Back to the Future for Conservatives. David Brooks says we should look across the pond to British Conservatives for the next direction of the conservative movement...

Today, British conservatives are on the way up, while American conservatives are on the way down. British conservatives have moved beyond Thatcherism, while American conservatives pine for another Reagan. The British Conservative Party enjoyed a series of stunning victories in local elections last week, while polls show American voters thoroughly rejecting the Republican brand.

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The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”

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This focus means that Conservatives talk not only about war and G.D.P., but also the softer stuff. There’s been more emphasis on environmental issues, civility, assimilation and the moral climate. Cameron has spent an enormous amount of time talking about marriage, families and children.

Right. Marriage, families, kids, and the moral climate...American conservatives never talk about that stuff. I realize receiving a six-figure salary to write 1500 words a week is a lot of pressure, but where has Brooks been the past 20 years?

The Tories do have one idea worth paying attention to:

They want the country to see the Tories as the party of decentralized organic
networks and the Laborites as the party of top-down mechanistic control.

It used to be that American conservatives would talk about decentralization, federalism, and local control. Then they got their hands on the national government and they started talking about "Big Government Conservatism"---a concept that Brooks himself might have mentioned approvingly now and then.

Meanwhile on the pages of the National Review, Michael G. Franc has noticed some things about who has been given to which political party:

Through May 1, the Democratic presidential field has suctioned up a cool $5.7 million from the more than 4,000 donors who list their occupation as “CEO.” The Republicans’ take was only $2.3 million. Chief financial officers, general counsels, directors, and chief information officers also break the Democrats’ way by more than two-to-one margins. The Democrats’ advantage among “presidents” is a less dramatic but still significant $7.2 million to $6.1 million.

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Wall Street firms, long a symbol of American elite accomplishment, also tilt decisively toward the Democrats. Employees in storied Wall Street institutions such as Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley have all favored the Democratic field by a large margin. Even both sides of the recent Bear Stearns/JP Morgan Chase deal choose Democratic candidates over Republicans by two-to-one margins.

Democrats also enjoy enormous fundraising advantages among well-educated
professionals — lawyers, teachers, accountants, journalists and writers. They
carry practitioners of the hard sciences, winning solidly among physicians ($8
million to $4 million), biologists, chemists, physicists, and plain old scientists. Republicans must settle for a slender advantage among rocket scientists.

The white-shirt/red-tie brigade of Republican presidential aspirants holds
a nearly three-to-one edge among janitors, custodians, cleaners, sanitation
workers, factory workers, truckers, bus drivers, barbers, security guards, and
secretaries. While Democrats command the financial loyalty of architects,
Republicans successfully woo contributions from the skilled craftsmen who turn
their blueprints into reality — specifically, contractors, hardhats, plumbers,
stonemasons, electricians, carpenters mechanics, and roofers. This trend extends
to the saloons, where the Democrats carry the bartenders and the Republicans the
waitresses. The GOP field even secures more financial support from teamsters,
steelworkers, bricklayers, and autoworkers.

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Washington Democrats have already adapted their Big Government instincts to this new reality. They have designed government guarantees, subsidies or handouts to address the insecurities of middle- and upper-income American families. Think of the new subsidies proposed on Capitol Hill for higher education, more generous flood insurance for vacation homes, bailouts for homeowners with mortgages as high as $730,000 and welfare-style health coverage for kids in middle-income families, and you get the idea.

And so reducing the AMT becomes urgent tax reform for the Middle Class.

The good news, as Franc points out, is that with such a constituency, the Democratic establishment isn't going to push for Naderite progressive regulation of the economy. The danger is, as a survey of any Latin American nation shows, is that being pro-business is not the same as being pro-free market. Business elites would be able to perfectly adapt to an environment of rent-seeking from government, screwing the middle and lower classes in the process.

Meghan O'Rourke writes a better review of Hannah Montana's show than I could. The only thing I could muster about it and the rest of the Disney Channel's execrable live-action line-up of rich, eye-rolling, precocious kids would be a lot incoherent swearing. And its cartoons stink too.

O'Rourke does flub one thing.

What's striking, though, is that we don't see all that much of Miley being a real person, going to school, riding the school bus. Instead, the show is really all about being a pop star.

The secret pop star premise is just a variant of the superhero theme. It feeds adolescent power fantasies: I may look like a wimpy sophomore, but if you only knew...

