Home The Post-American Liberal Culture
Home The Post-American Liberal Culture

The Post-American Liberal Culture

Even as an NPR associate was admitting that it had marginalized itself by targeting a liberal culture elite (which she generously estimated at 11 percent of the country), David Brooks was making the case that America needs PBS to provide it with a common culture. So which is it. Is public broadcasting the realm of a liberal culture elite or a defining common ground for what being an American means?

Liberals have over time successfully redefined liberal values as American values. Their cultural revisionism has worked so well that even for many conservatives, it is hard to tell one from the other. Particularly on immigration, tolerance, education and foreign affairs-- among many others. Their cultural programming stopped trying to assimilate immigrants around the 1970's, but has redoubled its efforts to assimilate Americans. And over and over again they have been successful. Wildly so. America is a country of conservative values, which becomes unrecognizable every generation.

Public broadcasting does not represent a common culture, but a culture of consensus. It reflects a liberal worldview. And liberals have a great deal of trouble articulating what America is. Ask a liberal what America should be, and he'll chew your ear off. Ask him what's wrong with America, and he'll offer you a reading list. But ask him what America is-- besides a massive social service center or a collection of war crimes and corporations, and he'll have no real answer.

The liberal worldview is post-national and multicultural. If 19th and early 20th century liberals could articulate the 'Union' as the defining point of America, by the 21st century the "Union" has given way to the "United Nations" as the ideal. Global federalism replacing national federalism. Bigger and bigger forms of government which have no room for American exceptionalism or nationalism. Where Mark Twain could favorably compare American democracy to the national institutions of Europe and the Ottoman Empire, the modern day liberal avoids such dangerous ground.

Liberalism has embraced relativism, trapping it in a feedback loop of reflexive national self-criticism. Talk about the status of women in the Muslim world, and a liberal interjects by pointing out unequal salary levels in America. Mention genocide in the Sudan and he talks about Native Americans. Summon outrage over some a beam in the Third World, and the liberal finds a mote in your eye. There's a protective ideological short circuit in that thinking, a governor that cuts in to defend against dangerous ideas with an irrelevant counterattack.

Soviet citizens were trained to respond to all criticisms of human rights in the USSR by shouting, "But Negroes are being lynched in Alabama." One had nothing to do with the other. The chief function of such responses is to immediately deflect dangerous ideas before they can be considered. Liberals invert the Soviet practice by replying to any criticism of non-Western countries with, "But Negroes are being lynched in Alabama." Less a criticism than a magic totem phrase that keeps them from making value judgments. A "What right do you have to judge" invocation that completely fails to address the problem, but instead silences the entire discussion.

As the UN has replaced the American Union as the most moral form of liberal government, so too multiculturalism has replaced American culture. Once liberals decided that America was no longer the world's beacon of freedom, its lady with the golden torch holding open a doorway for exiles, its culture ceased to have any value. The E Pluribus Unum was no longer the American experiment, but the global one without need of any country. H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come had eclipsed Jefferson, Paine and Twain in their imagination. Their burning vision was no longer of a country that would be a model to the world, a shining city on a hill, a new Jerusalem-- but of an age of global revolution and international brotherhood. The American exceptionalism that they had embraced in the fevers of 1776 and 1861 was tossed aside. Now their mandate had become the Brotherhood of Man.

The Post-Civil War liberal enthusiasm for American Unionism had soured with WW1, soured, revived and then soured again with WW2. By Korea, American soldiers were mass murderers. By Vietnam, they were maddened apocalyptic monsters serving a state of lunatic statesmen. Today they're torturers and murderers engaged in a bigoted crusade that obstructs global understanding in the service of corporations and bible loving rednecks. This is the worldview of everything from the media to academia, and from the entertainment industry to the non-profits. They see themselves as engaged in a struggle with evil and the name of that evil is America.

This is what NPR and PBS and the whole ugly Titanic of liberal cultural warfare pits itself against. American exceptionalism is their mortal enemy. A sin of arrogance by a country with an ugly history whose every attempt at sovereignty and every effort to cling to freedom is an offense against their globalist ideals. O'Keefe's NPR sting captured that attitude on tape. But it is a wholly ubiquitous and unsurprising attitude. It's the default position among the liberal elite. And it radiates from everything they touch, from the pit of the lowest entertainment to the highest ivory tower of ideas. It has become an inseparable part of them.

