Palin's popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal -- that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal -- that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.Here's DIA:
The problem with Mr Douthat's argument is that the democratic ideal, as much as there is one, is the meritocratic ideal. Americans don't simply believe that anyone can grow up to be a success. They believe that with hard work anyone can grow up to be a success. And for many (like Mr Obama) an Ivy-League education is indicative of that hard work. It would be quite a stretch to paint someone like Mr Obama with the same brush as, say, George Bush, who was gifted his stays at Harvard and Yale. Mr Obama's success story, Ivy-League education and all, is as much a story of the "everyman" as Mrs Palin's.
The problem is this notion that by merely not attending an Ivy, you somehow automatically fulfill the "democratic ideal." It's true Americans respect people who make it in the world without coming from an elite background. But the idea that the only real marker of that background is a college acceptance letter is reductive.
Palin is not so much an example of the democratic ideal as she is an example of the American Idol reject ideal. Most Americans believe everyone, no matter their background, has the right to compete. Very few believe everyone, no matter their suckage, has the right to win.
Again, I think race is key. From Conor Friedersdorf:
Given the history of race in America, the election of a mixed race black man to the presidency -- Columbia and Harvard or not -- ought to have as much a claim to fulfilling the democratic ideal as the nomination of a woman who didn't attend an Ivy League college. We've had our Andrew Jacksons and our Jimmy Carters. Despite the frequency of Ivy League presidents, no one doubts that a candidate from a less elite educational pedigree can be elected. Which candidate caused more Americans to reconsider the kind of person who might be elected to the presidency, Barack Obama or Sarah Palin?It just strikes me as blind to argue that in the year that America elected it's first black president, that the democratic ideal has failed. Seriously, if the only qualifier is that you don't attend an Ivy, why wasn't Jesse Jackson's loss in 88 evidence of the failure of the democratic ideal?
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
You had to obscure a good argument and bring Jesse Jackson into it. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Jackson couldn't gain any 'traction' as a candidate because he is too polarizing a figure. Politics is a game of addition and it takes more than a committed base to win election. I think and hope Sarah P will find that out if she runs in 2012.
Remember President Obama is not just the first black President. In the words of a comedy sketch he is the first "just white enough" President.
President Obama is clearly both an example of the meritocratic and democratic ideals.
With his brains, first rate personality and skills he worked himself into a position to get elected. The man is clearly one of the most skilled politicians in this nations history. Whether he will be a great President I don't know. I hope so.
He is also representative of the democratic ideal. He is the child of a black exchange student and white mother raised in Hawaii. No political connnections in his family. His name ain't Bush, Clinton, Kennedy, Bayh, Gore, Daley etc. Yet he gets elected President of a nation where forty years before his parents would not have been allowed to marry in many states. If that doesn't "represent" the American ideal of "Democracy" then nothing does.
So from the unreal America here in Chicago and this unreal American I say "May God Bless the American Republic".
I think you're missing the point...
The argument isn't that Jesse should have won. It's that if Palin, by virtue of not attending an Ivy, reps the democratic ideal, then so does JJ.
I could admit that I didn't get your point, but then again "real Americans" never admit to any doubt. We forge ahead. Blindly. With faith in our faith all the while hoping not to be infected by any facts or new ideas.
We think of Sarah Palin as our annual flu shot against the "influenza that is the unreal America".
I do get your point.
I'm not sure how much race plays in Douthat's argument. If Alan Keyes was President I suspect Ross would be extolling President Keyes meritocratic rise to power. That may be naive on my part.
Of course Ross might be unable to type because a Keyes Presidency would likely cause Ross to continuously spontaneously ejaculate all over his PC. I say PC because only meritocratic dogs use Mac's.
But that's just it. There can't be a black Sarah Palin. Try to a imagine a black woman, who revealed in the midst of a nation race that her underage daughter was pregnant, being discussed as a serious contender for the presidency. Add in said black woman can't think of a single newspaper she's read. Add in that she has a cloud of ethics investigations swirling around her. And then finish that up the fact that said black woman thinks living in Alaska constitutes foreign policy experience.
That woman isn't running for presidency of anything--except the tenant committee in the projects. And she will lose. Badly.
Imagining a "black" Sarah Palin is difficult. The white Sarah Palin is annoying enough.
It's near impossible to imagine a serious black Presidential contender who had an unwed pregnant daughter, thug potential son in law, son who got in trouble for vandalism and joined the Army, meth or crack dealing potential in laws and husband who espoused "separtist" political parties. Ain't gonna happen.
Of course if blacks were a monolithic force that represented 40 percent of the Democratic party it would be easier to foresee. Since blacks are neither monolithic nor 40 percent I guess we don't need to worry about finding out.
Palin is possible because she appeals to that "know nothing" Christianist base of the GOP. It may not be enough to get her the GOP nomination for Prez, but it is enough to make her a force.
It's very roughly similar to how white Dems were afraid to attack Jesse Jackson when he ran for Prez. No current GOP contender dare attack soon to be former Governor Palin. Think of her as Limbaugh-like. Criticize her at your own political risk.
To paraphrase the ideas of Andrew Sullivan until the GOP excises the cancer of Limbaugh/Palin/Newt etc it will likely never seriously contend for the Presidency.
The country has changed and changes more every day. The issues that the GOP Right likes to whip people into a frenzy about like race, gays, or abortion resonate less with the young. Every day people turn 18 years old and every day the elderly die. Time is not on the side of the current GOP.
Imagining a "black" Sarah Palin is difficult. The white Sarah Palin is annoying enough.
You might want to rephrase that, IP. I'm sure you didn't intend it the way I'm reading it (why would a different skin color make her more annoying?).
Marcos,
I think he just meant 1 Sarah Palin is bad enough, 2 of them is off the scale...
Marcos,
I think what I likely meant was two Sarah Palin's would be unspeakable. White or black or yellow or green or any other color or ethnic background wouldn't matter. Would black Sarah Palin be more annoying that white Sarah Palin.........I hope never to find out.
I think it's possible to read too much into a statement. Particularly a statement that is a quick "comment" on a blog. If I were writing a column I might have "caught" the possible implication you saw.
Stupidity doesn't bother me as I think we all have our moments of it.
Proud stupidity does bother me.
Willful ignorance bothers me; although, in fairness since most of us don't strive to be elected officials willful ignorance is likely not that dangerous in most of us.
I seek three qualities in a political leader.
1. Relative honesty.
2. Intellectual curiosity. You don't have to be a genius to be an effective leader, but you do have to be "curious". Harry Truman is an example of someone who was extremely well versed in history. I''ll take that over a high IQ and "incuriousness" any day.
3. Comfort in oneself. People who have "demons" tend to make lousy leaders.
FDR was said to have a second rate mind and a first rate personality. I'll take that over the opposite.
The problem with Palin, among many, is that she is dishonest, intellectually lazy, and extremely resentful of others. Outside that she would make a great President to harken in the end times.
I was just being a smart ass/trouble maker. Sorry! I'm really trying to keep that to a minimum because I am deriving such great pleasure from reading the intelligent comments here.
For every comment that I do post, there are at least two for which I click cancel, in case anyone thinks I have poor impulse control.
I think the notion behind this is that by being "white" and not attending an Ivy league school you fit the Democratic ideal - only during the term of a Black President. Because like Friedersdorf says there have been white Presidents who hadn't attended Ivy league - but really, the better point might be that there have been white males who have ran for office without attending Ivy league schools that didn't get touted as more representative of the "democratic ideal."
And to argue in any way that President Obama ain't as democratic as America has ever been is like when you play cards with a kid, your little brother or something, and they keep changing the rules so they can win because somehow they understand that they are supposed to win. Palin as more representative of the democratic ideal that President Obama is a clever way of saying, we are supposed to win, regardless of what history says.
TNC -
I think you and Douthat are kind of talking past each other, in that both a racial and a class dynamic are at work here, but you're each only seeing and/or focusing on one or the other.
There's a long tradition in the US of romanticizing the wisdom and "realness" of the rural working class - the idea that working with your hands, out in the elements, etc. leads to a clearer, more genuine perspective on the world. "Salt of the earth" and all that. I think that's what Douthat is getting at with his democratic ideal. He's arguing that Palin represents (though she clearly doesn't embody) that down-home wisdom. She may not know much about the policy issues, but she's got good folksy sense, untarnished by the vacuity and moral rot of elite, urban culture. Thus, her rejection by the political apparatus of DC is a rejection of this American tradition/value.
Now, there's nothing inherently racial about the archetype Douthat is appealing to. For instance, there are plenty of examples of black characters in American fiction that fill that role. (Of course, then we get into the whole "magical negro" controversy, but that's another story.) However, there is a de facto racial component, in that contemporary black American culture, and certainly much of the black political leadership, tends to be urban, not rural, and focused on the kind of social/economic issues that are, by definition, anathema to the folksy wisdom schtick.
So like I said, you and Douthat seem to be talking past each other. He's talking about an fantasy that is neither black nor white, and you're talking about a reality that is (at least these days) clearly white.
It's very difficult to reply to this argument, since there aren't any actual quotes of anything I've said. Responding to paraphrasing is, in the main, a bad idea because people forget what they're actually arguing about.
It's worth noting, for instance, that the words "urban" and "rural" never appear in Ross's column. It's worth noting also that you don't say anything about Harvard, Columbia or the Ivy League, all of which are pretty integral to Ross's argument. It's not fair to his argument, or my own, to argue about notions that don't actually appear in the text.
Quote, specifically, what I've written that you disagree with. Then quote, specifically, what Ross has written that you basically think is right. I'll gladly respond to that.
