As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned. By Angelo Codevilla. Forbes, February 20, 2013.
America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution. The American Spectator, July/August 2010. Also find it here.
Codevilla, As Country Club Republicans . . .:
On
January 1, 2013 one third of Republican congressmen, following their leaders,
joined with nearly all Democrats to legislate higher taxes and more subsidies
for Democratic constituencies. Two thirds voted no, following the people who
had elected them. For generations, the Republican Party had presented itself as
the political vehicle for Americans whose opposition to ever-bigger government
financed by ever-higher taxes makes them a “country class.” Yet modern Republican leaders, with the
exception of the Reagan Administration, have been partners in the expansion of
government, indeed in the growth of a government-based “ruling class.” They
have relished that role despite their voters. Thus these leaders gradually
solidified their choice to no longer represent what had been their
constituency, but to openly adopt the identity of junior partners in that ruling
class. By repeatedly passing bills that contradict the identity of Republican
voters and of the majority of Republican
elected representatives, the Republican leadership has made political
orphans of millions of Americans. In short, at the outset of 2013 a substantial
portion of America finds itself un-represented, while Republican leaders
increasingly represent only themselves.
By the
law of supply and demand, millions of Americans, (arguably a majority) cannot
remain without representation. Increasingly the top people in government,
corporations, and the media collude and demand submission as did the royal
courts of old. This marks these political orphans as a “country class.” In 1776
America’s country class responded to lack of representation by uniting under
the concept: “all men are created equal.” In our time, its disparate sectors’
common sentiment is more like: “who the hell do they think they are?”
The
ever-growing U.S. government has an edgy social, ethical, and political
character. It is distasteful to a majority of persons who vote Republican and
to independent voters, as well as to perhaps one fifth of those who vote
Democrat. The Republican leadership’s kinship with the socio-political class
that runs modern government is deep. Country class Americans have but to glance
at the Media to hear themselves insulted from on high as greedy, racist,
violent, ignorant extremists. Yet far has it been from the Republican
leadership to defend them. Whenever possible, the Republican Establishment has
chosen candidates for office – especially the Presidency – who have ignored,
soft-pedaled or given mere lip service to their voters’ identities and
concerns.
Thus
public opinion polls confirm that some two thirds of Americans feel that
government is “them” not “us,” that government has been taking the country in
the wrong direction, and that such sentiments largely parallel partisan
identification: While a majority of Democrats feel that officials who bear that
label represent them well, only about a fourth of Republican voters and an even
smaller proportion of independents trust Republican officials to be on their
side. Again: While the ruling class is well represented by the Democratic
Party, the country class is not represented politically – by the Republican Party
or by any other. Well or badly, its demand for representation will be met.
. . . . . . . . . .
In our
time, the Democratic Party gave up the diversity that had characterized it
since Jeffersonian times. Giving up the South, which had been its main bastion
since the Civil War as well as the working classes that had been the heart of
its big city machines from Boston to San Diego, it came to consist almost
exclusively of constituencies that make up government itself or benefit from
government. Big business, increasingly dependent on government contracts and
regulation, became a virtual adjunct of the contracting agents and regulators.
Democrats’ traditional labor union auxiliaries shifted from private employees
to public. Administrators of government programs of all kinds, notably public
assistance, recruited their clientele of dependents into the Party’s base.
Democrats, formerly the party of slavery and segregation, secured the
allegiance of racial minorities by unrelenting assertions that the rest of
American society is racist. Administrators and teachers at all levels of
education taught two generations that they are brighter and better educated
than the rest of Americans, whose objections to the schools’ (and the Party’s)
prescriptions need not be taken seriously.
It is
impossible to overstate the importance of American education’s centralization,
intellectual homogenization and partisanship in the formation of the ruling
class’ leadership. Many have noted the increasing stratification of American
society and that, unlike in decades past, entry into its top levels now depends
largely on graduation from elite universities. As Charles Murray has noted,
their graduates tend to marry one another, perpetuating what they like to call
a “meritocracy.” But this is rule not by the meritorious, rather by the merely
credentialed – because the credentials are suspect. As Ron Unz has shown, nowadays entry into the ivied
gateways to power is by co-option, not merit. Moreover, the amount of study
required at these universities leaves their products with more pretense than
knowledge or skill. The results of their management– debt, decreased household
net worth, increased social strife – show that America has been practicing
negative selection of elites.
Nevertheless
as the Democratic Party has grown its constituent parts into a massive complex
of patronage, its near monopoly of education has endowed its leaders ever more
firmly with the conviction that they are as entitled to deference and
perquisites as they are to ruling. The host of its non-governmental but
government-financed entities, such as Planned Parenthood and the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, argue for government funding by stating, correctly,
that they are pursuing the public interest as government itself defines it.
