The middle class supports both the upper and lower class, and has the respect of neither

Liberty's Torch links to a post at The Woodpile Report.

It was a cliche during the '30s that the wealthy were Marxists, the middle class were conservatives and the poor were Democrats.

The upper class and the lower class have more in common with each other than either has with the middle class. Both the upper and lower classes value comfort and leisure above all else—except sports, both adore unearned wealth, both are extraordinarily self-aware and cohesive, both think themselves gifted and blameless, both scorn education, both make ostentatious display of such affluence as they have, or pretend to have, and neither shrinks from any criminal enterprise they think they can get away with. The industrious and law-abiding middle class supports both and has the respect of neither.

In the Depression of the '30s the middle class found itself in a train wreck economy, lived by the hard rules of deprivation, resisted anything that would dishonor them or their family, then faced the hardships and horrors of a world war. In the good years that followed they built the prosperous America of legend and righted wrongs which had seemed intractable, at no one's bidding but their own and at considerable cost to themselves.

The Progressive narrative turns the middle class's innate good will against them by demanding they be answerable for their success, as if they were beneficiaries of a theft, as if they were also responsible for those who mocked every opportunity and blamed others for the consequences. Those who the middle class is told to "answer to" are those who sit uninvited at their table and complain of the condiments.