Life Experience and Politics

 Erick Erickson:

Last week, an urban planning warrior denounced the need for in-unit washers and dryers. He insisted no one ever needed to do laundry every day and once a week or two at a laundromat should be fine. He is a single childless twenty-something. He has no lived experience.

I do not think one must be in a demographic to opine on that demographic. A man should be as able to discuss issues related to women as women can with men. Civilians should be able to make informed opinions and policy decisions about the military, even with a lack of service. But credentials also should not be substituted for a lived life.

Like with the left, parts of the right are increasingly being held captive to the voices and opinions of spectacularly unaccomplished young men and women with brash Twitter personalities hiding their lack of lived lives. We probably should not be trying to set policies related to the working class based on the musings of a pampered progressive brat or of a pampered right-winger subsidized by dad. Nor should we set public policy by people who have only ever lived a political life. Unfortunately, both sides are more and more catering to the least accomplished, loudest voices whose only work experience is a political cause.