Doing a show about actually being an ordinary kid would be like an issue of Superman devoted to Clark Kent's adventures as a reporter, or an issue of Batman describing a Bruce Wayne hosted fundraiser.

The Gantlet. I've just returned from my spring travels around the state. It's only been a year since I've been out Prescott way, but since that time the 69 has been turned into 40-mile speed trap with photo radar and police cars of several levels of authority. What to watch out for: outside of Mayer the Man wants you to slow from 65 to 55. Unfortunately for you, the change is posted at the top of a hill so a tap on the brakes won't work. To slow down enough you have brake hard, if you don't...there's someone waiting for you at the bottom.

Christians and Pop Culture. Hanna Rosin reviews Daniel Radosh's survey of modern pop Christian culture, Rapture Ready!, on Slate.

Reading Radosh's book is like coming across another planet hidden somewhere on Earth where everything is just exactly like it is here except blue or made out of plastic. Every American pop phenomenon has its Christian equivalent, no matter how improbable. And Radosh seems to have experienced them all.

At a Christian retail show Radosh attends, there are rip-off trinkets of every kind—a Christian version of My Little Pony and the mood ring and the boardwalk T-shirt ("Friends don't let friends go to hell"). There is Christian Harlequin and Christian chick lit and Bibleman, hero of spiritual warfare. There are Christian raves and Christian rappers and Christian techno, which is somehow more Christian even though there are no words. There are Christian comedians who put on a Christian version of Punk'd, called Prank 3:16. There are Christian sex-advice sites where you can read the biblical case for a strap-on dildo or bondage (liberation through submission). There's a Christian planetarium, telling you the true age of the universe, and my personal favorite—Christian professional wrestling, where, by the last round, "Outlaw" Todd Zane sees the beauty of salvation.

At some point, Radosh asks the obvious question: Didn't Jesus chase the money changers out of the temple? In other words, isn't there something wrong with so thoroughly commercializing all aspects of faith?

No, the obvious question is this: For over a millenium-and-a-half Christianity was the mainspring of both high and popular cultures. Bach, Mozart, Michaelangelo--obviously all worked with Christian themes. And let's not forget gospel music. So since when do Daniel Radosh and Hanna Rosin get to ignore this tradition and treat Christian popular culture as the invasion of the pod people?

The corollary question is when did popular culture automatically equal commercial culture?

What a Christian chick-lit and rock music actually show is that without the sex, irony, and faux rebellion, there's a gigantic void in the middle of pop culture that even an omnipotent, omnipresent deity cannot fill.

In a way creating a parallel, modern pop-Christian culture--to involve God in every work of music, art, film, and literatur you consume--is un-Christian. There are people who devote themselves 24/7 to God, they're called monks and nuns. Most Christians, like Jesus, involve themselves in the world and, like Jesus, feel emotions other than praise and adoration. And when they fall in love, get the blues, get angry, or are moved by a sunset, they should sing about it.

Atonement. This review pretty much says it all about this kind of Oscar bait:

[H]ighly polished technically, adopting a proper sense of gravitas, appearing to say a lot of important tings [sic] without actually saying much at all. The Academy loves honoring such movies because they entail very little genuine risk. No one really hates them, and their Masterpiece Theater sheen imports a sense of film as art... which feels great in the moment but never stands up to the test of time.

Although, the scenes during the war, both on the home front and the battlefield, do evoke how scary WWII was, especially for non-Americans, before it acquired the Greatest Generation gloss.

The ending reminded me of the ending of Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven. As a matter of fact, the movie is driven by the same kind of crime and false accusation found in Pennies.

Man of the People. One byproduct of the melodrama that is the Democratic presidential primary is that Maureen Dowd is now interesting to read. She doesn't offer any particular wisdom or insight. The title of today's column, for example, is just a tease. She never ever offers us an explanation why "Obama, the one with the bumpy background and mixed racial heritage, the one raised by a single mother who was on food stamps, seem so forced when he mingles with the common folk." However, she does offer Vanity Fair-like vignettes of famous people when the cameras aren't on them.

Hillary was renowned for her upstairs-downstairs tussles in the White House, and her high-handed treatment of the little people in the travel office, on the switchboard and on the residence staff. The reports were legend about the Clintons’ problems with the Secret Service, and I once saw Bill dress down an agent in a humiliating way over a couple of autograph seekers who got past a rope line in Orange County, Calif.

Hmmm...who in the OC would want Bill Clinton's autograph?

