Civics: Upper-class America pretended to care about rights, until the rabble moved too close to home
There’s no “vibe shift.” Having written bestselling books on criminal justice for blue-leaning audiences, I can attest: American liberalism’s trumpeting of “rights” always stopped at the border of whatever tony suburb or upscale city neighborhood it inhabited. While public defenders fought rights violations at peasant wages, wealthy Democrats in the privacy of voting booths always voted in the truncheon, lapping even law-and-order Republicans in aristocratic disgust of the rabble. As podcast partner Walter Kirn put it, the mask is off:
