Might be so but a whole lot of those small towns voted overwhelmingly for Trump! Maybe it was the whig on his head that caused it.
54
I’m sure these smaller cities would rather we no nationalize their successes. Maybe learn from them. But my guess is they would rather accomplish goals not advertise aspirations.
9
the one thing local governments cant do is deficit spend. when the federal debt bubble bursts its going to take down all these great efforts at the local level by debasing the currency.
12
Brooks sounds like the voice of a budding third party and/or a movement to reclaim the GOP. Hope so. Seems like there is a great, long-term story to tell with great reading for years to come.
7
Welcome to the club, fellow Whigian! But, you forgot John Quincy Adams who ended up a Whig and with Henry Clay was a champion of the "American System." Like other politicians of his era, {including DeWitt Clinton the energy behind the Erie Canal}, they often transitioned from Federalist to Democrat-Republican, National Republican etc. Besides Improvements {!} Whigs were generally in favor of protectionism, and dithered about slavery... Methinks we have to take this back to the drawing board.
10
I didn't know I was a Whig. Thanks David.
13
I am very glad to hear that Brooks read this book. He is so attached to boxes and to labels, seemingly unable to detach from them. The Fallows are able to see people without boxing them in.
5
Utopian David. If you really want to look at America's future read Nancy MacLean's "Democracy in Chains", Steven Levitsky's and Daniel Ziblatt's "How Democracies Die", Katherine Stewart's "The Good News Club", and David Frum's "Trumpocracy". And this is only a sample. Trump + the evangelicals + the Republican Party + Koch brothers money + democratic incompetence = our future.
JD
26
I once thought of myself as belonging to the now nearly extinct moderate wing of the Republican Party, where moderation meant that you focused on fixing problems by working with others to build coalitions that could deliver a solution. The obeisance of the leadership of the Republican Party to Donald Trump makes it impossible for me to vote for them.
But now I know what party I belong too, I'm a Whig! (Minus pro-slavery Henry Clay)
25
Small is beautiful. Local is good.
The personal (vs the impersonal) is key to enhancing understanding, creativity, problem-solving, and even kindness.
Capitalism depends on competitive (not "free") markets. Until the "free for all" "laissez-faire" mentality is reined in, the wealth gap will continue to widen.
The middle-way means a balance between individual and community responsibility, and fiscal and social responsibility.
17
The sky is literally falling on America, and Mr. Brooks says; Ah, look at the lovely sunset". Brother from Another Planet would be a great title for this piece.
24
Wow. I didn't realize I was a Whig. Count me in!
4
The renaissance is happening at the hyper-local level. Communities have segregated themselves to cut off the poor and elevate the upper-middle class. You can see this in the disparity in our school districts. The affluent schools have a wealth of resources, while a few miles away the text books are falling apart and the facilities are crumbling. Progress for the small pockets within each community is great but don't fool yourself, the majority is still being grossly underserved.
18
I was so pleased to read that David Brooks now advocates the nationalization of business and industry.
10
The American Renaissance Is Already Happening Thanks To President Trump!
1
The So-Called president Trump is not our president. He is a Putin/Netanyahu agent.
27
Poor Mr. Brooks, still struggling to understand why his poor america is face-flat on the ground, not moving. Well, here's a hint for you: it's dead.
#calexit - stop pretending the united failed states is coming back.
9
The transformation of Brooks to a Trump apologist is now complete. I do not believe I could say that a few months ago. I agree America is still exceptional in spite of Trump but why give the Trumpistas more ammunition to continue to stifle civil liberties with their attack on journalists and people like Brooks look the other way and pretend everything is normal.
14
Brooks is suggesting that Whiggism (Whiggery?) has just been lying fallow, so to say, awaiting the spring rains to bring forth green shoots of renewal. But even assuming that the spring rains have not been cancelled due to climate change, more will be required. A rebranding, at the very least. The term Whig reeks of snuff boxes and black powder muskets. The opening for an effective centrist third party is surely expanding, but it won't be the Whigs.
It is also impossible to talk sensibly about the yawning gap between national and local political cultures without acknowledging the key role of Big Money. You may provide years of yeoman selfless public service to your local school board or fire district, but if you decide to try moving up the ladder to a federal elective office you will need to cut a deal with Big Money to finance your ambitions. A wall of mandatory financial corruption surrounds the national fort. Until it is removed, life at the top will not change.
21
Old defunct political parties & a few promising cities in the long list of old defunct busted post-boom-towns in the USA may not provide an immediate answer about How to Make America Happy Again.
There are societies that persistently excel while the US declines, Denmark for one:
"The 2018 World Happiness Report again ranks Denmark among the top three happiest of 155 countries surveyed – a distinction the country has earned for seven consecutive years. The U.S., on the other hand, ranked 18th, a four-spot drop from the previous year’s report".
Which is attributable in part to basic things the US lacks, like access to quality healthcare & education (funded by, yes, higher taxes, go figure).
But there's apparently this cultural construct called “hygge”, which might be something Mr. Brooks seeks in his search for a better society amidst the miserably mean, ornery attitudes that seem to infest the USA:
https://www.good.is/articles/denmark-world-happiness-report
10
Infrastructure, libraries, supporting social mobility efforts... yeah, progressives hate these kinds of things. The only reason we need a Whig party is so people like Brooks who have been trying to claim for years that our current political climate is the fault of "both sides" can save face.
24
i have lived in nashua, nh for 35 years. this column reminds me of our community. mayor james donchess' only ambition is to see nashua succeed.
5
Once again, David Brooks's solution to the country's problems involves no sacrifice by most well off of our society.
10
Mr. Brooks you need to get out into the real world and take a walk around.
8
I’d love to see Trump and all the horrific problems w/the federal government go away. However, as the mayor of a small town in Ohio, I don’t have the luxury of waiting until that happens, as some comments here suggest, before I go to work. The Feds don’t provide any of the daily services we are responsible for - clean drinking water, adequate sewage treatment, fire and EMS, police etc. The party affiliation of those who work for and with me does not matter to us. We are in the midst of a renaissance here every day as we embrace new, modern ways to get the complicated, practical business of local government done. Even in a small town. We’d better be, today’s problems cannot be solved w/old tools or ideas. Or by waiting for national consensus on anything.
11
What is it about David Brooks' columns that lead so many of the Most Recommended comments time after time to miss his underlying point, to only see the trees instead of the forest?
Sure, there are many things Brooks writes about to be critical of. However, especially when he ventures further from the specifics of day-to-day politics, he has perspective worth considering. Too often readers cheat themselves, cutting off their nose to spite their face.
9
If you click the link in Brooks' column and read the Modern Whig Party platform, it sounds similar to the Congressional Progressive Caucus platform. There are differences and perhaps the Whigs would spend less on progressive priorities, but basically both support the same areas -- education, infrastructure, energy independence, alternative energy, action to mitigate climate change, and equal rights including no discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Hey, if moderates are more comfortable calling themselves Whigs but basically support progressive ideas, Mazel Tov. Welcome aboard!
15
Speaking of homeless people, in Fresno or elsewhere ...
"Wait until California's huge homeless population sees the photo of that car-free mall in Fresno. Homelessness is a problem vexing and tearing apart community politics in California."
Not sure what the commenter's first sentence means, but homelessness certainly is a big problem in California. It's not "tearing apart community politics," though. Most of us Californians just recognize that homelessness will remain with us for a long time (San Francisco spends $350,000,000 a year on the "homeless problem" -- whatever that means -- and has decided to increase that spending significantly next year). One SF mayoral candidate expected to gain support by promising to "solve" the "homeless problem" by 2020, but most voters have probably concluded, as I do, that his proposals for doing so are old and that he's naive. Whether or not one thinks enough is being spent on the "homeless problem," nearly everyone agrees (though not this candidate, obviously) that it can only be managed, not ended -- regardless of whether Whigs (new or old Whigs) or some other political party is in power.
4
I'm fresh back from Portland, Oregon, where I lived 20 years ago. It was a somewhat quirky place, then, adding a light rail tunnel and another light rail extension to the airport, which was supposed to generate lots of development. And a streetcar, of all things. My house was on an old streetcar route, done in by cars.
The transit gambles seem to have worked, downtown is full of people, construction is going on at a pace no one would have imagined back then. But the park in my dumpy old neighborhood has a banner, "Save Our Homes." Housing was expensive back then--I met fine people at a shelter for homeless families. I couldn't afford to live there now.
8
There are too many people with no moral compass serving in Congress for this to work on a national level. The welfare of their constituents ranks way down the list of their priorities. The US has become an oligarchy thanks to to Citizens United and the tripling of Washington lobbyists during the Bush W. presidency.
17
I appreciate your good thoughts about renewal in America, David. I also live in a small town that almost died, and was raised from near death by a new industry. The problem is that all these good things ultimately don't matter if the nation's government fails. Corruption works more from the top down than from the bottom up. Watching PBS on TV, I get to watch you and other pundits ably describe and analyze the significance of each new event, but that doesn't change the fact that we are also watching the slow motion destruction of American democracy and the insane preparations for a third world war. What good was Whiggish philosophy in the Weimar republic?
18
Too much money has become involved. Such a renaissance can't occur when only the profitmongers are involved. We need campaign finance reform so some of the people you mention can afford to participate at a higher level.
6
The link to Fallows's book, "Our Town" appears to point to the Modern Whig Party website.
1
Are you sure you didn't click on the first link instead -- the link entitled "Modern Whig Party?" When I clicked on the "book" link, the book appeared, just as I would have expected. You might try again.
2
Compassionate center-right conservatives will need a place to go when the Republican Party goes the way of the dodo. But please come up with a name other than "Whigs". "GNP" (Grand New Party) has a nice, capitalist ring to it.
2
Mr. Brooks advocates local creativity and citizenship to fill the void left by our ineffective federal government, with the real work being done by volunteers FOR FREE. Meanwhile the lions share of our income taxes go to the federal government to be spent on mind-numbing bureaucracy and an incessant military build-up. Some of the comments here talk about the need to break the country up into smaller pieces whereby local progress can be made by government focused on the real needs of the people, rather than some ridiculous hope that volunteerism can fill the void on the cheap, or for free. There may be something to that, but first we have to stop this nonsense that we are a nation of shared interests, shared goals. We're not. The people of the Southeast and Midwest have vastly different expectations of government than do those who live in say California or Colorado, yet our politics currently insist that if one side wins the other side loses. I honestly don't care about what the people in the Southeast want.. I don't live there, I don't share that culture, but I do respect their right to make the progress they desire whatever it may be. Our federal government doesn't work anymore. It creates division and hatred, and it's destroying the country. We clearly are too big for one-size-fits all government. So let's help the republicans drown the federal government in the bathtub, get our tax dollars back home and spend them on progress on our own terms.
3
Mr. Brooks, what you describe is indeed heartening. I know part of the answer to the "how do we nationalize this?" question is we must find a way to turn off the obscene money spigot at the national level that keeps attracting (and maintaining) so many of the wrong people. Even when some good ones arrive, extrinsic rewards erode intrinsic rewards. Greedy people show up with their kitchen knives to carve their competition into pieces, not to create a gymnastics center. Everyone eventually gets their snout into the trough.
2
Thank you David Brooks. I know know what I am. I am a Whig, 25 and counting.
When we see business leaders get together and build even one multi-billion dollar bridge out of their own pockets, then and only then we might consider there is a tiny bit of truth in David Brook’s pablum fantasy about the “community spirit” of big businesses.
8
Man's natural estate is poverty.
"Over three billion people live on less than $2.50/day. At least 80 per cent of humanity live on less than $10/day; and more than 80 per cent of the world’s population live in countries where income differentials are widening."
The poor will be with us always. Just in America, we live at the top of the food chain, where even our poor people live better lives than billions of others. Of course, we should, and do, many of us, work to help them escape poverty. But I don't see a happy day when all of mankind have their physical needs met and live the good life.
To me, these hard facts should lead an ethical pragmatist to socialism. A well-regulated capitalism with a generous, fair-minded population would also work; it's just that it doesn't: the rich get richer, etc. Capitalism never fails to fail in that regard.
10
National politics are a mess in Italy, too. The reason America can't hope to achieve a "lovely lifestyle" is our Calvinist, neo-puritan culture.
4
Wait until California's huge homeless population sees the photo of that car-free mall in Fresno. Homelessness is a problem vexing and tearing apart community politics in California. David doesn't mention that.
1
Nope. American renaissance will not happen -- is impossible to happen -- until Trump and his fellow Deplorables are gone.
5
It would help if right-wing red state legislatures did not preempt every local ordinance that offends their ideology.
Cities and towns should be places where policy experimentation happens. And the Republican mania in places like Arizona and Texas and, well, just about every state that went for the maniac in the White House to handcuff them is anti-democratic (small d), anti-freedom, and offensive to the ideals about which you write.
5
Progressives believe in equality, at least of opportunity, and see government as an instrument for achieving it. Libertarians, in fairness, believe in liberty, and see government as an impediment to it. But I think progressives recognize the limitations of government in achieving equality and libertarians recognize that some level of government is needed to preserve freedom. The intellectually honest ones do, anyway.
Both libertarians and progressives value both freedom and equality, though they may value them differently or feel that the threats to those values differ. Progressives recognize that economic empires, corporations and trusts, represent a threat both to freedom and equality. Bound, as they are, to faith in markets, libertarians are reluctant to recognize that problem.
Intellectual honesty is not something those dependent on political contributions can afford. So our political structures do little to address this schism.
3
American renaissance indeed. The winsome myth of the golden days of the American past where faith (Christian) was the foundation of civic virtue, where politics was a noble and ennobling profession, where decency and morality were the core of the American character is simply flat out nonsense championed by Mr. Brooks. Our nation was built on a foundation of rapacious capitalism - i.e. slavery - that we have tried to paper over with false christian morality and the myth of the "level playing field". Technology and automation are creating the new slavery where morality, ethics, and justice simply do not compute. Trump, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, are just two sides of the same coin. Calling yourself a Whig does not reduce your culpability or complicity with the policies that have brought us to this point. Until we address the fundamental issue - the evolution of capitalism and its subjugation of the west - our country will remain divided and the legacy we leave our children will be one of enslavement - not enlightenment. Mr. Brook: go peddle your bland foolishness elsewhere - we need serious people willing to do serious work.
7
Where do you get the idea that progressives believe in expanding government to enhance equality?
Pls specify who believes in this proposition, thank you.
3
Dear Whig: I am glad you're a Whig. Only one out of 2000 American citizens have even seen/heard/read the word, and now that you have reminded of it, I will do my best to research famous Whigs and what they are all about and the effect that they have had on the electorate. Again, I'm glad you're a Whig.
1
"We just need to take these civic programs and this governing philosophy and nationalize them."
Really? And just how would/could that happen? We have a den of self-serving thieves as cabinet members, breeding an ever-growing swarm of greed-craved lobbyists. There isn't room in this mess for things like "principles" nor "philosophy". And I certainly wish this weren't true. Our nation, at the highest levels, has been walled in. If you aren't "connected", and it's especially beneficial to be involved in the war machine, you have no chance of finding a receptive ear.
7
Whigs, huh?
I’m willing to bet that the majority of these cities being held up as examples are Democratic liberal bastions.
4
Interesting story. I prefer to use the term progressive libertarian not whig since it is so outdated and obscure to only a few.
Be a progress like Lincoln with ending slavery, Teddy Roosevelt with breaking up trust, child labor laws, FDR with SS, union, LBJ with civil rights, gender rights etc. etc.
However be a libertarian when these things are perverted. Unions getting too much power and putting companies out of business, extreme liberals putting one million minorities on the welfare rolls circa 1970 and almost destroying NYC, identity obsessed feminists obsessed with making 100% equal to men in every way, shape and form whether they deserve it or not.
2
Mr. Brooks just discovered that what he thought was thoroughly uncontroversial isn’t. And there is his explanation.
Inspired by Mr. Brooks' whiggery I will be meeting with my four neighbors to plan a sorely needed new bridge over the Columbia river to connect California with Canada. I'll let you know when we'll be breaking ground.
5
I often wonder if Mr. Brooks actually gets out into real America? His columns are so disconnected from the reality that most Americans live, they amount to no more than wishful thinking of a Utopia that very few of us could live in. He. like his conservative peers, simplistically believes that hard work will lift everyone up, but if that were true, slaves would've inherited the riches of the country.
The great lie of "self sufficiency" is that it depends on no one else, when in fact the wealthiest have always had a leg up, or took advantage of others. No one has ever done anything completely by themselves. As Carl Sagan once said: "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch...first you have to invent the universe".
What is severely lacking is the sharing of wealth and opportunity, having been co-opted by the 1%, who have even bought our government to ensure that it only works for their interests. If this isn't un-done, we will not enjoy a Renaissance, but a Revolution.
130
I agree that he needs to see things from another point of view since he always sees some sort of conservative utopia awaiting all of us if we would just jump onboard. We're actually living in conservative hell thanks to almost 540 years on relentless GOP regressive policies that continue to shrink our once thriving middle class and causing the poverty rate, homelessness, and even infant/mother mortality rates to go up. He never reads the responses to his columns, so he'll never get our messages until the revolution is at his doorstep. I wonder where he'll stand politically at that point?
7
my mistake in my earlier post. I meant to say "40 years of," not "%40 years on" lol.
3
Brooks suggests investments in: "Whigs promoted infrastructure projects, public education, public-private investments and character-building programs to create dynamic, capitalist communities in which poor boys and girls could rise and succeed."
Hard work is part of the equation and yes too many Republicans/conservatives knee-jerk deride anyone who isn't one of them as lazy, but Whigs/Brooks believe in public investment that helps create opportunity for people who otherwise would not have it.
5
And here I though that David was a Republican who pushed the "Reagan Revolution" with its "Supply Side" economics and vacuuming out of public resources so that bridges and schools would go to rot. What a surprise to learn that he's just a misunderstood Whig with a subtle appreciation of "community" and "social capital" that somehow doesn't require any taxes.
8
Awesome story. What we need in Washington is a government--president, legislators--whose policies encourage local efforts like this, and which knows when to step in when local efforts aren't enough. America is a highly diverse society in which local cooperative efforts can solve some of the problems facing the country today. Unfortunately, what we have is a national government that encourages confrontation rather than cooperation. When the election campaign begins to gain momentum, I will be looking for candidates who talk about government as a cooperative effort between local leaders and Washington.
1
I appreciate the Fallow's discovery of Bend and David Brooks's analysis of the living renaissance. I just have one small addition to how multi-use facility-sharing is working in our charming city. The Deschutes County Access to Justice Committee launched "Lawyer in the Library: Free Consultations" this past fall. The volunteer attorneys have often been met with a line of people seeking advice. Impressive, successful, and necessary.
