David Brooks writes as a lonely and much-abused conservative for the New York Times. He also writes insightful books on cultural issues, including Bobos in Paradise in 2000. In Bobos (short for bohemian bourgeois), he described the high-achieving group of people, Boomers and younger, whose merit, rather than privilege, placed them in high positions in business, the arts, and the media, where they took control. They were proud of the path of opportunity they had followed and of the success that their hard work and merit had provided them. They were careful to eat simply, have only two children, recycle, and live a life in harmony with their surroundings.
Brooks, who is also one of them, now calls his admiration both naive and mistaken in an article, “How the Bobos Broke America” (Atlantic online August 2, 2021).
Joseph Sunde, writing for The Acton Institute, cites five insightful conclusions that the chastened Brooks came to. First, these merit achievers have become highly defensive and protective of their earned privilege, not only closing the door of opportunity but despising those who would follow them to their place and affluence.
Second, their insularity leads them to cluster in urban areas or, as Charles Murray wrote, 882 zip codes. They marry each other; they live near each other, and they want to have nothing to do with those flyover people, including those for whom they claim to have deep compassion. Related to this is that “Democratic and Republican areas of the country were at near parity on prosperity and income measures just 13 years ago.”(Now), they are divergent and getting more so.”
Third, this group of wise and counter-culture achievers has become simplistic in its binary view of their own narratives. Brooks offers a few: enlightened elites vs. working-class rubes; compassionate globalists vs. blood-and-soil nationalists; open-society liberals vs. closed-society scaredy-cats; diversity-lovers vs. diversity-haters. There is some truth to the rubes-nationalists-scaredy-cat-diversity-haters side of these simplistic binaries, but Brooks is now calling out as false their claim to be compassionate-open-society-diversity-lovers.
These open society folks believe in the concept of open society rather than the reality of it. Openness is fine for Texas, as they live in San Francisco or Connecticut. Vermont is 94% white and only 1.4% African American. Who cares? The same is true of the concept of diversity. Sure, their friends are African American, Asian, and Indian, but these friends are also their affluent and high-achieving neighbors. The poor are more of a concept than a reality to these white, insulated, affluent Bobos, who, as is common to all humanity, surround themselves with their own tribe and despise all others. These now-older elites will gladly use coercion to enforce their values and narratives.
Fourth, “Rather than freeing civil society to do what it does best, our elites have largely deflected such responsibilities to the state, hoping that top-down control will do the heavy lifting of social harmonization.” This means that compassion is delegated to the state. They are content with a large commitment to the small concept of compassion. Knowing the lingo is enough, and Brooks says they wear their wokeness as a status marker.
This issue of compassion is grinding at our very core. Christians are often seen as hypocritical on the topic of compassion; stingy in their tipping and prone to yelling. Well, there is enough evidence. There are also the widespread and substantial acts of compassion performed individually, through not-for-profits, and through churches, especially the larger churches. They are all bent on making an impact for good in their communities. Part of this is to atone for the church’s neglect of active compassion until recent decades. Christians, meaning Catholics, Protestants, Pentecostals, and Evangelicals, while not well-united, are substantially compassionate in a bottom-up kind of way. Catholics call for subsidiarity. Protestants call for help from the little platoons.
I highlight this aspect because of my shock that Brooks has observed that our virtue class has decided to deflect acts of compassion to the state. Rather than help a neighbor through a church or a not-for-profit, these Bobos now insist that compassion comes from a government program…from new infrastructure.
A final quote from Brooks, “I underestimated the way the creative class would successfully raise barriers around itself to protect its economic privilege – not just through schooling, but through zoning regulations that keep home values high, professional-certification structures that keep doctors’ and lawyers’ incomes high while blocking competition from nurses and paralegals, and more. And I underestimated our intolerance of ideological diversity.” Having earned their way into the good life in the castle, they have pulled up the drawbridge and declared themselves to be compassionate and lovers of a diverse and open society. Bottom line, “Don’t blame us.”