David Brooks (The Party of Work, NYTimes Nov 8) correctly points
out important reasons why Republican emphasis on individualism failed to
attract voters. Hard working Asians and Hispanics don’t buy into rugged individualism,
a concept as old as the Mayflower. They recognize the benefit of having some security
through government.
What Brooks left out, as everyone is afraid to include, is the role
of fundamental Christian beliefs in Republicans losing the election. It is
Christian beliefs that hijack the education of our children away from science,
reduce their future competitiveness and obstruct medical innovations such as
stem cell research. It is Christianity (as well as orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist
Islam) that supports male-dominant societies that treat women as property or
conduits for progeny and strive to remove their having any control over their
own bodies. Christian beliefs are usually the main justification for resisting
civil rights of gays. The list goes on. It’s all in the Bible, sometimes between
the lines, and it was rejected by voters last Tuesday.
Brooks also omits a more insidious force in Republican camps: classism,
which runs deep in old money. The rich wish to preserve class differences as
long as they can. They couch it in terms of job creation or trickle down
benefits if taxes are kept low, but it really is class warfare. They don’t want
expanding middle classes or waves of immigrants to upset their own apple carts.
Other people’s poverty doesn’t seem to bother them much. It’s a story as old as
the Bible. It’s what caused the French revolution.
But back to individualism. In early U.S. history, the least
functional of these libertarian types just moved further into the frontier, as
Brooks pointed out. Now, we’ve run out of frontier. And sadly, there are no far-off
lands toward which Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and several tall blond rabid Republican
women commentators might set sail. Looks like they’ll just have to learn how to get along.
The Republican loss is a move in the right direction. Who knows, maybe
in a decade or two the country can take on hand guns, or eliminate the teaching
of Creationism in public schools.
November 10, 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment