This post's title refers to the book Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks. Bobos is a neologism coined by Brooks by combining bourgeois and bohemian. According to Brooks, bobos are America’s new elite who have replaced the old WASP elite. The rise of this new elite is traced to the expansion of higher education in the post-war era, which coincided with the reforms of James Bryant Conant. It was Conant and his colleagues who transformed Harvard (and by extension the Ivy League) into a meritocracy. The opening up of the nation’s top schools to everyone with sufficiently impressive SATs has created what Charles Murray called the cognitive elite. According to Brooks, this new cognitive elite has gained control of every important institution of American society. For example, he cites journalism. Gone are the days when reporters were “hard-drinking, blue-collar” high school grads (at best) who worked their way up from the bottom. Now it’s “Yale, Yale, Stanford, Emory, Yale, and Harvard” (39).
The core of Brooks’ argument is on the dualism of this new elite as alluded to with the term bobos. Bobos live in the corporate world of high powered success, while at home they bask in the post sixties counter-culture. In other words, Brooks presents an updated version of the world of limousine liberals. They are a much caricatured bunch, and Brooks adds some amusing whacks to this nearly dead equine. His chapter on the great Montana “soul rush” of post A River Runs Through It fame is genuinely funny. Brooks presents a picture of bobo heaven as ecotopia based on nostalgia and "authenticity." The dichotomy of the bobo world presented is of well educated people with one foot firmly planted in the realm of worldly success, power and status and with the other cemented in a world of magical crystals, sandals, and eco-tourism.
Brooks researched his book in the late 1990s and it was published in 2000. Consequently, it has a strong, smug “end of history” odor about it. He refers to himself as a bobo. It is hard to discern just how tongue-in-cheek he is being on that score. He incorrectly states that bobos have moved beyond partisan politics and have embraced a fusion of the best of both “conservativism” and “liberalism.” In pursuing this line, he states such nonsense as “They recoil from those who try to ‘impose’ their views or their lifestyle on others” (247). Anyone at all familiar with Brooks’ bobos is aware of their pathological need for control. Their lust for control is inflicted upon others from the local coop board to supporting Obama's edicts on imposing "carbon controls" in order to destroy what is left of our liberty.
Reinhold Niebuhr also believes in a dualistic universe. Sometimes one can judge a book by its cover. The cover of The Irony of American History is illustrative. The cover portrays Niebuhr gazing out at a dark, forbidding, malevolent world where human aspirations for happiness and success on earth are clearly doomed. There is one source of light in Niebuhr’s Byronic realm. Unfortunately, this light source also doubles as a symbol of torture and human sacrifice. Although trite, the cover illustration is an accurate depiction of Niebuhr’s universe. It’s a sort of highbrow version of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video.
His dualistic metaphysics informs his views on ethics and virtue. He writes, “For our sense of responsibility to a world community beyond our own borders is a virtue, even though it is partly derived from the prudent understanding of our own interests” (7). In other words, virtue and self-interest are polar opposites. This dichotomy reflects Niebuhr’s metaphysics. Since the source of his morality exists in some alleged transcendental reality, he denigrates the concerns of this world, such as self-preservation, as merely “prudent.” He also observes that “Happiness is desired by all men” (61). He continues by claiming that such worldly desires are doomed to failure. He states that this is partly the result of human nature. The impossibility of happiness is also the result of the conflict between the needs of the many and the needs of the few, or the one.
He is wrong on both counts. First, the Nazis, Communists, and today the Islamists (along with their numerous followers, enablers, and fellow travelers) were/are not motivated by a vision of human happiness and flourishing. As to the propriety of pursuing one’s happiness, no less of an authority than Immanuel Kant wrote, “the principle of one’s own happiness is the most objectionable of all” (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals). Another moral teacher is quoted as saying, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you….” George W. Bush and Barack Obama, during both their administrations, faithfully followed this injunction. On foreign policy, both the Wilsonian “neo-cons” and the liberal “realists” agree on fundamentals. They just squabble on how best to sacrifice American interests and security in the name of “responsibility to the world community.”
Second, the entire purpose of the Founding Fathers was to create a form of government that would ensure the protection of the individual’s right to pursue his self-interest. Niebuhr did not consider the American Republic as exceptional. He argues that America cannot be exceptional unless it was arbitrarily granted “grace” by an otherwise malicious ghost. Nonetheless, America can certainly be viewed as exceptional based on its historical and philosophical origins, and its efforts to life up to an ideology of individual rights based on Natural Law. In this context, one is reminded of Walter McDougall’s comments on how school children are to be indoctrinate on the "right" way to interpret the American Revolution: “The authors seem surprised by all that was commonplace, and take for granted all that was rare.”
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