4
nice "job" description - however republicans need not apply - they very rarely even one of the attributes - because they are so infatuated with money and only money.
2
These examples are encouraging, but I fear they are only anecdotal. There are plenty of counter examples - take a look at the book, "Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town" shows how the economic damage done by financial investors who look to extract every cent of value from companies and leave demolished communities in their wake.
4
David said on PBS news last Friday that Gina Haspels unwillingness to say torture is immoral is "no big deal".
Yes David, Whigs didn't judge torturers and your a real renaissance man.
3
When we see business leaders use their money to build even one multi-billion dollar bridge, only then we might believe David Brook’s pablum fantasy about the progressive goodness of bug business.
5
Coffee shops and shrubbery measure progress now. Sad.
4
"Local improvement can go only so far when national politics is a meat grinder"--that's a pretty big qualifier of all the upbeat anecdotes. The "meat grinder" inhibits freedom and prevents much social mobility and equality (BTW, if equality is equality of opportunity--which is how many progressives see it, isn't it quite similar to "Whig" social mobility?). I think the main goal of libertarians, progressives, and mobility Whigs right now should be to restore oversight, accountability, and checks and balances to government, which is sliding toward authoritarian rule. Political news is plenty disheartening right now, but the path toward civility does not run through resurrecting Whiggery this year.
David, most US small towns and cities used to be Whigish before venture capital organized criminals hostile took over many thousands of small factories that used to supply jobs for millions of Americans. Then ripped the machines right off the shop floors and shipped them to China and Mexico where the manufacturing is done by no-rights slave workers. And this continues to this day. As soon as an American invents a new solar panel - usually with millions in taxpayer research grants, and gets 10's of millions in taxpayer subsidies to build a factory, our corrupt bought-off political class lets the Chinese swoop in and buy up the firm and steal and take the production machines and technology to China. Nothing is going to change substantially until we ban all goods made or produced in no rights nations with standards of living lower than our own. As long as American workers are forced to "compete" with overseas slaves, and the 10's of millions of desperate immigrant slave workers our 1% floods our nation with, American common citizens will continue to have to become low wage no rights slaves themselves.
5
"Back in the 19th century, during their heyday, Whigs promoted infrastructure projects, public education, public-private investments and character-building programs to create dynamic, capitalist communities in which poor boys and girls could rise and succeed."
Obviously, Mr. Brooks, you are remembering a period that did not exist. The 19th century was the beginnings of industrialization. The "poor boys and girls" of which you speak were working at least 10 hours a day, 6 days a week in factories. Agricultural workers were mostly sharecroppers who could be considered slave labor because most of them were indebted to the land owner and lived horrendously. Children were kept out of school to work in the factories and on the farms to supplement their parents' income.
Of course, if you were a landowner or an industrialist you lived well. The rose colored glasses Mr. Brooks prefers to present see the 19th century is not one to which I would like to return or hold up as a glorious period in the history of the United States.
Today, take off the rose colored glasses and you find financial inequality, millions of US citizens without health care, the highest cost of healthcare in the world, people priced out of the housing and rental market and living on the street, in their cars; a minimum wage that has not kept up with the cost of living.
Only a well healed American could laud the 19th century as a glorious period for those "boys and girls."
4
No it's not. I respect your optimism, Mr. Brooks; but your grasping at straws. It will only start if the day after Election Day this year, at least one house in Congress is led by Democrats.
3
What makes these local responses successful are exactly why there should not be a national program - the projects are designed and executed by the local communities to address their particular issues. In one community it might be creating pedestrian areas with local shops, in another it might be public/private partnerships to create vocational schools or programs. They are all led by local politicians and business leaders who are committed to their communities. I can't think of a worse thing to do than try to nationalize these efforts. With national funding will come national planning and oversight and federal bureaucracies. In other words, national control unrooted in the local communities.
What is it about David Brooks' columns that lead so many of the Most Recommended comments time after time to miss his underlying point, to only see the trees instead of the forest?
Sure, there are many things Brooks writes about to be critical of. However, especially when he ventures further from the specifics of day-to-day politics, he has perspective worth considering. Too often readers cheat themselves, cutting off their nose to spite their face.
2
People in the happier countries of the world have a lot of benefits that are often lacking here like some degree of financial security, especially in later years, and affordable health care or advanced education. The Republicans think it's every man for himself and the Democrats can't seem to voice any particular philosophy they might have. I don't agree with Mr. Brooks that the problems can be solved on a local level.
3
Politicians could learn a lot from local government practitioners and elected officials. Things have to get done and cities have to thrive. Big fails and gridlock are out there, but uncommon. Cities touch citizens lives directly and are accountable at the most basic level. They have to respond to mandates from States and the Federal government and mitigate the downside to residents. They are the shock absorbers and the facilitators. The sentiment of this column sounds very similar to the sentiment at local level governance.
Mr Brooks...dont forget that the US is all over the world. So, we get people mixing from all over the world with many different mentalities and ideas about how to live. WE need to evolve. This is the 21 century.
1
Gotta give Mr. Brooks credit. His glasses are always rose colored. The ideal of Whigs as civic minded wealthy leaders of communities was not true even when it was a thing. Whigs viewed people who were not wealthy as peasants. As a good Whig you take care of your peasants. Those community leaders were also community abusers through effective local monopoly power.
Today, NeoRoyalist Libertarians have only one civic purpose, more power to them and less democracy. Sure there's the odd Gates here and there working to end malaria. But they are not working to reassert democracy. That remains the real issue.
4
Well most moderate Reps and Dems would agree with what Mr. Brooks wants. I certainly do. Unfortunately, Congress is no longer able to productively work on these issues; in large part due to special interests that now buy Congress and tell them what they want. And it is because no one is willing to look at information and say, well, I guess I was wrong, lets try what has been working in XYZ rural or urban area.
Rural and small town America is a huge tourist draw in urban and suburban areas now. Just wish the Trump voters understood that. There really is no split between urban and rural. The same person with the same consistent belief can operate differently when he/she travels between the 2 areas. Because it IS about local. It is about Univeral values that no 1 religion owns; they all do.
3
It's funny, but it sounds like the towns Brooks uses as examples are attempting to maintain a secular form of non-corrupt government. This stands in sharp contrast to the quasi-theocratic vision of, say, Mike Pence or the brazen corruption of Trump's administration (i.e., use of government power in order to serve one's personal interests).
I must assume that the absence of any discussion of social issues in Brooks's description of Whig Party small towns reflects his good faith determination that everyone is committed to equal protection under the law and that no one's private beliefs are a law unto themselves. For instance, what would be the Whig Party of analysis regarding whether the LGBTQ community enjoy all the civil rights of their straight counterparts? Do women decide for themselves what services should be included in their healthcare plan (like men do) or must they conform their healthcare decisions to the religious beliefs of their employers?
Focusing on the economic and operational aspects of government is vital, but it is not all encompassing. For all the eye-rolling the term "social justice" may cause, a town allows injustices to simmer at its own peril. I'm not saying such injustice necessarily exist in the towns Brooks names. I am only noting that Brooks makes no mention of how grievances are heard and conflicts resolved. He focuses heavily on the idea of "community," but seems to take harmony as a given.
9
Thoughts:
Renaissance:
the activity, spirit, or time of the great revival of art, literature, and learning in Europe beginning in the 14th century and extending to the 17th century, marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world.
The key concept is "transition from the medieval to the modern world." This is NOT what nihilists like Trump and reactionaries like Republicans do.
"We just need to take these civic programs and this governing philosophy and nationalize them. We need to transform these local stories into a coherent national story and a bottom-up coalition, which will look a lot like a 21st-century descendant of the 19th-century Whigs."
What you propose is totally antithetical to the ideas, thoughts and actions of those whom you propose will coalesce and transform.
Have you not been paying attention, Mr Brooks?
8
Good luck getting Republicans to support libraries and local civic programs.
They call it "socialism" (not that limited socialism is bad, mind you, but they are in the "the only good commie is one who's dead" place, except when it comes to TrumpPutin) and continue to criminalize Democrats and poor people, cheat on elections, and practice reverse Robin Hood.
8
I can't imagine anything more anathema to your Whig sensibilities than President Trump and Secretary DeVos and the social destruction they sowed through the for profit university system. They destroy social mobility while exploiting government spending for education. For profit universities exploit hard working poorer Americans who seek improve and educate themselves by giving them a fraudulent, worthless education and saddling them with government loans they now have no ability to repay and can never discharge, all but guaranteeing they never exit poverty. If these really are your values, perhaps you can use future columns to call out Trump and DeVos for exploiting the most vulnerable Americans to line their pockets with government dollars and then using their power to shut down any investigation into for profit university corruption. The loss of potential from this administration's kleptocracy will limit America's potential for decades.
5
Ooops--Thought a "college education" was a surefire means for reaching the highest realms of bourgeois America--or at least that's what our public education systems have been selling for the last fifty years.
University-college administrators and deans have never been wealthier. Seems they were right.
3
Mr. Brooks declares his political irrelevancy by declaring himself a Whig, as in the political party that went away before the start of the Civil War. Its last well-known adherent was President Millard Fillmore. The irony could hardly be more perfect.
7
Great Article Brooks ! For those of us who work in local government, it is obvious what makes things happen where the rubber meets the road: working together and often in public /private partnerships, as well as public spending on infrastructure and quality of life amenities. Republicans on a local level do not demonize their democratic counterparts, not in communities who are getting things done and communities whose politicians bring federal beefs down to local government don't get anything done. We will have better national government the minute we start electing folks who started in local government and got good experience making things work , because they cared about their people, instead of corporate sycophants or grandstanding ideologues who feel they serve some higher purpose than their constituents or scorched earth neophytes bent on narcissistic accomplishment and get rich quick scheming.
3
"Libertarians try to reduce government to expand freedom"...is a false premise. If reduced government means reducing government oversight to the advantage of unbridled corporate America it certainly will not lead to anyone's freedom.
7
It seems like America has become too centralized. A lot of the angst on the "conservative" side is reactions about dictates from Washington DC. We have a massive Federal government imposing rules and regulations that personally affect every individual yet the policy is more and more controlled by large corporations and special interests. We have nationwide businesses and chains spread all over making every city look the same. Pop culture and mass media are like a one size fits all assault on individuality. But America has a built in fallback position to counter this. We need to de-Federalize, cut back on spending and regulation at the Federal level, reduce the Military, return more control to the states. Let Texans be Texans and New Yorkers be New Yorkers. It has been said that before the Civil War people said "the United States are" and afterwards they said "the United States is", maybe we need to go back towards the United States are.
3
The pedestrian mall in Fresno looked lovely. That it had to be torn up to allow cars is a disaster. That this is deemed a "renaissance" is insane.
3
In spite of their several great individual talents, the original Whigs failed because they could not contend with slavery. The best of them (Lincoln prominent among them) joined to form the antislavery Republican party. Yes, it was Whigs who built the Erie Canal and promoted public education and the national bank--killed by Jackson's spoils devouring Democrats suspicious of elites and concentrated economic power. Sound familiar? That tension continues, and one can only hope that the information revolution is Whiggish enough enable visionary local development described so handsomely by the Fallows. The problem is how to do that and avoid oligarchy and the corruption that follows dark money across the same decentralized landscape. Renaissance is probably too strong a term for a movement that little sense of the richness of the many cultures that have found their way to our urban centers. Gentrification is killing those cultures with homogenized affluence right as they're at the point of transitioning from first to second generation. Here in St. Louis our minorities mostly fend for themselves sometimes successfully: African Americans, Bosnians and Mexicans fitfully making their way in the city. But none of these communities have much chance as (Whiggish?) developers buy up blocks build around them and pricing them out.
35
So, is the point here that community can exist only on the face-to-face level?
Anything beyond that and we are reduced to media abstractions and two hostile camps?
I guess that would fine if we hadn't written a constitution for a national government, fought a civil war, and had to use federal power to permit minorities to vote and have equal access to public facilities.
But there's another problem: just as when Ronald Reagan basically coerced all of the states to raise their drinking age laws to 21 (if not they'd lose their highway money), the federal government still controls most of the revenue in the country, and when its dysfunctional, then the dysfunction spreads from the top down.
So, I'm pretty skeptical about the prospects for national revival one community at a time, because like it or not, the federal gov't is the only large institution not owned by corporations (not completely owned by corporations?), with enough influence and wealth to really rebuild this country. And powerful people on the right will keep doing whatever they have to do to stop it.
And one of their favorite tools, sadly, is (as mentioned) turning all of us into media abstractions.
4
If you believe that our current federal government is not completely owned by corporations, you haven't been paying attention! Both major parties are almost totally dependent on the largesse of wealthy donors, each of whom is not really interested in anything except promoting their own, (usually financial), welfare.
Don't get me wrong. I agree that the only the federal government can save us from the tribalism that is rampant in so much of the rest of the world. But the owners of our government, (and that is definitely not the voters), have a different plan in mind.
2
Well I was suggesting that its at least PARTLY owned by corporations, yes. But what I say when people say "both parties are the same" in this regard is that if we had elected a democratic president, Neil Gorsuch would not be on the supreme court--in other words there would be one less rubber stamp for corporations in our highest court. So, in spite of all of the corruption, to me that is a difference.
You have mis-defined me. I'm a lifelong progressive, and I'm completely agnostic about whether the ideas and money for progress come from government, the private sector, or a combination of both. What's important to me is that the progress be real.
3
There's not a liberal in the world who endorses expanding government to ensure equality. It's the job of government to ensure equality. It's right there plain as day in the Constitution. Additionally, there is no "freedom" or "social mobility" without it. Let's start with what the Constitution provides; the other two will follow.
5
Where in the Constitution do you see that? In the 3/5 clause, perhaps?
“…I hear people wondering if maybe America can be like Italy — dysfunctional on the national level but with strong localities and a lovely lifestyle…
That schism is tertiary – and borne of something in the Mediterranean Aqua…
Were folks to wonder about a schism between North Italy and South Italy, they might be getting warmer - especially if they drive one of Sergio’s stylish Jeeps and have the heated seats turned on…
But the most repairable schism – and the one that's caused so much bleeding and dying…
The one between any home town – and its hometown factory or commercially-equivalent raison d'être…
Think of the home town as the emotional and individual and so-human right brain – and the factory as its more analytical and identical and so-robotic left brain…
Poignant how every new Si Valley trillionaire wants to build a new home town right next to their new factory…
And how every old home town in flyover country wants Jeff Bezos to come and build an Amazon HQ2 right next to their old home town…
HQ2 - the acronym is so metaphorically timely and appropriate…
Though it would be fantastic if the kids could come back to town to work – and live nearby...
1
We can dream, can't we.
There are descendants of the Whigs. They are called Democrats.
5
Of course David Brooks a Whig after all it was Lord John Russell's Whigs who made sure that no food reached three million potato eaters during the blight to protect the Irish food export economy.
I am sure David utilizes the Whig moral compass with the cardinal directions $ $$ $$$ $$$$. thankfully after Russell there were Liberals like Gladstone and Conservatives like Disraeli to take over.
Sadly in the USA the Whigs are back in power.
2
Some very nice anedoctal stories.....would love to see some real data/solid reasearch on this.
There are essentially three Brooks columns: The Apologist, who wants to show us the bright side, or the allegedly increasing maturity, of the [Bush][Trump] Administration; The Communitarian, who wants to tell us that all is right with the world, if we would just focus on the good work of the local PTA; and the Sydney Awards. At least this version of the Comunitarian has this kernel of truth and self-awareness: "Local improvement can go only so far when national politics is a meat grinder."
Now back to reality. When are the Sydney Awards again?
4
...Or we could all just move to Italy. That's my plan.
2
".... maybe America can be like Italy — dysfunctional on the national level but with strong localities and a lovely lifestyle."
It is legitimate to compare Donald Trump with Silvio Berlusconi or even il Duce (Benito Mussolini), but please do not mix up Italians with Americans. First of all, Italians have good taste almost in every thing. Second they are not militaristic. Italy does not have military bases in more than 150 countries. Italy does not have thousands of nuclear bombs. Italy does not go around bullying other countries. And that is just a few off-the-cuff points.
2
Democrats lost credibility. Liberals lost credibility. Then progressives lost credibility. Republicans never had credibility despite Americans loving Abraham Lincoln and liking Ike.
So now David Brooks wants to go back 250 years and call himself a "Whig"?
3
Talking about infrastructure and human environment Mr. Books, you can put a lipstick on the pig all you want. We are still just the richest Third World country.
3
Somehow, David, you always cast yourself among the Wisest and Best...
I fear that Mr. Brooks just likes the idea of wearing a wig. More aristocrats "doing the right thing" is hilarious. Does Mr. Brooks have a day job? Let's not take the country forward towards income equality, no let's go back in time to the leisurely days of musing about how nice it would be if whoever powdered our wigs could afford bread. Yikes. Wanna join someone's party? Get on your dancing shoes and try and get into the Met Gala. Renaissance? Ain't nothing happening here that looks like a the most transformative artistic age in history. This so called renaissance ain't based on classical ideas of the 16th century, except of course that all resources were controlled by the wealthy. How happy and colorful the peasants must have been. Are you just another aristocratic wannabe? Justice, equality and compassion are the goals of good government. Happy Renaissance!
2
You can call yourself whatever you want, Dave. I will always think of you, however, as what you really are: A bog-standard reactionary, desperately pining for an America that only ever existed in the white-bread fictions of the entertainment media of your long-ago youth.
On some occasions, you have driven me to apply some other, more colorful, descriptors as well. Alas, the New York Times is a family paper, and therefore likely (and understandably) disinclined to print them. I invite you to use your imagination.
5
So, we are giving to rely on the "Good American" like Germany relied on the "Good German" in the 1930's? Good luck with that.
3
Creating more labels, David! Don’t we have enough identity wars? Why are you playing into it? The republicans and democrats believe they were born with labels R and D, meaning no one can convert from one to the other. You come along and say, ok let’s create a 3rd identity. Now the newborns will have a W on their birth certificates, not R or D.
2
I don't know what world DAVID is living in, but it must be different than the one that me and millions of other Americans are living in, there is no movement anywhere close to this happening right now, you must be running out of material
3
Mr.Brooks,today dozens of Palestinians were killed and over 1000 injured because of actions by Trump...and you choose to write about an American renaissance. God save the world from this American renaissance.
3
Yeah, it was Trump. It wasn't rushing the Israeli border armed with IEDs, rocks, and bottles.