If we're imagining race switcheroos, let's imagine that Barack Obama had the same background but was White. I still can't imagine that Douthat would have credited him as an example of the American Dream. Why? Because he's not one of them. This is part and parcel of the conservative's unending game of Calvin Ball that has left their intellect tank very close to "E." It's particularly visible on science issues where you have a "scientist" with a degree from the University of Phoenix is given equal weight to raft of respected leaders on matters of evolution or climate change. I don't disagree that Douthat's argument is weird when there's Barack Obama right there, but I argue it's about a different kind of tribalism than just race. Sarah Palin and Alan Keyes: yes. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: no.
janinedm- I totally agree with what you are saying, but I'd put a slightly different emphasis on it. I would say that people espousing this would really believe that it has nothing to do with race, but that doesn't mean it doesn't. It's true that Russ wouldn't acclaim a white guy with the same political philosophy (see: Clinton) but would he acclaim a black man or woman with Palin's? Wouldn't he see that person as essentially getting unearned privileges because of minority status? (I don't know for sure of course, but that's my impression.)
Polywogy - I hear you. I'm sure there's a racial component as well just because of the way that race and class in this country overlap. It's a knot that's too hard to untangle. But (and this is my totally unprovable impression) conservatives have managed to build for themselves a narrative that being conservative is a virtue, in and of itself. or is proof of virtue. This is after decades of Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." So yes, I think a Black Sarah Palin (as long as she were conservative) would reap the same comments from Douthat and other conservatives. Alternately if you're liberal, you're not part of the American Dream narrative. You're either a Limousine Liberal or a leech looking for government handouts.
Actually, if Sara Palin were Black the commentary from the right would be even worse. It would be all of the above PLUS the usual, "so you see, it is the liberals who are the racists!" with a dash of "Why do Blacks hate success?"
Sarah Palin has sex appeal. And conservatives such as Douthat--the elitist branch--will go to any length to spin her because they see in her the possibility of achieving their own weak agenda and tying it to their pipe dream that most Americans agree with them. Never mind that the woman is frighteningly incompetent and ignorant; no matter that she belongs to a church in which its membership recieves messages from Jesus via cell phone, nor that Mrs. Palin has an incredibly limited understanding of biological science. Never mind that she doesn't have the wherewithal to bring even one term of her governorship to a close. Never mind that while President Obama is pictured as Adolph Hitler at a Florida tea bag rally (Douthat, have your taxes increased? just asking) and as a proctologist with a Jack Nicholson leer on his face as he puts on a glove on the cover of National Review; never mind that Mrs. Palin sent her supporters into a frenzy of hatred with her pals around with terrorists campaign nonsense, Douthat defends Palin, the unbelievable sexism of it, so called bulldog with lipstick, as some sort of victim.
Palin is what she is, and it is so transparent I find it maddening that no one gets it. But Douthat is either an ignorant fool of the first order, or a criminally disingenous pundit who should be repudiated at every turn for his propagation of the phony bait and switch that has mired our populace today.
I agree, CitizenE, and I find it strange that we are even still talking about Sarah Palin in July, 2009, a full seven months after the election that she and McCain lost. What is worse is that we are still analyzing what her unsuccessful bid for the vice presidency really meant to America or should I say Real America?
It is as though we have forgotten that she was chosen as a gimmick to draw national attention to John McCain's failed campaign and to make sure that the Christian right turned out to vote.
Real America didn't even know Sarah Palin before McCain's desperate gimmick to resurrect his campaign. And given how little he knew about her, we have to conclude that it was about gender, religion, looking good in a pencil skirt, having a trim body and nice legs, and having a camera friendly face.
Unfortunately, when she opened her unscripted mouth, she ejected word hemorrhages of nonsense, as you say, and alienated anyone who thought that the vice president should not be a fool.
People do get it, but Palin fatigue is an issue, and the people who are really fed up with hearing about her aren't listening anymore.
There may have been a time when the remains of the GOP thought that she could lead some kind of conservative populist movement to get some seats back in Congress in 2010 and run for the presidency in 2012. But she turns out not to be much more than a tabloid story/picture generator.
Despite her good looks, the girl ain't got it. And the looks won't last much longer unless she uses some of that book deal money for plastic surgery as she gets closer to that half century mark.
Off topic, but whatever else I think about Sarah Palin, I hope sincerely she never goes in for plastic surgery. People need to stop altering naturally interesting faces, and she definitely has one. I would just like to see more women in the media age gracefully for a change, and retain the stories of their lives with their wrinkles and crows' feet and whatever. HDTV makes the scars and tucks and lifts and implants all nauseatingly obvious anyway.
I actually agree with you. Sarah has really nice bone structure in her face and she is very photogenic. And that is a major part of the reason why we see so much of her seven months after the election. If she were not pretty, there would be a lot less interest. She will age well if she continues to keep her weight down, but women over 50 just do not have the same sex appeal. That is just the way it is. Her moment is now, or very soon. It isn't as though she has a brilliant mind to fall back on.
Because they keep changing the "rules" to whatever makes them feel better about themselves.
On your recommendation, I'm reading Battle Cry of Freedom. I'm only about 80 pages in and reading about the Wilmot Proviso and the Compromise of 1850. Reading about how the South made all kinds of noise about the elite North who were out of touch and how far they were willing to go to protect their key value of slavery. That frankly scares the shit out of me when I think about Palin and her supporters, er, apologists..
Wasn't the Ricci case another angle on this same democratic versus meritocratic idea? It seems that it struck some as undemocratic that a department with a lot of black firemen would have none score high enough to get promoted, even though it was meritocratic to let the promotions go to the highest scorers, regardless of race.
Would it be better to pick firefighter officers via elections or maybe American Idol-style (we could text our votes!), and, on the flip side, require aptitude tests of anyone who wants to run for public office? That way, we could get more black and Hispanic firefighters promoted to the officer level in New Haven, and we could keep Sarah Palin off the campaign trail (assuming she wouldn't pass the politician aptitude test).
I think you're a bit in over your head arguing that point on the Ricci case because its so multi-faceted. Maybe on affirmative action in general, but not Ricci.
How is it "multi-faceted", Dan W? It was political pressure to put democracy over meritocracy that caused the city of New Haven to waive its hiring test for firefighters in 1994, so it could hire more black and Hispanic firefighters. Then, when it came time to select firefighters for promotion, the city hired a consulting firm to design an unbiased test; none of the black firefighters scored high enough on it to qualify for promotion; fearing a disparate impact lawsuit, the city ditched the results.
Look, Ta-Nehisi is absolutely right that a black man or woman expecting to be taken seriously as a candidate for the presidency would face a higher bar. E.g., I can't imagine a black Joe Biden even getting the VP slot, let alone being taken seriously in the primary. But this is a big exception, and in most cases -- even in politics at lower levels -- blacks face lower bars than whites. A white Marion Barry, for example, would have been out of politics a long time ago.
In the Ricci case, as in many others, there's a dispute over the criteria on which "merit" is evaluated. Significant racial disparities are a red flag, though certainly not an infallible test, that the criteria of merit in a given test may be compromised.
What exitr said, but I'd also add that 1) The white firefighters had more time to prepare for the test (see Ginsburg's dissent) 2) The city would have likely faced a law suit if they didn't through out the test.
To an extent, it's amazing to me that this argument still persists when quotas have been illegal for decades, and only were barely viable considering the Civil Rights Act was passed in 64. If you want to argue the actual laws regarding Civil Rights--in this case, you'd be arguing that this test was an appropriate way of evaluating the firefighters, and that it was not dependent on race--fine. If you want to argue whether racial, ethnic, sexual, etc. background should have no place in evaluating the firefighters, fine. But understand the nuances of the case at least; they didn't just throw the results out because a black person didn't qualify. It's deeper than that.
Please don't go here guys. We spent all last week arguing about this. If we must go back over it, there's an open thread up top.
Matt Yglesias had a pretty good post debunking this silliness. One point -- he finds the idea that the real class struggle in the U.S. is between college grads from the Ivies and college grads from less prestigious schools to be pretty "blinkered." I'd have used a less kind term. Another good point he makes, however, is that Joe Biden is an example of how the product of less prestigious schools can be both successful and well-respected for his knowledge and competence on the issues. Anyway, the link is here: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/07/class-and-sarah-palin.php
"One point -- he finds the idea that the real class struggle in the U.S. is between college grads from the Ivies and college grads from less prestigious schools to be pretty "blinkered."
Right, because Yglesias, Douthat and Ambinder all had to beat out those U Mass alumni who were being considered for their Atlantic blogging positions at the time.
Oh good lord. I hope you're joking.
Y'know, nolo, I'm really not interested in what Harvard graduate Matt Yglesias has to say about the class struggle between grads of the Ivies and state schools. (Unless Yglesias is willing to acknowledge that far too many hiring managers in our mutual field [journalism] lazily hire people based on alma mater instead of clips.)
Touchy, touchy. Look, I'm also in a field (law) where an Ivy degree can make hiring partners get all dewy-eyed, and folks like me (a state school product all the way) can get chips on their shoulders about it. But I think you're missing Yglesias' point, which is that when the majority of Americans don't even have college degrees, it's really kind of asinine to act like the most important class difference you can think of is the one between having gone to Cleveland State or Harvard for your professional education. It's even more asinine if you happen to be Ross Douthat.
nolo, the truth is that class struggle is much more often about adjacent and near-adjacent classes than it is about classes at a great divide, unless and until you actually have a full-on revolutionary situation. We're so far removed from that, I think it is silly to think that the most dramatic class frictions are between anything other than those between a people and those competing with them immediately above and below them.
