When James Taranto edited the “Best of the Web” feature for the Wall Street Journal, he had a recurring feature titled “Fox Butterfield Is That You?” in which he highlighted things claimed to be paradoxes which were actually completely comprehendable. I nominate Joel Kotkin for today’s “Fox Butterfield Award” for this sentence in a piece of his at Spiked!:
Rural America, once powerfully populist and even radical in its politics, is now heavily pro-Republican, as Democrats have made themselves toxic.
What’s puzzling about that? Rural America is still “powerfully populist and even radical in its politics” but the parties have to a large degree changed sides. There’s very little truly conservative as Edmund Burke or, more recently, William F. Buckley would have understood conservatism in today’s Republican Party. It has become increasingly populist and even radical, especially at the national level even as the Democratic Party has become increasingly elitist and, yes, radical but particularly social radicals. The cartoon that Elon Musk tweeted last week rankled because it was true, at least as far as it went. It would have been completely true if it had depicted “the right” dashing farther to the right even as “the left” dashed farther to the left.
That’s what I find frustrating about today’s politics. At the national level there is no party of good governance. Republicans have become the party, again at the national level, of less government or no government (at least notionally) while the Democrats have seemingly lost interest in good national governance while tilting at socially radical windmills. At the local level, at least here in the innermost wilds of Chicago, there does appear to be some good governance, particularly by Republicans, which I think goes a long way to explaining the greater point that Mr. Kotkin makes in his article: young people and minorities are fleeing deep Blue metropolises for Redder places. There is precious little good governance here in Illinois, of course.