About 15 years ago James Fallows wrote a book predicting that the (relatively near) future of airplane travel in America would be based on the use of very small planes between small towns (which fueled his small town obsession leading to this latest book)...... how’s that prediction coming to fruition? I like James Fallows as much as the next guy but come on
1
Why these categories? What meaning do they have in reality? A useless tautology...
1
Every one of these local projects embrace concepts fully accepted, promoted, and actualized by Democrats. Conversely, just examine the latest slash and burn budget submitted by Mulvaney and this White House. The "starve the beast" priorities of Radical Trumpism, a/k/a the present Republican Party, are on full display.
A Whig? You hate to admit it Mr. Brooks but please fess up, you are now a mainstream Democrat! Welcome to our big, inclusive tent. (No concealed carry permitted.)
2
If you are taking Fresno national--I'm looking for a new country. The absolute armpit of the vacuum of culture (I grew up there) should not be exemplified for abandoning the idea of crafting cultures less dependent on vehicles and more dependent on their feet. Fresno failed because of long term head-in-the-sand attitudes and policies towards community. Instead they isolated their black community from their white communities (those with the cars to go anywhere and build freely sprawling across agricultural lands) and stuck the mall in the middle. Please let's NOT use this as an example of any thing associated with the word Renaissance.
2
Gee, I'm trapped with millions of like-minded, in a sub-basement, sickening reality show that I hate, hate, hate and Brooks talks about life in America as if it were the happiest place on earth.
I want whatever he's taking to become oblivious of the Trump-GOP nightmare.
2
Wendell Berry has always said that revolution and change happen from the bottom up.
I don't know how to say this without sounding mean or deliberatively divisive, but this is one of the most ridiculous and perhaps least relevant middle-age-white-American-man pieces I have read in a long time.
3
Doe the country (and the world) have enough time? Trumplodites are dismantling all climate change related programs, the EPA, The Clean Water Act, etc. Plus they've robbed the future from our kids with the big lie tax cut. We need a coherant National Policy to deal with modern problems. This all sounds nice, but no this is not Italy. Italy is inconsequential. The US is not.....
Mr. Brooks writes these columns, and we read them, andvcomment, as thoughtful, educated “elites”. What will the “renaissance” do when it comes up against the ignorant, hypocritical, gun-toting “deplorables”, or the greedy arrogant “thugs” in our government who enable them.?
1
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"We just need to take these civic programs and this governing philosophy and nationalize them."
.
DB, you just wrote a story about what works locally and how it succeeds. If there is no local "Whig-ism", the nearest Whigs should come to their rescue. Or, invade..
.
Nationalized localism? How do you define that?
1
DB is just trying to remain positive during our current American Deterioration.
Let him dream - it's good for all of us ........
You are an optimist!
It’s a great thought and great ideas but with America being as fractured as it is politically and a large segment of its population marginalized not to mention that National Geographic has a Spanish language version in the check out lines in Arizona grocery stores, I would say the whigs are just a dead today as they have been for over a century. Maybe a new moniker. Like whiggers or whiggies? Nah! What ever you name this new movement, give it something upbeat like x-modulation or D-pahrtay. Whirleywhiggs. Got-WHIG. Lots of possibilities
1
WIth Israelis abundantly underwritten and enabled by the U.S. mowing down unarmed protesters in Gaza, somehow I wasn't expecting to read about the success stories in small-town America today in your column. Was this one already in the can?
1
The Whigs support for slavery sealed their doom, and it is refreshing to behold Mr Brooks' honesty about his political ideology.
2
There are the people that voted for Trump. Ostensibly because they hated the national politics and the policies that don't help the people they are "supposed" to help. Not because they are backward, racists and all the other names I hear them called in the comments. If we dropped our national hatred of the other team and listen to each other, we will find that most of us want the same things. We just may have different ideas for how to fix things.....or maybe we just hate being called hateful names by the other side that shows their ignorance and hatred.
The last paragraph of this piece is a cop-out. "We just need to..." ...do some very abstract and difficult things, that's all. (Such as "nationalize these civic programs"!)
How, Mr. Brooks? How?
Give us at least one idea to earn yourself the right to say that. Otherwise it's let 'em eat cake.
David - all these platitudes are nice but it really boils down to developing a sustainable third choice/party. What are YOU (Bill Kristin etc) doing about this tangible task , short of providing great material for your next column ? What is the "talking class" REALLY doing to break up the malicious political duopoly in this nation ?
That's right, David, you're a Whig: an outdated, irrelevant political mindset, too tight in their own britches to be able to rock and roll into the next century.
2
I am sorry Mr. Brooks, but this is a two party system! You are no more a Whig than you are a wig. And, just as most bald guys look ridiculous wearing a wig, you cannot use a Whig to hide the fact that you are republican. I know the present administration bother you because they are no longer hiding what their agenda has been all along. Therefore, I beg you to join the rest of us and say it out loud that you can no longer be seen as part of this fetid toxic dump that your party has become. Say out loud that, until you see substantive changes in the Republican party you will vote Democrat. I swear, it will do wanders toward easing your mind from its present state of almost pathological cognitive dissonance that I read in your columns. See.... I have both socialist and libertarian tendencies, I too cannot stand many of the things espoused by my fellow Democrats, but in the absence of a third or fourth option, I too declare myself a Democrat, because the other option is just too ugly and vile to contemplate.
4
The ignorance, cynicism and defense of greed that animates the 1% mouthed by Lord Brooks, their chief apologist, in a single phrase: "A thousand points of light."
5
You forgot Edmund Burke, the greatest Whig of all.
1
Wake up from your dream Mr. Brooks. The american nightmare has not ended, we are in the dark ages where truth has no value, education is elitist and political courage is non-existent. And the pigs are rejoicing in the swamp. Please wake-up. As a journalist we need you to show us the truth and light up the path, you are our last resort.
3
So that’s how Mr. Brooks explains his politics: he is an anti-Trump Republican, I guess. If science ever makes time-travel possible, Mr. Brooks & all of small town America can retreat to the eighteenth century & be happy again.
2
Thanks to David for his weekly book report.
2
David,
Where can I get me some of that dreamworld fog you walk around in? I'm in desperate need......
You know even our founders were nervous about
what could happen to the idea of democracy in the hands
of a careless electorate......
Voilà
3
Whig doesn’t scale.
"The American Renaissance Is Already Happening". Hello? Is anybody in there? What a massive joke of a headline.
3
So far, good news.
The bad will come when the equialent of Fox news is active at the local level.
1
I am afraid you only got part of the story David, we need to overhaul all of the “lifer politicians” who have high jacked the political discourse and are ruining our country! There caring is not for the populace but rather, filling their personal coffers and creating then voting for whatever the highest bidder er, I mean lobbyist that has the $$$.
1
The link to the book, Our Towns, seems incorrect.
1
In Britain, the Whigs evolved into the Liberal Party.
3
I've always suspected David Brooks was a bit of a magpie. He borrows a little from here, a little from there and builds a nest out of scraps of ideas.
But now he has given himself a label: Whig. Fine. Could he then stop citing those great anti-Whigs, Edmund Burke and Michael Oakeshott, so copiously in support of his many tendencies? Otherwise, he stands guilty of incoherence.
1
All rebirth starts with death. Just saying.
1
Mr. Brooks, it would be honest, for once, to write about your "Whig" cheerleading of the Iraq War and nere a critical word about George Bush when he was in office. Never a word of personal accountability for such unWhiglike behavior.
2
Yet another Brooks article in praise of social vitality, as opposed to resentment. Go David!
uncommonly fraudulent baloney. Progressives don't care about 'equality' the way you snobs think, they care about suffering caused by oppressive discimination: unequal opportunity. The "social mobility" you tout is gone, thanks to the reactionaries to whom your whole career has given cover. Quit, Brooks.
2
I guess you'll be moving back home to write for your local newspaper then!
3
There is an obvious selection bias in the story being told by the Fallows. They did not select 42 towns to visit by random from all the towns of America. Had they done so, the story they would be telling would be bleak and not the least uplifting.
If you cherry pick your data, you can support just about any story you wish to tell.
1
Rome is burning David. Get with the program.
4
Whigs? Really, M. Brooks?
I think the term you are looking for is Progressive.
The mayors of towns and cities are holding enclaves and seminars around the world to show US where leadership comes from and what it looks like.
Liberals don't want to expand government just for the sake of big government, we want the government to extend to everyone. Not just those who already have it all.
Why don't you bring up what is happening in towns and cities in states like Kansas, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Mississippi? Places where your party has imposed such severe austerity they can't keep their schools open or their water drinkable.
There is one reason, and one reason only, We the People aren't speaking to one another and getting problems solved: F(alse)ox news, republican propaganda, and the hate radio/TV your party and your dogma have forced onto the National scene.
Whigs? Indeed!
2
Yep, David Brook, local renaissance, national apocalypse! And yep, you're a Whig! We're not wondering at all "if maybe America can be like Italy on the national level". Tragic enough that the old Whigs (and some new 21st century ones) and the Republican party holding sway in America now are clueless about the dying of our planet. There will never be "a coherent national story" as long as the ultra-right conservative G.O.P., in the person of our demented 45th President, is America's Il Duce.
1
You're not a Whig you're and egalitarian social democrat( you just don't like to admit it cause it doesn't sound very Republican) welcome to the club.
David -- Newsflash.
Today's Whigs are called . . . wait for it . . .wait for it . . .Democrats.
Why is it so hard for you to pronounce the Republicans are utterly and completely unfit, unhinged, unmoored, so far from democratic, pluralistic ideals and philosophies, so deranged as to have no place in a modern democracy. But you know that, which is why you write columns about being a neo-Whig.
Trump, Nunes, McConnell, Ryan and the rest of their fellow travelers are intent on destroying America and we get a dose of Fresno repaving streets.
6
So -- what you are saying, I guess, is . . IT TAKES A VILLAGE.
4
Sir, for a rebirth, there must first be death. Politically speaking, of course.
1
First - just have to get this out of my system...
These tales of now - Whigging the dog
...that our national governance and zeitgeist have become sound intriguing
(no one going to recommend, anyway)
But - less seriously...
“…I hear people wondering if maybe America can be like Italy — dysfunctional on the national level but with strong localities and a lovely lifestyle…
That schism is tertiary – and borne of something in the Mediterranean Aqua…
Were folks to wonder about a schism between North Italy and South Italy, they might be getting warmer - especially if they drive one of Sergio’s stylish Jeeps and have the heated seats turned on…
But the most repairable schism – and the one that's caused so much bleeding and dying…
The one between any home town – and its hometown factory or commercially-equivalent raison d'être…
Think of the home town as the emotional and individual and so-human right brain – and the factory as its more analytical and identical and so-robotic left brain…
Poignant how every new Si Valley trillionaire wants to build a new home town right next to their new factory…
And how every old home town in flyover country wants Jeff Bezos to come and build an Amazon HQ2 right next to their old home town…
HQ2 - the acronym is so metaphorically timely and appropriate…
Though it would be fantastic if the kids could come back to town to work – and live nearby...
Another feel good column from David Brooks that basically says...."look you people in these small towns....it is up to you to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps when the big companies and super rich who control the national scene take away your jobs and your share of the revenue."
Same old right wing mantra.
Ignore the man behind the curtain.
2
Questions: Why did the Wig Party dissolve? Where did the Whig members go? Is being “wigish” a state of mind like being progressive?
25 David. Are we the only ones who read history???:(
The American spirit has always been about generosity and lifting one another up. Until the conservatives took over in 1968. Small government, low taxes, every man, woman and child competing just for themselves. That is what destroyed the American spirit of generosity and cooperation.
Liberals believe that our government is the vehicle by which we the people organize resources to accomplish these important goals. Conservatives believe cut-throat competition will make us all more generous and cooperative. Where do the Whigs fit in?
2
25 years ago, James Fallows solemnly entoned that we were doomed if we didn't imitate Japan. He was spectacularly wrong. He's still wrong. 'Flying his private plane from town to town...' omg...
3
I would much rather read about Mr. Brooks' stance on Gaza and the Israel 'renaissance' that is taken place right now, than the usual sermon from his over used pulprit.
2
America 2018 is little different than America 1948. And that is both the problem...and the solution. In the present day, most of the political partisans...loyal corporate soldiers of the the DNC,Inc and RNC,Inc....still insist that America follow the path set out Post WW2.
(And, yes, it is a fact.....your political overlords are indeed, actual, real-life CORPORATIONS).
We find ourselves locked in mortal combat to preserve a world view forged a long time ago....flat out refusing to acknowledge that there have been fundamental changes to the paradigm shifts that have already occurred. Overpopulation is a FACT....why else would would mothers be willing to throw their children over a barbed wire fence to get access to the least densely populated and most livable place on the planet?(USA). There is no longer a third world....if you dont believe me....text a tribesman in the Amazonian jungle.....he's got a smartphone. There is no "Global Economy(ie...American Empire).....the world, run by the Internet, has evolved into a much more complex web of Trading Networks, alternately competing and cooperating with one another(NAFTA, Brexit, Shanghai Accord, EU, OPEC...on and on)......
2
Mr Brooks,
I don't know what a whig is, I never met one,but you, sir, are a republican....you must be ashamed that Mr. Trump is your president and a republican, otherwise why wouldn't you admit to it.
6
How many times can Mr. Brooks get away with writing the same column?
There's a sensible conservative America out there waiting to come out any day now! You just watch! Coming . . . right . . . now . . .
Whigs . . .
5
(Intellectuals of the Dark Web, here's your trigger warning)
The columnist has no clothes! This is a preposterous interpretation of the current political environment. A few small cities doing some public projects a solid path forward for those small cities. However, creating a coherent web to tell a story is just a silly remedy for the current large city and metro areas, and the complete writing off of the institution that controls 4+ trillion of annual economic assets/$$$ is just a sad, sad reality of Mr. Brooks' pathological thinking on issues of the day.
The only comparison I can think of between Mr. Brooks and the Whigs is they belong in the same place: the dust bin of history...along with their dated ideas.
NYT, please do better. I want to keep a subscription with you, but your oped pages is turning into WSJ, Daily Beast, Washington Post garbage.
2
Still trying to run away from your GOP, huh Dave?
Calling yourself a Whig won’t cut your ties to the GOP and your president.
3
>
When are my locals going to fix the potholes?
I pay $10K a yr in P-taxes on a small 3bed 2ba cape on a puny lot, moreover, with the "make America great again" tax scam shifting fed spending to state and local it's only going worsen in your renaissance.
Look Brooks, there is no American Renaissance going on except for the Solipsism of it rattling around your head.
Please stop! You and your rightwing comrades have dragged us where we are and are going......DOWN
4
Thank you for your weekly book report, David.
Now please tell us how the Whig agenda differs from the Democratic agenda.
2
Sometimes I think Mr. Brooks lives on another planet, other times I think he is a professional social cherry picker. Perhaps it's just his being a member of a privileged elite that causes him to write what he does. Whatever the answer, this column is not grounded in the reality faced by most Americans.
4
Attempting to square any local "renaissance" with an otherwise-national schizophrenia finds the signature phrase "all politics is local" twice-elected Barack Obama followed by Donald J. Trump. Not my brand of a "reawakening", thank you.
1
Whig = Democrat. you just do not want to admit it ;)
3
Renaissance? As in the rebirth of despicable dictatorships, carpetbaggers and racism? No thanks.
Public library? Who pays? You picked Bend, but other towns in Oregon are so focused on reduced taxes and no spending that they dumped their libraries and they don't bother much with road maintenance either.
You, sir, live in a fantasy world...whigs...there probably are fewer than 24 left...
2
Meanwhile, Trump is helping China.
2
And then I read a book.
Every. David. Brooks. Column.
Time to punch out, sir.
1
The only similarity between the current administration and Mr Brooks’s aspirational Whig vision for America is the “wig” atop potus45’s head.
2
I may call myself tall, dark, and handsome; but i'm short, bald, and ordinary. David Brooks has been an unabashed cheerleader for every rightwing Republican policy for decades-and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq war and slash and burn economic policies that decimated the middle class. Now that things have gone so far south, and a Republican louche criminal is in the White House, Mr Brooks is trying to pretend he had nothing to do with it. Sure, buddy. A Whig. Right.
3
American Renaissance? Mr. Brooks is delusional. I am beginning to wonder if he still resides in the same country I do.
3
The Whig Party revival and American Renaissance is a pleasing pipe dream. Meanwhile back in the real world, most of America's attention is focused on how to get through another day of the Reality TV Presidency.
You may not have noticed Mr. Brooks, but America is swirling in intentional chaos. The Con Artist President has not only signaled the beginning of Post-Truth, Post-Reality America, he has introduced the Era of Indecency and Vulgarity. He has institutionalized corruption, and turned the presidency into a marketing scam to promote his name, business and to fill his pockets.
He does all of this with the willing abetment of the Republican Party. Remember them...the Party that proudly, loudly claimed family values, law and order, debt reduction, conservative spending, Christian values? That Party has abandoned all principles and loyalty to America.
So in the F-5 tornado of the Trump-Republican chaos, you may find solace in pipe-dreams of Whig renewal; however, the rest of us are engaged in a struggle for the survival of democracy, liberty (from the 1%'rs), decency, compassion, honor, truth, and in fact, survival itself.
3
Oh, Mr. Brooks, you are such a card. Pretending that anyone is power today cares about public education! Next you'll be telling an amusing anecdote about Betsy DeVos visiting poor children in school. Whigs. Hehehehe. So funny!
2
Whatever Brooks is on, I’d like some.
2
Members of communities, rich and poor alike, working together toward the betterment of their lives. Sounds strangely democratic, maybe a way to give everybody meaning and truly make America great again. Maybe a slogan "Don't wig-out, Whig-in!".........that's dumb.
Makes sense for a self-described Whig to lose himself in a nostalgic reverie. But does Mr. Brooks really consider himself the intellectual heir of Abraham Lincoln? Time to put Grandpa in a home and free up some NYT real estate for serious thinkers.
2
Okay, then...the only question that matters is "How do you vote?"
Your entire brand is predicated upon being a Very Public Republican, though a centrist one -- which means you are a very centrist irrelevancy -- but in the real world the GOP would find your embrace of civic action, not to mention a just-below-the-surface technocratic bent, to be an unholy abomination.
In America, in the voting booth, there are two options. How do you vote? Put up or shut up....
3
That's all very nice and hopeful and decent. There are scatterings of these "renaissances" here and there, good people doing good deeds.
But back in Washington a conman, a thief, an immoral ignoramus is leading a group of cowardly elected officials who sold their souls to the 1%. They're destroying the country faster than those few good people doing a few good deeds.
