In Praise of Elites and Capitals: In a Democratic Republic
A Response to David Brooks
We Americans are nonplussed. Especially those of us who grew up after World War 2. We were sure that Americans wore the white hats and beat all the black hats, first Nazis and then Communists, in line to lead the world into the American Century and the Free World.
Now many of us deny our past and question our future. Presently, we encounter the adamant patriotic among us showing insecurity and paranoia against the liberally educated wealthier elite who belittle the old-time religion, conspiracy theories, dread of immigrants, fear of technology, unwillingness to change.
I, like so many of my colleagues, have struggled with this new peril of polarization. If we study our history, we know that this conflict is not new. There were witch-burnings in Salem, in the West bounties for Indian scalps, KKK lynching of African Americans, No-Nothings exterminating Catholics and Jews, John Birchers persecuting unionizing laborers. A new book on George Washington by Fox political anchor Bret Baier is promoted as exposing “an early America that is grittier and far more divided than it is often portrayed — one we can see reflected in today’s conflicts.”
Moralist pundit David Brooks in What If We’re the Bad Guys Here? opines that progressive Democrats, pushing for full inclusion and even preferences for persons of color, immigrants, gay, trans, abortion defenders, and the poor and powerless, have judged, mocked, and excluded the white mostly male working poor families without graduate education. They attack the “Make America Great Again” Republicans who embrace and defend these poor misguided deplorables. Polarization: right or wrong, moderate or extreme, moral or immoral, religious or secular, individual or social, blue collar or white collar, small town or big city, household or state, ordinary citizens or elite experts.
I have come to appreciate David Brooks, his thoughtfulness, his writing, and his willingness to engage. As an old community organizer by vocation and profession, I think he is on to something here. I agree with him and Cool Hand Luke that “what we got here is a failure to communicate.” I agree with him that meritocracy and technocracy have been tearing us apart into opposing tribes playing a game not for the fun of it but to the death.
And so, we have a plethora of writings from many perspectives on the need to restore the Soul of America, to heal our White Fragility, to transcend America’s original sin, to examine our habits of the heart, to bless patriotism, to reclaim our individual rights, to take back our country, and, yes, to be great again. The wealthy and cultural elite become the symbolic and social elite to control the political elite.
I’m a descendent of lower income immigrants from Germany and Italy, butchers and music teachers in Sandusky, Ohio. I grew up in a Catholic/Jewish working-class neighborhood in Detroit. I had little contact with elites but learned to suspect rather than respect them. I was never impressed with aristocrats.
Recently I wrote a sort of manifesto for myself, hoping to draw in others, to collectively get through the fragmentation and polarization of our body politic in which we are suffering a sort of collective depression. My conclusion is simple. What we need to restore our democratic republic or, if you wish, republican democracy is more democracy. Not just a new awakening of culture on which Brooks and others focus, but in political action throughout our social order and its institutions.
The institutions of culture include morality, religion, language, education, sexual mores, art forms, mythology, philosophy, imagination, science. All very important human assets, i.e., capitals for our growth and self-actualization. But what our founders, and especially Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson insisted on in order to save our public institutions, our politics and especially the governance of our democratic republic, was to put our cultural concerns and institutions aside into the private sector and maintain a vigorous public sector through democratic politics. They wanted to avoid the cultural civilizational and religious wars they saw in Europe and other parts of the world which put people against people because of religion, education, ethnicity, race, beliefs, “persuasions.”
They wanted to support and safeguard the private sector, including cultural diversity and economic progress and their institutions, by making it immune to and protected by politics. They did this by attaching the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. Government would not interfere in cultural or household affairs or allow cultural and household mores to interfere with the political sector as long as they met the principles of freedom and equality set forth in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
And repeated in the preamble of the Constitution.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Unfortunately, factions divided “We the People” from the very beginning, through countless struggles for women’s and workers’ rights, Civil War and the abolition of slavery, through two world wars, the Cold War up to the present. The Supreme Court, charged with sustaining these public values, often violated them, for example in supporting the Fugitive Slave Acts and their Dred Scott decision, and more recently in Citizens United providing undue influence of the wealthy and, primarily for religious reasons, canceling the protection of women’s right to choose.
Today two political factions stand divided again by culture wars including race, gender, sexuality, religious persuasion, personal identity, education, and class. Moreover, economic and educational capital dominates the symbolic and political sectors of the social order. And “liberty” is being defined negatively as freedom from interference; not affirmatively as equal participation in shaping the social order. Welfare is not general but limited by education and economic wealth and power measured by money.
The culture of democracy is important to all our institutions but especially political, social, and economic which are often neglected by mainstream pundits like Brooks. In my manifesto I argue that all the human capitals are important starting with the basic needs of life that all citizens must have in order to seek other higher capitals that satisfy the higher drives for private and public happiness. We are all called to pursue our happiness by being elites in our chosen fields of human endeavor.
By expanding the notions of capital and elite and by “ensuring the general welfare,” we democratize both capitalism and elitism ensuring equal access to and enlargement of all the capitals, where all persons have the ability to be elites among others without being elitists over others.
Autocracy is rule by one; plutocracy, rule by the rich; technocracy, rule by experts; aristocracy, rule by the best and brightest, the famous and noblest. Democracy is governance by We the People. Democracy is where people organize themselves to act in concert without interference from the rich, the experts, the true believers, the best and the brightest, and the famous. It is where persons act out of self-interest for self-actualization by acting with others for personal happiness in public happiness. They act for individual economic and cultural goods (capitals) achieved in the common good. For household tranquility by peace in the polis. Democracy is where we all can be elites expanding our capitals in our own way.
Yes, David, we have been the bad guys when we treat people in ways we do not want to be treated, when we do not respect or love our neighbors, when we put our personal beliefs and our private gain above the common good. We are the bad guys when we objectify and use persons as pawns for our own pleasure stealing the fruits of their labor, robbing them of their human dignity. We are bad guys when we use violence and force to get our way.
When and wherever there are people without access to and without meaningful participation in the governance of the institutions in which they live, work, study, worship, and contribute, we have not just a cultural or moral failure, not just an economic or general welfare failure, we have a political failure. When we find people without the political capitals of freedom, justice, equality, and power, it is not enough to preach morality and renewal of spirit. We must organize and act politically.
Personal morality (telling truth, helping others, nonviolence, seeking justice, stopping cruelty, kindness, civility, etc.) is vital to elites. It is the highest of symbolic capitals for elite politicians, public workers, and citizens, for religious preachers, bishops, and laity, for homemakers and bread winners, for laborers in field and factory, for teachers, scholars, and students, for publicists and writers, for scientists and artists, for heads of industry and finance, for producers and consumers. In community organizing we say that everybody is a leader, a unique member of the human race, our best and our brightest.