[Vision2020] Party of Strivers

[lfalen]

I am not a big fan of David Brooks, but this is not a bad article. I like Rice also. I have some problems with Ayn Rand. Her philosophy is basicly correct, but it need s to be tempered by some compassion, which she seems to lack.
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: Art Deco art.deco.studios at gmail.com
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 03:51:28 -0700
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Party of Strivers

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> ------------------------------
> August 30, 2012
> Party of Strivers By DAVID
> BROOKS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html>
> 
> America was built by materialistic and sometimes superficial strivers. It
> was built by pioneers who voluntarily subjected themselves to stone-age
> conditions on the frontier fired by dreams of riches. It was built by
> immigrants who crammed themselves into hellish tenements because they
> thought it would lead, for their children, to big houses, big cars and big
> lives.
> 
> America has always been defined by this ferocious commercial energy, this
> zealotry for self-transformation, which leads its citizens to vacation
> less, work longer, consume more and invent more.
> 
> Many Americans, and many foreign observers, are ambivalent about or
> offended by this driving material ambition. Read “The Great Gatsby.” Read
> D.H. Lawrence on Benjamin Franklin.
> 
> But today’s Republican Party unabashedly celebrates this ambition and
> definition of success. Speaker after speaker at the convention in Tampa,
> Fla., celebrated the striver, who started small, struggled hard, looked
> within and became wealthy. Speaker after speaker argued that this ideal of
> success is under assault by Democrats who look down on strivers, who
> undermine self-reliance with government dependency, who smother ambition
> under regulations.
> 
> Republicans promised to get government out of the way. Reduce the burden of
> debt. Offer Americans an open field and a fair chance to let their ambition
> run.
> 
> If you believe, as I do, that American institutions are hitting a creaky
> middle age, then you have a lot of time for this argument. If you believe
> that there has been a hardening of the national arteries caused by a
> labyrinthine tax code, an unsustainable Medicare program and a suicidal
> addiction to deficits, then you appreciate this streamlining agenda, even
> if you don’t buy into the whole Ayn Rand-influenced gospel of wealth.
> 
> On the one hand, you see the Republicans taking the initiative, offering
> rejuvenating reform. On the other hand, you see an exhausted Democratic
> Party, which says: We don’t have an agenda, but we really don’t like
> theirs. Given these options, the choice is pretty clear.
> 
> But there is a flaw in the vision the Republicans offered in Tampa. It is
> contained in its rampant hyperindividualism. Speaker after speaker
> celebrated the solitary and heroic individual. There was almost no talk of
> community and compassionate conservatism. There was certainly no
> conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which individuals are
> embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions.
> 
> Today’s Republicans strongly believe that individuals determine their own
> fates. In a Pew Research Center
> poll<http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/>,
> for example, 57 percent of Republicans believe people are poor because they
> don’t work hard. Only 28 percent believe people are poor because of
> circumstances beyond their control. These Republicans believe that if only
> government gets out of the way, then people’s innate qualities will enable
> them to flourish.
> 
> But there’s a problem. I see what the G.O.P. is offering the engineering
> major from Purdue or the business major from Arizona State. The party is
> offering skilled people the freedom to run their race. I don’t see what the
> party is offering the waitress with two kids, or the warehouse worker whose
> wages have stagnated for a decade, or the factory worker whose skills are
> now obsolete.
> 
> The fact is our destinies are shaped by social forces much more than the
> current G.O.P. is willing to admit. The skills that enable people to
> flourish are not innate but constructed by circumstances.
> 
> Government does not always undermine initiative. Some government programs,
> like the G.I. Bill, inflame ambition. Others depress it. What matters is
> not whether a program is public or private but its effect on character.
> Today’s Republicans, who see every government program as a step on the road
> to serfdom, are often blind to that. They celebrate the race to success but
> don’t know how to give everyone access to that race.
> 
> The wisest speech departed from the prevailing story line. It was delivered
> by Condoleezza Rice. It echoed an older, less libertarian conservatism,
> which harkens back to Washington, Tocqueville and Lincoln. The powerful
> words in her speech were not “I” and “me” — the heroic individual They
> were “we” and “us” — citizens who emerge out of and exist as participants
> in a great national project.
> 
> Rice celebrated material striving but also larger national goals — the long
> national struggle to extend benefits and mobilize all human potential. She
> subtly emphasized how our individual destinies are dependent upon the
> social fabric and upon public institutions like schools, just laws and our
> mission in the world. She put less emphasis on commerce and more on
> citizenship.
> 
> Today’s Republican Party may be able to perform useful tasks with its
> current hyperindividualistic mentality. But its commercial soul is too
> narrow. It won’t be a worthy governing party until it treads the course
> Lincoln trod: starting with individual ambition but ascending to a larger
> vision and creating a national environment that arouses ambition and
> nurtures success.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
> art.deco.studios at gmail.com
> 
>