Those pretty little cleaned-up towns can't provide healthcare, good schools, roads and transportation, clean air and water.
Those nice little towns can't do anything about prescription drug costs or opioid addiction or neo-nazis or crazies walking around with automatic rifles.
Republicans will make this a wasteland before The Whigs get around to doing any more good deeds.
2
Nothing in this article is inconsistent with Trump. Yet Brooks is a never Trumper. Trump agenda is a national version of what he is describing here.
Brooks. You are not a Whig. You are a closeted Trumpian. The waves of immigrants (and I include people from Mexico, New Jersey, California, etc.) destroyed the utopia of what you are describing in your article in our once ideal town of Denton, Texas. Educated. Patient. Nice. Relaxed. Yes, people know what feels right, but the people it attracts are now simply too desperate, ignorant and myopic to comprehend, let alone apply, the principles that made the Whigs great. And you thought Trump had "good ole day's" syndrome. At least you finally realize why Trump was elected. Sobering isn't it, Brooks?
2
I cannot believe I misjudged Mr Brooks so badly.
I always thought he was a died in the wool Republican.
Where did all this Whig business come from?
I think I will become a brontosaurus.
3
Mr. Brooks is delusional.
American has always been something of a fraud, beginning with its celebration of equality and liberty while writing slavery into its constitution. Now its national soul is corrupted by obsession with entertainment, celebrity worship, economic inequality, identity politics, unending militarism and warfare, and the election of ninnies to high office. And to top it off, look at the press being given, even by the proud New York Times, to the British "royals" and the marriage of a couple of nice young twits.
Let's hope that something decent will arise from our ashes.
102
You are brave to be so frank: your comments struck a chord. Good goin', Mr. Airborne. I hope to see more of your coments appearing in the comment section .
3
I like reading David Brooks. But he cherry picks his Whigs. If you are going to talk about Whigs, you have to talk about Alexander Stephens, who famously said, "[the Confederacy's] foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." The Whig party was virulently anti-Catholic and anti-Immigrant. The fact that Abraham Lincoln HAD BEEN a whig is NOT what made him great. What made him great is that he was not the same man in 1863, 1864, & 1865 that he had been in 1848 or 1858 or 1860. More than any other President, Abraham Lincoln GREW in the job.
92
Cut it out, Mr. Brooks. The older you get , the more nonsensical your columns are. You just keep living in your insulated world. Actually, you remind me of someone whose opinions are quickly becoming irrelevant. But I am sure you will live for another maybe 40 years, your life matters, but your opinions, not so much
2
If we're in an "American Renaissance", shouldn't we be getting rid of Medieval columnists like David Brooks?
5
This is where America began. Benjamin Franklin and his peers were building the local infrastructure of modern American life via local projects long before they used that process to make a nation.
At the local level, a flawed citizen who is an asset to the community can usually participate without being destroyed for telling bad jokes, having a foolish affair, drinking too much on occasion, and making an ass of themselves every now and then. They are known and appreciated as a real human being by their fellow active citizens.
“ The Renaissance (UK: /rɪˈneɪsəns/, US: /rɛnəˈsɑːns/)[1] is a period in European history, covering the span between the 14th and 17th centuries. The intellectual basis of the Renaissance was humanism“ Is David deluded or just trying another con? The Renaissance was a white European intellectual humanist movement according to history. No mention of intellectual humanism....just carving knives.
No, the Renaissance is not here. This is the collapse of the Republic, more like Nero succeeding Claudius (an intellectual humanist) after the real carnage of Caligula.
David’s Party failed to eliminate Trump in the primaries (because he is an oligarch?)Then Putin (another oligarch) helped Republican oligarchs (Kochs, Mercers, Pecker, Adelson, Marcus....) and the GOP to hire Cambridge Analytica and spread propaganda (coincidentally) via micro targeted FB assaults and press propaganda, often copied verbatim from the Russian press by Trump’s buddy Pecker’s publications. Then there was the extensive voter suppression in Red states, and gerrymandering.
Then David’s Whigs aka GOP riled the mobs of racists, xenophobes, misogynists, and Christian Taliban to stick with Trump, subvert the ACA, threaten nuclear war, trade war, deepen entanglements with Saudi Arabia the real source of ISIS, Al Qaeda, transfer $1 trillion+ of wealth to the 0.01% while blowing up the budget. What could the goal be David Brooks? Renaissance or Oligarchy?
2
The problem with research is you always find what you are look for, same with opinion columnist, unicorns and rainbows.
2
If you see America in the way you seem to, then you are truly out of your mind.
3
Blind. How can you write about a renaissance at the same time Trump's government celebrates Israel massacre of Palestinian?
3
You are amazingly out of touch with what is happening in what's left of the United States.
3
Good dreaming Mr Brooks
3
When Israeli barbarity is the dominant news of the years, one can count on Brooks to write utterly irrelevant stories.
4
whig or prig?
2
Business pays for a new bridge or sidewalk and that helps our society? Are you high or smoking crack, David? The business gets a tax right off and yes, people enjoy the bridge or sidewalk but now the business get their hold on the people. When our taxes pay for the sidewalk & bridge the people own it. There is nothing to lord over the public. This is equality.
4
Run along, David. See if you can find a une-eeee-corn. You're pullin' from the same smoker as Freidman.
2
The whigs died out because they couldn't get united for or against slavery. Why would you consider yourself as a whig? This is a joke, right? Lincoln left the party as did other honorable people. You should be a Republican like the rest of us and be active in wresting our party back from organized criminals. This has to be in the top ten of your most complacent columns. You need to get on a Greyhound bus and go anywhere asap. This is obvious upperclass Midtown Manhattan drivel. Why do you torture us with such words? You think there's nothing going on right now? Please get on any Greyhound bus, don't even look at the destination. Don't reserve a room at the 4 Seasons hotel.Don't take your wife with you. Eat at Burger King. C'mon Dave. Please?
1
The Whigs died out because they couldn't unite for or against slavery. Now Brooks is a Whig? Why? This is perhaps a joke? The Republicans were every bit as progressive as the Whigs and were against slavery. This is possibly among Brook's top ten of most complacent columns. It pretends that we should be concerned with the Whigs when it's obvious that we should be concerned by the molestation of the Republican party by an organized crime president. Why would the New York times consent to run drivel by a pundit who writes to bury his head in the sand? I challenge Brooks to board any Greyhound bus to any town USA, without his wife and without a 4 seasons hotel reservation. The midtown Manhattan pov in NY Times is hurting our nation. Our political culture is toxic and we have little leadership in the opposition. Why waste people's brain space with Whig politics, especially when Brooks excludes the most salient point of why the Whigs went the way of the dinosaurs? Not good newspaper work today.
1
A whig? You must be joking, Mr. Brooks! Next, you will pass out red-hot pennies to the gathered rabble from a wagon?
1
You are not a Whig. You are a Republican. Don’t try to romanticize the disaster of your Parties’ policies. Too late to reclassify yourself.
3
Right, all happening cause Trump is here. No acknowledgement that a Democrat saved your bacon, or that a fool has been in charge for several months. All goody and tomorrow prosperity! God David are you slowly going senile. Can you not see!
Are you the fiddler when Rome burns!
1
David Brooks' membership in a political party that reached it's heyday in the mid19th century explains so many of his columns.
1
amen brother
I don't know about your being a Whig, Mr. Brooks but you certainly live in the 19th Century and you'd like to drag everyone back there with you.
1
tone deaf
2
Good Lord, can someone at the New York Times please put David Brooks and his bizarre op-ed tone poems out to pasture?
The only conclusion I can come to when looking at the contrast between this column and the actual news on the Times front page is that Brooks is someone's idea of inside joke performance art -- a mushroom-laced jazz-hands-interpretive-dance-amuse-bouche for people who find real news and opinions too unsettling.
4
So being a whig means being into progressivism for those who can afford it? Nah. That's stupid.
1
Another book report. NYT, please find a more thoughtful columnist.
1
Sorry... you probably worked really hard writing this article, but I can't even see straight, much less concentrate on this jejune and optimistic pablum in light of the atrocity that transpired yesterday in Israel.
2
What about this is not Progressive? It would seem Mr. Brooks doesn’t understand Progressives at all. We are not communists Mr. Brook. We do believe in small businesses that are community minded. We believe in any business that is community minded. What we don’t care for is businesses that are in it only for their shareholders and be damned about country or community. And as for downtown areas moving away from closed off streets, this was a small business adventure that was trying to respond to the growing Mall-ification of the retail world. That trend has ended as people didn’t have time to peruse Malls anymore and just wanted to drive up to their destination and get in and out quickly. The times they are a changing and changing and changing.
1
Don't flatter yourself, David. You're not a Whig. You're a Tory and always have been.
2
Our Mr. Brooks:
Your comments have become very stale.
Honestly, I believe you don't really know what you believe.
3
No, Brooks,
You are a Republican. You are the reason Comrade in the Oval exists.
Quit lying to yourself. Quit building life rafts for the party you've spent your life building.
2
"Local improvement can go only so far when national politics is a meat grinder"
Ah... the elephant in the room.... or should I say, "pigs"...
Our local libraries don't need your voice, David. You have a national platform which, of late, you don't seem to have the stones to embrace.
So here's my suggestion for you. Stop vacillating! Use your voice or step aside!! The pigs will soon eat everything in sight, why you drone on about 'Whigs"...
2
David,
It has been said that you don't read responses to your essays. You really should. Then there would be only 23 Whigs.
1
Sorry David, but as long as the Koch-to-pus is living and breathing, there will be no American Renaissance.
1
I don't think Greenville is gonna build a F-35 Lightning.
Or provide healthcare to all. Or protect civil rights. Or protect voting rights.
The problem are bigger every day and small towns ain't gonna solve them.
1
Whig. Is that a polite term for prig ??? Asking for a friend.
1
Now we have a "Me First!" narcissist from Hell in Washington to set the tone for us all.
You had to go back a hundred years to find a good example of what you are? Here’s a one word answer, OUTDATED.
2
Ah yes, and Ragged Dick the newsboy, through luck and pluck will catch the bosses eye, marry his daughter, and reach the top of the wealth pyramid while retaining a front and center pew in church each Sunday. I take it the Fallows usually landed their plane on an airport run way. I wonder who else in the neighborhood drove their beat-up trucks to this small-international airport and jumped in their Beechcraft King Air planes to do a little neighborly crop dusting.
1
Uhmm David - methinks you sound like a community organizer and Democrat. Who woulda thunk it?
I gues it is ok to gloss over the negative aspects of Whigdom. Tell the whole story.
2
The United States is now a one-party fascist state headed by an ignorant incompetent racist and sexual predator, Donald Trump. and David Brooks writes about an an American Renaissance. Is this his way of saying happy days are here again?
2
Maybe. These towns are always trying something -anything - to try to get people into them.
Fresno originally developed the downtown pedestrian mall (the first in the country) when all the major department stores departed for the new Fashion Fair mall in North Fresno. Downtown was already going downhill fast with business shuttering due to lack of shoppers who also departed to the new mall.
Then after several decades of trying many ways to get shoppers downtown they finally decided to put the street back in. We'll see if that works. In the meantime they also built a stadium (soccer and baseball ) that is doing middling well (hard to watch in 100+ heat all summer!)
It is still not really clear that a pedestrian mall was the cause of failure - after all it was pretty similar to going to the new mall - park outside and go in. Indeed, the pedestrian mall was the first of it's kind in the US and now we see things like Santana Row in San Jose and similar "outdoor" malls in other places that are essentially the same thing. It was just in the wrong place.
David; Where do you get your history?
Alexander Hamilton believed in a strong central government, primarily for defense, but overseen by an wealthy Aristocracy or Plutocracy. In contrast, the Jeffersonian Democrats believed in small central government, or the what has become 'states rights'.
After the war of 1812, the Jeffersonians acquiesced to the need for a strong central government. Indeed JQ Adams, a Whig, switched to the Jeffersonians. This gave which rise to the Jacksonian Democrats, who attempted to wrest the national government from the Plutocratic Whigs. You seem to want some sort of Aristocracy, which is admirable, but not a Plutocracy, which is the inevitable corruption of the Aristocracy.
Whigs or Mugwumps or moderate/independents or semi-libertarian pro-government blah blah blahs. The name doesn't matter so much, so long as it can attract enough people. And, it can't right now. Not sure it ever could or will. Whigs don't excite people. They aren't yelling and they try to be fair to everyone. Yawwwwn. It seems most people want to be part of the un-dynamic duo, the Parties of Mutual Assured Destruction. They drain all of the money, all of the good-will, all of air out of the discussion. Last time they gave us the two worst candidates in history (although, given the level of hatred, I have to admit that Trump is doing pretty well).
I fully supported the concepts of the article until the last two paragraphs. We do not need to take these civic programs and this governing philosophy and nationalize them. The reason they work is that they are local solutions to local problems. The solution that works perfectly in Fresno may, and probably will, fail miserably in Walla Walla or Kalamazoo.
Let local residents see the local problems and come up with local solutions, and on a State and Federal level, at least get out of the way by removing restrictions on how they can proceed, or even better, give back to the localities some of the money you siphon off for nationalized solutions.
Nice set of cherry-picked anecdotes, but insufficient to be very convincing about anything at all, much less a "Renaissance."
3
Mr. Brooks is back in the 19th century, where he seems to truly belong. His Whiggishness avoids the horrors of slavery and the general segregationist attitude of non-slave holding white Americans. The forceful removal of indigenous peoples from the path of the colonizers can be seen as a precondition and enabler of the great infrastructure investments he praises. The government removes native peoples, then gives "public lands" to private investors to build roads, canals and railways to facilitate settlement. Great stuff - for the beneficiaries.
Brooks also conveniently ignores one of Hamilton's great contributions to American economic growth - The TARIFF. So much for "free trade!"
The "Renaissance" occurred after the alleged "Dark Ages." Is Brooks making a veiled critique of the "neoliberal" economic policies pursued by successive American presidents of both parties since 1977?
Perhaps Brooks could take some time off and study American History. There is much about the American past about which he ignores or just is ignorant. Tell us about "globalization" in the 19th century, in particular about the role of the Gold Standard as a break on economic policies that benefited working people during recessions, just as international financial interests put a break on intervention today. Don't forget strike-breaking, not only by goons hired by corporate interests, but by the "National Guard" working for corporate interests.
Good riddance to the Grand Whiggery.
2
I guess lead in the water would be a renaissance when compared to the days of typhoid.
2
A Whig? Is that the 19th century American Whig Party or the 18th century British Whig Party which extolled rule by the aristocracy, religious uniformity and elimination of Tories from public life? Or perhaps an orange hair piece?
Brooks is closer to the British Whigs with his long support of Republican causes. And while it is nice to be reminded that there are myriad successful local interventions drawing on America's entrepreneurial spirit and moral compass this leaves out too much. Overlay gerrymandering, federal and state politics and finance, racism, misogyny, and systemic favoring of the rich to the detriment of everyone else by a horrid GoP and President and we are witnessing not renewal but the international and domestic decline of US fortunes and moral standing. To ignore this, to extol local activists and imply that they can take over a two party system and especially a GoP mired in big $$ and vested interests, is to divert attention from the real issues of the day and Brooks's broken Republican Party.
You are not a Whig, Mr. Brooks, you wear a whig --a fox in sheep's clothing...?
1
A Charles James Fox?
Wow. Lost me at the part about 19th century capitalist communities where poor boys and girls could rise and succeed.
Well, maybe that was true if you were a poor white boy. It didn't apply so much to poor boys of color, and it certainly didn't apply to girls whether they were white or not or from poor or wealthy families.
Restrictions most definitely applied... then and, to some degree, now. The differences created from then to now, well, thank a progressive. You know, things like settlement houses, kindergarten, 8-hour work days, better wages plus benefits, environmental protection, mandatory public education, and a whole host of other improvements. These are the things that allow communities to spruce themselves up and thrive.
2
When I read these "there's a little light of hope" articles from Brooks, I see them for what they are: pained avoidance from admitting the modern Republican party is one big lie. There is no "local renaissance". David, check out the level of homelessness and poverty across the U.S., together with opioid based destruction and infrastructure decay, and I don't think you'll be able to patch together a story of renaissance.
2
I am not sure where Mr Brooks has been or whether he has been on a very long nap. These kinds of local projects have been going on for years and years. In Philadelphia, they completely changed parts of the city -- even in the dark days when crime was high. And all he had to do was stroll over to the west side and walk the High Line to figure this out . But he said nothing about education, big infrastructure (and necessary maintenance) that his Whigs are trying to defund .
1
What is missing here is a source of information for small town folk which is 100% reliably truthful.
Donald John Trump's election as the President of the United States insures that there will be no American Renaissance.
Unless the aging and shrinking white European American majority sinks beneath a below replacement level birthrate along with a decreasing life expectancy due to alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and suicide to minority status. Trump is a symptom. Not a cause.
David Brooks believes in partisan political fantasy and fiction. There is no Whig Party nor any whig wearing men in the real modern America. David Brooks mantra is 'I have a scheme'.
2
Lately with Brooks growing endorsement of Trump's authoritative misuse of power I think he's lost his Whig.
1
Read Piketty or Saez for a data-driven explanation of the true story--that working people have experienced an erosion of bargaining power and stagnating wages in the last 40 years. Thanks to the despotism of the workplace and the dismantling of unions.
These glimmers are just anecdotes. And frankly a total misreading of the Fallows article which was squarely not meant to refute the failings of the last 40 years thanks to the hard right.
For a better idea of what Fallows meant, please listen to this.
https://art19.com/shows/the-ezra-klein-show/episodes/cb7916f6-c072-4de2-...
1
Dear Mr. Brooks,
Some US cities may be thriving, and that is good. However, the big picture for this country looks bleak. Republican leadership is engaging in corrupt political practices, denial of science and of the important of factual knowledge, bullying, attempts to politicize, and possibly destroy democratic institutions, and unnecessary and mean-spirited talk. This sounds like the dark ages, not a "renaissance."
1
Have you seen “The Boom, the Bust and the Bomb”, a documentary film? It helps support the claim you’re making — in the example of OKC. Local is very, very different, powerful, but hampered by the national context.
Why can't we pay people to do these jobs? Because we have an inequitable tax revenue distribution system that gives our taxes away to billionaires and military contractors.
Who can afford to volunteer so much time, when it's already difficult enough to make ends meet? Why don't some of those overpaid billionaires and CEOs get out and do some volunteering? They've already got all of our money. They could at least give back their time in exchange.
