THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First by Mona Charen (Regnery, 263 pp., $27.95). Many of my liberal friends are...
...She is occasionally too dismissive of the damaging effects of irresponsible anti-communism...
...A key feature of the values divide is the way it cleaves the nation into evenly populated cultural cantons...
...In any case, many liberals, after doting on the Soviet Union, flacking for the Viet Cong, marching for a nuclear freeze, stumping for the Sandinistas, and comparing the United States unfavorably with every tin pot dictator and Stalinist on the planet, had the gall to pretend, post-1989, that they had been anti-Communists all along...
...Earning the privilege of representing Americans' shared values isn't simple...
...But he doesn't explain how they will close the divide, and his awkward try at generation-branding comes off as a lame attempt at hipness...
...His own book, The Values Divide, correctly predicted that candidates who best articulated voters' values would win...
...Most people credited the GOP with this upswing, and sure enough, George Bush's Republicans took control of Congress last fall...
...White describes how these took shape: Libertarian and establishment Republicans yielded ground to liberal Democrats in the Northeast and movement conservatives in the South and Southwest...
...However, Mona Charen reminds us that the opinions of the loonies are often not as far from the opinions of the liberals as my friends would like them to be...
...The political noise White disdains is the discordant racket of accommodation...
...Dix-iecrats either morphed into or were replaced by conservative Republicans...
...Jeremy Lott The Values Divide: American Politics and Culture in Transition by John Kenneth White (Chatham, 270 pp., $22.95...
...But her broad point is well made and important...
...Indeed, according to White, American elections have always turned on values...
...The Values Divide provides a clear, persuasive description of the forces that drive American politics, and a model for forecasting national election results in the near term...
...After September 11 Bush skillfully rallied the electorate behind duty, patriotism, and community, and won back Congress...
...Unfortunately, when White launches into longer-term pronouncements, he doesn't present finished arguments...
...Democratic commentator Paul Begala, author of It's Still the Economy, Stupid, was a sad sight as the election returns came in last November...
...This idea might evoke one image for a Democrat from a "blue" enclave, while a Bush supporter confronted with it might picture something quite different...
...But not by much...
...White says that though we cherish tolerance, community, self-reliance, individual freedom, and fair play, we differ passionately on how these are defined...
...Successful politicians and parties bridge this chasm by emphasizing broad-stroke common values...
...Useful Idiots does not claim to contain much original reporting and makes no attempt to be comprehensive...
...In the aftermath of September 11, White points out, 64 percent of Americans believed the United States is on the right path morally...
...Charen explains she isn't indiscriminately targeting all liberals—although, she observes, "Great Liberal Cold Warriors would make a very short book...
...Many of my liberal friends are skeptical or undecided about war in Iraq...
...At the same time, nearly all of them went out of their way, during the recent antiwar protests, to explain that the pro-testers—with signs comparing America with Nazi Germany or extolling the virtues of Iraqi democracy—struck them as stark raving loonies...
...And yet, our politics is coping...
...Take "community...
...Progress may be slow, painful, and ugly, but sometimes that's what democracy looks like...
...John Kenneth White had reason to be more sanguine...
...He fervently hopes that America's values divide will be repaired by "Generation 9-11," a cadre of 20-something MTVers united by national tragedy and a commitment to tolerance as an absolute value...
...Values will continue to matter more than ever before," he writes, "but it is our politics that remains unable to cope...
...Timothy Ireland...
...It aims, rather, to call into question the judgment of a political class...
Vol. 8 • February 2003 • No. 20
