Rise Of The Limousine Liberals
Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel pen an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today that points out that the "liberal" of today has little, if any, resemblance to the liberal of old. Nor do they care about the lower or middle classes. The authors call them "Gentry Liberals."
Well, it isn't your father's liberalism, the ideology that defended the interests and values of the middle and working classes. The old liberalism had its flaws, but it also inspired increased social and economic mobility, strong protections for unions, the funding of a national highway system and a network of public parks, and the development of viable public schools. It also invented Social Security and favored a strong foreign policy.
Today's ascendant liberalism has a much different agenda. Call it "gentry liberalism." It's not driven by the lunch-pail concerns of those workers struggling to make it in an increasingly high-tech, information-based, outsourcing U.S. economy — though it does pay lip service to them.
Rather, gentry liberalism reflects the interests and values of the affluent winners in the era of globalization and the beneficiaries of the "financialization" of the economy. Its strongholds are the tony neighborhoods and luxurious suburbs in and around New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and West Los Angeles.
Just as the number of industrial workers and traditional middle-class households has declined, the ranks of the affluent class have grown. From 2000 to 2005, the number of millionaires in the U.S. rose 26%. Meanwhile, households with incomes of more than $100,000 a year were the most rapidly growing income category, according to Ogilvy & Mather demographer Peter Francese. From 1994 to 2004, the number of six-figure-income households jumped 54%.
Although many of the newly affluent are — as is traditional — politically conservative, a rising number of them are turning left. Surveys done by the Pew Research Center indicate that an increasing number of households with annual incomes greater than $135,000 — the nation's top 10% — are moving toward the Democrats. In 1995, there were nearly twice as many Republicans (46%) as Democrats (25%) in this category. Today, there are as many Democrats (31%) as Republicans (32%).
The political upshot is that Democrats now control the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts, according to Michael Franc of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Kotkin and Siegel point out that this is elitism - the presumptuous assumption that the gentry are wiser and more capable of ruling and deciding what is best. I'd recommend reading it all. Because, in fact, the gentry liberals are increasingly out of touch with the interests of the working people.
But gentry liberalism's increasingly "green tint" distances it the furthest from the values and interests of the middle and working classes. Leading gentry liberals, whether on Wall Street, in Hollywood or in Silicon Valley, are among the greatest scolds on global warming. They justifiably excoriate the Bush administration for its overall environmental record, but some of them — movie stars, investment bankers, dot-com billionaires — are quick to insulate themselves from charges that their private jets or 20,000-square-foot vacation homes in Nantucket spew prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide. Repentance typically includes the purchase of carbon "offsets," parcels of rain forests, hybrid vehicles or solar panels.
The gentry liberal crusade to tighten U.S. environmental regulations to slow global warming could end up hurting middle- and working-class interests. U.S. industry needs time and incentives to develop new technologies to replace carbon-based energy. If it doesn't get them, and an overly aggressive anti-carbon regime is instituted, the shift of manufacturing, energy and shipping jobs to developing countries with weak environmental laws and regulations could accelerate.
Ignoring these potential Third World environmental costs would result only in shifting the geography of greenhouse gas emissions without slowing global warming — and at a terrible cost to jobs in the U.S.
Which is what a lot of us have been trying to point out. In the end this imposition of the limousine liberal agenda (which I prefer to the gentry term) is little more than societal suicide. They are firmly convinced that they are right and will brook no dissent, actively trying to silence anyone who disagrees. They also don't acknowledge the reality that imposing draconian carbon laws here will merely drive the factories - and all the jobs - to China.
By Mwalimu Daudi, Sunday, 2 December , 2007 @ 10:48 am
Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel are wrong in this respect - “gentry liberals” have been around for many decades. When has Hollywood not been somewhere to the left of Josef Stalin? Not since the 1950s, I’ll wager! Both Kotkin and Siegel are members of another long-time reliably leftist elitist - university professors. And Congress has always been packed full of limousine liberals (John Edwards, the Kennedys, Rockefeller, Kohl, and the late John Heinz come to mind).
One of the aspects of “gentry liberalism” is its severe degree of isolation from reality, and Kotkin and Siegel are no exceptions. They celebrate the New Deal, even though it did nothing to lift the country out of the Great Depression (World War II did that). They also sing hosannas to Social Security, another failed New Deal program. Have Kotkin and Siegel never heard of the coming baby-boom retirement crisis? Currently Social Security has roughly three workers for every retiree - already an unsustainable ratio. By the middle of the century it will fall to a 1-to-2 ratio (if the program survives at all).
Kotkin and Siegel celebrate liberalism’s record of “a strong foreign policy”. Was that what we saw in Southeast Asia when a liberal Democrat Congress yanked the rug out from under the South Vietnamese government - and thus contributed to genocide?
Nor do Kotkin and Siegel deal with other seedy aspects of yesterday’s liberalism - racial balkanization, rampant abortion, soaring crime rates, and a bloated social welfare complex that seems to create more problems that it solves. In short, the liberalism that Kotkin and Siegel celebrate - a liberalism that looks out for the interests for poor and middle class people - never existed. Elitism (along with intolerance of opposition) has always been the central feature of liberalism. Remember the group of psychiatrists who decided that Barry Goldwater was mentally unstable in the 1964 elections because he opposed Social Security and the welfare state? That received widespread publicity – and approval.