Can people who think like that assimilate immigrants? What would they assimilate them into. 19th and 20th century liberals wanted to assimilate immigrants, because those immigrants were more religious and did not share their assumptions and beliefs. But liberals don't think that way about immigrants anymore, just about their own fellow Americans. And they wouldn't know what to assimilate immigrants into if they tried.

Popular American culture is globally ubiquitous and meaningless. The world wears baseball caps and T-shirts, and listens to music from Cleveland, Detroit and New York and watches movies from Los Angeles. But as liberals have changed, so have the assumptions of the cultural products they make. The world still watches American movies, but they no longer convey that old American sense of optimism and confidence in wrongs being righted, but rather they speak an international language of opulence and cynicism. American culture has become kinetic, hyperactive in its dazzling displays of sound and light, yet conveying nothing except wealth and power. A foreigner watching Hollywood movies of the 40's and 50's could gain a sense of who Americans were, or who they thought they were. Today he knows American cities intimately without ever setting in foot in them, he knows that all Americans are rich, American women are easy, American life is violent and American government is corrupt. To the world, America has become a mirror of its sins and vices. Whatever fault they find at home, they see redoubled in American popular culture.

For all that liberal filmmakers fly the occasional American flag in a crucial scene, or news anchors do their best homespun tone, or liberal musicians go on the occasional USO tour-- they don't believe in their own country. And it shows. This is Brooks' common ground culture and it doesn't look very pretty. You can hear it in Obama's teleprompter fed attempts at patriotism or Pelosi trying to speak about biblical values. You can stop by the local theater to see once again that the only heroic American soldiers in movies are fighting aliens, not terrorists. The tropes are there, but they lack content. The symbols are there, but there is no faith behind them.

NPR and PBS's exercises in faux Americanism fall into that same sad category. The tape rolls, the flag unfurls and there's nothing inside it except stories about diversity, British programs, liberals droning on about something no one can stay awake long enough to listen to, fake country color (which has come down a long way from Mark Twain to Garrison Keillor), the hobbies and shopping habits of the elite, their tastes and opinions. Their worldview leavened with occasional exotic imports to remind them of how broadminded they are. What does this all add up to? Nothing.

Multiculturalism is more of an absence than a presence. A throwing up of the hands, as if to say, "We don't know who we are, you guys get together and figure it out." Multiculturalism is a math teacher saying that every answer to X + Y = 4 is valid, except the ones she doesn't like. Multiculturalism is liberals saying that they don't know who they are anymore, but they know who they aren't. They aren't Republicans, they aren't into biblical literalism or flag waving or English Only signs or cheering the troops. They may not know who they are, but they damn well know who they aren't. They aren't Americans.

Defining multiculturalism as Americanism is not a definition, but an absence of a definition. And that's the definition that liberals are most comfortable with. The missing answer. The absence. The abyss. They don't know who they are anymore, but they damn well sure intend that no one else find out either. In the meantime they are citizens of the world, they are human beings who are concerned about the plight of other human beings so long as they are as different from them as possible. They are open-minded, tolerant and willing to listen to anyone who isn't an American.

Liberals have hijacked the culture with no real idea where to take it. Like stupid bank robbers, they're making their getaway, but where are they going? Anywhere but here. Anywhere but America. Their big idea is internationalism, the brotherhood of man, mingling with the nations of the world, tearing down borders and singing John Lennon sings. And to do that, they have decided they don't need to know who they are. Even as they spend half their time trying to discover themselves in self-help sections. Searching for happiness in other countries and cultures. Constantly exploring everything, even as the cold realization creeps in that they have nothing to come home to.

Their culture war has become an extended filibuster making less and less sense by the hour. They traffic in cliches, and the substance is completely lost. It's easy enough to see that in the media or in the entertainment industry. Or to listen to one of Obama's overpraised speeches, which have less semantic content than a box of cereal. NPR and PBS come down to the same thing. Much talk with no content. "Where's the beef?" "There isn't any. We all eat soy now."

NPR and PBS reflect the tastes and attitudes of a lost elite, a liberal bicoastal Brahmin caste forever at war with the untouchables of the heartland. Its public service is a service to that one percent of the country which treats NPR listenership and PBS viewership as hallmarks of its own superiority, toting PBS and NPR carry bags like Mensa membership cards. A sign to discerning people that you are a discerning person. A non-profit status symbol, among the many non-profit status symbols of the elite.