The majority of people who don't have college degrees are competing for jobs with people (or working under people) who either have only an associate's degree, or competing more successfully for jobs with (or supervising) people without a high-school degree.
Lemmy, you make a very good point. I think it's tangential to whatever Douthat was trying to say, which (if I understand it correctly) is that people who didn't come from the right schools get punished in the political realm by people who did. It's a silly point, I think, especially because the people who get voted into office don't get voted in by the Ivy cabal (though I appreciate how certain cabals can provide some of the support one needs to succeed as a political candidate). They get voted in by all those people who didn't go to either Ivy or state schools. And those people don't care about the chips that state school grads may have on their shoulders about their job opportunities vis a vis the Ivy grads. They don't.
What Ross and other Palin defenders seem to ignore is that people's disapproval of her is based on Palin's own words. This is not about where she went to school or what kind of grades she got. This is not about her being from a small town. It's not about her gender or religion. In many ways it's not even about her ideology.
Time and again through her own words she has displayed that she lacks a basic working knowledge of the federal government and the issues of the day. She is woefully uninformed or ill-informed. Just look at the quote Sullivan posted today:
"Palin said there is a difference between the White House and what she has experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the "department of law" would protect her from baseless ethical allegations."I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out," she said."
There is no department of law. Even assuming she was referring to the Office of Legal Council, they can't automatically throw out a case.
We can debate how "smart" she is or how politically savvy she is. But it is pretty clear that she does not possess the knowledge to hold national office. This is not an attack on her intelligence - you can be smart in general but ignorant about certain subjects. It is her ignorance of our government and issues that is most problematic.
Well put. If she'd been articulate, thoughtful, or shown really any interest in the realities of governing, I still wouldn't have voted for her but I would have some respect for her as a candidate. But her own words damn her. I realize there's the possibility that as someone who went to a fancy school out East I might have been conditioned to hear her folksy charm as yokel-y, that I'm just dismissing her because she's got a goofy accent and whatnot. Except that that's garbage. The woman does not make sense.
And I fear it may not have been the Office of Legal Counsel but the Department of Justice she was (sort of) talking about. Think about the implications of that for a Palin administration.
Mr. C.
Shodagee,
Seems like I have a lot to read. It always seems to happen that way. Go back to the rez for a week and suddenly the world passes you by.
Just wanted to say that in my opinion Palin represents the quiet desperation part of America. For some people there is a pride in acomplishment, a pride in being from a place, and yet not defined by it. For others their is a persverse pride in being from a place and being completely defined by it. Personally I think Palin is more the second part and less the first, but I could be wrong. These things are always more complicated than we give them credit for.
Aho.
The first part of the post should read:
Palin represents a part of America (at least White America --whatever that term means--, although she's from Alaska and we could have a whole discussion on whether being rural and white makes a person a part of "White" America,) that experiences what Thoreau called a quiet Depseration.
The people who sell Palin do so not on her accomplishments, which are limited at best and with her resignation diminishing as we speak, but based on what she stands for/against. And this recent right-wing theme of "prinicipals" versus actual accomplishments/competency, is the hallmark of the W-Bush era. Just look at the banking/market situation where all of those federal level republicans took free-markets as literally an article of faith for which they had little to no educated reasons. This kind of extension of faith commitments, left or right, into public policies is disastrous but easy to sell to a public which has been led to believe that they can too can understand matters like economics or foreign policy without ever having studied them.
I couldn't agree more. The rejection of Palin (and Bush) corresponds with society's increasing skepticism and rejection of "extension of faith commitments" into the public policy arena. (How many times do people have to be severely burnt before they wake up?). It is no coincidence that pedigree, class background, and other personal characteristics that might stereotypically be presumed to reveal something about ignorance vs merit... have loomed large in the discourse as yellow flags. People have become wary about the blindspots inherent in easy to sell "folksiness", and are now demanding an administration that can be held to account on the basis of informed, transparent, sound, and responsible reasoning.
I think I would really just like for Douthat to explain himself. What thoughts were going through his head when he made this distinction, and why it is something (presumably from the tone of the op-ed) to lament.
I think that's still wrong. The democratic ideal must be a procedural ideal. Democracy is not defined by the outcome of a procedure. Democracy is the procedure itself. You go out and try to convince people, if you fail, you lose. That's what happened to Palin. Democracy has spoken. Whether or not Obama/Biden merited the win more than McCain/Palin is not a relevant question within the system of democracy.
The ideal that Douthat probably had in mind, is the idea of Mr. Smith going to Washington and change things for the better. But that ideal depends highly on Mr. Smith. If Mr. Smith wouldn't have known what he was talking about, that movie would have been made by the Farelly brothers and not by Frank Capra.
Here's why I think Douthat made this weird meritocracy/democracy distinction:
First of all, I agree that Douthat's column is full blindspots, and I'm not disagreeing with TNC here, but I think the column is quite insightful when read as an explanation of the Palin phenomenon. It's a window into the mind of a serious Palin supporter (if not Douthat's). It ignores the racial angle not because Douthat necessarily thinks such an angle isn't important or relevant, but because it's beside his more narrow point.
I mean, I get why Kristol-types support her -- he's a cynic looking for a figurehead for his movement's ship -- but I've really had a hard time understanding why so many people have apparently genuine enthusiasm for her as a leader. As far as that goes, Douthat's column helps a lot.
As I read it, this is why he has constructed a dichotomy between the two nearly parallel ideas of meritocracy and democracy. For Palin supporters -- at least those who share Palin's (apparent) class and education -- meritocracy favors those NOT like them: those that moved out of their little town, out of their social class, out of their intellectual league, out of their local conversations. Defined that way, they will never see "one of their own" lead in a meritocracy. For them, the distinction is a valid one.
In this argument, it's not "hard work" that distinguishes those who should lead -- Palin has, whatever her faults and failures, worked very hard at her career (while having lots of kids no less!). It's just what Douthat says it is: class. It's not about how much money you make (Palin has a lot) or whether you have a degree (Palin does), it's about how close you are socially and intellectually to your roots.
Yes, the argument is weird and myopic, but it has to be, because so is support for Palin, which it is describing (if not defending).
What makes you think Douthat is describing rather than advocating the view you (pretty articulately, I think) sketch here? If nothing else (and I think there's a lot else), the fact that he labels Obama's rise "meritocratic," explicitly contrasting it with the "democratic" near-rise of Palin, shows where his sympathies lie.
I also think you're conflating class resentment with provincialism. Even in tiny rural towns there are haves and have-nots. Whatever distinguishes Obama from Palin, it's not social class.
Provincialism is the exact right word. I agree with TNC on the race angle because I watched the footage from her campaign rallies and the racism was palpable. But the overarching theme in the endless celebrations of all things Palin is a form of provincialism that turns a blind eye to the fact that most Americans live in cities and that you really do have to work hard to succeed in anything other than reality television.
Yes, I agree "provincialism" is a better word for Palin's side of this coin; I guess "cosmopolitanism" would be the other side; I'm not sure what to call the coin. I used "class" because that was Douthat's word. It's sloppy shorthand, but makes for good copy.
I don't necessarily think Douthat is not advocating this perspective (I tried to write my post without addressing that issue). If pressed, I'd say Douthat is too smart to buy this argument -- it's inherently anti-intellectual, and Douthat's an intellectual. Perhaps he's looking for his figurehead, too.
But debating Douthat's actual sympathies misses my broader point that he's got an insight into the mind of a lot of Palin supporters, whether he buys it or not.
Yes, I think this captures a lot of it.
My mother loves Sarah Palin. My mom is quite conservative, but she's not stupid, and I've had a difficult time trying to explain to myself how she could so admire someone I see as really pretty nasty and hateful, not to mention incurious and self-dramatizing. But my mom understands the world the way Palin does, and doesn't understand the world I live in any better than Palin does.
A lot of my relatives still live in little towns and in essentially the same circumstances - manual labor, little education - that their parents and grandparents lived in. And to look at this anthropologically, I think they just are having a hard time understanding what the world is becoming. Again, they're not stupid, they're just not well educated. And the world has changed so very much in the past 50 years, and I think perhaps this past election year - with the utter failure of the good old Texas boy's presidency and the rise to real political power of a woman and a black man - was perhaps quite destabilizing in a subconscious way. Put aside racism, sexism (though I wouldn't argue those things aren't involved) - the world just doesn't look like an understandable world - with people occupying the places and roles they always have - anymore.
Sarah Palin is female, but despite her power, she accepts traditional roles and rules, and mocks the people who think they can live outside those rules. This is why Douthat wants to defend her. She's a standard bearer for people who don't understand the pace of (progressive and otherwise) change in the world.
This probably reflects some truth... as for the points about "democratic ideal", many people would consider that ideal best represented by a potential leader who claims a relatively similar worldview as they themselves do, even if it be uneducated. At the same time, the majority spoke and elected a highly skilled leader (i.e., meritocratic ideal) to represent their evolving democratic ideal. Frightening to those who cling to the comfort of blindspots.
Yes, I agree that might be why Douthat's sympathies lie with her. But I don't understand why he thinks she would make a good chief executive that would make it her primary job to honor, obey, and defend the Constitution.
