"The Party of Work"

Brooks again, at NYTimes.com.   He makes some interesting (and I think very accurate) points here, and I agree with him - except I think that Democrats are the ones poised to be able to accomplish what he recommends here.   I've read so many strange "America is over" post-election essays from the Republican side, and I honestly cannot understand where this is coming from.  It seems completely wacko, to me.  I guess it's what  Brooks is saying here:  that many Republicans have had this romantic ideal (and self-image) of "the rugged individual and the frontier"  - and that that is what's gone now.  To be honest: I'm glad; good riddance to that whole idea, I say.  I think finding ways to live in community is a lot healthier - and it's what we need to do anyway.

I do suppose that there are some Democrats who want to "be the party of security, defending the 20th-century welfare state" - but I don't know any personally.  The Democrats I know work very, very hard themselves - and I don't know anybody who thinks "the welfare state" per se is the goal.  The idea has always been, in my experience, for government to assist people in achieving a better life for themselves - to help create conditions for that to happen, if necessary - and, of course, to help  people who really can't help themselves.

I honestly don't know anybody who doesn't work or aspire to - so I'm not sure why the Republicans are the "party of work."   Bill Clinton reformed Welfare, after all - that's sort of ancient history by now, isn't it?     (I read an interesting article awhile back about the problems with "meritocracy," and will post that at some point if I can find it; it made some interesting points about the unexamined assumptions built into the notion.)

To me, the problem with the Republican Party is that their media mouthpieces and their hangers-on seem really crazy these days.  From what I'm reading on the web, some really do believe that 47% of the people of the country are basically worthless - and they don't hesitate to express their disdain openly.  How did they ever think they were going to get people to vote for them with that approach?   It's nuts.

I woke up in the middle of the night after the election - didn't know who had won when I went to sleep; I've been going to bed with the chickens lately, especially after the hurricane - and was vastly relieved that Obama won.   The Republican Party scares me these days; it seems, as a whole, totally filled with rage and anger, and just plain out of touch with reality.

Anyway, here's the article; my bold, as usual.

The American colonies were first settled by Protestant dissenters. These were people who refused to submit to the established religious authorities. They sought personal relationships with God. They moved to the frontier when life got too confining. They created an American creed, built, as the sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset put it, around liberty, individualism, equal opportunity, populism and laissez-faire.

This creed shaped America and evolved with the decades. Starting in the mid-20th century, there was a Southern and Western version of it, formed by ranching Republicans like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Their version drew on the traditional tenets: ordinary people are capable of greatness; individuals have the power to shape their destinies; they should be given maximum freedom to do so.

This is not an Ayn Randian, radically individualistic belief system. Republicans in this mold place tremendous importance on churches, charities and families — on the sort of pastoral work Mitt Romney does and the sort of community groups Representative Paul Ryan celebrated in a speech at Cleveland State University last month.

But this worldview is innately suspicious of government. Its adherents generally believe in the equation that more government equals less individual and civic vitality. Growing beyond proper limits, government saps initiative, sucks resources, breeds a sense of entitlement and imposes a stifling uniformity on the diverse webs of local activity.

During the 2012 campaign, Republicans kept circling back to the spot where government expansion threatens personal initiative: you didn’t build that; makers versus takers; the supposed dependency of the 47 percent. Again and again, Republicans argued that the vital essence of the country is threatened by overweening government.

These economic values played well in places with a lot of Protestant dissenters and their cultural heirs. They struck chords with people whose imaginations are inspired by the frontier experience.

But, each year, there are more Americans whose cultural roots lie elsewhere. Each year, there are more people from different cultures, with different attitudes toward authority, different attitudes about individualism, different ideas about what makes people enterprising.

More important, people in these groups are facing problems not captured by the fundamental Republican equation: more government = less vitality.

The Pew Research Center does excellent research on Asian-American and Hispanic values. Two findings jump out. First, people in these groups have an awesome commitment to work. By most measures, members of these groups value industriousness more than whites.

Second, they are also tremendously appreciative of government. In survey after survey, they embrace the idea that some government programs can incite hard work, not undermine it; enhance opportunity, not crush it.

Moreover, when they look at the things that undermine the work ethic and threaten their chances to succeed, it’s often not government. It’s a modern economy in which you can work more productively, but your wages still don’t rise. It’s a bloated financial sector that just sent the world into turmoil. It’s a university system that is indispensable but unaffordable. It’s chaotic neighborhoods that can’t be cured by withdrawing government programs.

For these people, the Republican equation is irrelevant. When they hear Romney talk abstractly about Big Government vs. Small Government, they think: He doesn’t get me or people like me.

Let’s just look at one segment, Asian-Americans. Many of these people are leading the lives Republicans celebrate. They are, disproportionately, entrepreneurial, industrious and family-oriented. Yet, on Tuesday, Asian-Americans rejected the Republican Party by 3 to 1. They don’t relate to the Republican equation that more government = less work.

Over all, Republicans have lost the popular vote in five out of the six post-cold-war elections because large parts of the country have moved on. The basic Republican framing no longer resonates.

Some Republicans argue that they can win over these rising groups with a better immigration policy. That’s necessary but insufficient. The real problem is economic values.

If I were given a few minutes with the Republican billionaires, I’d say: spend less money on marketing and more on product development. Spend less on “super PACs” and more on research. Find people who can shift the debate away from the abstract frameworks — like Big Government vs. Small Government. Find people who can go out with notebooks and study specific, grounded everyday problems: what exactly does it take these days to rise? What exactly happens to the ambitious kid in Akron at each stage of life in this new economy? What are the best ways to rouse ambition and open fields of opportunity?

Don’t get hung up on whether the federal government is 20 percent or 22 percent of G.D.P. Let Democrats be the party of security, defending the 20th-century welfare state. Be the party that celebrates work and inflames enterprise. Use any tool, public or private, to help people transform their lives.