Brooks likes the nice little system that rewards him
by David Atkins
David Brooks, being his usual insufferably out-of-touch self, responds directly to Chris Hayes’ indictment of our failing “meritocracy”:
It’s a challenging argument but wrong. I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined. They raise their kids in organized families. They spend enormous amounts of money and time on enrichment. They work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room…
As a result, today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess. If you went to Groton a century ago, you knew you were privileged. You were taught how morally precarious privilege was and how much responsibility it entailed. You were housed in a spartan 6-foot-by-9-foot cubicle to prepare you for the rigors of leadership…
Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this.
If you read the e-mails from the Libor scandal you get the same sensation you get from reading the e-mails in so many recent scandals: these people are brats; they have no sense that they are guardians for an institution the world depends on; they have no consciousness of their larger social role.
The difference between the Hayes view and mine is a bit like the difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. He wants to upend the social order. I want to keep the current social order, but I want to give it a different ethos and institutions that are more consistent with its existing ideals.
Belief that only the wealthy work hard and prioritize their kids’ education? Check. Belief that the super-wealthy actually drive their own kids to preschool rather than having the nanny do it? Check. Belief that the Mitt Romneys of the world who take big paychecks for doing no work, work longer hours than people with two jobs? Check. Belief in boarding schools as the answer to Wall Street’s moral collapse? Check. Belief that the problem with society today is that young people and anti-authoritarians have too much influence? Check. Opposition to direct regulation in favor of vague talk of ethical transformations without any sort of plan to achieve those transformations? Check.
Wonkette’s response is delicious:
To be fair, if I churned out this kind of drivel a few times a week and had a four million dollar house to show for it, I’d probably want to keep the existing social order as well. So maybe David Brooks isn’t QUITE as stupid as his columns indicate. But yeah, totally. No need to regulate these elites; just TELL them how important they are, and how many Poors are affected by their decisions, and surely they’ll start acting with the magnanimity of their racist, sexist, anti-Semitic predecessors—now THEY had a moral code, amiright?
I’ll wager that a woman who leaves her abusive husband and works two jobs to take care of her kids works a lot harder and cares a lot more about her kids than Brooks does. The fact that Brooks remains on the New York Times payroll and does so well for himself churning out such garbage is Exhibit A in the evidentiary vault of our institutional moral decay.
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