Actually TNC, the best explanation on the subject occurs in the comments section of Matt Yglesias' blog. The distintion is American Dream vs American Fantasy. here's the entire quote from astrodern:
"A better contrast would be between the American Dream vs. the American Fantasy. The American Dream is the story of how equal opportunity, combined with innate ability, hard work, and meritocratic competition is the path to success or at least a better future and a decent measure of happiness. The American Fantasy, on the other hand, is a kind of rags to riches story where little or no time, effort, and personal resources need be brought to bear to get from point A to point B. Instead, the American Fantasy is the classic Cinderella story, the person who wins the lottery, the victor on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” who gets lucky and takes home the whole million, the man or woman who is plucked from obscurity and becomes an overnight celebrity. The hero of the American Fantasy need have no innate ability and need not have worked a day in their life. In fact, it’s often the hero’s or heroine’s complete absence of merit that makes this particular fantasy so emotionally compelling.
Sarah Palin is a classic example of the American Fantasy narrative. Think about it. An obscure first term governor of minimal intelligence and almost no accomplishments under her belt is plucked from obscurity by a rich and powerful benefactor and thrust into the national spotlight. Overnight, she becomes the talk of the nation, icon to a struggling movement, and the most captivating politician in decades. There’s even talk that she should be the one to complete the task that her original benefactor (McCain) was chosen to perform. Yet she can’t put her past completely behind her, as no heroine in this kind of narrative can. Her detractors from back home are out to get her, as are the powerful rivals of her original benefactor, rivals whose elitist attitudes blind them to the heroine’s innate virtue. In the end, the heroine of the American Fantasy must sever ties to those she left behind, and must prove to all that she is deserving of having been plucked from obscurity in the first place.
We’re living in an era where the opportunities to live out the American Dream have been disappearing at an alarming rate. The result is that American Fantasy has come to dominate America’s culture and media landscape in the past 15 years. Most reality TV and game shows are a derivative of the American Fantasy narrative. Sarah Palin’s emergence on the national scene is just the latest example. In contrast to the emergence of Barack Obama — whose story has been democratic, meritocratic, and a model example of the American Dream — Sarah Palin’s story has been none of those things. And when you acknowledge the existence of the American Fantasy as a contrasting narrative to the American Dream, it starts making a lot more sense why Obama and Palin are perfect foils for each other."
This argument supports your claim that the democratic ideal and meritocratic ideal are the same. I'm not sure why "race is key." To say that "if she were black, she wouldn't have been as popular with her base" is oddly myopic. While technically true, it ignores that there are MULTIPLE markers that are necessary ingredients to her success with her base:
If she weren't pro-life AND pro-creationism, she wouldn't be beloved by the Christian Right. yes, it is likely true that a black woman who is pro-life wouldn't be able to match what Palin has with her base, but neither would a white pro-choice. that you choose one of those scenarios as evidence of "key" ingredients says more about your interest in highlighting a particular angle (race), but doesn't really prove that one (race) is more important than another (stance on abortion).
If she didn't have "beauty pageant good looks," she wouldn't have as much support as she does. (and to argue that being white was the key to this ignores conservative white women who haven't been as popularly received by her base)
Douthat's argument was flawed, but it was never based on the claim that "the democratic ideal FAILED" or even that it was rejected in favor of the meritocratic ideal as exemplified in BHO. that's where your reading of his essay is flawed. as astrodern explains, Douthat's take mistakes the popularity of the American Fantasy with the democratic ideal.
Do you really believe the not supporting someone because they are black, is the same as not supporting someone because they aren't pro-life? Do you not see the difference?
Um, yes, there is a difference between those two. Unfortunately for the argument you're trying to make, that difference doesn't matter.
The questions about Palin many analysts are wrestling with is this: "What about Palin makes her so appealing to her supporters? So appealing in fact, that all the things that seem like negatives are viewed as positives by her rabid fans?"
My rebuttal to your piece is her race is NOT that secret ingredient. My examples of her other identity markers (pro-life, pro-gun, pro-creationism, considered good-looking by many) don't have to be "equal to race" in terms of having historical significance or moral importance for them to be good examples of why "race isn't the key" to to her appeal.
In fact, a better case could be made that Obama's being black had more to do with him being attractive to his rabid supporters than Palin being white was the reason her base loves her. And we can use the issue of abortion to develop that point:
Can you honestly say that if Obama took anti-abortion stances his support would drop more than if Palin was openly pro-choice? i'm confidently placing my bet on Palin taking a HUGE nose-dive with her base. yes, BHO would lose some support, but not nearly as much. his ambivalence on gay rights (marriage, DADT) is fairly strong evidence that his less than popular stance on issues considered key by Dems doesn't cause him the same harm as similarly controversial stances would affect Palin.
This isn't to deny that Palin needed to be white to be where she is with her base, but to note that she ALSO needed to be other things as well. My argument doesn't depend on something being more important than race; many factors can be equally key to her support.
p.s. - and for those who would cite Alan Keyes as evidence that black pro-lifers, i'd reply: my point isn't that abortion is more important than race in every case. just that race is not more important than other issues in Palin's case.
Please tell me what argument, I'm trying to make. I'd love to hear it. Oh wait...
I think you should post this comment on the board of "many analysts." I've looked through this post several times. Not once have I argued about "What makes Palin so appealing to her supporters." This is a strawman--and the rest of your post basically proceeds from it.
You have now posted two very long comments. It's instructive that you've barely quoted me in single one. Instead, you've just bulled ahead against an argument that you either think I'm making, or would like me to be making.
Quote what you disagree with. Make an argument against what's on the page. I can't respond to what I haven't said. I can't be responsible for "many analysts."
sorry for the combative tone. i'll abide by your requests.
Here are the arguments you made originally:
1)"I think race is key."
you then quote DIA noting that the democratic ideal and the meritocratic ideal are the same. (i agreed with you, him, and astrodern on that part)
the problem is DIA's analysis (like yours) is addressing a different issue than Douthat's piece. whether Obama's story is more emblematic of the American Dream than Palin's is not relevant to the issue Douthat et al (the reason why i referenced other analysts) are trying to figure out (what makes Palin such a lightning rod for Palin lovers and haters).
why is race the key to the Palin story? you've made that claim, but the rest of your essay doesn't provide warrants. i'm refuting it by citing non-race items that are just as likely (if not more) to play a role in why Palin's story has resonance with her base.
2) "It just strikes me as blind to argue that in the year that America elected it's first black president, that the democratic ideal has failed."
Douthat never made this argument. Nothing about his argument requires defending that "the democratic ideal has failed." one need look no further to find a straw argument.
Those are the two sentences in your original post posited as arguments. Although not quoted in my original responses, they were challenged.
Many commentators in this thread are mistaking "there were racists at her rallies" with "race is the key factor in the Palin story." Obama being black can be THE reason those people would never vote for him without her being white being THE key reason people did support her. That was my point about those other markers. Sarah Palin, white feminist from NYC, ain't drawing those crowds. Sarah Palin, white pro-choice evolutionist, ain't drawing those crowds.
You first:
You're conflating two different things. I actually don't quote DIA making that argument after I say race is key, I quote Conor Friesdorf saying the following:
To which you reply:
Again, this is hard to address because no one has actually mentioned the American Dream, except you. What people are addressing ,is Douthat's argument about the democratic ideal, not the American Dream. The reason for this is because, Ross says the following:
See the difference? It's true that Palin's popularity is addressed, but what people are arguing about is why Ross thinks Palin is better representative than Obama of "the democratic ideal." That's why the phrase is repeated.
Now back to you:
Ok....Let's look at Ross's actual column. Again, he claims that Palin is the democratic ideal. We see that in the quote above. He then says:
He also says:
He concludes by saying:
Readers can judge for themselves, whether I've made a strawman argument. The evidence is all there.
Speaking of which...
Look, I'm not trying to be an ass, but seriously, people take a lot of time thinking about this stuff and then articulating it. They don't deserve to be lumped together as "Many Commenters." We have an interface here which allows you to directly challenge the people you disagree with. Quote their arguments accurately, and then go after them.
thanks for engaging my comments. i do like that you have a comments section and are willing to argue with your readers.
thanks for the quotes from Ross about the democratic ideal. i was wrong to say that "the deomcratic ideal" is not at least part of his argument. you're right about that.
i read him in the context of her announcement to resign and how that's being covered by media - some conservatives kicking Palin to the curb, others taking a wait-and-see approach, and pundits like Ross trying to rationalize her actions and depict her as positively as possible. as such, i wasn't bothered by a failure to cite Obama as the better example of the democratic ideal, because i read this as a continuation of the internal conservative debate over where Palin belongs in their hierarchy.
i read these conservatives as arguing with each other over which 2012 hopeful has the best chance to oust Obama. the choice for them is not Palin or Obama as the exemplar of the democratic ideal (Ross wouldn't cite Obama as that example if he were white, because Obama would still be a liberal), it's Palin or Romney, et al. since all of these candidates are white, i don't see race as the key to why Palin is preferred over Romney or Huckabee or Gingrich by the most rabid of the base. heck, Romney fits the archetype of White President more than Palin does, yet is loathed by most Palin supporters as a poser. even further, using Toni Morrison's warrants for what made Clinton a "black president," Palin's mythologized background (bouncing around colleges, kids having kids out of wedlock, etc) actually runs counter to the "white" archetype. so i guess our disagreement continues there.
thanks again for the forum and for covering a variety of issues. you're even making civil war history interesting to me.
I've got to agree with TNC on this one - I think race is the key.
I don't (can't) spend much time dissecting Ross's piece because I think it's a muddled mess and frankly can't quite perform the logical gymnastics required. As most posters here have articulated with far more insight eloquence than I could muster the core premise of his "argument" only works when a number of premises are applied. I believe I see them, I just don't agree with them.