2
I was thinking this article might be about the white nationalist organization American Renaissance, headed by Jared Taylor. I was afraid they were expanding rapidly or that "race realism" was becoming much more popular.
Luckily, it turned out to just be more wishful thinking about moderates regaining power. That's what counts for good news, these days.
1
The Whigs also turned their backs on the enslavement of millions of people to keep the peace. As you would prefer that Americans turn their backs to social injustice for the sake of a fragile middle-ground, your analogy is appropriate.
1
An American Renaissance already happening? You are kidding, right? This much institutionalized violence and disarray 'a la Trump' is hardly a model of prudence. If any.
1
A sustained renaissance can never grow along side a growth of religious fanaticism. We now have our own version of Taliban in power. They expect more privileges, especially the privilege to claim authority based on what they imagine their particular gods are telling them. There is no prosperous future or enduring creative activity when people are empowered to protect and enhance their particular god more than they focus to do the same for real sentient people.
1
I find myself being conflicted when I read David's columns: My spirit warms to his reminders that community spirit and common human decency do still exist.... but then I grieve when, once again, he states that these positive traits are all that is needed solve our social ills.
"We just need to take these civic programs and this governing philosophy and nationalize them."
Really, David? That is ALL that is needed?
1
Mr. Brooks, The Con Don and his Robber Baron brethren are trying to start WW3. Nothing else matters right now.
Thanks for your part in this forced march to world government destruction. You say, "Whigs admired people and places that are enterprising, emotionally balanced and spiritually ardent."
You don't say, "as long as they are white men". There is a reason your "whig" party died. Time for the entire male fear-hate-anger-Lies,Lies,Lies-WAR-death-destruction model to die, too. Time's UP.
3
A lovely whig world. It all ends in the second coming. What of Flint Mi. An American Renaissance how? Civic pride while states and cities are undercut by low taxes that starve the gov't of vital services. Civic decline has no progressive component.
1
Dear David. By your definition, I guess I am a Whig also. But, I cringed at your linking of mechanism with goal in your opening definition of progressive vs libertarian vs Whig. Previously, when asked, I have declared myself an eclectic but admitted to progressive by dint of absence of an eclectic party on the ballots. My embrace of the progressive label has been based on the goal, which should be equality of opportunity and moderated differences in wealth, rather than simply 'enhance equality', but that is a quibble. I would never, however, embrace 'expanding government' as part of my progressivism. Every objective deserves a review of all implementation options to find the most effective means. Sometimes it is government. Sometimes not. Often it is some form of government implemented incentive. If government, it must be 'energetic' to be effective. Part of the problem today is that the debate often centers on gov or no gov, when it is the objectives followed by full examination of possible means that we should be talking about.
How much federal or state money was used to finance these various projects?
The size of government should be appropriate for the needs of the people it serves.
The Libertarian focus on reducing government is simply mindless.
3
"They found that as the national political climate has deteriorated, small cities have revived. As the national scene has polarized, people in local communities are working effectively to get things done."
What they found is that people realize we live in a YOYO world (as I call it) where they know "You're On Your Own" and they get it done as part of their own survival since the government no longer has their backs. With the GOP and Paul Ryan ready to butcher Medicare and Social Security to pay for tax cuts for billionaires the people around the country have to be their own safety net, or else. The 'or else' part terrifies them to get moving.
Gridlock in Congress leaves people rightfully feeling abandoned. My GOP is ever more firmly owned by the Koch network of organizations and PACs which means we must do it ourselves or end up strung out Opioid junkies in the heartland living on disability checks.
2
Wonderful thoughts but who is going to take care of the Federal Infrastructure?
Who is going to take care we don't get Ebola when we go to a local restaurant?
Who is going to take care the water we drink will not be loaded with lead?
Who is going to build the Interstate Highways?
We need a strong and an effective Federal government to take care of our foundation. No city nor local municipalities can take that on.
2
Thank you for this article. I have wondered what happened with this couple after I heard them interviewed on NPR. Will definitely get their book. Good to find something with a ray of hope but I don't think I need sunglasses yet!
Though the MWP website provides interesting ideas on governance and with respect to David Brooks, the biggest hindrance to sensible policies and energetic and efficient institutions is the (now) inability of the general public to decipher well-intentioned versus specious ideas, which are delivered to everybody with an iPhone. We as the public need to be open to ideas we don’t agree with, and not blast them offhandedly. Without voters agreeing to meet in the middle and talk with one another, as adults, good ideas by the MWP and others will die-off.
1
Every time the Democratic city council and mayor of Austin try to pass laws requiring businesses to be responsive to the needs of the local citizenry, the Republican state legislature gets in the way and passes another law, forbidding Austin to pass the laws it wants to pass.
How is that helping the local population govern itself? Austin, Houston, and even Dallas are increasingly liberal cities full of people who demand liberal policies. But the Texas legislature is dominated by conservative rural interest that are determined to run our cities themselves. They want control over us, period.
Current Republican ideology has nothing to do with smaller government or empowering locals. The Republicans here have built a bloated government that serves themselves. State politicians here award their donors contracts, cut secret deals with their donors, give each other plum jobs, march in and out of the revolving lobbyist doors, and do their darndest not to allow anyone else to participate in this closed system of cronyism and patronage.
7
"Whigs seek to use limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility." Never heard that. I consider myself a pragmatic libertarian - celebrating individual liberty but recognizing that government can help its citizens make positive choices so that all can enjoy that liberty.
But your examples belie your particular brand of "energetic government". In all cases, you lean to the collectivist - e.g. "the local library serves as an all-purpose community center".
Where the individual shows up in your story, it's almost exclusively in the form of "noblesse oblige". "When the firm succeeded, he set up an education nonprofit ..."
In your picture of America, where are the poor and what is their responsibility to take advantage of the opportunities provided ? Take Bill Clinton as an example. Sure, he raised taxes on the rich. But he also encouraged the poor to work full time (expand EITC, welfare reform) and insisted that they obey the law (crime bill). He understood the private sector was America's engine of growth declaring "the era of big government was over" and encouraged new business (expensing of stock options). As a result, he generated 22 million jobs - most of any post-war President.
Increasingly, I feel like a man without a party. The GOP believes in economic growth but growth will not put a diploma on a poor child's wall. Liberals believe we live in a caste system where the poor can do nothing to improve their circumstance. Where is the middle ground ?
3
When it actually comes to getting things done in small cities and towns politics makes no difference because at the end of the day we're all on the same team. It's most unfortunate we don't see it that way nationally.
Human maturation occurs when adolescent selfishness discovers that mutual cooperation yields more of what's wanted. That's generally true for each of us and for all of us. Since global communication advancements now allow us to see one another in real time, global cooperation will inevitably outpace human conflict, as we increasingly see ourselves in all others. Why would collective maturation not mirror that of the individual?
3
We just need to take these civic programs and this governing philosophy and nationalize them
*********
There is not a Whig Party, Mr. Brooks. Are you going to become a Democrat? Because it's not going to happen under Republicans.
3
Whigga please!! Some people just wanna laugh. I finally saw D.C cab yesterday. enjoyable movie. I wonder did DC United the soccer team (more like DC divided) inspire that name? I like your story though, but that and a little DC cab seems the best mix.
Apperently you believe that collective action to address social problems is wonderful - a renaissance! - as long as it is small, ad hoc and not organized on a larger scale to reach everyone. It's great for small town folks to get the things they need as long as it's uncertain, spotty and dependent on voluntary charity drifting their way.
Or you can be a Democrat and believe such benefits can be broadly available as they are already in Europe. This requires the organizing role of government. It also requires that billionaires learn to survive as hundred-millionaires.
7
In our town the fire chief said it best. "If you think for one minute Trump gives a dam about us, our town, you or me, you've wasted that minute. He doesn't, they don't and they won't. Working togeather, you and me, locally is our only way to better our lives." He's an amzingly civic and civil local guy who doesn't want to be mayor or governor. He likes his life and our twon. He leads the way to new schools, better EMT services, cleaner streets, flower pots lining the streets downtown.
3
Thank you Mr. Brooks.
As an architect with over 40 years experience with this type of city redevelopment, this is happening all over. Here in Michigan, it is occuring in cities as large as Detroit and as small as Howell and Fowlerville.
This type of bottom-up economic development was proposed by Jane Jacobs 50 years and has gradually taken root. It doesn't solve everything and won't save a one factory city when the factory closes, but it has made many of our communities more vibrant and prosperous.
Although I am otherwise quite liberal, I have professionally considered myself a progressive libertarian. Maybe I should start calling myself a Whig.
2
We just need, David, to return to progressive taxation. We just need to recognize the partnership of government and capitalism. Come on David, get on board. We see the evils of run-away, un-regulated, capitalism and it is NOT a pretty picture.
5
David-reading the Whig party platform , it appears pretty much standard Democratic platform BUT takes on the teachers unions and does not glorify identity politics. Why cant the Democratic Party do that right now and put together a commanding governing majority ??
4
I've been reading Mr. Brooks for a while now and am always amazed at the many myriad ways he dodges accountability for what he and his ilk have done to this country in the last fifty years. Now he's claiming to be a member of a political party that has been defunct for 150 years.
Wouldn't it just be easier to admit you were wrong and start to make amends? Nah, as we're seeing in this current administration the one thing that republicans never do is admit they were wrong and apologize.
6
I've thought for several years the only way forward for voters not at the extremes is with a centrist 3rd party . However, the Modern Whig Party as GOT to come up with a different name!
3
I live in Fresno, CA. When I was young, I watched the Mall downtown being built, and it caused a downtown renaissance. But decades later, developers have pushed all the growth to the north and east, effectively killing downtown, creating food deserts, park deserts, and all the rest of the bad things that come with no effective growth plan. Unfortunately, buldozing the downtown Mall has done nothing to re-engage the populace with the area. The new street is more of a desert than the Mall ever was.
2
I live in a similar small city in Canada--Barrie. Barrie has been blessed by a good mayor who's just decided he would rather continue to carry out good works in Barrie than stand for provincial or federal office. He may have noticed that locally, he and local business can actually get things done. In provincial or federal governments, there is less evidence of success.
Andrew Biemiller
2
"In Fresno, Calif., the misbegotten pedestrian mall that crushed downtown development was bulldozed, and now there are human-size streets that encourage visits and activity."
-------
This example is baffling to me. Presumably such a mall has streets for traffic and parking 1 block away. Why people can't get out of their cars is a mystery.
Almost every town (and some big cities, too) in Germany and elsewhere in Europe has a pedestrian zone in the city center. They are most enjoyable, making being there an extremely pleasant experience.
8
I should have added that there must be something else contributing to the supposed non-use of the pedestrian mall than the mere fact of its design or existence.
2
@ MJ: I know what you're talking about, having lived in Europe for a long time and been in many of these pedestrian zones. They are great contributions to quality of life.
I've also been to Fresno, where summer temperatures make being outdoors unbearable. Pedestrian malls don't stand a chance in desert climates. Hardly anyone will leave their air conditioned homes and cars to go anywhere on foot. And the fact that there is no regular, dependable public transportation to any of these places doesn't help, either.
The Renaissance is on hold. Brooks should local paper articles about how the Fresno street redevelopment has failed to attract visitors and customers despite massive expense. Not surprising that one of the poorest counties in the country isn't spending what little money its residents have on the downtown area even though there is now to a more "attractive" to spend it.
5
Thanks for the feel-good stories, Mr. Brooks, but they don't begin to address what's ailing this country. For example, who's going to volunteer to pay for my unemployed neighbor's emergency appendectomy?
Stuff happens, Mr. Brooks, and those who pretend that capitalism and the private sector will decide to make healthcare available to everyone regardless of means, improve our schools and pay our teachers a decent wage, modernize our failing roads, bridges, airports and public transportation, etc., are fantasizing.
Businesses focus on the next quarter. We need a government that plans for the next decade or more and provides what the private sector cannot. Give it any ideological label you prefer: successful 21st-century democracies provide the healthcare, education, and infrastructure that their citizens need to live their lives.
11
You neighbor is hopefully going to pay for his or her own surgery, if not immediately, then over time. As a libertarian, I don't think magic will result in health insurance for all. I also don't view health insurance for all as a goal. I prefer personal freedom, and am not willing to give it up in order to achieve your objectives.
How would single-payer health insurance infringe on your personal freedom?
If you can't see how (i) redistributive taxes (single payer would require me to pay for me and your neighbor) and (ii) government control over all medical procedures nationwide (i.e. government decided not to cover x procedure because under some formula it's not "worth it.") infringe on personal freedom, then you haven't thought through the issue sufficiently.
And no, I'm not paying for your neighbor already at the emergency room to the same extent, as first he is required to exhaust his own assets, and also would go to the emergency room very judiciously compared to being fully insured.
Backbone and ethics - I'd be optimistic about grass roots civics if leaders read this column and stopped wasting our tax money basically doing what they want, what enriches them personally and politically. There are workarounds to corrupt leadership; lets not lose sight of the DC swamp failure.
3
Sadly, for every one of those "renaissance" towns, you can likely find ten that are ravaged by the opioid epidemic and whose main vocation is collecting Social Security disability checks.
5
"We just need to take these civic programs and this governing philosophy and nationalize them. We need to transform these local stories into a coherent national story and a bottom-up coalition" Yes. Of course. But remember the reaction to the latest attempt of this project; Obama. Conservative thinkers let the propaganda machine of right-wing media figures spew all kinds of untruths about Obama. They then could not get a real conservative elected, and ended up with Trump. What then needs to happen so these projects can happen on a national level? Nothing less than conservative politicians who will stand up and tell their base that they were brainwashed into believing nonsense, and that government is not, in and of itself, evil. The conservative thinking class needs to name propaganda when it appears, and show the difference between lies and truth.
4
"Nothing less than conservative politicians who will stand up and tell their base that they were brainwashed into believing nonsense, and that government is not, in and of itself, evil."
Perhaps the unemployed Lois Lerner and Peter Strzok can team up and make that pitch. Honorable public servants that they were.
Pollyanna, meet Horatio Alger. Would that we were all so privileged as to enjoy the selective view of DB's rose-colored glasses, or to self-medicate with whichever feel-good chemical allows this blithe spirit to stay afloat on his own private Cloud Nine.
"Just think happy thoughts." - Peter Pan
3
We will be stuck in the Dark Ages until evangelicals grasp that the Bible is historical fiction, and that we have learned a lot over the past 5000 years. Most people now realize that thunder is not caused by a heavenly bowling tournament.
4
Except those folks in “America’s Heartland”. The invisible giant in the sky told them to love trump.
Any progress made in the world today will be despite the current WH. It seems everyone has determined that no help is coming from this dysfunctional, greedy, selfish group. It is difficult to imagine how we get progress in renovating our cities without a national infrastructure plan. Would that our president care more about the US than how he looks on TV and what his ratings are.
1
Refreshing to read a political column without the words "partisan", "Republican", "Democrat", "Trump", etc. in it. Thanks, David!
2
This sounds lovely. Unfortunately, this is meaningless for the 80% of Americans who don’t live in small towns or rural areas. What? Are we all supposed to relocate?
2
“Progressives believe in expanding government to enhance equality”
“Whigs seek to use limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility”
“We need to transform these local stories into a coherent national story and a bottom up coalition”
“embodied most brilliantly in the minds of Abraham Lincoln an Theodore Roosevelt”
This is just a Republican saying “NO” in cunning way, which is how Mr. Brooks usually tries to sell his smarmy vision of the perfect society.
He knows nothing about Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln said, “The legitimate purpose of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all or cannot do so well, for themselves — in their separate and individual capacities.”
Progressives DO NOT sit around the campfire saying “How can we figure out a way to spend more money.” That is a Republican scorn. They have concrete programs, all of which fit precisely into Abraham Lincoln’s view of government.
Lincoln founded the land grant college program under which free college educations were available. That vision lasted until I attended the University of California when Ronald Reagan started raising fees and cutting funding leading to the outrageous, unaffordable tuition charges we see today.
He also founded the Transcon RR by furnishing public land.
All the communities Mr. Brooks talks about sound great, but how do the people in them get their health care or pay for college?
Some things have to be paid
8
Ironic that you talk about getting things for free and then mention that some things have to be paid for. Individual responsibility and accountability are the greatest contributors to a functioning society.
The only place there is a renaissance is inside the Brooks’ Bubble where he rewrites history to fit to his fantasies. If the Whigs were so great, why did they last only 20 years? While they advocated some of the things Brooks mentions, their driving force was primarily animosity to Andrew Jackson and the Democrats. Ultimately they had no unifying mission, and they often appeared to be no more than a loose conglomeration of opportunistic individuals. In the end they split, like the rest of the country, over slavery.
But inside the Brooks’ Fantasy Factory Whigs become the latest, greatest thing in American history. Sometimes it’s painful to watch the verbal, factual, and logical contortions Brooks goes through in an attempt to create a consistent “argument.” It’s hard to pick just one example, but today’s award for twisted logic goes to: “Whigs seek to use limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility.” Which is it – limited or energetic?
Of course lurking in the subtextual shadows in that quote is Brooks’ conservative worship of individual freedom, meaning: the responsibility for social mobility falls mainly on the individual rather than government. His words are intentionally vague enough so that he doesn’t explicitly declare how “energetic” government should be in helping individuals. And, of course, Brooks’ notion of social mobility assumes a level playing field for all participants – a fantasy if there ever was one.
6
We’ll, this is a new one. most Republicans who are ashamed of what Bush and now Trump have done to,the country call themselves independents. Only the desperate would call themselves Whigs. Is that because they want to identify with a failed party in anticipation of the failure of the beloved Republican Party?
3
Whigs- a strong federal government that didn’t prioritize states rights. Tariffs meant to help and protect businesses, and their last presidential candidate was a slave holder. Not the best record there.
Of course the Whig party was torn apart by that racism, which led to the republicans who nominally replaced the whigs as they had replaced Hamilton’s federalists.
As usual Mr Brooks has a problem with the complexities of history and ideas. Trying to turn them into something he wants them to be versus dealing with the reality of what was.
6
The ultimate Whig story happened in 1845-1846 in Ireland. Lord John Russell the British Prime Minister oversaw the death and deportation of the bottom third of Irish society. Two million were soul were deported to the new urban hellholes of the industrial revolution and one million perished from starvation. There was no famine in Ireland and Ireland's landowners thrived in a time of boom food exports and new land made available as the hovels were burned and the land they say on made available for grazing animals and growing vegetables other than potatoes.
The Whig philosophy and its ultimate conclusion was written about in the early 18th century by Jonathan Swift in both Gulliver's Travels and his Modest Proposal.
