<html><head></head><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Great essay. Thanks.<br><br>Sent from my iPad</div><div><br>On Aug 31, 2012, at 3:51 AM, Art Deco <<a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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<div class="timestamp">August 30, 2012</div>
<h1>Party of Strivers</h1>
<h6 class="byline">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by DAVID BROOKS"><span>DAVID BROOKS</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
Today’s Republicans strongly believe that individuals determine their own fates. In <a title="A poll from June" href="http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/">a Pew Research Center poll</a>,
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br><br>
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