You'll notice that it's all bile and resentment with nary a reference to anything specific in sight

The guy who says we should preserve Huntington Hartford's Pretense has the nerve to say that 'The liberal elite hasn't got a clue'. This is royal cheek:

"I think support for Bush is about not wanting to be led by East-coast pretensions. It is about not wanting to be led by people who are forever trying to force their twisted sense of morality onto us, which is a non-morality. That is constantly done, and there is real resentment. Support for Bush is about resentment in the so-called 'red states'...

I am astonished at how how this lie -- is that what it is? fantasy? I don't know the word for such garbage -- is going around. What are they resentful about? Getting more tax dollars than they contribute? Making it fashionable to sound country? And to think that Tom Wolfe of all people seconds it. It's like something out of...hey!...a novel about vanity!

•••

I keep asking for an example of "...their twisted sense of morality..." (like the ACLU and the Sierra Club and Mr. Rogers?) and I hear silence; no one can come up with any examples.

But I am still listening.
UPDATE: Specifics, folks. Specifics, please. Who is this "liberal elite" and what specifically are they saying -- day-in and day-out, not just the occasional gaffe -- which is so offensive? Give me some specifics, and no, not comedians like Michael Moore or Dan Savage. Obviously I think the whole "liberal elite" thing is largely a crock, a creation of the Republican Party's "Maoist" anti-urban wing, and it's pathetic that so many people buy into it. But I am listening; show me your cards. Like Michael Blowhard with his post-election "analysis," I don't think there are any. In fact, and here I speak from my own experience. A large number of the construction workers in the in-city Seattle market are guys who live in the suburbs. In the course of spending time on job-sites over the past 25 years I have had a fair number of conversations. And it is with such folks, too, that I find any sort of "spatial bad-mouthing." I'd like a dollar for every time I heard someone say "Well I'll build it but I couldn't possibly live here in the city. What do people see? It's just too crowded, too much traffic." To each his own, of course, and I couldn't care less if they like the city as long as they do their job competently. But my point is that there is indeed a lot of city/suburb tension (that's basic Polic Sci 101) and while bringing it out in the open in an adolescent way is unproductive, it does indeed form the basis of much regional politics. So to people who don't like what Dan Savage wrote: distinguish his silly, bombastic style from the real issues he raises and the solutions he proposes. And let me say one last thing thing: about Dan Savage. I like many things that Dan Savage writes. (Btw, he was loudly pro-Iraq War just in case that might prevent some cant from foaming.) I know Dan Savage. And if I know Dan Savage he can in no way be part of any "liberal elite."

Comments

[Bill Seitz]

The example that's driven Christopher Hitchens off the deep end was the belief of some far-left loonies that "America deserved it" after 9/11.

But the more general issue may be the confusion of law with morality, which makes it seem as though liberals are saying that any behavior which they think should be legal is just as morally valid as any other legal behavior. E.g. to say that "drugs should be legalized" is to say that "there's nothing morally wrong with screwing up your life via drug abuse".

[Brian Miller]

Conversely, some Red Staters honestly believe that everything that offends their particular moral sense should be illegal.

I would really doubt that many "liberals" who really believe that "there is nothing wrong with screwing up your life via drug abuse." This liberal simply believes the drug war creates more problems than it solves. Besides, there are lots of questionable things that are "celebrated" by traditional morality that are as morally repugnant as drug abuse. Which is worse, an addict passed out in an alley, or a celebrated CEO superstar who got that way through price fixing and illegally dumping toxic goo into the local river? We know which one "the right" focuses on.

Conversely, some Red Staters honestly believe that everything that offends their particular moral sense should be illegal.

[TM Lutas]

The problem of libertarians (and liberals) is separation between themselves and the libertines who share the labels. Here's an example. I advocate and predict the end of broadcast in favor of multicasting in part because it gets the FCC out of the censorship business. What'll be out there without decency regulations will be appalling and there'll be nobody left to complain to. But those who are moral will not buy it, will not pay for it, and will be able to shield themselves and their loved ones in far better fashion than the current system. It would be very easy indeed to celebrate the first and not the latter effect and give entirely the wrong impression.

You can argue that the libertines do not actually have the upper hand amongst the liberals. You can also argue pretty well that they, in fact, do.

As for east coast pretensions, try rereading that Urban Archipelago article mentioned a few posts back on this site and you'll get an eyeful if you put yourself in the shoes of a red state reader, maybe one whose neighbor in the FD went to help out on 9/11 in NYC or who had a bake sale to support NYC in its crisis. It's a giant political middle finger raised towards the red states and the blue state elites have not hooted it down, suppressing it as stupid, ignorant, or mean spirited (in point of fact, it is all three).

The liberal elite *doesn't* have a clue and if the advocacy of urbanism is to span left and right on this site, Tom Wolfe's saying so should not be linked to his architectural opinions. This is the kind of post that makes me question whether new urbanism has much of a future in the hands of its current advocates. Buildings are for everyone, as are the streets, the grid, and the public transit systems.

