THE ALABAMA POLICY REVIEW

A weekly compendium of what we have read, reviewed, and written, as well as an omnium-gatherum of insights, announcements, and amplifications.
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1

What Were Reading

New York Times

Trumps SCOTUS: Ivy League? Out. Heartland? In.

One name that continues to stand
out on the list for President-elect
Trumps first Supreme Court pick
is Alabamas own Judge William H.
Pryor of the United States Court of
Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Wall Street Journal

Fidel Castros Communist Utopia

Though the Cuba that he inherited
was relatively prosperous, Fidel Castro turned his country into an impoverished prison. He was a dictator who
invoked socialist ideals to hammer
human beings into nails for the state.

National Review

Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General America Needs

With a staunch conservative record
and a reputation for upholding the
rule of law, Jeff Sessions as United
States attorney general would have
only a single downside: no Jeff Sessions as United States senator.

Texas Observer

Don Willetts Quiet Revolution

The most famous judge on Twitter
(and the keynote speaker at APIs
2016 Annual Birmingham Dinner),
Texas Supreme Court Justice Don
Willett is doing more than sharing
dad jokes with his tweets.

Cato Institute

In Defense of the Electoral College

The Founders of the United States
fashioned a republic, not a pure democracy. In The Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton famously argued,
If the manner of it be not perfect, it
is at least excellent.

New York Times

Trump Returns to Trail, Triumphant

President-elect Donald J. Trump
has kicked off his pre-inauguration
thank you tour in his singular style,
traveling through key battleground
states with Vice President-elect Mike
Pence to thank their supporters.

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ALABAMA POLICY INSTITUTE

BOOK REVIEW | By Caleb Crosby

Hillbillies and the American Dream

Hillbilly Elegy
By J. D. Vance

(Harper, 264 pages, $27.99)

he life of J. D. Vance is the stuff of a bestseller. His is a real-world rags to riches success story, an exemplification of the American Dream, the type of tale that we Americans never tire of hearingthat continues to speak
to us nearly two and a half centuries after the Declaration of Independence articulated our national ideal.
Vance has written a book about his life and the American Dream, and it indeed has become a bestseller, but not for
the inspirational reasons one might expect. That book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,
is part autobiography and part sociology, less a story of Vances success than an unblinking attempt to explain how
he escaped poverty and to examine why others like himfellow hillbillies, a label he uses to endearingly describe
the white-working-class inhabitants of the areas of Appalachia like the one he once called homeremain ensnared
in poverty.
Vance was born to an overadventurous mother in rural Kentucky, and reared by his grandparents in the Rust Belt
city of Middletown, Ohio. Surrounded by joblessness, idleness, and hopelessness, Vances future seemed certain to be
bleak. There were two likely outcomes for a young man in his situation: if lucky, he would
manage to avoid welfare; if unlucky, he would die of a heroin overdose.
The way outand upfrom Middletown started when Vance joined the United States
Marine Corps, where he received a rigorous, and desperately needed, education in self-discipline, self-management, and character. After four years in the military, with the G.I. Bill
helping him afford the cost, Vance enrolled in Ohio State University, whereeven with a
full-time course load and two jobshe excelled. By the time I started at Ohio State, Vance
writes, the Marine Corps had instilled in me an incredible sense of invincibility. And so it
had. Vance would go on to be accepted by, and graduate from, Yale Law School, the most selective law school in the country. He is now thirty-one years old and a principal at a leading
Silicon Valley investment firm, far from the strife and struggles of Middletown
But this is not a feel-good story about the American Dream; nor, however, is it a feel-bad
story about the American Dream. Vance recognizes that our national ideal is still readily
attainablehe is living proof of thisand struggles with the fact that it is increasingly unattained by his family,
friends, and neighbors. Is this a personal failing of their making? Is this a systematic failing not of their making?
These are not always yes-or-no questions, Vance suggests, even if conservatives and liberals often answer them that
way (conservatives tend to answer the former in the affirmative, liberals tend to answer the latter in the affirmative,
and both tend to ignore the other). This is not to imply that Vance paints with gray all of the problems plaguing hillbilliescertainly not. For example, an acquaintance of Vances once explained to him that he quit his job because he
did not like waking up early, and then took to Facebook to complain about the effect of the Obama economy on his
livelihood. Vance is unsympathetic to this blame-everything-on-society-or-government mentality. His status in life,
Vance says about the man, is directly attributable to the choices hes made, and his life will improve only through
better decisions. While not lessening the blame owed to the man himself, Vance notes that other factors should not
be overlooked. There is, after all, both correlation and causation between the strength of families and the values of
the men they produce.
Vance is brutally honest in his account and assessments, whether he is discussing himself, the problems of the
white working class, or the failures of our political parties. He is a conservative who can be extremely critical of
modern conservatism, such as when it comes to an unfortunate trend in our rhetoric: Instead of encouraging engagement, conservatives increasingly foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my
peers. I have watched some friends blossom into successful adults and others fall victim to the worst of Middletowns
temptationspremature parenthood, drugs, incarceration. What separates the successful from the unsuccessful
are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: Its not your fault
that youre a loser; its the governments fault.
We should judge less and learn more about the people struggling in our communities and country, while never hesitating to hold them accountable for their own actions.
That is an important takeaway from Hillbilly Elegya
fascinating memoir that, a month after reading it, reLast Friday, the Birmingham Busimains on my mind.
ness Journal published a version of
(Note: This book contains material that is offensive.
the essay License to Kill OpportuThe author has not airbrushed his account, and includes
nity, written by Andrew A. Yerbey,
quotations of explicit language. If it were a film, it would
Senior Policy Counsel of API. The
receive an R rating.)
digital edition of that issue is avail-

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Caleb Crosby is President and CEO of the Alabama Policy Institute.

able on the BBJ website.

Words and Phrases (Youd Like to Know)

immanentize the eschaton \ im-uh-nuhn-tahyz thee es-kuh-tahn \
phrase
: to attempt to make that which belongs to the afterlife happen here and now; to seek to create heaven on earth;
to endeavor for utopia.

_______
etymology immanentize, from immanent + -ize; eschaton, from Greek , neuter of , last. origin coined by Eric Voegelin in
The New Science of Politics in 1952, popularized by William F. Buckley Jr., and consequently turned into a political slogan (Dont Immanentize
the Eschaton!) by Young Americans for Freedom.

The Christian knows the rules of the game. Worldly approaches to the Christian vision are in the nature
of things asymptotic. We can aspire to the goodness of Mother Teresa, but the realization of goodness is
for another world. Meanwhile secular metabolism quickens the appetite for the achievement of earthly
ends. Any confusion between the two visions runs the risk identified by Eric Voegelin when he warned
against immanentizing the eschaton. . . . It is illusory to suppose the problem can be erased, but surely not
illusory to suppose it can be reduced, and that American conservatives are best endowed to confront it.
William F. Buckley Jr.