I would like to dismiss Palin as a product of our McCelebrity culture seeping into politics (as if the two weren't inherently related) but I sense there is much more here than the Palin celebrity buzz and superficial "democracy - meritocracy" discourse. For me, Palin has always represented a core endemic within American culture that just seems to mutate with the times. Different strain, same bug. I think it's always been with us. It's not her or her views or her "social class" - for me, it's her personification of identity politics in its highest form. It's the only way I can understand the appeal.
Identity politics is rooted in identity. I define myself by what (who) I am not. Call it xenophobia, call it exclusionary, call it whatever - it isn't about expanding the field to let others have a seat at the table (ie., "meritocracy"), it's somehow about the role of "others" limiting potential success if only we had a true "meritocracy". It doesn't take much imagination to determine who the "others" are. So for me, that's the only way I can make the argument work - on a deeper level at least. There's too many gaps, too many inconsistencies at play to suggest otherwise. At the risk of indulging into character generalities befitting of El Rushbo himself - I would be willing to pose an experiment to at least substantiate my point: randomly select any Palin supporter, put them on the couch for a 20-minute session discussing her appeal as it relates to their belief system. It wouldn't take long to peel away to the core essence of the identity appeal. Race is key.
If race is key, then what explains Palin's star power among conservatives relative to all the other white conservatives? Why are so many people more excited about Palin than about Huckabee--also from a modest background, also self-made without even a whiff of Ivy League, but apparently a much more able and informed man?
It is nice to see some paths to power other than either being born rich and powerful or going to Ivy League schools. But Palin isn't all that great an example of that, because she hasn't distinguished herself much. Compare her record and history with Huckabee, Biden, Guiliani, or Edwards, all important players in last year's election. For that matter, compare her rise to that of Reagan or Jack Kemp--capable politicians with star power who also didn't come up on the coattails of their family connections or of the connections they made at Harvard or Yale or wherever.
I guess the point I was attempting to make is the process from which the appeal to identity politics makes sense to me. I will cede the point that using a term like "race" is too broad, too loaded, too invidious to legitimately advance the ball. It serves to distract rather than illuminate.
That said, my rambling missive was attempting (poorly) to get at the core idea that certain viewpoints and "analysis" of identity populism is inherently inclusive. It's the starting point from which one assemble your basis of beliefs, and hence, validate one's own identity. I just think that a figure like Palin owes her public existence to her particular identity and no other asset. Without being too dismissive, this meme of "...she connects to a lot of 'real Americans' is of no import to me. I view it as intellectually lazy and dishonest. It proceeds from a simplistic notion that she "stands" for some ideal that only "we" share. We, as a group that see ourselves as a collective from which the outlines and purpose only have meaning by defining that, and who, we are not. It is a tautology that looses all meaning and becomes a form of theology in faith and expression. The emphasis is placed on defining oneself through association and reaffirming that held identity by creating a demogogic straw man of cartoonish proportions from which to inveigh. From it's core element, I just think this process is the well spring from which "racism" seeps.
That's the only point I was trying to make.
I would describe race as among those qualities that are "necessary" for this kind of populism-of-the-statistical-mode. But all the other categories are also indispensible. There would not be a Jewish lesbian Sarah Palin, nor an English Oxbridge-educated Sarah Palin, nor even an upper-class Sarah Palin. TNC, do you recognize this? Or do you uniquely privilege race as the category here?
In local politics, I think we see the same populism at work. Having lived in Oakland, I can tell you that Jerry Brown won his mayoral termo by a meritocratic appeal and would never have won a populist campaign. Populist-appeal "one-of-us"-type candidates (which I feel is a better characterization of Palin than "democratic" is, although I do suspect it is an inevitable consequence of universal democracy) win when they are completely recognizable as "one-of-us" by the people who vote them in. And the "us" includes race, whatever the race of the electorate might be. But it also includes all the other stuff.
I don't understand this argument. Ross was comparing her to a black guy--the first black president--and arguing that that she better exemplified the "democratic ideal." That's why race is key--because the other guy is black. In that context, arguing that we really should be talking about lesbians or Jews, or people who went to Oxford, is baffling.
OK, I think I understand the problem in our conversation here.
First, I agree with RD in saying the SP exemplifies a "democratic ideal" and BHO a "meritocratic" one, but I think that's because the "democratic ideal" sucks. Race is one of the main reasons that BHO could never fulfill the role of that "democratic ideal," but it wouldn't be the only deal killer. We get into a morass of contrafactuals with the "if BHO were white" question, but if here were otherwise just who he is - literate, Ivy-educated, comfortable with surrounding himself with very-smart people who will challenge him, seeking to move past traditional political divides, leading through vision and pragmatism rather than empathy (which distinguishes him from the Clintons) - he would also not be able to gain traction as a populist candidate. (Despite my praise of BHO, make no mistake - I'm unhappy with his timidity in certain issues and I am realistic about his possiblities. Nonetheless, I stand by my description.)
People like SP play on lingering resentments and a kind of narcissism-of-the-mediocre. You can only win elections like that when you resemble the electorate.
My point is that the "if BHO were white" thought-experiment would leave someone who tempermentally could never play that populist role. And race is by no means the only reason. To win from any "outside" perspective, you not only have to convince the electorate of your excellence, you have to do so in a way that doesn't stoke resentment. I think this is a problem of any democracy.
Is part of the problem that you think that the "democratic ideal" - understood as a kind of populist narcissism - is really a good thing? And that in a fair universe, BHO would be able to fulfill that role?
I gotta go with Lemmy on this one and I'll take it further. I think he understands Douhat's argument even better than Douhat does himself.
What Lemmy has correctly identified is that Douhat's Democratic vs Meritocratic is really a just a restatement of the classic Populist vs Intellectual divide that has been present in American politics pretty much since day 1.
A black could never win as a populist because the populist appeal is based on tribal identification - so a black populist can win say a Congressional seat in a majority black district, but not a statewide office. That is why there couldn't be a black Sarah Palin, but there could easily be a white Barack Obama, in fact there have been several of them.
What the republicans don't realize is that a white populist in the Sarah Palin mode can't win either, the demographics don't work anymore.
This seems like a really obvious point, and I'm not sure what it's actually an argument against. I don't know where I wrote that race was "the only reason." I don't think anyone would seriously argue that there could be a gay Sarah Palin, for instance. Again, the reason I pointed to race--as in race is key--is because the comparison was made with a black guy. I guess I could have talked about the problems of a Jewish Sarah Palin....
Erick gets it (and, importantly, also gets that populism works locally, often to disastrous effect.) One might argue, too, that Marion Barry exemplifies the "democratic ideal."
TNC, the original comparison was made with a black guy, BHO. But it was also made with an Ivy-educated, peer-reviewed, cosmopolitan, world-travelling Democrat with a compelling resume. Those things, too, would negate a BHO-as-populist-hero, and those were clearly more at stake. All that says is that there's still a white plurality in Alaska and the US. Quelle surprise.
I didn't vote for "the black guy." I voted for the egghead. I was aware of the "historical moment" involved, it wasn't a matter of being color-blind or oblivious to it, but essentially most of the people who voted for BHO felt that he was different from themselves, and mostly in a way they'd call better than themselves. (He's certainly a lot more accomplished than I am likely to ever become; I wouldn't say the same for Palin and her ilk. I consider her political career a fluke.)
Others voted against him for what they identified as a subtly arch attitude. And I think that's actually a more important fact in understanding this tension between democracy-qua-populism and meritocracy. Yes, race remains a category that produces membranes against mutual identification. But I consider that both less interesting and less revealing than the central conflict in democracy between choosing the admirable and the best and choosing the most typical and representative. Even in an imaginary color-blind world where a black populist could be elected by a non-black plurality, this contradiction would persist.
The fact that we don't live in that world is "less interesting" to you. The fact that that "central conflict in democracy" actually has deep roots and is intertwined with America's racial history is equally "less interesting" to you. But some of us (and maybe you, I don't know) have to raise kids with the weight of that "less interesting" conflict on their heads.
At any rate, I appreciate the clarification. I now understand where you're coming from. You don't simply think that race is an equal factor, as you originally stated, you actually think it's less revealing, less interesting, and presumably, less important factor in fulfilling the "democratic ideal." That clarifies the disagreement. We aren't talking about whether there could be a lesbian Sarah Palin, as you originally stated. We agree that there could not be. We're talking about the fact that race isn't that big of a deal.
I think the idea that having an Ivy League education is just as much a disqualifier as being black speaks for itself. Readers can weight that notion against American history, against the very history of populism that we're discussing, and reach their own conclusions. I'm willing to argue about a lot of things. At some point, we hit a wall. This really is mine.
TNC, I wouldn't argue that race in general is just one of many other symmetrical categories in all things. Race isn't just like class in how it plays out. Racism is not the same as, say, homophobia. Its texture is different, its entailments are different. Is that what you want to hear said?
But the thing is, you don't even need to have deep racism to make the populist appeal collapse. It is a less interesting element of this dynamic at play. It is not a compelling element of the explanation for why there wouldn't be a black Sarah Palin as a national political contender. Pulling my statement into a broader social context about the consequences of racism is unfair and ungrounded.
And, I would point out to you that, um, BHO is president now. Not Sarah Palin. The populists lost.
The debate over Palin has become as incoherent as Palin herself.
I remember seeing a documentary about class in America (on PBS?) in which a town was bitterly divided over whether to open a Whole Foods-type grocery store or a Good Ol' American grocery store. People almost came to blows during a discussion of Wonder Bread vs. fresh-baked whole grain bread. The Wonder Bread people were SO ANGERED by the suggestion that their bread was less good. The fact that the other bread was hand-kneaded by local artisans who had, through hard work, developed a nutritionally & flavor-fully optimal loaf was a reason to reject it even more vehemently. To me, this divide is a lot like the one over Palin.
