Noblesse oblige 2009

Tom Friedman’s latest column provides real evidence our national elite’s in a different place than the rest of us.

According to Friedman, many Americans are “Warren Buffett centrists.” We agree with Buffett that whatever we achieve in life is because we were born in America at this time, with all of its advantages and opportunities.

I think Friedman means we are well positioned to “give back.” I think this, because Friedman also writes America’s “becoming a declining great power” in need of “nation-building at home,” something in turn requiring “a spirit of shared sacrifice.”

Friedman underlines our need for nation-building through sacrifice by quoting Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel, author of the new best seller — Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?:

Obama’s election marked a shift — from a politics that celebrated privatized concerns to a politics that recognized the need for effective government and larger public purposes. You can’t get nation-building without shared sacrifice. [emphases added]

Here’s the problem with Friedman’s thinking. Most of us aren’t wealthy like Buffett or like Friedman, who married the daughter of shopping mall king Matthew Bucksbaum (General Growth Properties). These aren’t the folks, even including Harvard’s Sandel, to be inviting us to a “shared sacrifice.” Nor are Obama and most of the people around him.

Noblesse oblige, maybe. “Shared sacrifice,” no.

I think the elite don’t get it. So they take a shot at people focused on “privatized concerns,” which to me is kitchen-table talk about holding onto a job or a home, or managing disappearing savings. By trashing “privatized concerns,” the elite again fail to notice the rising populist anger against America’s government and business privileged.

Or perhaps you don’t buy this, and instead accept Friedman’s reason for people not joining Obama’s “shared sacrifice”?:

independents and conservatives who voted for Mr. Obama [note Friedman’s only interested in holding Obama’s 2008 majority; forget about the other 47%] have been so easily swayed against him by Fox News . . . because [Obama] has not given voice to the truly patriotic nation-building endeavor in which he is engaged.

Whoa! FOX News again!