About Secession

When yesterday I began reading that some distraught Democrats were talking about secession, I briefly considered blogging on it but dismissed the idea as a waste of time. Why write about such juvenile idiocy, I wondered? This will blow over in a day and, since no one is seriously considering such a move anyway, the story has no legs. Besides, having already seceded from the American mainstream, the liberal elite doesn't need to bother with anything so messy.

Today it's clear that no one's considering such a move, and yet we're again hearing cries to secede from some of the elite left. As a Georgian whose forebears lived in the South for some time before the War, I grew up knowing a thing or two about secession, its causes, and its consequences. Let's just say that it didn't work out too well for my ancestors, some of whom were killed in action or died in prison, all of whom suffered years of depravation and military occupation. I'm not asking for sympathy for any of them, per se, only pointing out that real secession has real consequences.

But this isn't real, of course. It's just another way the liberal elite can show their contempt for Americans without worrying about a loss of income, freedom, or status among their peers, much less life. Simply another cost-free exercise of petulance designed (remarkably) to demonstrate their superiority to the rest of us, as if displays so jejune prove anything beyond a desperate need for attention and a death grip by their junior high-like worldview.

Matthew Continetti has an insightful column up today at the Weekly Standard that points out the levels this dementia has reached. Both Simon Schama, the Columbia University historian and culture critic, and Sean Wilentz of Princeton believe American culture is hopelessly bifurcated. I'm not surprised by Wilentz's silliness, as that's his trade, but Schama has written some superb material.

It's long been a mystery -- well, that's overstating it, but at least an interesting problem, as academic-types say -- how intelligent, highly educated people who display not just sufficient erudition, but considerable understanding of the human condition and human nature in their line of work can sound so isolated and unhinged when they stray from their academic discipline. It has more than a little to do with the over-professionalization of knowledge and the sequestered lives of so many professors. Princeton is perhaps America's most beautiful college, and Columbia one of her finest universities, but it takes more than aesthetic pleasantries, fine libraries, a grand tradition, or even the vibrancy of New York to produce cultural commentary that's accurate and accessible.

It takes what elite Democrats and their sympathizers so clearly lack: empathy for average Americans and some historical memory of being one of them, or at least the capability of acquiring an understanding through study and observation sufficient to allow one to appreciate rather than patronize, grasp rather than condemn. And it takes humility sufficient to avoid viewing one's fellow Americans as, in Tony Blankely's words, "categorically unacceptable as fellow countrymen."

I now live in a normal, middle class neighborhood in a fairly normal, middle class town (albeit with a larger-than-average share of wealthy employees of Dupont, MBNA, et al.). While I'm sure some of my neighbors share the elite's view of America, I know from experience that it doesn't compare to what I saw in Ann Arbor or, to a lesser degree, Athens, Ga., during my years in those picturesque college towns. The former, in particular, was both delightful and annoying, and both traits originated of course in its academic setting. I enjoyed my time there and, if given the chance of going back in time, would do it all again. But that's not simply because I made some wonderful friends, learned a great deal from my professors, or got used to great book stores and restaurants.

It's because it gave me some insights into the cultural and intellectual isolation the inhabitants of such places suffer. Intellectuals as a class spend a great deal of time "living in their head," as someone said of the elder Darwin. Work in the humanities, in particular, is often solitary and introspective. Or at least solitary, introspection being a quality in short supply on the modern campus. Couple this with teaching youth, many of whom are like putty in the hands of a skilled rhetorician, with life on a campus -- a place set apart architecturally and physically -- and with the vocational aura of university life, which merges the private and professional, and it's little wonder that an inter-generational elite finds it quite natural to look with contempt on the forest-dwellers beyond the next hill. Living a fairytale, even one filled with unintended irony, doesn't provide the best vantage for seeing and understanding the world around you.

And what of the non-academics who can condescend with the best of them? From Michael Moore to Lawrence O'Donnell to Babs and her Hollywood cohorts, the principal source of their sanctimoniousness and assumptions of intellectual and moral superiority lies with the pronouncements of the academy and its allies. Take away the Marxism that was ensconced in myriad university departments for so long, with its demented determinism and abhorrence of historical color, and where would radicals have turned for ideas and social support? Toss in Marx's bastard children -- the manias of race, class, and gender, postcolonial studies, deconstructionism, and the attendant nihilism that results whenever human nature and history are denied -- and you'll find a font of ideas and attitudes sufficient to float the whole sorry flotilla that carries our would-be masters.

And so, to Schama and Wilentz, O'Donnell and Jane Smiley, I ask: Why all the talk about secession and unbridgeable divides when you've long since taken leave of your fellow Americans along with your senses? Achieving the degree of intellectual and cultural myopia revealed by your comments (made over many years, in most cases) evinces a high level of comfort within your blue bubbles, for heaven knows you'd abandon that ground in a nanosecond if holding it required any real sacrifice. As it is, the rewards of narcissism and condescension -- group solidarity, press coverage, ego gratification -- must seem cheap compared with price commanded by genuine reflection, humility, and commitment to reform. And indeed they are.

Power Line has more here and here; Jeff Jarvis has some thoughts on the red/blue divide.