By martian, Sunday, 2 December , 2007 @ 3:28 pm
“They are firmly convinced that they are right and will brook no dissent” - this describes the liberal mindset to a “T”. These are the people who preach that everyone must be more tolerant of others, yet they are the most intolerant bunch around when it comes to acknowledging any dissent from their viewpoint.
By Former Republican, Sunday, 2 December , 2007 @ 4:52 pm
Gaius, I read the entire article, as you recommended, and toward the end it had this to say:
“The ascent of gentry liberalism remains largely unchallenged, in part because of the abject failure of the Republicans to address middle-class aspirations in a serious way and in part because of the absence of a strong pro-middle-class voice among Democratic presidential contenders, with the exception of former Sen. John Edwards.”
I entirely agree. Too bad Edwards’s prospects look bleak. You may dislike limousine liberals, but they help fund the Democratic Party, which is the only hope for the middle and working classes in this country. I think the Republicans’ track record had made a lot of ordinary people realize that the Republicans are not on their side, which is why party identification with the Democrats has risen and party identification with the Republicans has fallen.
By sestamibi, Sunday, 2 December , 2007 @ 8:07 pm
While Mwalimu Daudi is correct to point out that this sort of thing has been around for a long time (as a young neoconservative back in the 70’s I remember endless discussions about “The New Class”), it is only in the last 10-15 years or so that it has come to be embraced by groups who, to be candid about it, ought to know better. I think this explains, for example, the enthusiasm for gay rights initiatives among black and Hispanic politicians representing ghetto areas–a position which is quite at odds with that of most of their constituents.
I also think much of the rise of “gentry liberalism” is the product of the ascendancy of women in politics, especially in the Democratic party. The very concept of liberalism as described by Kotkin & Siegel is one which explicitly did not intend to protect you from the vagaries of life, but only promised not to let anyone fall through the cracks. Remember the “safety net”?
By contrast, the goal of today’s feminized version is that life must be all bliss, all the time, and one should never have her poor widdle feewings hurt. Hence such obscenities as The Precautionary Principle, The Right Not to Be Offended, The Flexible Woman Standard for Sexual Harrassment, etc. etc. The people/party that once gave us the Civil Rights Acts in response to the real economic hardships resulting from discrimination now seem primarily concerned about making sure that high school athletic teams are not named with Indian mascots and the “right” of two (or more?) members of the same sex have their “marriages” recognized.
I accept that, sadly, this is the majority opinion in America today. However, we must defend, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, our right to make sure that it is not the ONLY opinion permitted to be expressed, because that’s coming right behind.
By Gaius, Sunday, 2 December , 2007 @ 8:56 pm
Be careful, sestamibi. By any legal means is the correct way to phrase that. That is a line you do not want to cross here.
By kreiz, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 5:36 am
Very interesting, Gaius. Mwalimu Daudion has a point- gentry liberalism has been around a while. I quibble with him a bit about dates- I don’t see that faction rising to prominence until well after the 50s (as sestamibi suggests). Gentry ascendency as a definitive faction took place between 1968 and 1972, culminating in George McGovern’s grassroots takeover of the 1972 Dem convention. McGovern’s base was young, white, intellectual, and disaffected by the War- the sons and daughters of working class Dems. This group coalesced and became a significant faction of the party. (Bill and Hillary Clinton spring come to mind). Today’s Netroots are the successor generation to the Gentry Liberals. The Class of 1974 included some of these young activists.
Since that time, the Gentries have become the most dominant intellectual base of the Dem Party, which has never returned to its blue collar origins of the 30s. Ironically, they are privileged and wealthy- yet self-identify, to some degree, with the poor and disaffected.
By martian, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 1:33 pm
Former Republican, you don’t get any more middle class than yours truly. Yet, somehow, I still identify more with the Republican Party than I ever have with the Democrats. For one thing, I’ve always been (if only a little) better off financially under Republican administrations. Do I agree 100% with the Republican Party? Not by a long shot. There are a number of major issues on which I actually agree more with the middle of the road members of both parties. When I was younger and more idealistic I was a registered independent for many years. Then I took a practical look at the way we elect our presidents and decided that I wanted to be able to vote in the primaries. So I took an objective look at both parties and decided that the Republican Party was where I wanted to be. Because I agree with every plank in the Republican platform? No, because I don’t. I chose the Republican Party because it was the party most likely to preserve our American freedoms and our way of life. Why didn’t I choose the Democrats (and still don’t)? Because I could not bring myself to align with a party that makes a point of denigrating everything that makes America great; a party that actively claims that the USA is at the root of all the evil in the world; a party that, every time they get in office, tries their very best to destroy American military might and dominance; a party that actively tries to destroy our intelligence gathering ability; in short, a party that apparently wants the USA to become a third world country.
By sestamibi, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 1:53 pm
Gaius–
Oh really? Well maybe this will help:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Yjg0MGZhM2VkZTBlYzkwNjRlZDUwYmM0NDkxNmYwODQ=
Look, it’s your website, and you have every right to censor me. When the government tries to do so, I stand by my position.
By Gaius, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 2:13 pm
sestamibi, you have to watch how you phrase things on my site. There is a comment policy (http://bluecrabboulevard.com/about/) and the left has a bad habit of cherry picking comments from sites to “prove” something or other.