The bike riding, sandal wearing NPR listener, who furrows his brow over events in Libya, demands only Fair Trade coffee and is forever explaining to people that Burma is now Myanmar, knows that he is a better person for it. Not a better American, but a better Citizen of Gaia. The PBS viewer, who totes her tote full of library books on Southeast Asia, retired after working in some capacity for the government, signs petitions for whales, donates money to the Southern Poverty Law Center and listens to hideous Chinese operas for the same reason. None of these things matter in and of themselves. But they testify to the status of liberalism as a status symbol.

Liberals could easily fund all of public broadcasting with a shake of their wallets. But they wouldn't want to. Public broadcasting has an air of mission about it. Take the 'public' out of the equation and it all too quickly stands revealed for what it is, a status symbol and a club for the elite. A game played by the rebellious children of the upper class and middle class aspirants to that status. Its rules are arbitrary and so are its values. Like James Dean's rebel, it knows what it is against, but only has a faint idea of what it is for. It dresses up its simple thoughts in complex formulas, leaps from trend to trend to always be ahead of whatever it is escaping, and finds charm only in ironic detachment. And that ditzy elitism requires that its culture be worthless in order to be worthwhile, non-profit in order to be profitable and meaningless in order to have meaning.

The liberal aspires to be post-modern, post-consumer and post-American. He admires Banksy, wears shoes made out of recycled tires and prides himself on being ashamed of his country. His culture is as hollow as it is hypocritical, as antithetical as it is absurd. It is a culture of being against things. Of running away from things only to find himself doing them anyway. Tearing down art in order to reclaim it and collect it. Shopping for anti-consumer goods to take a stand against consumerism. Bashing his own country in order to be proud of it again. Thus the childish perversity of our cultural hijackers undoes themselves.

Comments

  1. Ouch. As a recovering liberal, I must say I winced at your accuracy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous16/3/11

    "Brahmin caste"
    I get what you are saying but please don't use Hindu imagery in the negative. Hinduism has been attacked by communists/socialists/leftists for decades now. Brahmins are like your rabbis. They are respected because of their dedication to God. To attack Hinduism the left has in particular gone after Brahmins. To undermine the religion you undermine those who pass it on, the ones who study the scriptures. So I get what you are saying but please don't use Hindu imagery in the negative. We already are bombarded with it.

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  3. Anonymous16/3/11

    These things are cyclical. I remember when studying European Romanticism that one of their slogans was "Any time but now, any place but here."

    I remember the professor being asked about whether Classicism and Romanticism were cyclical, and his answer was that these are technical terms for these specific movements, so these particular movements will not be repeated, but that in general, yes, periods of rationalism and irrationalism appear to be cyclical.

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  4. Soviet citizens were trained to respond to all criticisms of human rights in the USSR by shouting, "But Negroes are being lynched in Alabama."

    This is called the "Ambush".
    It is practiced all the time by teenagers against parents,
    "But you and Dad.. etc etc" as a way to divert blame from themselves and set their parents off kilter defending themselves.
    Many times it works and the kid will have the parent sputtering and trying to defend themselves.

    What you see in children you see in adults only in a more deadly way but it is learned in childhood.

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  5. John,

    Romanticism is an escape, and escape has a motivator. The question is what are they escaping from.


    Anonymous,

    no offense was intended. The metaphor in American usage is completely disconnected from its Hindu roots, but I apologize for any offense.


    Lemon,

    and it also be a way for people to stop thinking about a subject that bothers them. For example feminists who don't want to think about the condition of women in the Muslim world.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sultan - I love tofu, I love recycled upcycled design, Fair Trade coffee and a lot of the things that would be classed in the "liberal" category. (I'm Aussie though so we label things a bit differently here.) i think green technology is cool and needs exploring because I believe in research and its byproducts and free enterprise etc.
    But I don't rule out the whole oil/coal thing because of its uses. I just want it to be mined and drilled as cleanly as possible and ideally without giving the town down the road cancer.
    So what?

    Enjoying all these things doesn't mean for one minute that I buy into the crazy antiSemitic ecoMarxist one World bulldust spouted by all the crazies currently populating the planet.
    They DON"T believe in these resourceful things - they just say they do becasue they want to trap everyone except themselves into living poorly. Notice they seldom do the things they preach?
    (I say seldom becasue some people actuyally live up to what they preach, but they are in the minority).

    perhaps it's becasue i enjoy and believe in them differently - not because I believe in "global warming', that repository of claptrap rhetoric and global theft, but because it develops resourceful thinking and habits.
    Doesn't stop me appreciating a fine car or what have you, mind you.

