A Generation's Fall

We've written here often about the ongoing decline of cultural institutions long run by self-righteous early-Boomers. John Kerry's own Vietnam quagmire, the attacks he's suffered from the Swift Vets, and of course Rathergate, which may be seen in generational terms, all point to an ongoing shift of power. Or, as I wrote the other day, a wresting of the torch from the older folks.

So it's worth noting that Victor Davis Hanson has written another sophisticated look at this collapse in "The Fall: A Bankrupt Generation is Fading Away." And it's flattering to see that great minds agree with folks you know and, at times even, with your own ideas. Most notably, Hanson cites the Oz theme as the means some bloggers, most notably our own Wilfred McClay, have explained Rathergate and the larger revolution of which it's a part.

"Commentators have envisioned Rather's fall as symbolic of a 'paradigm shift' and the 'end of the era' — an event that has crystallized the much larger and ongoing demise of the old establishment media. Allegories from the French Revolution and the emperor without any clothes to the curtain scene in The Wizard of Oz have been evoked to illustrate Rather's dilemma and the hypocrisy of all that went before. We have come a long way since the 1960s: The once-revolutionary pigs taking over the manor are now bloated and strutting on two legs as they feast on silver inside the farmhouse."

Few commentators in any medium have a keener eye for elite blather than Hanson, who nails their pedestrian sophistry that one time passed for sophistication:

"Elites may lament that someone who did not go to the Columbia School of Journalism can affect more readers than the Times, but instead of the usual aristocratic snarls they should ask themselves how and why that came about — and why, for example, watching a PBS documentary by Bill Moyers or listening to Garrison Keillor on NPR is now to endure a publicly subsidized extension of their silly rants at lectures and in op-eds."

And Hanson calls the left out for it's moral nihilism that allows them to implement a "end justifies the means" approach to the most vexing problems of our times. This leads, inevitably, to chaos and decline. No generation, no matter how strong in numbers or headstrong, can simply change the rules of civilization. No group, regardless of their wealth or self-proclaimed sophistication, can beat into submission the citizens of a huge, rich, and free republic that rests on an educated middle class.

What Hanson, McClay, and others celebrate, in some sense, is the triumph of middle class virtues over upper class vanities. Again Hanson:

"Those who profess to be Democrats are reaching historically low numbers. Many prominent Democrats are hypocrites: Feminists Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton were uncouth womanizers; the principled war critic Senator Byrd cut his teeth in the Klan; and the self-proclaimed moralists Senators Harkin and Kennedy have both been caught in postmodern problems with the truth. Being rich and a lawyer helps too. Most prominent Democrats and their enablers are either lawyers or multimillionaires, and now often both. Running a hardware store may explain your Republicanism; inheriting the profits from a chain of 1,000 hardware franchises will likely make you a new Democrat."

Other writers have addressed this truth lately, including Karl Zinsmeister in the WSJ earlier this month. His conclusion:

"So we're in an interesting new era. The right has become a thinking party, with rich intellectual resources, that is simultaneously dead set against political elitism and cultural snobbery. Conservatism has laid claim to America's quiet but multitudinous middle class. And during the same period, the left has come to dominate among the overclass and underclass that bracket the conservative middle.

"As a result, the old way of thinking about U.S. politics--little-guy Democrats vs. wealthy Republicans--is about as accurate and relevant today as a 1930 weather forecast. New fronts have moved in. Expect some major squalls ahead."

I also recommend Daniel Henninger's columns in both yesterday's WSJ and in the paper's August 13 edition. In both he contrasts the suffocating elitism of the left with the common-man conservatism that increasingly rules the country. For the latter, the New Media represent a means to a virtuous end -- something I think more and more people intuit and believe.