I don't find the Douthout column helpful. He acknowledges that Palin has had "her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologue" - but then blames "elites" for treating her harshly. My own take is: she's being called an ignorant, small-minded liar and she IS an arrogant small-minded liar. And: Wonder Bread IS flavorless & chemical-laden, and saying otherwise doesn't make it so.
Douthout seems to be like the person who concedes that, yes, the bread lacks flavor, nutrition, etc. - but those who point this out & urge us to try better bread are to be faulted, because 48% of people without a college education prefer Wonder Bread! This seems lame to me. But I also wonder (ha ha): can/should I try to figure out my own motivations? Why do I think that it's obvious that the other bread is just BETTER? Why do I think that it's obvious that THOSE facts about Sarah Palin are all-important? (Is the answer really simple: because they ARE?)
Frankly, I think this lacks any real sense of what "the democratic ideal" is, and that DIA is just flat wrong.
Herodotus, quoting Otanes, as relayed by Wikipedia, defines democracy:
Specifically, this includes sortition: the selection of office holders by lot. In this, Herodotus is not only with Otanes, but with the tradition of western philosophical investigation of "democracy" through Montesquieu and into modern thought on still living practices (witness jury selection).Hence, the democratic ideal of selection is sortition -- a random sampling. Of course, we could suppose a near-ideal standard of democracy that replicates something like sortition (i.e.: elections that result in selection of representatives that is very like what would be produced by random sampling), but the very idea of meritocracy (which was, incidentally, originally coined as a disparaging term) rejects this; it explicitly tries to fill offices with and/or allot power to people that have more merit than that possessed by people picked by lot. Once you get this, it is pretty clear that, between the two, Obama is the meritocratic selection (being a person of great merit, which even I, in whom abides a great hatred of the man, will admit) and Palin is the democratic selection, being as she more neatly represents what one would expect if you just picked a person at random to be president, including such factors as being a woman (women slightly outnumber men), non-black (being as black people are a minority), and not being an Ivy League graduate or someone that would likely win an American Idol competition (the average American having not attended an Ivy League university or won American Idol).
This is not to say that I think Palin should be president or that we should select a president by random choice or that Obama is "too good" to be president (in fact, I'm an anarchist, and what I really think is that we ought not have a president at all); "democratic" is not a synonym of "good", and while you can define the sound-symbol "democratic" in any way you wish (including just applying it as an adjective to things you like), by doing so in a way that differs from its historical usage you also divorce yourself from the cultural dialog about it throughout that history. Along those lines, most other people don't think that people of major suckage should have the right to as much chance as anyone else at being randomly picked to be president, but to the extent that they think this they are clinging to something other than "the democratic ideal", which would quite clearly indicate that everyone has the same shot regardless of their merit or suckitude, and to the extent that they think that their thinking embodies "democracy", as spoken of since ancient times, they are mistaken.
But thats not the American democratic ideal right? Greek democracy, small island, open to only male Athenian citizens (12% of the population.)
American democracy is more of a Roman Republican ideal, an entirely different animal. I dont know that picking people at random is a traditional American democratic ideal, but if thats what Ross truly meant, thanks for deciphering him.
Right, the practice of American politics is of a republican nature, not a democratic one. Also, note that I did include the notion of a psuedo-democracy (an allotment of power that while not actually done by sortition produces one that is practially indistinguishable from it) and specifically contrasted even that relaxed standard, still far from any actual American practice, with meritocracy.
That being said, I have no special insight into the internal workings of Ross's mind, but I'm prepared to suppose that if he meant "the republican ideal" or "the American ideal" instead of "the democratic ideal" in his piece then he would have written "the republican ideal".
Using Athenian democracy as the example, I'd like to point out that the prototype is not necessarily the ideal. For instance, in contemporary America and in Athens alike a certain kind of officer, the people that sit on juries, is selected largely by sortition. In one way the American practice is closer to the democratic ideal than the Athenian practice (which is, by definition, the democratic prototype) in that in America we sample from a larger portion of the people (although the Athenian practice seems to have been closer to the ideal in that it was harder to get out of the duty after having been selected by lot).
Joshua, certain terms have become so blindly linked with the "good" that subjecting them to critical analysis is a form of secular Satanism. "Democracy" is one of them ("equality" is another.) I agree with your analysis, but you have to actually walk your readers through it over a long term and endure a lot of abuse on the way there.
Ok. Let's assume that the term "democracy" is really best defined by regarding the Athenian prototype (which ignores 99% of all forms of democracies ever practiced).
Douthat is still wrong. Palin was picked my McCain. If that process corresponds to sortition, so does the process in which a dictator randomly picks his heir, and I guess you wouldn't call that a representation of the democratic ideal.
I straight up reject your assumption. I'm not trying to define democracy by it's prototype, I'm specifically talking about the ideal as separate from the prototype, and how "democracy", if looked at in the context of how it has been analyzed in serious thought for the last two-and-a-half millennia, has certain substantive qualities that make it something that is different than "meritocracy", which, by construction, is is opposed to democracy (it having been defined in a work of fiction [The Rise of the Meritocracy] with the intention of describing a prototypical system that was explicitly elitist and overthrown by a democratic uprising for its hubris).
So, while the selection of Palin as the Republican candidate in actual fact was not by lot, I very clearly stated that she is "what one would expect" in the contrapositive case of looking at which of the set {Obama,Palin} is more the meritocratic selection and which the more democratic, in the specific sense of "being like that produced by sortition", which I think is more apropos to what Douthat wrote than your prosaic example.
I proudly accept the horns of secular Satanism. Thanks for your support.
That's a smart defense.
However, saying that sortition represents the democratic ideal is like saying that a naked ice hockey player represents the olympic ideal.
More like saying a naked pentathlete represents the Olympic ideal. Which I have said, and is true.
Look, I tremble for humanity that I have to stoop to stating something so vacuous, but common practice is often non-ideal, therefore the nature of common practice is not a usually good indicator of the nature of the ideal.
Well you don't have to. I don't think that's the problem
You said:
So what you are saying is that picking a person at random is democratic. That only makes sense if you are talking about democracy in Athens. Democracy has changed since then, and with respect to the question at hand, fundamentally so. The concept of elections - absolutly predominant in modern democracies - is not a mere change of the "common practice". It is a fundamentally different concept. The legitimacy - I would even say the raison être - of modern democracies mainly derives from the participation of the people as voters, and not from the participation of the people as potential POTUS-lottery winners. And the ideal of democracy, consequentially, has changed too. I would say it is legitimate representation through fair elections. Hence, the democratic selection is Obama.
I completly agree with you that meritocracy and democracy are two very different things.
Sure, there's a common usage definition of "democracy" in which lots of things that have nothing much to do with one another are included. However, I didn't say the "the typical secular democratic standard", I said "the democratic ideal". The ideal is a matter of philosophical inquiry, a matter on which our understanding may be refined over time, but not something defined or changeable by the uneducated prattle of the masses that wouldn't know the ideal of democracy if it forced them into office and then had them executed afterward for screwing it up. The claim is not just that meritocracy and democracy are different things, but that they differ in this specific way, a claim which is eminently justified in the context.
Moreover, you also implicitly discount the larger ongoing discourse as to how systems of power-allocation and decision making by vote are designed, which exists in a theoretical framework that uses the sortition standard as a key part of it's analytical and evaluative standards; the question of the legitimacy -- or raison être -- of what you call democracies still turns on matters that are in part determined by their relation to ideal standards such as sortition (e.g.: one might argue that meritocracy is good because it produces results so different than that of sortition). Hence, what you refer to as democracy is certainly unlike what I'm calling the "ideal" of democracy, but they are still related in important ways, and you can't totally break that relation without also breaking with all of that historical thought on democracy, from Aristotle through Montesquieu to the designers of the Internet Engineering Task Force (all of whom discussed, and in the later case employed, sortition), and having to do all of the philosophical heavy lifting from scratch.
TNC: This whole debate about Palin, "democracy" and "meritocracy" reminds me of a historian's take on Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy: "Jefferson thought the people could be taught the truth, while Jackson thought they knew it by instinct." (I think this was James A. Garraty, but not sure.)
Palin's fans are clearly in the "Jacksonian" camp. You don't need any fancy learning to be a great President, just the right moral instincts. It's a belief that seems to have slowly taken over the Republican Party, which seems to celebrate Reagan, Bush and Palin's ignorance. Democrats, meanwhile, have settled into the Jeffersonian camp, with a clear preference for brainy leaders.
Both Jefferson and Jackson, of course, were racist slave owners, and as I see it, both visions of democracy are equally compatible with white supremacy or its opposition. To me, this division is about as independent of race as any can be in the United States. (Which doesn't mean race doesn't color it at all, of course.)
Wow, nice post.
Yet even Jackson, a guy who I intensely dislike on some levels but whose hustle I cannot knock, was a war hero, a congressional rep, a senator and a Governor before winning the Presidency, which he took several shots at.
He may have ran on being "just folks" but he sure wasnt.
Pardon the digression, but I'm a new commenter here and a little unclear on the protocol for replying/posting. Is standard practice here to hit the Reply button under someone else's post if you want to address their points or to post a new comment and quote them? Also, it seems some of the comments have the Reply button available while others do not. Is there a limit to the number of replies allowed in a sub-thread?
The answer to both your questions is yes.