The Dems ought to relax about the blue-collar manners of their candidates. After all, Saint Franklin of Roosevelt, the premier tribune of the people, wore a cape and smoked cigarettes out of a holder. And you wouldn't find many Kennedys at a rodeo.

Outrage. Even in our cynical, bitter, hyper-partisan age, this is hard to believe: a poll commissioned by an interest group hoping to influence legislation here in Arizona, asked leading, one-sided questions! Fortunately for the integrity of democracy in our state, Mary Jo Pitzl and Matthew Benson were alert to the travesty.

Flyboy. Robert Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines, offered his solutions to US airline problems in Monday's Times. Some are good; some are bad, all are self-serving except, apparently, for this one:

[O]ffshore maintenance of American aircraft should be prohibited. Maintenance performed in the United States is done under more demanding rules and a far higher level of Federal Aviation Administration oversight than work done abroad.

There are two interesting things about the libel that foreign goods and services are shoddy and dangerous. First, US regulators are often accused of being curbed by laissez-faire ideologue politicians; it's business leaders as short-sighted profiteers; and its workers poorly educated. You would think it would be an improvement to offsource maintenance to a country where regulators are more vigorous, workers better educated, and business leaders understand the social compact.

Second, the claim of the inferiority of foreign products is often greeted sympathy by many who view themselves as broad-minded and cosmopolitan. If you told them that foreign aid should be cut to zero because foreign governments are shiftless and corrupt, they would call you a narrow-minded jingo. However, say that foreign products should be banned because foreign workers are shiftless and their managers corrupt, you would be praised for your insight on globalization.

The comments to the article indicate current of progressive environmental thinking that labels airplanes as the next cars: environmental disasters that should be replaced by publicly owned trains.

Bailout Backlash. Again, I don't see why politicians are in such a hurry to re-inflate the housing bubble when I've seen very, very little sympathy for buyers, speculators, and lenders hurt by the bubble, as this article shows...

Nationalbubble.com is another newly minted site devoted to the bailout backlash. "I just got really angry," said blogger Morgan Ward Doran, an L.A.-based attorney who isn't professional involved with the housing industry. "Everyone I hear from is against the bailouts."

It's been ten years since the implosion of the Sierra Clubs campaign to bring Portland-style growth boundaries to Arizona. And aside from Jon Talton's squawking there has been hardly any anxiety and chin-stroking about smart and not-so-smart growth from the usual suspects. It's interesting to speculate how things would have turned out if the initiative had passed. For one thing, the house I'm living in now might not have been built.

One of the things we heard a lot about when we heard a lot about growth was how we needed more density. In California, Governor Arnold and ex-governor Jerry Brown have decided that increasing density is the way to fight global warming. Those who remember the push for infill and density probably remember how the sides lined up back then:

Pro-density: Environmentalists, politicians, Donald Trump

Anti-density: Local residents.

Developers were mostly skeptical but wouldn't turn down a government subsidy if one was thrown their way.

In California the coalitions are a little different. In California, since it is California, most of the locals resistant to increasing density in their neighborhood are the sort of enviro/liberals who supported density (in the abstract) here. And the developers in CA are actually eager to build condos and apartment buildings that are supposedly greener.

But is density actually greener. Jill Stewart, via Kaus, has found several scientist types who say "no".

[T]he debate is being dominated by the smart-growth movement, unsettling several top global-warming scientists and researchers, who say the sweeping land-use proposals being considered by Schwarzenegger’s Climate Action Team — from lifting hard-won zoning caps to create far more high-rises to watering down longtime fire codes to permit “compact development” — have little basis in
science.

“I am happy to know that your attorney general is going to fight
global warming,” Konstantin Vinnikov, an atmospheric scientist at the University
of Maryland, wrote in an exchange with L.A. Weekly. “But contemporary global
warming is a result of overpopulation. This is politically incorrect truth. It
is [the] wrong idea to settle as many people as possible in [a] limited area.”

Andrea Sarzynski, a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, was
mocked by smart-growth proponents when her own studies unexpectedly found that housing density, instead of helping, actually spurs congestion and pollution.
“There’s no consensus whatsoever on the contributions from these two [different
types] of land use,” she says, “and there is no comprehensive study in existence
on this.”

And while we're on the topic of green/not green: it turns out that automatic dishwashers are greener than washing dishes yourself--unless you're my mother or siblings.