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The culture wars
are heating up again, although
the focus has shifted. In recent years, the controversy
posed secular coastal elites
against wholesome
heartland common folks. Now we see a return to an earlier
version which features the culture of poverty
or the
culture of failure,
tied to an ethnic group.
This may have started about 40 years ago, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan, later to be come a Democratic senator from New York, saw a rising rate of single-parent households among African-Americans, and predicted social and economic problems on account of that cultural shift.
It popped up last week when Bob Beauprez, Republican
candidate for governor, told a radio audience that in
some of our ethnic communities we're seeing very, very high
percentages of babies, children, pregnancies end in
abortion.
If the pregnancies are not terminated, then the children
may grow up in single-parent households with no father at
home. Rick O'Donnell, GOP candidate for congress from
Colorado's seventh district, wrote in these pages in 2004;
he listed various social problems to which the largest
contributor is the epidemic of absent fathers.
The cultural angle comes in: It's sad that for too
many young men, sex, sports, and violence are all that is
left as anchors of their souls, rather than family, faith
and hard-work.
And former Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm has been making
waves all summer with his book One Wand, Two
Nations,
wherein he argues that certain ethic cultures
raise under-performing children, which means America is
not producing the skills, talents and educational
achievements in its young people to keep us competitive in
a global world.
He pointed to Asian-American and Jewish-American cultures, both emphasizing education and a strong work ethic, as cultures that tend to produce success.
But sometimes this can backfire. Go back to pioneer times in Colorado. Chinese immigrants were willing to work harder and longer on marginal placer gold claims, and for lower wages, than white miners. Instead of being lauded for their work ethic, they were lynched or run out of town.
In the early years of the 20th century, Italian immigrants pointed out that they would work harder than the Chinese or African-Americans in Colorado. Some of the Italian immigrants were lynched, and meanwhile many white Protestant Coloradans supported the Ku Klux Klan's campaign of terror against them.
There are other cultural barriers to success. For instance, I was raised in a moral culture that disparaged ostentation. That may explain why I find the whole gangsta rap culture disgusting -- its degradation of women, its strut and swagger, its focus on bling-bling and conspicuous consumption.
Yet who can deny that it's a success, with with its effects on American music, clothing and language? Nothing I write will ever have a tenth of the influence of a 50-Cent release.
So you could argue that some puritanism derived from culture is an impediment to success, rather than an incentive.
Indeed, you can look at the alleged virtues that many of us try to instill in our children, and see that they stand in the way of success in America.
Teach your son not to act the bully, and he will never reach the heights of Bill Gates or Dick Cheney. Teach your daughter to respect herself, and she will never enjoy the prominence of Paris Hilton, nor will you ever be engaged as the star of a reality-TV series designed to edify the masses about upscale standards.
Practice family values
too strongly if you own a
business, and you'll be expected to employ lots of
relatives -- some of them incompetent and a drain on the
bottom line that prevents real commercial success.
Work consistently and loyally over the years, which should be a route to success, and see your pension and retirement portfolio disappear overnight. That's certainly no success.
Assuming we could go around shopping for a culture, which one would provide the best chance of success in America?
I'd go with the trust-fund country-club culture. It imparts vital American social skills, like snobbery, flattery and hypocrisy. It respects education, especially higher education in the form of legacy admissions to Ivy League schools. It esteems hard work -- when performed by other people at the lowest possible wage.
In short, this culture provides just about everything it takes to succeed in America, although in future years, it might not keep us competitive in a global world. Our politicians are right to be worried about culture and the future of America. But the focus seems misplaced, when they point at the problems of the powerless while ignoring the flaws of the dominant.
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