As any careful observer will note, both left and right elites take turns in the clueless category right before and after they are ejected from power by the native good sense of the people. Being ejected into the outer darkness of perennial opposition leads to a dark night of the political soul, a reformation of the movement, and a comeback against the new clueless. Most of the time that rejuvenation in the US comes with identical party labels but that's not always the case (see the rise of the Republican party for an example).

Power creates isolation in elites and from that, cluelessness. Based on objective observations of government power shifts, party affiliation figures, and current voting trends in the past three federal elections, the liberal elite is currently cluelessness personified.

[Chris Burd]

Hi David,

OK, I'm Canadian, but if I were American I would be an instinctive blue-stater in terms of culture and in terms of the people I like to hang out with. I'm proud of my New England ancestors, regard Boston as the Athens of America -- and I'm a trade-union support and a card-carrying social democrat (we have them up here).

Even so, I too regard the American liberal elite as essentially clueless -- in fact, sunken into a deep moral and intellectual decadence. Think of them as the cultural/political equivalent of 1960s urban planning.

I'll give you one data point: the DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University is a man who believes it would be morally permissible for a couple to raise a child to age one, then kill it to provide organs for an older child.

My point is not about Singer, although his absurdly radicalised brand of utilitarianism is obviously out of synch with normal human values, but about Princeton. On display here are an absence of clear moral standards, a preference for evading difficult questions, attitude of condescension toward non-elite views, and a fixation on academic celebrity as a criterion for appointment. In short, a deeply disturbing level of moral cluelessness.

Here's an article on Singer:

http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=9987

An extract:

'If the 21st century becomes a Singer century, we will also see legal infanticide of born children who are ill or who have ill older siblings in need of their body parts. Question: What about parents conceiving and giving birth to a child specifically to kill him, take his organs, and transplant them into their ill older children? Mr. Singer: "It's difficult to warm to parents who can take such a detached view, [but] they're not doing something really wrong in itself." Is there anything wrong with a society in which children are bred for spare parts on a massive scale? "No."'

Blandissimo commentary from the president of Princeton:

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/98/1207/singer.htm

Cheers,

Chris

[Brian Miller]

Singer is godawful. Maybe it's the vestiges of my Red State (though irreligious) upbringing-but I hope this doesn't represent our (Blue State) views???

On the other hand, one could easily pull out, for example, a quotation from recent (Conservative Citizens Club???) in Mississippi. Or the Chelcedon Foundation (cooincidentally a major funder of several electronic voting machine makers) and claim that these groups and their thinking represents the cold, out-of-touch reality of Red State/Southern culture and leadership. Keep in mind that the republican Leadership were closely involved with groups like this.

[Chris Burd]

Hi Brian,

My point was more about the university president's remarks defending Singer's appointment. The president of Princeton is pretty much an _ex officio_ member of the liberal elite, insofar as that phrase means anything. He's not the blue-state equivalent of chapter president of a Conservative Citizen's Club in Missippi.

While there's nothing horrible or egregiously offensive in his remarks (Princeton lawyers please take note of this position), they reflect a terminal blandness, a spirit of acquiescence, an unwillingness to take serious issues seriously, that seems to me typical of a elite group that has lost faith in its traditional values.

Cheers,

[Mary Kay]

I wonder if it is what is said so much as how it is said. We've had a long and acrimonious discussion about some of that over at Electrolite on the thread labeled "Nice".

That said, probably some of the twisted morality they're talking about includes that it's ok to be homosexual and we should let them get married, that abortions should be legal, that there really may not be a god, and if there is, He should stay out of government (aka separation of church and state). If you're a red stater these things are all clearly horrific and the liberal elite has no business pushing them on you. I don't know how to make them see that it's no more okay for THEM to push THEIR choices on ME.

MKK

[Eric Brown]

Uh, David - How about the "Women in Black" crew that show up every month or so at Westlake Center? Out of touch, and morally incoherent.

[David Sucher]

Eric, You are proving my point if you have to cite "the "Women in Black" crew that show up every month or so at Westlake Center." I have no idea who they are and I doubt if very many others do as well.

[David Sucher]

Chris.
Singer is Australian.

[Chris Burd]

David,

I know he's Australian. That's why I've been talking about Princeton: what Princeton's appointment of Singer, and the late-liberal blandness of their president's defence of the appointment, say about... uh, whatever the topic of this thread was.*

Cheers,

Chris

*Actually, the topic was Tom Wolfe's comment about the "twisted morality" of the East Coast liberal elite as a factor in Bush's re-election. I wouldn't characterise Singer's morality as "twisted", if anything, it's hyper-rationalistic, and that's the problem. "Twisted" is a the word I'd apply to some of the appointment's defendors, however, the people who take the view, "Oh,this is no big deal. We value 'diversity'. He's a famous guy", and so on.