Here’s an instructive excerpt from Peter Augustine Lawler’s Weekly Standard piece, “Does Human Nature Have a Future?”

Bobos [bourgeois bohemians — or those who prefer comfort to truth, who prefer feeling good to being good] claim to be laid-back bohemian nonjudgmentalists on everything. Or almost everything: When it comes to the soul, they reject as repressive the morality of traditional religion, but when it comes to the body, they are far from laissez faire. They are pro-choice on abortion. But when it comes to seatbelts and smoking, there ought to be a law. Being chaste, they say, is unrealistically hard for our young people. But they can and should just say no to drunkeness and obesity. Sex of all kinds can be safe, but being fat is genuinely risky business. In their puritanical disdain for cigarettes, drunkenness, and rich food, the Bobos show themselves to be far more bourgeois than bohemian. Comparatively speaking, their predecessors — the martini-drinking, chain-smoking, dessert-eating, and war-fighting WASP establishment — laughed in the face of death.

…Explains Rumsfeld’s popularity — not to mention Hollywood’s decision to bring back Ocean’s Eleven…

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