Thus by
the turn of the twenty first century America had a bona fide ruling class that transcends government and sees itself at once as distinct from the
rest of society – and as the only element thereof that may act on its behalf.
It rules – to use New York Times
columnist David Brooks’ characterization of Barack Obama – “as a visitor from a
morally superior civilization.” The civilization of the ruling class does not
concede that those who resist it have any moral or intellectual right, and only
reluctantly any civil right, to do so. Resistance is illegitimate because it
can come only from low motives. President Obama’s statement that Republican
legislators – and hence the people who elect them – don’t care whether “seniors
have decent health care…children have enough to eat” is typical.
. . . . . . . . . .
In sum,
the closer one gets to the Republican Party’s voters, the more the Party looks
like Goldwater and Reagan. The closer one gets to its top, the more it looks
like the ghost of Rockefeller. Consider 2012: the party chose for President
someone preferred by only one fourth of its voters – Mitt Romney, whose first
youthful venture in politics had been to take part in the political
blackballing of Barry Goldwater.
. . . . . . . . . .
A new
party is likely to arise because the public holds both Republicans and
Democrats responsible for the nation’s unsustainable course. Indebtedness
cannot increase endlessly. Nor can regulations pile on top of regulations while
the officials who promulgate them – and their pensions – continue to grow,
without crushing those beneath. Nor can the population’s rush to disability
status and other forms of public assistance, or the no-win wars that have
resulted in “open season” on Americans around the world, continue without
catharsis. One half of the population cannot continue passively to absorb
insults without pushing back. When – sooner rather than later – events collapse
this house of cards, it will be hard to credibly advocate a better future while
bearing a label that advertises responsibility for the present. Why trust any
Republican qua Republican?
To
represent the country class, to set about reversing the ills the ruling class
imposed on America, a party would have to confront the ruling class’ pretenses,
with unity and force comparable to that by which these were imposed. There will
be no alternative to all the country class’ various components acting jointly
on measures dear to each. For example: since the connection between government
and finance, the principle that large institutions are “too big to fail,” are
dear to America’s best-connected people who can be counted on to threaten
“systemic collapse,” breaking it will require the support of sectors of the
country class for which “corporate welfare” is less of a concern than the
welfare effects of the Social Security system’s component that funds fake
disability and drug addiction – something about which macroeconomists mostly
care little – and vice versa. Similarly the entire country class has as much
interest in asserting the right of armed self-defense as does any gun owner,
because the principle of constitutional right is indivisible. Nothing will
require greater unity against greater resistance than ending government
promotion of abortion and homosexuality. Yet those whose main concerns are with
financial probity cannot afford continuing to neglect that capitalist economics
presupposes a morally upright people. All this illustrates the need for, and
the meaning of, a political party: disparate elements acting all of one and one
for all.
Diversity
is not a natural barrier to pursuing common interests. Franklin Roosevelt’s
Democratic party included every unreconstructed segregationist in the South, as
well as nearly all Progressives in university towns like Hyde Park, Illinois
and Madison, Wisconsin – people who despised not only the segregationists but
also the Catholic Poles, Italians, and Irish from Milwaukee to Boston whose
faith and habits were as foreign to them as they were to Southerners. Yet all
understood that being mutually supportive of Democrats was the key to getting
what they wanted.
The
common, unifying element of the several country class’ sectors is the ruling
class’ insistence, founded on force rather than reason, that their concerns are
illegitimate, that they are
illegitimate. The ruling class demonizes the country class piece by piece.
Piece by piece it cannot defend itself, much less can it set the country on a
course of domestic and international peace, freedom and solvency. None of the
country class’ politically active elements can, by themselves, hope to achieve
any of their goals because they can be sure that the entire ruling class’
resources will be focused on them whenever circumstances seem propitious. In
2012 for example, the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms seemed
politically safe. Then, one disaster brought seemingly endless resources from
every corner of the ruling class to bear on its defenders. The rest of the
country class’ politically active elements stood by, sympathetically, but
without a vehicle for helping. Each of these elements should have learned that
none can hope for indulgence from any part of the ruling class. They can look
only to others who are under attack as they themselves are.
Far be
it from a party that represents the country class to ape what it abhors by
imposing punitive measures through party line votes covered by barrages of
insults: few in the country class’ parts want to become a ruling class. Yet the
country class, to defend itself, to cut down the forest of subsidies and
privileges that choke America, to curb the arrogance of modern government,
cannot shy away from offending the ruling class’ intellectual and moral pretenses.
Events themselves show how dysfunctional the ruling class is. But only a
political party worthy of the name can marshal the combination of reason,
brutal images, and consistency adequately to represent America’s country class.
