Class struggle.(The Uncivil War: How a New Elite Is Destroying Our Democracy)(Book Review)

The Uncivil War: How a New Elite Is Destroying Our Democracy, by David Lebedoff (Taylor, 208 pp., $24.95)

WITH America more divided than at any time since the 1960s, it's time to take a step back and thoughtfully puzzle out the causes of our differences; this is what author and lawyer David Lebedoff tries to do in The Uncivil War. The book does not disappoint. Lebedoff believes that our political and cultural struggles are being driven by a conflict between two groups, "The New Elite" and "The Left Behinds." Let's have a look at a couple of representatives of these competing social camps.

Growing up in Allentown, Pa., Charlene had felt a bit ashamed of her hand-me-down clothes and less-than-cultured parents. Yet this bright girl blossomed in college, proud to be accepted as an equal by a circle of friends who made concerts, foreign films, and lectures their mainstay. On getting her doctorate in microbiology, Charlene married a physicist and moved to Seattle. Charlene and her neighbors are culturally sophisticated and fairly well off. They feel they've earned their position in life by dint of talent and intelligence. Having risen above their backgrounds, they're suspicious of tradition and impatient with those who don't see things their way. After all, Charlene and her neighbors have proven themselves to be among the brightest and most knowledgeable of citizens; they are members of "The New Elite."

Edward grew up in Mankato, Minn., a prosperous town of 30,000. His IQ is actually higher than Charlene's, yet he doesn't see his intelligence as the key to his place in life. Edward's father, like his father before him, was a respected lawyer and leader in Mankato. Edward values his family's place in the town, and returned to Mankato to practice law. After an indifferent performance in college, Edward had applied himself and done quite well in law school. Yet he knew that, either way, a desk would be waiting for him at the family firm. Edward sees himself as a leader in Mankato, heir to the standards of his profession, and an admirer of the American way of life. Although a prominent citizen and financially well off, Edward is part of what Lebedoff calls "The Left Behinds."

What sets these portraits apart from a typical contrast between "blue" and "red" America is Lebedoff's focus on intelligence. Edward may be smart, but he doesn't define himself by his intellectual accomplishments; yet Charlene and her neighbors in Seattle became professionals by virtue of their grades and SAT scores. What's more, they know it. Deep down, these sophisticates take their intelligence and success as proof that their anti-traditionalist world-view is right--and that those who see things differently are both ignorant and mistaken.

This, says Lebedoff, is the downside of our meritocracy. A laudable democratic desire to ensure equality of opportunity prompted us to make tests like the SAT a decisive determinant of success; an unintended consequence of this change has been to create an elite that is suspicious of democracy itself. Democracy depends on majority rule, but--without quite admitting it--our elites have lost faith in the wisdom of the majority. They think they're smart enough to decide what's right for all of us. These elites don't realize that most political decisions depend on values, not intelligence. Their unshakable faith in their own intelligence leads them to mistake their own imperfect preferences for the truth.

The tension between the New Elites and the Left Behinds is everywhere in our politics, says Lebedoff. George Bush won because Al Gore was the ultimate embodiment of the know-it-all New Elites. Bush (whose test scores were perfectly respectable) was happy to tell an interviewer that he's not particularly good at digesting 500-page policy tomes. Gore stressed to The New Yorker how deeply he'd been influenced by the abstruse French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Our press elites took the contrast as a warning about Bush; the public took it as a strike against Gore. Looking at our last few presidential elections as a clash between the New Elite and the Left Behinds ...