When a thread gets too deep if you just hir reply to the last comment that has the option your comment will eb in order so the flow still kind of works.
Cool, thanks.
I can't imagine a black Palin right now, but I could imagine a biracial one a generation from now. And I wouldn't be altogether shocked by a Latina or Native American one in areas where those groups are the majority of the rural population. A lot of rural America is very white, but certainly not all of it.
As far as all thes up-from-poverty narratives we have been comparing over the past few months (Sotomayor, Obama, Bill Clinton, Palin), aren't we kind of lumping? I mean, real elites like the Kennedy clan stick out by miles. But there are a lot of different levels and social classes in non-elite America.
Obama's background strikes me as solidly middle class. Alternative in many ways, and not upper middle class like orthodontists from Westchester County, but white collar and in the broad statistical middle when it comes to resources and opportunities. Palin strikes me as small town middle class in background -- people who do rather well by blue colllar work or small business and think they are the elite, but are legitimately stunned when they discover that the outside world doesn't agree with them. This often happens when they go to the big city for the first time and get dismissed as hicks. It's been happening for many generations now.
I'm not saying this to dismiss people from rural backgrounds. It's all too easy to take that shot, and I don't actually think more cosmopolitan values are always the right ones. I do live in a city now, and I try to BE cosmopolitan and at least consider everything, but I honestly don't think urban liberals are going to win everything.
Racial issues and gay issues, very probably, and rightly so. But a lot of other things, perhaps not. Big city Ivy League grads brought us the banking crisis, after all, so there's certainly room to think that group hasn't solved absolutely everything.
That is one of the points Yglesies was addressing.
Sarah Palin's father is a high school biology teacher, both of her parents have college degrees, she has a college degree, there is nothing blue collar about her background.
The "truth" of Palin is irrelevant to her political career. George W. Bush also ran on the "guy you could have a beer with" plank (he certainly couldn't have run on "smart, capable statesman with insight and poise") despite coming from an elite family with Ivy credentials. Ultimately, Palin's voters didn't see someone with college-educated parents; they didn't see someone of accomplishment, or gifted with talent or education, that they could admire. They saw, and see, someone utterly like themselves. The details of her biography are irrelevant.
TNC:
Yesterday's column notwithstanding, let us all acknowledge that regardless of Ross Douthat's politics, his intellectual honesty is refreshing --- a vast upgrade for the NY Times op-ed page over the GOP hack William Kristol.
Refreshing in the way that a small paper cup of water is refreshing after trekking several miles in the desert. No oasis, that guy.
I agree with this. I don't doubt his sincerity.
I guess I do. Unless you mean he is more sincere than Bill Kristol. I would agree then but being more sincere than Bill Kristol is hardly a tall order.
For someone who was born into any real wealth at all, who went to a private high school and then Harvard University and possesses a plum spot in the media, for them to talk about the “elites” as if they are not "elite" themselves…it just beyond belief to me.
Again, it just strikes me as political ideology being prized over everything, even objective professional attributes. Elites are only elites if they don’t like Sarah Palin. If you do like Sarah Palin, no matter how wealthy or influential you are, you’re in touch with mainstream America.
But again, Douthat doesn’t want to make this argument. So he offers the meritocratic vs. democratic concept.
I won’t repeat my argument all over again. I’ll just point out the way in which he frames his meritocratic vs. democratic argument. He speaks of “the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman”.
This is just lazy intellectualism at its finest. Let’s forget the fact that plenty of ordinary citizens, who pull themselves up from their own bootstraps and end up taking on forces that could generally...possibly be called “elite” do so in part by graduating from Ivy League institutions. Taking a good look at his statement, it’s clear that Douthat is trying to call to mind an extremely vague character.
His character is someone who was born poor in a rural setting, never had a formal education and still made their way to “the top”. Now let’s look at his examples.
Andrew Jackson was born relatively poor in a rural setting and had no formal education. But he made his way into prominence through the military. Now perhaps his military exploits did not warrant all of the fame that they received, considering it was largely this fame that fueled his way into the White House, not anything he did in his brief congressional career. But one could easily argue that he made his way to the top in a meritocratic fashion. The Battle of New Orleans may not have made an actual difference in the War of 1812 but Jackson’s success there proved his merit as a military commander.
Harry Truman was born relatively poor in a rural setting and had no formal education. But he made his way through the benevolence of a corrupt political boss named Tom Pendergast. Now I think Harry Truman was a fine if also short-lived US Senator and I think he was a good President. But no one should look to his rise in politics and say, “hey, there’s a model all aspiring citizens should aim to follow.”
Sarah Palin was not born poor but very middle class by any reasonable standard. She was born in a rural setting. But she did have a formal education. Yes, it was from the University of Northern Idaho and it was a degree in “sports journalism”, whatever the hell that is. But it still is an authentic degree from an accredited school. That’s more than Jackson or Truman ever got and it’s more than over 70% of Americans get. To many people in Alaska and throughout America, the lifestyle that Governor Sarah Palin and her family live is very elite. And her spot as the Vice-Presidential nominee was little more than blind, dumb luck.
Is the argument that Douthat is trying to make is that only by attending an Ivy League University can you be called “an elite” or said to fulfill a Meritocratic (but never a Democratic) ideal? Mr. Coates, you yourself said “The problem is this notion that by merely not attending an Ivy, you somehow automatically fulfill the "democratic ideal." It's true Americans respect people who make it in the world without coming from an elite background. But the idea that the only real marker of that background is a college acceptance letter is reductive.” Quite right.
Now I would suppose one could find a big-shot Politician or world leader that better fits with Douthat’s model. But would that model, if it does exist in real life, say something good about America or something bad? Not just a person who made it big without a wealthy upbringing or a fancy education but someone who did never to anything to warrant success at all. As you say Mr. Coates, “Most Americans believe everyone, no matter their background, has the right to compete. Very few believe everyone, no matter their suckage, has the right to win.” Again, I agree totally.
Douthat has the right to make any argument he wants. But a good argument, in written form, shouldn’t be harder to understand than interpretive dance. And he shouldn’t expect any reader, gentile or otherwise, to come up with better examples to support an argument that he himself made, in an attempt to be fair.
I will say this. If I actually suspend my disbelief and trust that Douthat is sincere in putting forth his Democratic vs. Meritocratic dynamic…then race becomes key. Then his whole argument seems like an attempt to subconsciously cover over inherent racism. It’s the perfect case of, as others have said, moving the goalposts. As if no matter how admirable a black person’s success is, it’s not as admirable as what at least one type of white person could do.
Whether Douthat is to some degree, either racist, insincere or both, is not a determination I personally have a great stake in. I don’t regularly read his columns. But I still vote for a degree of insincerity, far more than any degree of racism. His argument doesn’t make sense. Generally when people don’t make sense like this, they are lying.
I'm kinda set back by this whole notion. Makes me laugh. During the election, no amount of education or background experience could make the Obama qualified.. and now we have this debate where we could say Obama is over-qualified, whereas Palin would be the democratic ideal just by happening into a job? Ha! So now, being unqualified is an attractive attribute of an elected government official... except when he's black. Thennnn it's Affirmative Action. Geez.
I spent some time with the Douthat's article yesterday--perhaps too much time when, at dinner, I asked my girlfriend if I could read the piece out loud to her, when really I wanted to hear it myself. (She said yes, but in such a way that I knew I was doing dishes that night). In any event, I realized that there is a fundamental problem that courses throughout the piece. Indeed there is much to say and critique about this specious meritocratic and democratic dyad--and much of that has been done here and other places. However, what is perhaps most distressing about the piece is that at its foundation is that omnipresent strand of anti-intellectualism that conservatives are wont to espouse with increasing frequency these days. Notwithstanding Douthat's own problematic position (e.g. product of private schools, editor at THE ATLANTIC, and Harvard, yes, Harvard: would his place as the TIMES be meritocratic, then?), conservatism in this country, in some significant way, has always been tethered to an anti-intellectualism. This is part of the Southern strategy, too, and no one seems to talk too much about that. In the years before the Civil War, conservatism and intellectualism in the South seemed polar opposites because, at its very core, conservatism counters progress, inquiry, and new knowledge. (See Drew Gilpin Faust's amazing text, A SACRED CIRCLE: THE DILEMMA OF THE INTELLECTUAL IN THE OLD SOUTH, 1840-1860.) From Nixon on (thanks Patty, Patty, Pat Pat (Buchanan)), the Southern strategy has followed this model and explicitly tied intellectualism with elitism, activism, and "negro loving."
Enter Palin as someone who is clearly not an intellectual--but "connects" with "real Americans," as Mika B. said the other day on Morning Joe. (Of course Obama and Biden connected more by about 8 percentage points and about 200 electoral votes). Her background and her seeming rise from humble origins and state schools (HA!), made her seem like the perfect model of what Douthat sees at the "democratic" ideal. Of course the two ideals--meritocratic and democratic--are not opposites at all but are in fact part of the same thing. But the question becomes why would Douthat, Kristol, and Buchanan and the rest be so in love with Palin as a candidate. It is precisely because she is the ideal anti-intellectual. But this model is going nowhere fast, and Republicans should realize this quickly. As we become a more global world, with global markets and global information highways, more and more people--North, South, East, West want their president and leaders to be intellectuals. This is especially the case post-Bush. But those in the conservative punditry (many of them ARE intellectuals with Ivy League credentials) know that conservatism as an ideal and as a shaping of policy rubs against intellectualism and engaged reading. (Name the periodicals you read, Gov. Palin!) Knowledge is, in many ways, their enemy. You know Joe Scarbourgh recently talked about going back to Edmund Burke and his brand of conservatism. The problem with Burke--and I admire him greatly--is that he wanted to preserve a pre-modern society that had the very few at the top taking care of the great many at the bottom. This conservatism runs directly against democracy and the deep pursuit of knowledge. (At one point Burke argued that they should do away with the Encyclopediasts in France!)
