Monthly Archives: October 2005

Ross Douthat has a new post up that’s worth a careful read, as well as the Boston Globe article to which he links. The Globe article by Walter Michaels uses the books Prep and I am Charlotte Simmons to launch a discussion over social class and the "neoliberal imagination."

Ross says:

Both novels, Michaels argues, toss working-class heroines into snobby elite schools, and then protest the indignities visited on them by their richer peers. The lesson of both novels isn’t that class differences are bad per se, but that "poor people shouldn’t be made to feel inferior, either in novels or in life." Thus, Michaels argues, "the imaginative world of neoliberalism . . . is a world where it’s OK for a few people to be rich and a lot of people to be poor but where it’s definitely not OK to make anyone feel bad about being poor." He calls this "right-wing egalitarianism," a point of view whose primary credo is "respect the poor," which is the mirror image of the "left-wing egalitarianism" that focuses on cultural identity and demands that we "respect the Other." Both, he claims, reflect the fact that "at the heart of the neoliberal imagination is the desire not to have to get rid of class difference."

Ross then makes a key point about all the rah-rah about trying to bridge the class gap:

Or put another way, is a politics that demands that we somehow "get rid of class difference" really the only way out of our current meritocratic morass, as Michaels implies? Isn’t it possible that instead of trying to directly reduce the wealth gap between a Charlotte Simmons and her Dupont classmates, which is probably a hopeless task – there are a lot of trends, many of them well beyond the control of even the most socialist government, driving the current growth of economic inequality – we should be focusing more on raising the "general level of competence, energy and devotion," as Christopher Lasch once put it, so that wealth isn’t as important a factor in personal happiness, or in democratic life in general?…

A decade ago, in The End of Equality, Mickey Kaus argued that 1950s-style economic equality was slipping away from us, but he pointed out that economic equality was never the promise of American democracy anyway – "social equality" was. It’s social equality, defined less by money than by manners and mores, that we’re in danger of losing – social equality that’s undercut both by the struggles of the working class and by the worship of success that defines too much of elite life – social equality that both parties have conspicuously failed to address.

Read these three articles from today’s NYT:

1. Joan Didion’s new book A Year of Magical Thinking has received plenty of positive reviews, including one today in the NYT Book Review. But the better piece in the book review is the profile of Didion, which ends with Didion’s powerful commencement remarks at U.C. Riverside: "I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package," she said. "I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it."

2. In the mag the article Post-Teenage Wasteland explores one of those "hot" issues the press likes to write about: people don’t really "become" adults until age 27 on average. They "dip in and out of school (the average college student takes five years to graduate), jobs and relationships, sometimes ending up back at home."

3. David Brooks’ column (Times Select subscribers, only) is a good reminder about what’s really exciting about politics, and it’s not the day-to-day partisan tug of wars. He articulates his core ideas and I pretty much agree with every single one.

I believe in the lost tradition of American politics, the tradition of Hamilton, Lincoln and the Bull Moose. In other words, I believe that social mobility is the core of the American experience. I believe that society should be structured so that as many boys and girls as possible can work, and rise the way young Hamilton and Lincoln did….

If something is going to make American society more fluid and dynamic, then I am for that thing. That’s why I love globalization, even while I am aware of its costs. I love the fact that American businesses are going to be improved via competition with Chinese and Indian rivals. I love the fact that to compete we are going to have to reform our lobbyist-written tax code into something flatter and fairer.

I can’t believe people want to shield America behind the walls of "fair trade agreements."…
Like Alexander Hamilton, I love the dynamism of capitalism. And like Alexander Hamilton, that doesn’t mean I hate government. I love government when it lifts people up to compete. I hate government only when it stifles competition and coddles. I hated the old welfare system, which pushed its victims away from work. I love welfare reform, which encourages work. I hate government that directs ever more money to the affluent elderly, but I would love a government that gave poor children savings accounts at birth, which would encourage them to think about the future and understand that their destiny is in their own hands…

I hate the forces of the education establishment, which protects its system even though after years and billions spent, African-American students still graduate from high schools at academic levels four years behind their white peers. But I love the charter schools and the forces of reform…

I can’t believe that over the past 10 years our leaders have done nothing to reduce the growing costs of entitlements. Our preparations for Katrina look like models of efficiency compared to our preparations for the hurricane of debt that is ineluctably gathering force in front of us. I can’t believe we haven’t learned from Western Europe’s plight, as it slowly stagnates under the weight of its own welfare costs…

I know America has to persevere in its exceptional mission to promote freedom, and the effort to promote democracy in the Arab world is one of the most difficult and noble endeavors any great power has undertaken.