    The post-liberal stuff is a bad attitude on what can be and often are productive activities. Don't let's allow them to claim that too for their own while we recognise their deparavity.
    Cheers. Great article as usual.

    PS. March 30 is Let's Bankrupt Israel Day by the Liberal Terror Nazis and their Screaming Hordes.
    BUYCOTT Israel is on the same day, so buy Israeli goods and help Israel be financially stronger - nand get great skin and radioation-free cancer diagnosis at the same time!
    Please tell your friends.
    And Happy Purim.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Daniel, the romanticising doesn't stop these people being horribly practical. Speaking as one who has a similar mentality, the mental and emotional escape all this provides is simply fun and exciting.
    Imagine! A new world where everyone loves each other...
    You must have noticed the way peopole go on about "community". Whether this is just a communistic catchcry or not, the reality is there are many lonely people out there, but it is also the next lofical evolutionary step for them. Of course just becasue it entails oppressing a whole bunch of people isn't important becasue they don't matter do they?
    Of course many of them are writers and creative types who spend a lot of time in their own heads anyway
    and older business men who have reached the time in their lives when they stop working and start allowing their brains to gather these dustballs of idiocy,
    and a lot of very well-trained propagandists and powerbroekr who stand to make a shedload of cash from all this.
    As for the young, they are easy to fool but they'd wake up if they had the right teachers.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous16/3/11

    "Anonymous,

    no offense was intended. The metaphor in American usage is completely disconnected from its Hindu roots, but I apologize for any offense."

    Oh I know you meant no offense. I appreciate that. Though I get how it was used, that it is used as such in American usage is so sad. The association of Hindu imagery with negativity is so entrenched that it is no longer conscious.

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  9. Anonymous16/3/11

    What it amazes me is Sesame street program. One would have thought that after more than 40 years they would raise a generation that is so high class and tolerant, but what happen? Hoods full of violence, hatred, intolerance, no nice big bird, no nice froggy. And they don't get it yet?

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  10. Anonymous16/3/11

    "and listens to hideous Chinese operas" made me spew milk out my nose. Great writing, as usual.

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  11. TBS,

    I don't know if it's just escape for the sake of novelty, or escape to avoid growing up

    I like green tech, just not the compulsory flavors or the useless stuff built for grant money, etc


    anonymous,

    it's not that the American association with Hindu context is negative, it's more that words are taken and stripped of their context.

    For example Tycoon is taken from the Japanese, but has little in common with it. Words like okay or thug are used with no context either.

    Most cultures do this when they pick up words and concepts they have no context for.

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  12. anon 2,

    they raised a self-centered generation forever looking to be entertained


    anon 3,

    so long as it didn't go far

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous17/3/11

    Yes, yes, and yes.

    But what these elite liberal sensitive types do not and cannot know is this.

    They cannot imagine a world situation in which their neighborhood Starbucks has been looted, and burned, and taken apart for its useful components.

    When it comes down to "brass tacks" time, people like me will use people like them for food, or at least fertilizer or to keep my hunting dogs sleek and fat.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Love it!

    Thanks.

    http://www.brucehanify.com/2011/03/18/blog-post-of-the-day/

    ReplyDelete
  15. Lemon said...

    "... This is called the "Ambush".
    It is practiced all the time by teenagers against parents,
    "But you and Dad.. etc etc" as a way to divert blame from themselves and set their parents off kilter defending themselves.
    ....
    What you see in children you see in adults only in a more deadly way but it is learned in childhood."

    You're SO close to the answer!

    This is because they *ARE* children! -- or at least they have the mental-capacites of children.

    Think about it: Doesn't every "liberal program" sound like it came from the mind of a smart kid, but one with no grasp of COST, or CONSEQUENCE?

    Perpetual children!

    DD

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  16. Anonymous19/3/11

    so please post a blog on how we can talk to lib/lefty airheads. what to do when you start talking with them and you feel your head fill up with air because there's no 'there' there.
    you know what i mean?
    if i try to talk to a lib/leftie about anything it is impossible to have a substantive conversation. instead it feels masochistic.
    so i try to never discuss anything remotely political with them.
    how does one converse with them and still maintain one's sanity?
    maybe you could give examples of what they say and possibilities of how to respond?
    thanks

    ReplyDelete
  17. some guy19/3/11

    Daniel,

    Thanks for such a thoughtful post. To me the people of whom you write (much like the President they elected) risk becoming "the hollow men" T.S. Eliot wrote about. I begin to think he was a prophet as well as poet.

    ReplyDelete

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