Recommended: The Party of Work

David Brooks, as much a sociologist as a journalist, has once again written an insightful piece, The Party Of Work, in the New York Times. He discusses our Puritan heritage as it evolved into a Southern and a Western vision of hardy independence and individualism that was for many years the bedrock appeal of the Republican party.  This vision is inherently suspicious of government, seeing it as intrusive and potentially sapping initiative.

As Brooks points out (and as the analysis of the polls in this least election bear out), an increasing proportion of the country are immigrants from other cultures who indeed believe in hard work (often far more than those who have been here for more generations, shades of the "Tiger Moms"), but who have a different view of government and don't view it with suspicion.

Republicans apparently need to do far more than just drop their nutty religious and patriotic extremism, their short-sighted immigration views, and their anti-science biases.  They need to fundamentally rethink the bedrock appeal of the Republican party if they are to reshape the party to appeal to these immigrants.

This is a good article, worth pondering.