Sorry for the rambling. But what strikes me is not so much the notion of race that courses throughout the piece--it does, as TNC points out. But the racial unconscious in the piece is part and parcel of the real problem with modern-day conservatism, the same problem that has hampered it since the antebellum days: anti-intellectualism. You see, once people pursue knowledge and approach a life of intellect and inquiry, many of the conservative ideals go out of the window (and it has been that way since the beginning of the nation). (Remember Noonan's some things are better left mysterious comment regarding torture?). In Palin, Krisol et. al see someone who might rally just enough people to win an election (she won't and can't); they see her as anti-intellectual, woman-of-the-people. But they don't realize that more and more the people WANT their kids to go to Harvard, Columbia, etc.
Side note: I think Douthat is too young to work at the Times. He is clearly smart and articulate. But conservative voices don't need a wunderkind there; they need someone with more experience, more life, and more time as a conservative with deeper bona fides. As someone roughly the same age as Douthat, I don't think he is doing conservatism (or the paper) any favors with his quirky, sometimes thoughtful, but too often jejune commentary. He is simply too young, hasn't read enough, and hasn't lived enough. But this is a problem I see throughout the newspapers and magazines: people fresh out of undergrad with little knowledge of the real world and especially not read enough-- I remember watching a blogging heads with a young writer who was talking about whether or not she would have confirmed Roberts or Alito. She wasn't even old enough to be a Congressman, let alone a Senator! She clearly had no grasp of their time on the court or as lawyers and was spouting platitude after platitude. It was shameful and silly. But anyway I have digressed... Douthat is too young is my point...
Although Douthat does contrast "meritocratic" Obama versus "democratic" Palin, to be fair, he does not seem to say that Obama's victory represents a failure of the democratic ideal. As I read his argument, Palin's national career has been a "despiriting period for democracy" because "media and political establishments," in their attacks of Palin, exceeded the bounds of political give-and-take to specifically attack the anyone-can-be-anything ideal. (He probably does not see Obama as a representative of this ideal--- as, indeed, he isn't; Obama is uncommonly smart, and definitely not "anyone".)
If we believe that Palin is a self-made maverick, of no great gifts or privileges but worthy of holding political office, we may also believe that her treatment by the media shows that we are uncommonly cruel to such people--- and if all of that is taken for granted, I concede that it _would_ say something unseemly about our country. But of course I don't buy it, much for the same reason you don't buy it. To see Sarah Palin as an Everywoman victimized by elites is to ignore that elites created Sarah Palin. She has always allied herself with power (even in the non-partisan Wasilla mayoral race, when she introduced highly emotional but largely irrelevant campaign issues like guns and abortion with the support of the state Republican party). Her history of grappling with the Alaskan GOP is not unique in the annals of American politics; it only became a heroic stand against elites when the national party sensed it was the one part of her "narrative" that could appeal to people not already sold on the fact that she is a white Christianist mother of five.
This is the fundamental problem of being an apologist for Sarah Palin. Douthat clearly feels that the media crossed a line in its treatment of Palin, but tellingly, he doesn't say anything about what they should have done, probably because he knows there wasn't much else they could do. (What matter of substance in Palin's candidacy went ignored while the media focused on trivialities? Was there anything to Sarah Palin besides trivialities?)
Deep down, my guess is that Douthat does not lament the failure of the Palin candidacy, but merely wishes that she had been pushed more gently out of the spotlight. (This might've been possible if Palin didn't try so hard to stay in it, Ross.)
I am sorry, but I fail to see the comparison between Obama and Palin, largely due to the fact that I fail to see Palin as a success of any kind. She was elected Governor in a state with the second smallest population. She then had a horrific time while in office, even though her party controlled politics. She was a diasterous pick by McCain that did more to defeat his campaign than anything else. Now she quits when the going gets tough and runs around giving inane and babbling reasons why she is "not a quitter." Yet, we are told she is a star, maverick and a force. It begs the question, is she a star with conservatives just because she takes some of the social positions they like? If that is the case, can't they find somewhat markedly more intelligent to espouse them for their party. I know of few Democrats that fear a Palin run, they would welcome it.
I think Palin is important, because she to me embodies how democracies really become fascisms: by the manifestation of resentment into power. When you read the rantings of people who support her, who idolize her in the way they do, who abide no critique - I've seen people write of "a war of life and death." She is a star with the white-trash-conservative crowd because she speaks to their toxicity. It is her constituency's class that historically makes up the rank-and-file of fascist regimes.
Part of the poor political education in this country is the failure to understand the close link between fascism and populism, and to attribute the former to Bond-villianesque schemings rather than to popular malaise.
An interesting question is why there is so much obsession on a failed political candidate from a somewhat out-of-the-way state with few electoral votes. Why is she so important ? First of all, Frank Rich and Andrew Sullivan obsess over her, but Why ? Is she Joan Crawford or Bette Davis ?I do not want her to run for anything. One wonders. If Sarah Palin did not exist, some people would have to invent her fober the woman you could love to hate. Hate can be a very warming thing, especially if you can convince yourself that your warm hate is enlightened.
Whether it is Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin, a large portion of this nation is looking for someone who will carry the banner for social conservatives. Many of these live in or were reared in smaller communities. We see our values of family, faith, and industry as far superior to those being embraced by Frank Rich, Andrew Sullivan and their ilk.
We are disgusted by...
Urbanites who have
lauded greed and corruption
wrecked our financial markets.
undercut and mocked the institution of marriage and left us with cities full of single moms and disadvantaged children.
replaced personal charity and generosity with taxation.
rejected the protestant work ethic.
created a welfare system that is now generational.
made racial division a game that politicians play for selfish ends.
created inferior schools and wasteful social programs that do not accomplish what they promise.
regularly rejected faith and replaced it with a compulsive cynicism.
Palin is a poor choice, but most any choice is better than celebrating or electing those who represent the horribly failed ideologies and policies of urban america. Obama has yet to do one thing to make America a better nation. He is doing all the things that the urbanists think will make the nation better, but the policies that have failed in the microlabs of our cities seem destined to fail on the macro level as well. Until his policies actually bring some real benefit to our failing nation, I'll wait to celebrate his presidency. It would be good if our press would wait to worship as well.
So much nonsense in one post I don;t even know where to start, since I'm sure you will soon be banned anyway I won't bother being polite.
Rejected the protestant work ethic? WTF does that even mean? Do you think we are all day traders flipping stocks to make quick bucks? You know most of us in the cities have jobs that we go to and work at all day in exchange for a paycheck, just like you.
It is this attitude that your values are superior to mine that makes your brand of populism so vile. I try real hard to not be an elitist snob who looks down on social conservatives and then jerks like you keep coming along to reinforce all the cartoon stereotypes.
Let me put it bluntly asshole, their are tens of millions of us who live in cities, we work hard and take care of our families. We also respect gay people and believe they have the same rights to share their lives with the one they love that we do. You call that wrecking the institution of marriage, that argument is so absurd it isn't worth engaging.
As for the rest of your rants and regurgitated 1970s stereotypes all I have to say is get out and see the world my friend, the divorce rate is way higher in rural and exurban red areas than in cities. So is teen pregnancy. And you might read up on Welfare reform, remember Clinton passing that in the 90s? Good lord have you been to a city in the last 30 years? None of them are Times Square circa 1975 anymore.
Oh and by the way you give away a lot of your biases by lumping Andrew Sullivan with Frank Rich, you may consider Sullivan a vile urban liberal since he is gay, but you might be surprised to find that he is pretty right wing on economics and probably shares most of your misinformed views about welfare and so on and is basically the polar opposite of Frank Rich on most issues.
You left out the fact that Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee were born and raised in the same small town.
Oh, that and Sarah Palin’s daughter had a child out of wedlock, she is a single mom. Is that supposed to be representative of small-town values? I guess Brett must have missed that…I thought that it was in the news a few times though.
BrettL,
You're banned. I don't even know why you're on this blog.
MR BrettL
I live in a large city.I fail to see how that makes me reject the Christian faith. With all due respect have you actually visited a city ?Or actually talked to someone who lives in a city?
One of the most disturbing trends recently is for people to act as though ones political beliefs makes them different than people who have different beliefs.
It is stupid to hate another ethnic group.But it is even stupider to make it seem like conservatives and liberals are two different ethnic groups who live totally apart from each other and are almost completly different in every respect.
i am not going to ask you to change your opinions MR BrettL .But I would like to ask you to open your mind to the possibilities that there are good and bad people in both urban and rural areas.And that believe it or not , just because i live in the city it does not mean that i somehow lack patriotism or religiouse faith.
You should ask yourself why you have to feel that people like myself are your enemy just because we live in the city.Does it make you feel better about yourself that you are fighting some sort of crusade against us" evil" city folk.
MR BrettL Despite our differences in opinion i wish you well but I would leave you with this one last thought.
Life is too short to go through it with hatred in your heart.
I do not mean this sarcasticly MR BrettL . Please take time to think about what I have said and please reread what you have written.There is way too much hatred in what you have written.
This is an argument by assertion that does not prove its point and ignores the vast problems of racism, poverty and generations of hopelessness in these "smaller communities," who tend to honor their values in breach.
"Urbanites", at least, do not sweep the problem under the rug.