Thank you David Brooks for informing us of how we bring our overpopulated world into balance we cull the bottom third every five years.
5
If there is any one renaissance going on coast to coast it is the massive proliferation of Dollar Stores.
4
“Whigs seek to use limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility.”
Nicely said, David. When you put it that way, then perhaps I’m a Whig, too.
2
I hate to be a cynic, but there's no way with the media outlets that we have today, both on the left and the right, that we can once again become the America that existed in the 19th century. For there to be any hope of "fixing" America as it exists today, those who run our national government will have to care about dealing with reality and doing what is necessary to genuinely promote the general welfare of our nation. This will require living within our means and living up to the core values that were so succinctly articulated by our nation's founders. Until that happens, we will remain a divided nation, destined for economic collapse, or perhaps something worse.
2
Mr. Brooks is nostalgic for a Norman Rockwell America. His ideals of personal responsibility and kindness towards neighbors are lost in the modern day world of monetized politics and of rising tribalism.
Trumpism is caused by an unsettling feeling of a dominant group (white males) in a changing multicultural and multiracial society. We are in uncharted waters. How it sorts itself out is still unclear.
Mr. Brooks will be disappointed that his good old days are gone forever.
4
So David Brooks is a Whig. He finally admits that he is NOT a Republican anymore, at least not as the Republican Party is now define by its Fuhr ... I mean it's current Leader, and those who support him.
I think that is fine. And I hope the readers of his column will stop calling him a Republican, or blaming the him for the GOP.
Renaissance? Nope. We're being run not by civic minded Medicis but by self serving Borgias on most levels. Renaissance is the wrong word - devolution is much more apropos.
3
Capitalism exists in small communities. I hope to take advantage by installing Manufacturing Villages throughout the places the Flying Fallows visited.
"Today, in this era of local renaissance and national apocalypse..."
Lowest unemployment in 17 years. Peace in North Korea for first time since 1948. No more funding terrorists via Iran Deal. Lowest unemployment for black people ever. April best month for US budget ever.
I realize that Democrats greet these fantastic results as a "national apocalypse" because it doesn't bode well for their election prospects, but realize that the majority of Americans think it's all good.
Mr. Brooks, a year-and-a-half ago you wrote "It wouldn't kill us Trump critics to take a break from our never-ending umbrage to engage in a little listening." My impression is that you're still stuck in the Beltway, listening to the chattering class.
You need to get out more.
2
Low unemployment and a booming stock market are not a measure of the economic health of society as a whole, just those who own stocks and hire people at low wages. Jobs that don’t feed families, provide adequate health care or child care, allow for onerous work scheduling, and offer no security or opportunity for advancement are nothing to brag about. As for North Korea, we all hope for a solution, but if ever there was a case of counting your eggs before they hatch, the current euphoria over giving Kim a meeting he wanted anyway is it. And, of course, you can gloat over sticking it to those nasty Iranians if you want, but what exactly is the next step? Bombing them? Imposing sanctions on our allies in Western Europe to force them to violate their treaty obligations, too? Perfection is always a good way of condemning whatever is less than perfect. Perhaps you haven’t heard that the best settlements/compromises are the ones where both parties leave the table dissatisfied. When you get a better deal with Iran without creating a regional war in the Middle East or incinerating the planet, come back and we can talk. Until then, you are gloating over statistics that mean nothing and unfulfilled promises.
69
I hope the Korean situation works out. The Iran situation is TBD.
But I remind you that it is easy to have a wild party spending a $1,000,000,000,000 a year more than you earn. The question is: what will you do when the bill (with interest) arrives?
2
What is the stance on the separation of church and state... I went to the New Whigs website, and could not locate any definitive stance.
1
Small town Canada is experiencing a similar reimagination of purpose. The possibility for better quality of life outside the mega city real estate bubble is what is fueling the new appreciation for small and medium sized cities. University towns do well. Historical and environmental features have chance to be valued and become a meaningful part of community pride. Perhaps local involvement is really all there is. The internet is another factor powering up small town viability in a big economic future. National politics in USA is polarized and divisive today, but it has a good chance to heal and reimagine its course. Brooks reminds me about Whigs, and the enduring values, and gives me hope.
We are definitely not experiencing an American Renaissance. There are a few small glimmers of hope here and there. For the most part though, we are drifting in an ocean of inequality and intolerance. Communities are simply trying to stay afloat. When people like Roger Jeffress and John C. Hagee are giving speeches supposedly representing the values of our nation, I feel like the Dark Ages might not have been so bad. I hear the Medieval Warming Period was nice.
As for a Whig-ish reemergence, I'd say you'll always find a nail if you only have a hammer. If you fly around the country looking for that sort of thing, you're sure to find examples. However, Local politics are not usually Whig-ish in the way the Fallowses or Mr. Brooks describe. You should trying branching out a bit more. Your opinions increasingly reflect selection bias. In other words, wishful thinking.
169
After traveling around the western U.S. by car for the past 5 summers, my husband and I have had many small town experiences. We connected with residents who owned businesses and had inside knowledge of their communities. They shared with us how hard they were all trying to stay above water, taking on 2 jobs even though they had professions such as teaching and nursing. There were no success stories. They were nickeling and diming it. But most of all they were very happy to have us contributing to their economy in the smallest of our tourist capacity.
9
What's most important about "these places" is that cultural Marxism is without exception not welcome.
Marcuse, his disciples, and his postmodern academic miscreants are anathema to time and place.
Thoreau, Irving, Emerson, and Dickinson are the cornerstones that mark the boundaries of American independence, imagination, and individual responsibility.
Can this dream become real again?
1
I don't know, David. The world has really big problems. You have a tendency to ignore them ---instead putting forth little feel good "solutions." I for one, find your "optimism" depressing.
7
This piece, like many of Brooks’ recent columns, falls somewhere between the brothers Grimm and whistling past the graveyard. He has yet to come to grips with or even adequately acknowledge the big national issues dividing us: enormous wealth disparity and racism.
8
The Whigs also wrote their own histories, hence 'the Whiggish narrative' that champions colonialism and imperialism as evidence of enlightened attitudes. We get what your saying, but your logic is a bit skewed, from this historian's perspective at least.
2
(*you're)
Sorry for the "glass half empty" but for every city Fallows finds a renaissance happening we can identify 20 that don't.
Infrastructure spending please...
6
Funny, that sounds a lot like Milwaukee when the local government was run by Socialists working in close cooperation with local business. You know, the setting of the old TV show "Happy Days."
3
I think American politics is expierencing a descent into a cess pool led by an apparent totally immoral president who became president by a highly questionable election. The POTUS and his family including Jared are acting like royalty oblivous to the fact that the US is becoming dangerously more chaotic.
4
Night shift backstage crew missed this, it seems. Once again:
What's most important about "these places" is that cultural Marxism is without exception not welcome.
Marcuse, his disciples, and his postmodern academic miscreants are anathema to time and place.
Thoreau, Irving, Emerson, and Dickinson are the cornerstones that mark the boundaries of American independence, imagination, and individual responsibility.
Can this dream become real again?
Do you call people Tories? Lel, the philosophical questions remain, but let us use new language. I hate to be "Paine", but break your tired traditions, and build future-oriented characters.
1
I don’t get it. Now that the Greed Over People party has given itself over to Trump and a Know-Nothing mob, David Brooks wants to become a moderate Democrat... but doesn’t want anyone calling him a Democrat, (or have a red, white and blue elephant tattoo removed?) so he’s a Whig?
1
Problem Davey, they parroted the pablum spewed by the local boosters. How many hovels on the back roads did they visit?
2
And who paid for all this activity ?
I still want to say that a well-regulated government would seem to be a crucial key.
After all, all the great "discoveries" of the last century, Highway system, Telephone system, Space program, Internet, Genome Project etc. were all started with governmental seed money.
In the case of the Space program (to elaborate) it took about 30 years(?) of intense and expensive efforts before turning some of the results to the private sector which is now on the verge of exploding.
People always talk about 3-legged tools. Government, Private Enterprise and most importantly an Enlightened Citizenry (meaning proper education) are such legs.
The American Renaissance may be already happening in about 1% of the country, but until it hits the ghettos of the inner cities and other places where the good life is an impossible dream, you don't have a renaissance, you have a nicer place for some very lucky people and the same old daily grind for the rest.
132
Two of the cities referenced that I am familiar with are affluent areas and have been for awhile. Even people of average means are finding it difficult to find housing in Bend, OR, so it males slight difference what the libraries do.
6
I'm glad he mentioned libraries. Local libraries thrive in middle-class communities. They receive tax dollars and philanthropic support, they are heavily used and available to all. If the public library was a new idea, many conservatives would oppose it and say that these services could be provided better by private enterprise. Free books and DVD's for everyone? Common computers and meeting rooms for public use? Socialism!
8
State library funding was sharply reduced 10 years ago. It hasn’t recovered.
What if we reduced defense spending by 30% and applied those resources to infrastructure, reducing the cost of post secondary school education, and providing more affordable health care? We’d still have the world’s most powerful military.
I’m sure the Whigs of Lincoln and Roosevelt would be appalled by our all consuming military-industrial-Congressional complex.
2
I suspect that if we had publicly financed elections that the face of our government both national and local would change radically. We wouldn't give guys like trump a moment's thought.
Nothing would please me more at my age, 69, to volunteer at my local library or community center to offer my skills to my local community, that would be refreshing and rewarding. However, I am too busy working full time frequently 6 days a week to keep my head above water. Thanks to such things as a medical related bankruptcy, inability to obtain health coverage after the fact and an elimination of a pension plan I scramble to try and keep up with the rent, medicare co-pays and purchase at least some of the medications I should be taking. When government can insure the basics of equal access to education, health care, a living wage and housing I suspect that we would have a flood of participants in Mr. Brook's grand scheme. Right now far too many of us are "wigging" out just trying to get through the day.
1
The majority of these comments are negative. As in, STILL pointing the finger at liberals or conservatives...as in, moaning why THis or THat can't be done.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons why this country is lagging. I for one enjoyed this piece, and see a bit of hope - hope in seeing people who are trying to actually get things done because it's the right thing to do. And not necessarily doing it because it's going to lead to the next rung on the ladder, whether that's political, corporate..whatever.
Whig? I don't know. If it works, call it whatever you want. Can we PLEASE stop labeling, and start seeing what works without explaining whether it's progressive, conservative, liberal or whatever?
1
For those cynics who have lost hope that challenges can be overcome, that problems no longer have achievable answers, and that people working together in a bipartisan way to address them is a pipe dream, I offer this advice. Pick a problem or challenge you can do something about. Focus your attention and efforts on that. Enlist friends and neighbors to help. Rejoice and celebrate the accomplishments then move on to the next challenge you can address. Remember the old saying that it is not about reaching a destination, rather it is all about the journey. Don’t be frustrated and don’t be overwhelmed. Each generation moves the stone a bit further up the hill so the next can take over and keep moving forward. Sometimes it may seem that the stone may roll back downhill a bit and it may require a few more shoulders to arrest the downhill slide and get it back on track. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Whigs were most recently called Republicans! In the fifties through the seventies, Republicans stood for energetic government that supported infrastructure development ( the Interstate Highway System was built under Eisenhower), strong public education (even Bush supported a Federal law, however misguided, designed to help promote good education for all), environmental protection (the EPA was initiated under Nixon). Starting with Reagan's assault on government, Republicans have moved further and further away from good government as helpful and supportive to all, and more and more towards "government as the problem, not the solution" - the less government, the better. So the real goal is to move Republicans back to a view of promoting government programs that help, not hurt, individual opportunity in and adaptation to a rapidly changing world.
1
I wish David, you and the Fallows, also addressed Race. Abraham Lincoln left the Whig Party for the Republican Party because the Whigs could not honestly assess the evils of slavery. The Whigs chose compromise and thus helped perpetuate the institution of slavery. The end result was catastrophic. How are contemporary Whigs addressing wealth and income inequality, racial inequalities, voting rights infringed upon, the precarious position members of DACA have to live, sanctuary cities, and infrastructure? Do they expect local government and business to do it themselves without Federal Government assistance? The EPA came into existence because local governments and businesses could not prevent the creation of the toxic waters of Love Canal and the inflammatory waters of the Cuyahoga River. Where are contemporary Whigs regarding the balance between the 1st and 2nd Amendments; can cities and businesses determine for themselves what are gun free zones or is that an example government interference restricting the exercise of personal freedom?
2
Yep, David Brook, local renaissance, national apocalypse! And yep, you're a Whig Redux. We're not wondering at all "if maybe America can be like Italy on the national level". Tragic enough that the old Whigs (and some 21st century ones) and the Republican party holding sway in America now are clueless about the dying of our planet. As long as American politics is a meat-grinder run into the ground by the Grand Old Party, e pluribus unum are sausages like the product of Satriale's Pork Store in "The Sopranos".
2
What rubbish. Here in central Michigan, the only thing, it seems, that holds Americans together are fast food restaurants and flag waving (from billboards, trucks, whatever). This area has never really recovered from the loss of automotive jobs. Now all the local economic development people want to see growth again, but the young educated folk leave. The farmers and
I have a gut feeling that Americans are licking their chops about starting another war with someone, anyone. This will make them feel "great" again and possibly put their children to work.
I don't share Brooks' ridiculously rosy view of the States.
4
Thanks for the mention, David! Fresno is trying hard to revitalize its downtown and while progress is slow, there are things happening.
Thoughtful, insightful, as always. Thank you David.
1
Great Dave! We "simply" need to rewrite the national narrative with the local story. Does that mean we need to erase the page on which is written the current national tragedy? You know the one where the conservatism you touted for so many years devolved into it's natural form with the election of a President truly representative of and for the economic aristocracy and his court of greed-ridden monsters as a cabinet (not least of which are his family) and the toadies in Congress who facilitate the destruction of America, land of We the People? Well Dave that's what we Progressive Liberals are trying to do. So if you truly believe in the Whig-like development of civic projects and civic-minded Capitalists maybe you could use your influence to help us "drain the swamp".
3
You got me excited, I thought you were on to something, then I went to the website of the Modern Whig Party. I found blog entries with ONE comment. Sadly, I don't think Americans today are interested in anything bigger than themselves.
1
The Whigs ran out of gas more than a century ago, TR and Ike notwithstanding.
David Brooks‘s screeds have, too.
Volunteerism and community involvement have always been critical to civil engagement. But, the ongoing promotion of the vicious conservatism Brooks has espoused for years has helped lead us to the brink of disaster.
5
You overlook the decidedly progressive planners who work with government, communities, and businesses to form and implement the local vision.
2
A breath of hope. Success stories at the local level would be bolstered by the election of intelligent, fair minded, persons of integrity to local leadership roles. Indeed, in many places, we do see increased energy to "run for office" locally. This does require a more positive view of what government can do. Can such efforts succeed with out a national vision that supports this? You say no. I say they must. I do applaud this kind of thinking. Thank you.
Too bad our politicians aren't paying attention to this. Then again, they're caught up in satisfying their large corporate and or uber rich donors who care nothing for the average American.
What will happen Mr. Brooks, when the money for this renaissance runs out? It's not as if our government(s) are funding it. We have a cheapskate in chief who believes that the private sector will help out even though there's proof that the private sector will not because if there's no profit in it for them they don't do it. We have a GOP, for whom you are the point man, that despises working Americans, gives their rich donors government welfare in the form of tax breaks, and tells the rest of us to work harder.
The only American Renaissance this reader sees is the resurgence of bigotry, racism, religious intolerance, and poverty. I guess it all depends upon where you are in the economy.
7
I like Ike and was wondering whether political scientists and historians count Eisenhower as among the Whiggish American political figures.
Quickly found this, evidently written during the primary season for the 2016 election: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/10/19/where-are-the-whigs-whe...
It’s a magazine article dive into the thinking and political reflexes of the Whigs and the political figures who came after them who think like Whigs. The author counts Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Eisenhower as Whigs or Whiggish figures. He describes people in the Whig tradition as “biased toward a government that was both energetic and limited, directed toward growth and unity.”
I’ve long thought Lincoln, TR, and Ike represent the center of gravity of American politics and I continue to wonder why people with those sorts of political reflexes haven’t had a stronger influence at the national level on at least one major American political party these last 50 years or so.
2
"In these places if you become successful, it is expected that you will become active in town life."
I'll note here that successful *always* means financially successful. As if that's the only kind of success that counts.
6
I searched in vain for the one sentence that would convince me of the premise of this article -- the existence of an American "renaissance." I didn't find it.
Rather, I found 42 examples of small-scale civic improvements that seem to work. That's fine -- and I'm sure basis for the article is an engaging, readable book.
But in a country of 350 million people, I'm likely to be able to find 42 examples of just about anything. The anecdotes here seem like feel-good stories that are pretty irrelevant to what's actually happening in this country.
15
Many thanks to Mr. Brooks for letting the readers know that the Whigs are not extinct and they have evolved to Modern Whig Party.
Anything is better than the Two-Party Cabal. But, before I vote for the MAP, I would need to know their standing on the 2nd Amendment and the hopefully yet to come the 34th. In the latter, the right to bear arms EVERYWHERE AND ALWAYS will be guaranteed by the three words (in caps above) that were overlooked by the Founding Fathers.
What will all these local governments and organizations do with the windfall from the new tax code? Will they invest in education and vocational training or will they continue to short change their futures.
2
As yes, wonderful places like Bend, Austin, Asheville, the gentrifing parts of New York, Chicago, etc. Look closer at the gyms, brew-pubs, restaurants: low paid waitresses, cooks, janitors, maintenance people who usually live outside of these new Utopias (rents are too high to live in them) in less than favorable conditions, precarious existences and with very little safety nets. The reality of America is strange indeed.
9
The whigs in many ways were progressives, ideas like universal public education and economic mobility were the hallmarks of progressives as well (despite what Fox News nation believes, a lot of social mobility came out of the organized labor movement for both blue and white collar workers). The idea that progressive champion only government expansion for social mobility is one of those myths that the right loves to claim (and of course, one of the ironies of the right is they have done that, especially with things like defense spending, which is basically a jobs program in many red areas, spending on things the military doesn't need).
The problem with this on a national level is obvious, that centrist and right voters have given up the idea of the community, Ayn Rand is firmly in charge of the GOP and among centrists it is often "what's in it for me?". Worse, on the right there is the idea that instead of training people for jobs of the future, we should be bringing back jobs of the past (coal mining, large scale steel, aluminum).
I like the idea, David, in many ways this is kind of like Tip O'Neil's famous line that all politics are local, and that bottom up thinking can work. The hard part is when you go national, greed and self interest take over, I can't see hedge fund managers and private wealth/equity firms signing on to help small towns or create jobs, and their $$$ rules.
