I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but losing the entire professional upper middle class in exchange for a broader, more working class and less educated electorate may turn out to be the ultimate Pyrrhic victory for conservatism.
Let me explain.
People on the right are currently exulting over how college educated America, especially the downwardly mobile elements thereof, is driving the Democratic party far to the left: nominating radicals and extremists as Congressional and Senatorial candidates, expressing record low levels of patriotism and love of country, and trying to force hated ideas down the throats of the general populace, ensuring Republican victories and success even in tough elections.
Indeed, it’s hard to celebrate the “decimation” of the middle class with so many Americans entering its upper reaches when this is the political result – further dividing and demoralizing the country, destroying America’s great cities through mismanagement, and generally making a mess of things.
But there’s a flip side to this: The more the professional class homogenizes and becomes rigidly leftwing or liberal in practice, the more the right is denied its vital pool of manpower and resources to support its own causes.
The right needs generation after generation of lawyers and judges to uphold the constitution, teachers and educators to push back on woke insanity from the inside of public schools where most children still learn, conscientious volunteers willing and able to revive and revitalize struggling families and communities outside their local ones, and men and women of ideas who can effectively defend the values of family, community, patriotism, and faith in the public square in a way at least those in the middle can hear.
Those people tend to come from the educated classes, especially college.
Thus, a world in which ever increasing numbers of the college educated – including fields such as law and the humanities - are ever radicalizing Democrats is not one where the right can conserve much of anything. For all that populism has denigrated elites in general, the right needs responsible cadres of elites at all levels to safeguard the republic and its own people against the extremism of the left, as well as help it rebuild institutions and communities a la Yuval Levin.
That can’t happen if the Realignment continues to deepen and anyone in the professional world to the right of whoever is in vogue among the DSA fans is forced out or marginalized.
We currently exult in the victories handed down by the Roberts court – but where are we going to find the next Gorsuch or Barrett in twenty years? Or forty? In a world where lawyers are increasingly liberal or leftwing, it will become ever harder. Even more so in places like schools or non-Republican local communities where we need far greater numbers.
Some might counter that there are still many college educated Americans who are, if not conservative, at least heterodox liberals open to conservative ideas. They might also point to multiple instance – neocons, the intellectual dark web, the Free Press – where normal liberals rebelled against increasing leftwing orthodoxy and restored what Arthur Schlesinger called “the vital center.”
But ultimately, this is a numbers game, and as conservatives and centrists have been pushed to the margins in academia and the professions, even the normal liberals are finding themselves forced through peer pressure or genuine radicalization towards ever more intolerant positions, especially among the younger graduates. Boomers, Gen X, and even reasonable millennials can only hold this line for so long.
So yes, the right might win more elections in the foreseeable future thanks to the derangement of the educated class. But without solid, effective leaders of its own cementing such victories in American society on a daily basis in government and civil society, they will remain hollow and short-lived.
They have the barbarian horde, but don’t have the people who can do anything other than loot and pillage.
Amy Coney Barrett is around my age. I went to law school. You easily would have said that then. Law school was a diverse mix of left and far left. No conservatives to be found-or very very few- on both the faculty or the student body.
A relevant idea you don’t address is birth rates, family formation, despair deaths, etc. Very important for the future.
You know what else is relevant?
How many hyper educated people does a movement need? Because the left had too many and that’s one of their problems.
Articulate erudite spokespeople were never the stereotype of the right, but we have always had them. Perhaps the few contrarian principles-based intellects are enough.