Republicans (vs) Intellectuals
David Brooks:
Modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals. Richard Weaver wrote a book called, “Ideas Have Consequences.” Russell Kirk placed Edmund Burke in an American context. William F. Buckley famously said he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. But he didn’t believe those were the only two options. His entire life was a celebration of urbane values, sophistication and the rigorous and constant application of intellect.
But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.
Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.
The political effects of this trend have been obvious. Republicans have alienated the highly educated regions — Silicon Valley, northern Virginia, the suburbs outside of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Raleigh-Durham. The West Coast and the Northeast are mostly gone.
The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.
And so, politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.
From The Class War Before Palin, David Brooks, New York Times
Filed under politics : Comments (1) : Oct 18th, 2008 by tadfad
October 18th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Wenn der Teufel es nicht mag, kann er sich auf einem Tack setzen.
Now I’m not sure what to make of the bit: “oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.” Although Brooks is doing this for emphasis, the “over” seems to be the wrong word of relativization. Since when is going to college “over”-education? And since when did America not become a product of the Enlightenment, where skepticism in (the) Church is considered “over”-secularization.
Clearly, if the republicans are hoping to bring the US back to the pre-Enlightenment, pre-Renaissance and pre-Reformation Europe, they’re doing a good job. But as I remember from a high school history class (is that over-education too?), that’s exactly what our founding fathers were trying to make a break from in the first place.
I mean, they do call it the “Dark Ages” for a reason.