Disclosure: I read David Brooks mostly for the entertainment value; I don't really think he's the voice of conservatism or even a credible pundit. But even the most toothless prognosticator occasionally gets something right, and to my surprise, today was David Brooks' lucky day.
Not that I really thought much of "The Sam's Club Agenda" (NYT, June 27, 2008), but this section is worth ruminating upon:
Liberals write about economic inequality and conservatives about
social disruption, but [Ross] Douthat and [Reithan] Salam write about the interplay
between values and economics and the way virtue and economic security
can reinforce each other.
In the 1950s, divorce rates were low
and jobs were plentiful, but over the next few decades that broke down.
The social revolutions of the 1960s and the economic revolution of the
information age have emancipated the well-educated but left the Sam’s
Club voters feeling insecure.
Gaps are opening between the
educated and less educated. Working-class divorce rates remain high,
while the mostly upper-middle-class parents of Ivy Leaguers have
divorce rates of only 10 percent. Working-class kids are unlikely to
complete college, affluent kids usually do.
Liberals have a way
to address these inequalities — the creation of a Denmark-style welfare
state. Conservatives have offered almost nothing. The G.O.P. has lost
contact with its own working-class base. This is the intellectual
vacuum that “Grand New Party” seeks to fill.
The party that can figure out how to use government to best boost the prospects of working-class children and adults -- without compromising their values or making wealthier people feel as though they're being penalized for being successful -- is the one that will have a lock on the nation in the next few decades.
Perhaps it's time to revive a WPA-style workforce and bolster America's greatest infrastructures -- highways, waterways, telecom networks, national parks. You could even come up with new programs devoted to national energy auditing and efficiency, high-speed network access in rural areas, victory garden-style urban and suburban gardening for food independence, etc. As a nation, we've been so factionalized for much of the decade -- perhaps what we need now is an initiative that makes us all feel as though we're invested in the country.
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