GNP Nostalgia
Sorry I’ve been AWOL, guys. I’m working on some exciting new projects at The Atlantic, so I’m going to scale things back here. Fortunately, TAS has some of America’s best, smartest, most delightful bloggers to keep you entertained.
Mike Riggs wrote a short squib about Grand New Party for the Washington City Paper, and I think it’s very smart.
Grand New Party, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam’s proposed blueprint for retooling the GOP, is eloquent, comprehensive, and less condescending toward the working class than Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? Their prescription for “restoring the American Dream” reads like smart economics, albeit coupled with batty social expectations: Reform the medical system but reject globalization, they argue, and get the government off the backs of “traditional families” and then use it to beat back cultural liberalism. Instead of looking forward, it pines for a society where all mothers are married, all men vote Republican, all children are enrolled in Catholic schools, and everyone speaks English. In other words, here’s a perfect argument-starter just before an election.
I wouldn’t say we reject globalization — quite the opposite — but we certainly take stock of its uneven impact, and overall I think Riggs does a good job of divining the nature of the GNP utopia.
Working on exciting new projects for the Atlantic? Here’s one for you. Bring back Cox and Rathvon into the print edition, dammit. I genuinely think that they are real artists, with an amazing sense of craftsmanship: they are the John and Paul of their craft. I am thoroughly pissed that the Atlantic sidelined them. That and the fiction, dammit. You mothers want to make me pay extra for a goddam fiction issue in the summer? Screw that. Give it back to me in the magazine. And an advice column? Are you shitting me? Unless it’s Reihan giving hair care tips, not interested. And….
— Sanjay · Sep 18, 12:18 PM · #
Well that is the core problem with conservatism, isnt it Reihan?
Am fear nach seall roimhe Seallaidh e as a dheigh. [He who will not look before him Will look behind him.]Always looking backward.
In the runup to the Singularity, I have to think that is a loozer strategy.
For example, marriage is evolving, because culture doesnt change society so much as society changes culture according to the needs of the population.
Evolutionary theory of culture 101.
Does anyone doubt that gay marriage will be legal?
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 12:55 PM · #
I think the thing I like best about you and Ross is that you are a couple of the only pundits willing to break with the “globalization is always and only good and produces nothing but abundance and justice” thing. It really is the closest thing to a universal opinion among bloggers, and those on the right, left and various in-betweens guard it like mad. I’m afraid it’s one of those issues where if you don’t have the majority opinion, you just aren’t serious.
— Freddie · Sep 18, 01:12 PM · #
Reihan,
Still hoping you will comment on this review of GNP in Boston Review—
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.5/daly.php
— jason · Sep 22, 09:07 PM · #