5
A note of caution about the second common thread of modern Whigs: business leaders. By their designation, business leaders are leaders of businesses. They are not elected officials. Their business acumen and management styles do not translate easily to the public sector nor are their insights anymore valid or superior to those of us in the public realm. Just because they have created and run successful businesses doesn't mean that they will naturally bring their successes into the public sector. In fact, more often than not, they have brought ruin. Such assumptions have brought us President Trump and his lackeys. In Philadelphia, we recently rebuked a slate of candidates that were primarily members of other boards and private sector leaders that vied for seats in our new School Board. Instead the mayor chose civic leaders that had some background in education. Please stop glorifying business leaders as if we are still waiting for Superman. We need to work collaboratively with business leaders but we definitely don't work for them.
3
Such a hopeful article. Thanks, Mr. Brooks. What a Whig needs to come to terms with is Universal Health Care. The lack of this creates despair and bankruptcies that stop the hopeful hard working families. That and a reasonable minimum wage. Protections that can create opportunity.
There is way too much despair, too many people have lost hope for class mobility. One fall from a ladder, one cancer diagnosis, and the family dreams can be destroyed.
Limit government--I like it!! But create a land of hope and opportunity. We don't have that now unless you have the resources to buy yourself few senators.
1
Perhaps you missed Dar Williams's "What I Found in a Thousand Towns?" (2017)
Ms. Williams tells similar stories with a different lens (I don't think you'd call her a Whig). Nonetheless, local power should certainly not be forgotten in the mess that is our national political discourse, I agree.
1
Finally! I see where I stand: I'm a Whig! Thank you, Mr. Brooks for the clarification. Now, when my family says I'm a "liberal", my response will be "No I'm not! I'm a Whig!" This is a helpful, positive column.
4
No amount of community level success stories can hide the larger narrative of failings at the national level, specially under the Trump administration.
8
"...maybe America can be like Italy — dysfunctional on the national level but with strong localities and a lovely lifestyle."
America will continue to be "dysfunctional on the national level" until it returns its expectations of the role of the national government to what the founders had in mind.
The authors of the Constitution knew perfectly well, even in 1787, that the country wasn't a monolith. What New York wanted wasn't the same as what Virginia wanted. Accordingly, the founders limited the role of the federal government to what all the states could agree on, mostly maintaining the military and diplomatic face of the country to the rest of the world, and serving as an arbiter in disputes between states. Basically, with regard to just about everything else, the states were free to go their own ways.
Now, a couple of centuries later, that diversity of interests is still true, but the country has fallen into the trap of trying to impose one-size-fits-all rules, set by a bunch of people in one smallish coastal city, across a country far too large and diverse for one size to possibly fit all. What urbanites want is not the same as what non-urbanites want. What Oregonians want isn't the same as what Oklahomans want.
So the US is going to go on being nationally dysfunctional as long as the definition of "functional" goes on being too broad. Fortunately, it's well within the scope of the Constitution to fix that.
2
When are people going to stop worshiping at the altar of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers which has been used to keep us locked us into to the wonderfulness of The States - as if the The States as they existed almost 150 years ago have not changed over that time and as if everybody in New York State or Virginia or California or Ohio or Illinois or even Indiana shares a common set of interests PRIMARILY with all the other people who live in the "State". ?
The "wisdom" of the so-called "States Rights" (which should really be "States Powers" - only PEOPLE have RIGHTS. States have POWERS) "The States" have served a purpose similar to the geographically based allocation of Parliamentary seats based on geography - giving the same representation and POWER to a handfull of people living in a sparsely settled area as to masses of people living in densely populated areas - States, in our case.
It is far past time to recognize that the people who live in western Virginia have few interests in common with those who live in the Washington, DC suburbs; the people who live in rural upstate New York have little in common with the residents of New York City or even Buffalo.
The idea of the commonality of interest within a State may have made sense back when only property owning white males had a voice in governing (though the vote) that anti-democratic idea fits the modern USA's realities as well as a glove fits a butterfly - and is as at least as anti-democratic now as it was then.
Excellent post.
1
The problem with Brooks’ vision of an entrepreneurial led renaissance eventually bringing in working class people is that inequality has shrunk the middle class and enlarged the group below the poverty line.
And the dirty little secret about US inequality is that it is in large part caused by our tax policies. Inequality as a function of the marketplace, as measured before taxes and transfers, is about middling compared to other wealthy nations. It’s a different story after taxes and transfers. On that measure inequality rises well above other wealthy countries and approaches that found in Mexico or Chile.
Simply put, we do less to ameliorate the inequities of the marketplace through our regressive tax policies. For years those on the IRS wealthiest 400 list have paid less in total taxes as a percentage of their earnings than do people making less than median earnings. This is guaranteed to nip any economic renaissance in the bud.
3
Thank you for lifting me up today. These people and their accomplishments for the common good are just what this fractured country needs. This may sound simplistic but the effect of good deeds seems more real than "how can we make fun of ______________ " today. Thank you for your continuous efforts to spread the word about good deeds and good people making a good life.
2
I read most of the comments, and my conclusion is that naysayers always outnumber those who actually think about what anyone who has positive approaches to leadership has to say. Human nature is to protect the status quo. Poor leadership is to give the naysayers what they want, which never leads to progress, but regression. Leadership which is peppered with visions of failure and anxiety is getting us absolutely nowhere. What is sorely needed, locally and nationally, is both moral and political imagination and vision, clearly stated and deeply connected to those who want to be led. People can disagree with Whigs, but listening carefully and not reacting is the first step in progress.
5
You brought up Columbus Ohio. While Columbus is a thriving city and has never seen the kind of decline that Cleveland and Cincinnati had to suffer through; Columbus City Schools are rated nearly the lowest in the state and are horribly underfunded. How do you solve that with reading programs at the public library?
A short drive from Columbus will take you to Olentangy School district where the schools are new, the athletic facilities are better than most small colleges and the funding increases every year along with the rapidly increasing housing prices.
No Mayor can undo the incredible disparities between rich communities and poor. They can improve their communities, but their kids are still hugely disadvantaged when compared with wealth communities.
5
How much of the advancement in these communities is related to rich neighborhood property tax spent wisely and voter approved bonds passed? My guess is home owners see value in investing in their communities, so they put collected pressure on elected officials.
On the federal level, we have the electoral college game. Even when voters elect a progressive leader through the p[popular vote, the electoral college steps in picks the other GUY. And then there is gerrymandering and voter suppression.
To reach Brooks' vision on the federal level, change our dysfunctional election process. we local renaissance in a handful of neighborhoods, but nationally we are still in the dark ages.
1
Regrettably the Fallows trip precede the 2016 election and it's ongoing results.
I live in areas they describe so well. The optimism and unity they found has been seriously damaged by that election. Folks are not focusing on the negatives in lives far more than they did prior to the 2016 election and subsequent months.
Our politics is becoming jumbled. In this, there is opportunity.
Yes, David Brooks has a long history, from my point of view, of trying to make a greedy and destructive political party look moral and aspiring. But Trump's crassness and excess has stripped away the illusions of many former Republicans, even if most are not willing to see that Trump is just two steps down a road that his Republican predecessors have been paving for decades.
BUT, let's all reach out to the decent people of all stripes, including Brooks, who want to build something better. I think he gets it right here that in local government there is energy and community. We can form common cause there.
The piece that is missing here is that local community can usually function better because the divisive identity issues (by which I mostly, but not entirely, mean the faux issues used by the Republican Party to keep us in a state of turmoil) are absent. Perhaps that is where we need to start, however, in rebuilding out civic spaces.
2
Great column! I’m definitely Whigish. Yes! Magazine is another terrific source for stories about people building a better world. It’s non-profit, independent, and reader-supported.
Thanks, David, for your thoughtful writings!
1
A Whig faction in the Republican Party sounds too quaint to take hold today. Still, I'm optimistic that we will have enough patience and determination to beat back the well-financed special interests, but not from the moderate right. The moderate right only needs to neutralize the extremism in the Republican Party.
It's obscene how these self-interests are working against the collective good. Today we can simply associate the conservative movement with a donor class that is laser-focused on self-interests. Whigs? Do you have a chance against the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus that is vehemently opposed to collective good? I have my doubts.
I do not think that it was old money that led to Greenville's revival. I think it was the arrival of the BMW plant and all of the subsidiary industries that located there and raised the tax base significantly.
6
And when the tax advantages offered to BMW run out, do you really think BMW is going to hesitate to abandon Greenville in a heartbeat, just as every other company lured to a low wage state with the addition of tax incentives?
I can't see how to make this work in my community, yet.
Though it seems a good direction for thinking about the future.
1
Excellent points and well written. Your columns are usually a refreshing read compared to many other opinion pieces.
2
I was born and raised in Greenville, SC, and returned after college to begin my career there, so I like to think I have some insight into the underpinnings of the, granted, remarkable transformation of my hometown. In the early sixties, then-governor Fritz Hollings pushed for the development of a strong tech school system as well as an increase in public school teacher pay to near the national average. He also pushed for industrial diversification away from the predominant textiles. Ultimately, and directly as a result, billions of dollars in foreign investment flowed into the state, first Michelin which established its North American headquarters in Greenville, then later BMW in nearby Greer. That led to city leaders and real estate investors focusing on revitalizing the moribund downtown district. But first came education, funded by a state government that enjoyed visionary leadership that championed quality education and industrial diversification, especially of foreign origin. The same transformation is occurring or already has occurred in Columbia and Charleston. But, make no mistake, it was not individuals who caused the change, they just climbed aboard.
7
Sounds like Fritz Hollings was a Whig.
Let's hear it for moderates on both sides. It is right and necessary for a democracy to swing between moderate liberalism and moderate conservatism, but when the extremists become too influential, the swings become too great, and they can destabilize the system. That's what we're seeing now. We need to start electing moderates who are working for us, but to do that at the national level, we need to revamp the vetting and financing, which are currently controlled by the party apparatus on both sides.
Mr. Brooks, local control is a nice thought. So what do we do about our Constitution which mentions not one word about cities nor any recognition of their local powers?
When cities want to protect their minority's housing or right to work, how can they fend off State and Federal intrusion?
1
"If progressives generally believe in expanding government to enhance equality,...".
Do you mean equality of outcomes or equality of opportunity? The former is communist. The latter is progressive and does not require expanded numbers of people working in government or an expansion of government agencies. It does mean heavier taxes on the wealthy so that everyone has access to good schools and health care, two conditions that help lead to equality of opportunity.
4
Dear David
Nice story. Glad to hear that in this sorry state of affairs, called America, something good is happening. However, the use of the word Renaissance is an interesting term. As you all too well know, it was primarily the rich who benefited from the Renaissance, which in spite of a move toward the idea of unlimited human potential was characterized mostly by a corrupt Church, a flawed Reformation, and poor people only getting poorer. As a historian, I try to take the good from the past and see it as a potential for future developments. I have always encouraged my students to build from this good to imagine a better future. Perhaps this Renaissance about which you write will serve as a model for the future. By the way, I am a liberal, but an open minded one at that. I think government can do many but not all things to create a better place. People need to step up too. Thanks for your article. I always enjoy reading your thoughts and hearing them on NPR.
3
Thank you! After 75 years I finally may have a party :) Make it 25 for the New Whigs. Cheers.
BTW, every time we see another park or road built by the WPA, let’s thank FDR for being a closet Whig?
3
Curious calling for Whig renewal to nationalizing local civic programs into a coherent story when it would just dumb them down into one size fits all central government edicts. Federalism, the sharing of power between the States and Capital, was a practical solution toward governing at the time primarily because of poor communication. As communication improved with the telegraph the Robbers Barons of the late nineteenth century formed centralized command and control business structures. FDR took government into the same structure and diminished Federalism. Today communication has jumped to a new level with the internet that has flattened command and control business structures. Washington is transitioning as well primarily because Progressives are recognizing the nightmare of a strong central government, one lead by one they disagree with vehemently. The near term looks like the Italian one of wonderful localities and a laughable central government.
1
Communications may have improved over the centuries, but the country is no more homogeneous now than it was in 1787. It's still far too large and diverse for one size to possibly fit all.
Dear Mr. Brooks,
As Rousseau once said, civilization is a hopeless race to find remedies for the evils it produces. The answers are rarely national, regional, or local. They arrive as each individual realizes his job is to stop looking for answers and start creating solutions.
Cordially,
S.A. Traina
Individualist
7
I am an elected official in a very small New England town and unfortunately our government reflects the worst of Prussian conservatism and the post-fact demagoguery of Trump's Washington.
4
And the party of Trump's predecessor is a bunch of arrogant, meddling, narrow-minded, busybodies who think they're so superior to everyone else that it's their prerogative to run everyone's lives.
There's plenty of room for political outrage on both sides.
How 'bout this for a solution: we'll all agree to reduce Washington's domestic presence to a scale small enough to be ignored, leaving only its international military and diplomatic presence, and then we can all run our own mini-societies as we see fit.
Oddly, that's exactly what the Constitution prescribes.
America can be like Italy. We already have our own Berlusconi.
15
If what you describe is a Whig, then I am one too! I think a lot of us so called demonized "liberals" are ready for a modern party ready to help others rise up while ensuring freedoms of the modern world.
2
I enjoy reading David's work...most of the time and even agree with him some of the time...but (and isn't there always) Americans do not live predominantly in small sleepy hamlets beside gently moving waters.
Instead we live in a nation where nearly half the population hates not just the other half but also hates nearly everyone not already personally known to them.
LOCK HER UP .....IMMIGRANTS OUT...BACK OF THE BUS
...SEPARATE BUT EQUAL.
We can re-direct the rivers and level the mountains but we can NOT control human nature it seems.
4
Community college. Vocational school. Local library. Infrastructure. GEE HOW DO THESE GET PAID FOR?
372
How do community improvements get paid for? By fairly taxing corporations, religious organzations and the super-rich. Only Democrats will strive for that.
20
They get paid for by citizens voting for people with Democratic principles, even if they carry a Republican label in order to get elected because locals think they need to vote Republican.
15
In Kentucky, where are governor is trying to out-Kansas Kansas, increasingly through federal Pell grants and student loans with overly high interest, at least for community colleges.
7
"We just need to take these civic programs and this governing philosophy and nationalize them."
Nah. Let the bureaucrats devour themselves, and let D.C. grind to a halt. Then the rest of America can get on with being Americans.
3
Only people like Brooks, who have never had to live with the consequences of weakened government, can wax blithely enthusiastic about the Whig notion.
Those of us who saw the federal government in the 1950s and '60s place itself, however ambivalently, on the side of people who'd been enslaved and then violently subjugated for the previous 350 years -- and then saw, beginning at the end of the '60s, the white backlash-driven retreat which continues to this day -- beg to differ.
7
While I share many of David's sentiments here, I fear the emergence of an up-and-coming centrist party, however desirable, would divide the vote and risk the Republicans staying in power. Priority #1 is to remove the Republicans from power.
I'd like to see a centrist movement within the Democratic Party, because there's a market for it. Or perhaps I'd like to see the extreme right leave the Republican party and form their own fringe party that could then just die.
The Republicans are a national emergency and an existential threat the country. Let's keep our eye on the ball.
7
It seems to me that the erstwhile Republicans have lost their party to the Trump Nativist/Populist aggregation and that they would be likely conscripts to a new national centrist party like modern Whigs.
A local focus is great.
But it is completely undermined by the attempt to manage policy at the national level. With one party trying to implement a mash-up of Ayn Randism and Christian Sharia and the other seemingly intent on stripping people of any reason to strive to accumulate wealth, I’m not sure how we get out of this mess.
5
David - what are you talking about?
These are examples of cities emulating already successful models of coastal or global cities- human scale & dynamic and diversified industry. Remember the big dig in Boston? Have you seen the parks in every waterfront of New York and Chicago? Headquarters are moving from suburbs to cities and company towns to global towns for a reason - they want a dynamic and educated revolving door workforce.
That's what you learned from going back to some outdated political party?
You should read economics books vs political.
7
Renaissance?
Our infrastructure is collapsing; clean water?
We continue to wage endless wars.
We've failed to modernize public education.
Secondary education is often not worth the crushing debt.
A large portion of US citizens do not agree with scientific principles.
Our medical system is dreadful by all measures.
Our blind worship of guns results in record deaths.
Our justice system is failing systemically.
Our political system is deeply corrupt systemically.
We are a long way from any Renaissance.
11
Tell it like it is Judy. This is mostly due to the endless cuts in taxes on the wealthy. When I was a boy in NYC, the marginal tax rate on the wealthy exceeded 90%. None of them were hurting.
5
Underneath the surface of effective public action is a person with a “domestic policy” that is in place and working effectively. I’m still working on my domestic policy but if you’re wondering where to start please establish a policy that works for you and the people around you. :). It flows toward the community just like bad domestic policy flows.
1
" --- dysfunctional on the national level but with strong localities and a lovely lifestyle."
Dysfunctional is far too nice of a description for what our corporate owned government is. In fact, they have become truly evil, and represent everything Americans used to regard as anathema to a caring socially conscious society
Great article, except what we have occurring at the national level, is a complete and total abrogation of the very ideals that America used to pride itself on representing, ideals which both entirely self-serving mainstream political parties abhor, since to accept social responsibility is to agree in sharing the wealth produced by the economic enslaved masses, with those masses.
Corporations have successfully co-opted government at all levels, installed their henchmen, and seeded nearly every agency with former corporate senior level executives, who themselves have brought in their yes-men and acolytes, thereby ensuring that social awareness and actions are quenched well before they develop the opportunity to spread.
Before we can realize freedom from those who are set in further enslaving us, and reducing us to near penury, we must, in every community, village, town, city, county, and state, drive out these ugly evil proponents of authoritarianism, and enact enforceable laws, to prevent them from ever gaining power again.
5
You don't have to go to small cities to find revival of sound American governance. In the 1970s and 1980s, New York was one of the most dangerous places in America. Times Square was an open-air market for drug dealers and prostitutes. We topped out at more than six homicides per day. The city verged on bankruptcy, the middle class fled, and our economy was in tatters.
Today, New York is one of the safest places in America. We are the biggest tourist destination in America, and we've once again found the will to address, and sometimes solve, the problems that seemed intractable a few decades back. Our middle class is back, our universities are thriving, our appeal to tech industries is strong, and our economy is booming.
The problems with governance in America are not primarily local. America's political problems are at the state and national levels. Indeed, a vigorous federal government, or even just a functional one, would resolve a lot of the local problems we struggle with, like underfunded mass transit.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
2
David, where did the money for these "Whig" projects come from? My guess is, predominantly, the federal government.
