David Frum reviews the book "The Ruling Class":

And is on target. Here's an excerpt: (emp add)

... “The Ruling Class” takes us as deep as we are ever likely to get into the minds of Tea Party Americans. It is important not for what it argues, but for what it reveals.

Here’s what it does reveal:

1) The central concept of the Tea Party is the division of the nation into two parts: the legitimate and the illegitimate, “real America” vs unreal. This is the idea behind Sarah Palin’s speeches.

That has been evident for some time now. The use of "constitutional" in "constitutional conservative" is merely a way to define themselves as genuinely American, and others as not, even though they dismiss the Constitution (declaring what Congress has passed as illegitimate and demanding revisions to the Constitution).

and

5) If one idea unites “The Ruling Class” it is Codevilla’s conviction that white Christians are targets of oppression and discrimination fully equal to that which ever oppressed black Americans. ...

Codevilla’s story never explicitly acknowledges race, but it is unmistakably racialized. If Christian whites are America’s new Negroes, what happened to the old Negroes? Apparently they joined the Ruling Class.

In this regard, Codevilla’s 2/3 vs. 1/3 division of the country begins to look less like a morale-boosting attempt to conjure up a majority for his preferred side of the argument — and more like a tally of the proportion of whites and non-whites in the voting age population.

... “The Ruling Class” is not a book about governing. It’s a book about feeling: about identifying targets for blame, about mobilizing anger against those targets, about defining who is – and who is not – a proper American. The book does not aspire to be useful, but to be satisfying to those who feel most outraged and alienated.

Interesting stuff. (Ignore the comments, though.)


posted by Quiddity at 9/22/2010 03:06:00 AM