Populists vs Progressives

David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times, has written another great little piece that gets at something I've been thinking about for a while. During my teens and twenties, race was a big deal in this country, and how you approached the topic in great measure revealed your ideology. It was one of several cultural divides along which the country broke, incl. religion & the role of government.

Now religion and race are not the sentinel issues they once were. We may still be a religious people (perhaps post-Christian in practice), but we clearly have a clearly secular state (albeit one informed by our Christian past). We also are no longer an explicitly segregated nation (though we still have ethnic neighborhoods). We have a great deal more racial/gender equality and are more diverse than ever.

But the role of government is still a sentinel issue, a polarizing divide. Ideology has become more & more divisive even as we have begun to abandon and work past the other divisive issues of a prior generation.

Brooks suggests, in his column, that the divide is between populists and progressives, between decentralization and centralization, between autonomy and collectivism. He discounts the old labels of "right wing / conservative" and 'left wing / liberal". I'm not sure I buy the argument completely, but I think he may be on to something.