Two Nations

When reading either Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, it’s interesting that you almost never meet a really poor person, except those recently made so by their own fault, in Austen, and rarely meet a really rich person in Dickens, except the benevolent deus ex machina who resolves many of his stories or the villainous Scrooge who finally reforms.  The bridge between those two different worlds was Benjamin Disraeli, the author/Prime Minister who, while a leader of the conservative Tory party, also wrote about the “two Englands” of the rich and the poor and the distance between them and set off a social revolution in his own flamboyantly quiet way.  “Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.” was the aristocratic Disraeli’s observation, and the many results included the Primrose (Disraeli’s favorite flower) League, a society of working class and middle class English which endured until 2004 and featured a conservative point of view that believed in uniting both rich and poor in defense of Britain’s traditional values.  Defense of the Empire was its highest value, not defense of the wealthy.  At its height, the Primrose League included 2 million members at a time when the total English electorate was 7 million, and much of their membership were people deemed liberal territory in America.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates come from a socially conscious wealth archetype with long historical roots; the Roman poet Martial wrote a short poem chiding his host at a dinner party for selling a slave in order to fund the dinner, pointing out that they would be feasting not just on mullet but on the life of a human being.   How’s that for a hostess gift?  But it’s much easier to be like Jane Austen, simply unaware of that “other Nation” out there.  Of course Scrooges go back a long way too.  But Disraeli, and Buffet and Gates, show that being wealthy doesn’t have to preclude having a social conscience.  The scalpel that cuts the heart out of wealthy conservatives is an ideological one, the blind belief in merit-based individualism to the point of assuming anyone who has suffered misfortune had it coming to him.  And ideologies can be replaced by better ones.  But it will require great leadership among them.

A recent comment by a Republican party leader was that they should put out a sign saying “closed for repair” for a year, while they examine themselves and figure out ways to remain viable in the face of changing ethnic demographics, increasing voter dissatisfaction with “no, no, never” politics and a growing sense that time and outdated ideas have relegated them to becoming at best a regional party, at worst one of grumpy old southern white men.  There is only one Republican House representative from New England, a former bastion of theirs, and almost none from the west coast.  Their current basic excuse is that they are forced by their base to remain negative, but leadership means persuading your base to follow you, not acting like a lemming.  In the eyes of an increasing number of people, they embody Adam Smith’s wry observation that the principal role of government is to defend the rich against the poor, but following current Republican practices and values, the poor are beginning substantially to outnumber them.

The English had Disraeli, who led conservatives eventually to a dominance in British politics that lasted most of a hundred years, building it on a coalition of rich and poor, aristocrats and laborers, who shared a common vision about preserving the value of traditional English ways.  That uniting vision, not the divisive one of rich against poor, is what their conservative politics were built on.  What the Republicans need is leadership that focuses on what unites us all, not what divides us, i.e., they need to focus on coalition building across the socioeconomic and ethnic spectrums, and then to persuade their true believers to follow them to the Promised Land. There’s plenty of room for positive ideas and values that are not just carbon copies of ideas already taken by the Democrats.  It does not mean always agreeing with Democrats, but it does mean working and arguing with Democrats about how best to build a better future, not just hang on to everything they’ve got now, even at the expense of all others.

And it means updating their individualistic ideology to a 21^st century urban, global world.  It would be wonderful to have a party committed to the ideals of our Founding Fathers, but still able to translate them into positive steps toward a better future.  If they manage to do so, they too, along with America, will share that future.  If not, they will more and more be just a relic, like the Know-Nothings and anti-Masons, in the museum of lost political parties.