Luxury Beliefs
Story Stream
What Working-Class Voters Wanted November 25, 2024
At the end of the presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris and her surrogates placed a bet on a hard-edged closing argument: that Donald Trump is a fascist and friend of dictators. She offered herself as the alternative, a messenger of hop...
Twilight of the Elites? November 07, 2024
In light of Donald Trump’s second election to the presidency, many observers, especially those in the luxury-belief class, are bewildered. Branding Trump and his supporters as everything from “fascist” to “deplorable” to “racist” to “garbage” did lit...
In Praise of "Luxury Beliefs" October 14, 2024
Half a decade ago Rob K. Henderson introduced the world to the concept of “luxury beliefs.” This neologism has enjoyed a remarkable career; it has its own Wikipedia entry, for example....
Is Social Conservatism a Luxury Belief? October 10, 2024
Is social conservatism now considered a “luxury belief”? This is not a facile question, even though there are good reasons for thinking that it has already been answered affirmatively....
Luxury Beliefs are Real July 26, 2024
In his excellent memoir, Troubled, the psychologist Rob Henderson recounts the alienating experiences he had as a mature student from a poor background at Yale University. One classmate told him that it was hopelessly outmoded for people who want to ...
The ‘Luxury Beliefs’ That Harm Vulnerable Children April 05, 2024
Now that everyone insists that the oppressed must be lifted up – or platformed, if you’re that way inclined: why does no one in the West give a second thought to the most obviously powerless group: kids in care – children who’ve been abandoned by or ...
From Foster Care to Yale and Cambridge March 15, 2024
The American writer Rob Henderson defied steep odds to “succeed” in the world, but his thoughtful memoir is less concerned with that familiar narrative than with the idea that our values need to be recalibrated: family stability, in his eyes, matters...
Light From Darkness March 12, 2024
Rob Henderson is a rare young example of a dying breed: Cambridge scholar, public intellectual and unsentimental writer. These qualities radiate from his new memoir, Troubled, which recounts his “miraculous trajectory” through family dysfunction, fos...
A Conversation With Rob Henderson March 08, 2024
When Rob Henderson arrived at Yale as an undergraduate, one of his then classmates told him “monogamy is kind of outdated.”This classmate said she planned to get married, and for it to be a monogamous relationship — but still, she said, society needs...
Misery Loves Company March 07, 2024
When I was still in single digits, I read The Murder of Robbie Wayne, Age Six. It appeared in condensed form, in Reader’s Digest, on the magazine racks in my primary school library. I probably shouldn’t have read it, realistically, but I’d become—une...
From a Broken Home to a Broken Institution February 26, 2024
When someone emerges from a challenging childhood to become a successful adult and writes a memoir about the experience, one of two narratives usually emerges: The first, and most lucrative in today’s market, is what might be called the "wallowing" n...
How Luxury Beliefs of an Educated Elite Erode Society February 26, 2024
Born in Los Angeles into what many would consider the American lower class, I entered the foster system aged three after my drug-addicted birth mother, originally from Seoul, was unable to care for me. Over the next five years, I moved through seven ...
Why Luxury Beliefs Should Trouble Us All February 19, 2024
Rob Henderson’s Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is a difficult read. For the first four chapters of the book, you want to reach through the pages, back in time, hug a small abandoned boy, and tell him everything is going t...
The Making of an American Conservative February 16, 2024
In January Rob Henderson posted a newsletter to his Substack: “Book Stores Refuse to Host an Event for My Book”. No major bookshop in New York City or San Francisco would host an event for his new memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family and...
Polyamory Is a Luxury Belief February 15, 2024
What happens when the fantasy of getting everything you want collides with cold, hard reality? Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility attempts to answer that question by plotting the love lives of two young women: the cool-headed, pragmatic Elinor Dashw...
An Orphan at Yale February 09, 2024
In Rob Henderson’s first recounted memory in his new memoir, Troubled, he is three years old, screaming in terror and clinging to his mother as two policemen wrestle handcuffs onto her wrists. He had no idea why this was happening, of course; the scu...
The Polyamorist Next Door February 05, 2024
I suppose, given Americans’ fondness for postmodern taboo-breaking, it was inevitable that polyamory would go mainstream. Recently, it’s been the subject of lifestyle articles in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, The New Yorker, and More...
