In times like these, when conservatives are licking their wounds and trying to figure out what comes next, a helpful framework exists. It starts with a simple, self-evident fact: There is such a thing as elite opinion that is not the same as popular opinion.
Sometimes elite opinion is honestly of two minds, and has a vigorous internal debate that, in a republic like ours, winds up going to popular opinion for resolution. The first two contested elections in the United States, the close Adams-Jefferson elections of 1796 and 1800, exemplify this.
At other times, elites in a democracy have a tendency to get overly bound up with social status and careerism, and there is a premium on conformity. Having the right views, and the right way of expressing such views, becomes an emblem of elite status and a harbinger of career advancement. More and more issues become "not debatable." At such times, elite opinion is likely to see itself as self-evidently superior to popular opinion, and its role toward popular opinion as--shall we say--educative.
By the Friday after the election, what had happened in California had become a little too awkward for elite opinion to ignore. It was not so much that Proposition 8--writing marriage between a man and a woman into the state constitution, over the vehement objections of the California Supreme Court, the Republican governor, the Democratic legislature, Senator Barack Obama, and every editorial page and opinion writer imaginable--had passed. With similar results the same day in Florida and Arizona,
the scoreboard in popular referenda on such amendments is now Marriage 30, Same Sex Marriage 0. It was the fact that in the most socially liberal state in the country, whites had voted (narrowly) against the amendment, Hispanics narrowly for, and black voters overwhelmingly for the traditional definition of marriage. Amazingly, Los Angeles County, which chose Obama over McCain 69 percent to 29 percent, supported Proposition 8, with black voters in crime-ridden South Los Angeles neighborhoods like Compton voting strongly in favor, while Beverly Hills, Westwood, and Pacific Palisades were tolerantly and disdainfully against.
So elite opinion makers had to say something about these black voters. The accounts I saw said two things: Many blacks are bigoted against gays, and the pro-Proposition 8 forces got to California's black pastors. In other words, the anti-same-sex-marriage black voters are bigoted, they are sheep, or most likely some combination of the two. No other analysis offered--or needed.
I suspect the reality of this vote, once elite opinion's multiple stereotypes of black voters are set aside, has more to do with the aspirational nature of American values politics and of our social issues in general. It is why, no matter how hedonistic and promiscuous our mass culture gets, social issues show zero sign of disappearing from American politics the way they have from those of Western Europe and Japan.
American voters, and not just white voters in red states, still believe they have not just the right but the democratic obligation to set standards for their communities. They remain far from ready to take at face value the assurances of judicial, media, and academic elites on how things must be, however unanimous these elites appear to be. Socially conservative Americans, black and white, regret and (my sense is) are deeply self-critical of their own frequent failure to overcome the surrounding culture and live up to the standards they believe in. But to them it does not follow that the standards should no longer exist, or (in the openly stated, nearly unanimous view of elite opinion) should no longer even be debated in politics.
|
