David Brooks today cited Charles Murray's new book approvingly. Let that one sink in for a bit: it's like trusting Schmitt on jurisprudence. He doesn't mention that the book is really just worrying about white people becoming divided by class, and doesn't care about black people. This isn't innocent oversight.
Secondly Brooks creates an ideal type: the urban university-educated professional who goes to church and married before they had kids. He then has the chutzpah to say this is 20% of white america, and that it represents traditionalism.
There's something deeply wrong with this argument: just because some college educated people go to church more often and marry before having children doesn't mean you can construct a sociological narrative of college educated people with particular values leading them to this. Certainly the attitudes of the urban elite towards homosexuality, birth control, abortion, secularism, and the existence of other modes of life are deeply untraditional.
Furthermore, lower-class americans are working less not because they are less industrious, but there is less work that exists for them. The decline in wages and benefits of lower-tier work has been a constant trend since the 1970's. Pinning this on attitudes towards work changing requires evidence, and I don't trust Dr. Murray to tell me what the evidence is. The work that does exist is under conditions of scheduling and environment that do not lend themselves to social engagement.
Lastly, the elite is not homogenous. If we think Upper East Side we get a different picture from wealthy Dallas doctor. Social attitudes are not the ultimate predictors of success that Brooks has them be in his editorial.
