LUXURY BELIEFS: Michael Barone on Politics as the Leisure of the Theory Class.

Politics has increasingly become, for many Americans, the leisure of the theory class. That’s a phrase from the early 20th century sociologist Thorstein Veblen, which I turned on its head in a recent column. He was condemning the showy consumerism of the contemporary rich for having no economically practical purpose. I, on the other hand, was describing the political preoccupations of contemporary people, mainly high-education liberals but also low-education populists, as having no practically achievable goals.

One prime example is the abortion question, which was brought into the political foreground by the leaking of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Within 30 days, we’ll see whether this view prevails.

But for most voters, abortion is, increasingly, an abstract concern. Statistics compiled by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute, and largely relied upon by those with other views, too, show that the abortion rate, or the number of abortions per woman ages 15 to 44, peaked in 1980, just seven years after Roe was handed down. That’s 41 years go. The absolute number of annual abortions in the United States peaked in 1990, 31 years ago, even though the national population has since increased from 250 million to 330 million.

Read the whole thing.