Is sanity returning to the media?
23-Oct-06
TAPPED, The American Prospect
BROOKS’S BOBOS ABANDON GOP… [I]t must be said that David Brooks makes an insightful and valuable argument in his column on Sunday. Brooks, who has earned much-deserved mockery for his red and blue America shtick, in which he typically lambasts the coastal intelligentsia that he writes for and belongs to (“they can’t tell wheat from corn in a field, or a soldier’s rank by his insignia blah blah blah”), finally turns it on its head. Noting how the Republicans have endangered their majority by trampling their Northeastern moderate wing, he remarks, “it’s as if they are purposely trying to antagonize the married moms at the pseudo-New Urbanist outdoor cafes.” So, finally Brooks admits what liberals have been saying for years: that cultural/regional alienation cuts both ways in this country, and the proud heartland conservatives who use nouns like “Massachusettes” and “New York” as terms of abuse are the most deliberately responsible for it.
What is really interesting about Brooks’s column, though, is that he somewhat eschews the usual explanation for the Bobos’ alienation from the GOP (middle-class suburbanites are moderately pro-choice and don’t aggressively hate gays so they are turned off by the rise of the religious right.) Rather, Brooks points to the Bush Administration’s abandonment of empiricism and accountability in governance. Brooks argues that the professionals and managers who populate suburbs are used to following and enforcing accountablity for one’s job performance, and non-ideological fact-gathering in their work. So when they see two of the chief incompetents of the Iraq debacle going unpunished — Donald Rumsfeld is secure in his job and George Tenet was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom — they see a movement that does not know how to govern effectively. And the politicization of the domestic policy process disgusts them as well. Says Brooks:
The people in these offices manage information for a living, and when they see Republicans denying obvious trends, or shutting out relevant data, they say to themselves, “Those people are not like me.”
Brooks is right that the Republican leadership needs to return to responsible policy-making. He frames it as a matter of their political self-interest, and while the more important reason is the good of the country, I’ll settle for the reason Republicans might actually care about.
Posted by Ben Adler on October 23, 2006
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tseving wrote:
Anytime one party becomes too firmly entrenched in power it seems to evolve a culture in which the retention of that power is the be all and end all of life, so corruption thrives. The critical different here is that the Democrats held power for twenty years before that happened, but the GOP. only six.
Perhaps the cause of that difference is that leftists tend to be relative thinkers making them more open to question their views and consider other options. On the other hand, rightists tend to be absolute thinkers, more prone to believe that their views are so correct that they not only refuse to consider other options, but also believe that whatever they do, no matter how dishonest, is justified by the correctness (perceived) of those views.
Posted on 24-Oct-06 at 10:30 am | Permalink
caro wrote:
Everyone is a relativist. Some only think they aren’t.
Posted on 24-Oct-06 at 10:50 am | Permalink
tseving wrote:
Of course you are correct, Caro, but I meant by philosophy, not by practice. Their belief in their justification for whatever they do to achieve their ends usually stems from their mistaken belief that they are following God’s will.
Posted on 25-Oct-06 at 8:23 am | Permalink
caro wrote:
Yes, but their mistake is a double one. The first mistake is that no one can even know whether there is a God or if so, whether God has a will, much less what that will might be. The second mistake is in thinking that what they believe is God’s will is necessarily consistent with other things they believe are God’s will.
One example is Christian fundamentalists’ stance against abortion but in favor of other kinds of killing, such as killing in war or capital punishment. The commandment says thou shalt not murder, but following it depends on what murder means to the individual, doesn’t it? It depends on the individual’s moral and religious belief, which can often be swayed by religious leaders.
This is one of the reasons why legal definitions of criminality must necessarily be separate from religious teaching about sinful behavior. Echidne had a good analysis of this a few months ago.
Posted on 25-Oct-06 at 1:31 pm | Permalink
tseving wrote:
Caro, I have had the following conversation with fundamentalists on numerous occasions.
F: Are you pro life?
Me: Yes. Are you?
F: Yes I am!
Me: What made you decide to oppose capital punishment?
F: What?!!?
Me: You said you were pro life, so what made you decide to oppose capital punishment?
F: But I’m FOR capital punishment!!
Me: Ah, then you’re pro death.
That usually ends the conversation. :-)
Posted on 25-Oct-06 at 10:20 pm | Permalink