), in the deadbeats we watch our daughters waste their time with. Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren’t. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we’re lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn’t be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it — not because we think she’s wrong but because we know she’s right.

The day I graduated from boot camp was the proudest of my life. An entire crew of hillbillies showed up for my graduation —

Did you see me on FOX Primetime recently? I needed to speak DIRECTLY to patriots like you about the serious issue of radical childless leaders in this country. [...] We can’t have people who don't have a direct stake in this country making our most important decisions.
We've allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths - they're invested in NOTHING because they're not invested in this country's children. Fighting back won't be easy - our childless opponents have a lot of free time. That's why I need YOU to stand with me.

For there are no villains in this story.

Unfortunately, the fight-or-flight response is a destructive constant companion. As Dr. Nadine Burke Harris put it, the response is great “if you’re in a forest and there’s a bear. The problem is when that bear comes home from the bar every night.

Reams of social science attest to the positive effect of a loving and stable home. I could cite a dozen studies suggesting that Mamaw’s home offered me not just a short-term haven but also hope for a better life. Entire volumes are devoted to the phenomenon of “resilient children” — kids who prosper despite an unstable home because they have the social support of a loving adult.

Every time the drill instructor screamed at me and I stood proudly; every time I thought I’d fall behind during a run and kept up; every time I learned to do something I thought impossible, like climb the rope, I came a little closer to believing in myself. Psychologists call it “learned helplessness” when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life. From Middletown’s world of small expectations to the constant chaos of our home, life had taught me that I had no control. Mamaw and Papaw had saved me from succumbing entirely to that notion, and the Marine Corps broke new ground. If I had learned helplessness at home, the Marines were teaching learned willfulness.

My professor gave me permission to be me.

the fundamental question of our domestic politics over the next generation is how to continue to protect our society’s less fortunate while simultaneously enabling advancement and mobility for everyone.

hillbillies like me are more down about the future than many other groups — some of whom are clearly more destitute

Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren’t.

Similarly, when people do fail, this mind-set allows them to look outward. I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the “Obama economy” and how it had affected his life. I don’t doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day. Here