2
Not quite sure why this column consistently spends its time quantifying, measuring, labeling, and organizing ideas that shouldn't be reduced to such an exercise. Why box up people like seasonal clothing in a small closet? It seems like a wasteful use of communal literary potential.
Let's try sharing solution-building experiences without all the measuring like a baking class.
2
An overly Whiggish view of circumstances...and recall, this is not a complimentary term.
2
yes, communitarian commitment can work wonders, but these are liberal values you are citing. You should notice that the success stories you tell are all without villains, enemies, fear or hate, all of which are central to modern conservatism.
2
Wow, this is eye opening and extremely hopeful. Without knowing until today, this is my idealized vision of America. It should be every American's America, snd its probably most American's romanticized vision of American life. David, please keep this at the fore of your mind. Every movement starts with a simple conversation. Let this be ours
Hmm... Character-building programs...
Perhaps that could begin with not tolerating low character in high office? In not allowing wrongdoers to profit?
Properly investigating the acts of hostile foreign powers and holding colluders to account, whether their actions are illegal or just immoral?
Bringing to light crimes like money laundering and bribery and seeing to it that perpetrators are expelled from responsible positions?
Turning our backs on those who commit sexual assault?
Not tolerating lying, whether on a "news" network or in public officials?
Yeah, it sounds good to me. Wonder where we might start?
6
This report is interesting and perceptive, but America is not going to become Italy. Those "lovely" Italian "localities" were constructed centuries before automobile-dependent pre-fab sprawl infected, corrupted and took over local economies across America. To get anything like European-style walkable communities on a wide scale in America will require European-style public transit, and an enlightened revolution (not renaissance) in urban and suburban planning in a country that is now heading rudderless towards Neroist collapse.
3
Your optimism is charming, Mr. Brooks. That there are small enclaves of sanity and functioning society in the USA is inevitable, given that most of us are not as craven or simpleminded as our current federal executive branch or Congress. It is not remarkable, except that it is so exceptional. The rest of us in the USA, a diverse, fair-minded, and mostly optimistic lot, wants opportunity and meaningful engagement with their communities, too. They cannot all up and move to small cities managed by philosopher-entrepreneurs. Who are probably all white men, correct?
4
Mr. Brooks’ love of oligarchy gave us Reagan, Bush and Trump, and he now has the audacity to preach love and community.
With his history of destroying the middle class to transfer even more wealth to the rich why would anyone ever take anything Mr. Brooks says seriously.
4
Columnist Brooks' - and the NYT headline writer's - sunny, look-look-see heralding of the arrival of an American Renaissance this morning is not even momentarily diverting. It is insulting and laughable on its face.
Because a few communities are reinventing themselves (bravo for them, by the way), Brooks asks us to believe that if we all just turn a blind eye to reality, summon up our inner Whig-ness, and do what they're doing - voila.
In the real America where most of us live, work, play (and fret constantly these days) Mr. Brooks, the desire is not so much for cafes along a river, nor the arrival of an entrepreneur who will revive our community's economy
We'll gladly settle for some decidedly non-Renaissance basics:
- a functioning federal government that's not an ATM for special interests or embarrassingly rife with corruption (ditto state and local)
- not being worried sick that our kids will be murdered in their classrooms or that we will be gunned down at the movies
- well-run, effective public schools
- safe roads and bridges
- 21st century public transit
- a world-envied VA that shows we truly value of our servicemen and women beyond the gratuitous and increasingly meaningless "thank you for your service."
- universal health care that all other first world countries have
- cleaner air and water
- freedom to choose whom we love/marry and what we do with our bodies...
- a President who tells the truth regularly and us not under criminal investigation.
Good start.
7
"Whigs admired people and places that are enterprising, emotionally balanced and spiritually ardent. They had a great historic run — inspired by Alexander Hamilton..."
Oh-- now Brooks wants to be a Whig, with this list of exemplary attributes? So what? Big deal. Who doesn't admire these qualities? Does Brooks suggest that he exhibits these qualities continuously? I sure don't think Lin- Manuel Miranda or Ron Chernow would say that Hamilton exhibited those qualities consistently-- if he had, it wouldn't be such a good story, now would it?
Brooks writes ths column today while Donald Trump has put a match into Jerusalem, the Republican congress is dismantling food stamps, and predatory, for profit colleges can again fleece Americans. We are in big trouble-- but I guess Brooks at least feels ok, and so that is supposed to make me feel better?
3
Interesting that you dump on pedestrian malls. As a matter of fact they work just fine in many places, but mostly in Europe and larger cities where people are not dependent on cars because there is excellent public transportation. Also where people are not so overweight that they need electric scooters even in a supermarket.
3
A wonderful Utopian view with a precise diagnosis - lack of nationalized policy. Sadly, this will not happen with our present NIMBY approach to everything.
Having recently completed a cross country road trip through small towns, eschewing cities, it became quite clear there is no unifying vision for our country. There is, however, finger pointing and chest beating.
American inability to compromise is as old as our Country. Whenever one group feels they are doing well, they are quick to attempt obstacles to retard the progress of others - they are protecting their gains.
Mr Brooks, why not provide an outline of items that you feel will be accepted by all different groups across the country. . .issues that will be embraced and 'nationalized'?
2
"We need to transform these local stories into a coherent national story and a bottom-up coalition,....."
We can start the transformation by voting this November. Just make sure we all have our thinking hats on, and understand the difference between fake and fact. Big hurdle there to get over there, but one can hope.
2
When you have the leisure to fly around from place to place on a private plane, it's easy to find nice stuff. The country's a pretty place from on high.
4
Seems to me Mr. Brooks travels are choreographed to find places that support his ideology. My experiences in Northern Michigan are quite different. It is a story of the haves and have nots. The Opiate epidemic runs rampant, the Trump 'economic miracle' has not touched this place, although one would think it had by the way these people vote. The roads are in disrepair, people are driving junk heaps, and many live hand to mouth. The affluent, many of whom are imports from Chicago, are busy building huge 'summer cottages' with reckless abandon, knowing they can hire cheap labor to tend to the upkeep. Most of the hard labor jobs of tending the fields and orchards are done by imported labor, because the work is back-breaking. The local residents overwhelmingly voted for Trump as a protest only further alienating their prospects.
Brooks is becoming more and more tone deaf as exhibited by his rehabilitation as a Trumper on NPR Friday nights. The fact that this column ran the day after the carnage in Gaza speaks volumes. Nero fiddled as Rome burned!
4
If we must turn to meager shreds of evidence of good government that exist in a few communities, then we are apparently grasping at straws. Good moral leadership at the top will eventually evolve into good government at the community level...good will prevail from the top down... We sorely need a president who is an example of strong moral character, who surrounds himself with a cabinet and advisers who respect the rule of law and are respectful and mindful of their mission as government officials. We need a president who loves and respects his wife, who is a good family man, who is not boastful, who does not self aggrandize, who is sensitive to global as well as national concerns... remember such a man? He did not engage in brinkmanship, he did not embroil us in unnecessary wars, he did not abuse the solemnity of the office he held with distinction and honor for 8 years. And now, follow such a man and a time of relative calm,and hope for a better brighter future in concert with a Federal government that was working for the common good, and we have Mr. Trump, who wantonly wishes to destroy not only the key accomplishments of Mr. Obama, but even more cravenly, makes a daily effort to deport and conduct himself as the antithesis of all those noble qualities his predecessor manifested in an effort to remake the American government, the American society, and the American culture into a horrible image of his own inwardly driven self destructive impulses.
3
It sounds as if these "Beacons of Hope" are examples of America's last chance to make the changes and transition to a better, more equitable society, way of life and prosperity that is sadly absent from America today and never really reached the potential that these bright lights suggest can still be possible to be.
May they shine ever greater, grow and spread throughout the land making America greater than it has ever yet become...
...but can be.
"We need to transform these local stories into a coherent national story."
Except we are now faced with an Administration that is determined to eviscerate precisely the programs that enhance quality of life - and indeed, life itself: funding for the arts and humanities, for children's health, for Medicare and Social Security, for public schools, for programs to protect the environment, for housing ... you name it.
What is our "coherent national story" now? There is no coherence in this era of divisiveness, alienation, and polarization. Nice fantasy, David Brooks.
4
The name Whig is so outré. Building from the bottom up is a great sign of progress but, let's give the movement a better name. Anyone?
Lincoln was a Whig before he became Republican. I think he was a Whig member of Congress, actually.
Brooks does gloss over the Whig connections to know nothings and anti-masons, and the fact that their ideas were roundly rebuked by most Americans at the time, including eventually Lincoln.
He seems to be working his way toward admitting that Democrats are the party of America's future though.
Another piece of the puzzle is the misappropriation of "conservative" by those who espouse a radically exploitive practice of politics. The result is that the millions who treasure a healthy physical and social environment have to choose between the devil of greedy hypocrisy and the deep blue sea of naïve illusions. Besides your good list, three more references worth checking out for their relevance are Benjamin Barber's "If Mayors Ruled the World", the Davis, California Farmer's Market, and www.exemplars.world.
All the so-called Whig heroes noted here by Mr. Brooks have a lot of money and choose to give some away. They are, as he says, “entrepreneurial.” The authors “pilot their own small plane” to find uplifting tales of good folk who don’t rely on the federal government but instead save their own town through investment or by volunteering. Mike Gallo was in the military, worked for a while developing missiles, started an aerospace company, and then set up an “education nonprofit” before being elected to the school board. Raj Shaunak developed a manufacturing company, enjoyed the profits, sold his company, and then headed to a community college where he helped insure that the young learned how to serve in manufacturing.
Acts of charity. Mr. Brooks warms to stories of charitable actions by secure entrepreneurs.
But these are not the seeds of a new national narrative and “bottoms-up” coalition.
It’s just Republican politics with a big smile on its face.
1
Mr. "Whig" was a stalwart of the Republican party until the wheels came off the bus. He aided the rise of Trumpism with his constant moral equivalence nonsense. He needs some sort of public penance before he is accepted by know into the fold if the rational. Perhaps a week kneeling in the snow confessing would be a good start.
2
Actually what you are describing is an America where we all get together to solve problems. Everyone goes to the levy to put sandbags up to save our houses, all our houses. Schools are important, hospitals are important, fire departments, libraries and maybe we don't want Walmart, or maybe we do. But somebody has to pay for all this and you describe the well-off communitie. We can beg for donations or tax people. At the same time we have larger civic programs like Social Security and Medicare and oh, yes Food Stamps. Administrating these things has now labelled a "Swamp". We just recently had a huge setback with the Recession caused by cheaters and scams and the laws to prevent a repeat are being repealed and everyone is in a disarray one side hating the other. So the project of shoring up the levy has devolved into a big brawl, egged on by demagogic loudmouths. Lets make America America again.
1
These are successful urban renewal examples fueled by federal
funds,More progressive than Whiggish.Community involvement is a byproduct but not the essential cause
A thousand points of light redux.
It is a romantic notion that these lovely neighborhood projects can solve America's problems.
Poverty cares little for the romantic story of a foam pit made of discarded airplane seat padding. Poverty has no space for either gymnastics or airplane seats. In Greenville, S.C., some folks have a "gorgeous" walk with parks and cafes. Google "Greenville and racism" to see how "gorgeous" that walk is for girls and boys of color.
In Whig-world, will health care be dispensed by local volunteers handing out polka dot bandaids? Underfunded schools can have Whig organized bake sales.
We are a country of 325 million. Our infrastructure is crumbling. The wealth gap is unconscionable and won't be fixed by petunias by the river walk. 150 or so miles from Greenville, climate change may make Charleston uninhabitable. Perhaps they can come to Greenville and enjoy the river walk.
Local charity is not national justice. A thousand points of light can illuminate a river walk, but leave the nation in moral darkness.
We need radical, progressive, large scale action on poverty, health care, climate, education and infrastructure if we want to stop the desperate decline of the United States. The decline started when "aw shucks" Ronald Reagan declared government the problem and H.W. cheered small acts of kindness. This is more of the same nonsense.
4
I haven't read this article yet, I'll admit. But an American Renaissance? I'd say this is one of the darkest times I have ever witnessed in my long life here. There is so much hatred now in this country that I doubt we can continue to have anything resembling a democracy anymore.
1
This story reminds me of soccer and karate. Great sports at the local level. Totally ignored at any other level.
When it worked some segments of the population were best served by keeping their mouths shut - or else. Now everyone has their mouth moving, and many of them don't want the plum-pudding.
I'm not sure I buy into this Mr. Brooks -- the Whigs were in decline long before it ended for some of the very reasons the Republican party is now in decline (or I would say with Donald Trump completely dead now)... Going back to the Whigs (or some variation as they did when they morphed into becoming the Republican party) seems to be more desperate thinking for people who can't seem to accept that their worst instincts and fears are not only allowed, but encouraged in the so-called party of Lincoln (Lincoln must be turning over in his grave). The point is, there were good reasons for the Whigs to end and going back will not save good Conservative ideas that are important to the country. Let's face it, the Emperor has no clothes and with the election of Donald Trump, we all know now how ugly and petty the Republican is and perhaps always has been, so let's stop longing for the Whigs -- they were not the answer either. A little humility and fiscal responsibility and a decent human rights agenda -- in short, a basic caring of our fellow human beings would go a long way in making this country great again.
2
If we look up what the Merriam-Webster dictionary says , it points out that to whigs are characterized by "chiefly manufacturing, commercial and financial interests". They were succeeded in 1854 by the republican party. It is true that small towns are usually under the influence of individuals whose wealth is very much dependent on local economic activity. It is nice that they have charitable instincts and that from time to time they create a new Hospital or ballpark.
In towns that do not have the good fortune to have such charitable leaders, the reality is that if the local government abstains from using a strong hand, hospitals and clinics will not be built, the bridges will rust and overcrowded schools with under paid teachers become the norm.
It is time that we pass on hoping that charity will save the day and instead use the government to supply the basic needs of all americans, wether or not they live in economically thriving regions or areas very much down on their luck .
1
Brooks answer to this situation should come from the rhetorical question he posed in his previous opinion. That is to summarize: Too many people with too many ideas. Too much freedom. Not enough repressed people. Everyone now has a voice and they'd (who) better listen. So what does that mean for the future. Well, if I were a pessimist I'd say anarchy; but since I'm not, some form of socialism will drive pie in sky folks like Brooks back to the history books. Not that it will matter much, in the future the few young people who read, won't be interested in reading about the remains of his Whig out party.
1
Essentially the new Whigs are moderate Republicans. Hopefully, they can change the party and take it away from the extremists at the top. Or, maybe we will have a great third party. Even if Dems win because of the split on the political right, that would still be progress for America.
4
Such stories are there in almost every country, even in those developing countries with almost dysfunctional and mostly highly corrupt central and state governments. But in the long run it fails to have almost any impact on the society and the country as there is active force (both political and financial) that prevent it from being nationalized. The transformation you hoped for never happen. On the contrary the established forces (political, along with opportunist business interests) coerce those same local leadership either to break down or bribe to align with the bigger national forces.
My long experience in countries like India strong support what I just said.
2
Nice Story about some people picking themselves up by their boot straps, but as a recent NPR story about poverty in our country points out, you need boots to begin with. When so many live from pay check to pay check and see nothing but stagnant wages and fixed incomes the ability to see beyond the daily struggle is almost impossible.
Yes there are signs of development in some cities, but this often is fed by gentrification which often squeezes out the prospects of those just trying to keep their homes and livelihoods.
6
Necessarily, an expansion of government for social mobility would be predicated on equality. Golly, Whigs sound like progressives.
93
Conservatives are fine with government at the community level.
It's "small government", not "no government".
4
Well, actually they're okay with taking care of their own--and they define "their own" with increasingly smaller circles. That's why they're okay with local government--as long as the locals don't spend money on those undesirable folks on the other side of the tracks.
Jeff G, the propensity to care first for people who share your general opinions and goals in society is both ubiquitous, and understandable. Look at every nation around the world, and almost every nation has less diversity of both race and ideology than ours. Nobody says tribalism is a force for good in the world, but anyone claiming they don't engage in it while they criticize others for it is a hypocrite.
The question needs to be, how do we establish the genuine unity we need as a nation to overcome the impulses of tribalism, and reestablish the great American idea that we are all in the same tribe?
If you don't understand the effects the teachings of MLK has on religious Southern Conservstive whites, then my fellow citizen, I humbly, sincerely offer that you don't know enough of us by anything other than what you see on TV.
Now many people correctly point out how misinformed and ignorant some conservatives still are to this day about minorities. But if that misinformation and ignorance is driven by the mass media, which only ever seems to show the actions of our black fellow citizens when a gang banger is getting in trouble, or a black civil rights leader is blaming white people for the problem while ignoring all the decent people, then why do you think your perspective on us is any more informed, by a mass media that shows you every instance of even the implication of racism in society, while ignoring the millions of people that got the memo on racism decades ago?
25
The people should lead and direct the national government. Those people out there, and around here in Maryland, who take the problems by the horns and do something about them and don't constantly whine about difficulties and, oh, yes, broken, faded and largely unimportant ideologies.
The left/right manufactured schism is dead, we just haven't read the obit yet. Its a phony division cooked up in the 20th century as communism reared its ugly, monstrous head in Russia and tried to re-set the way people saw the world. Now, we are being pounded day and night into hostile tribes by right wing media so they, the right wing media, can make millions feasting on anger and resentment. This Republican media apparatus, AM radio, Fox Noise and hundreds of websites, has no stake at all in solving anything, it is only about stirring the pot of fear and unending resentment.
Still, there are reasons not to give up entirely on the national government. It is the only entity current equipped to face down big business and corporate domination. Second, its taxing power gives it the capacity to take on really big problems (and mess them up more?) and have some potential solutions.
I have seen the mighty power of the people and it is awesome to behold. When we get ready to stop screaming insults at one another, and listening to those like the NRA who would divide us more, and then get to work, important stuff will happen. The first step is to believe and then...take the first step.
4
You said:
"Its a phony division cooked up in the 20th century as communism reared its ugly, monstrous head in Russia and tried to re-set the way people saw the world. "
The "manufactured schism" between conservative elites and liberal working people goes back as far as the ancient Greek democracies. The rumors of it's impending death are greatly exaggerated.
Meanwhile, communism in Russia and elsewhere was a response to the monstrous conditions imposed by capitalism as it was practiced then. It took hold in Russia, a country with a history of poor governance (royalism and capitalism don't work well there either).
The schism between communism and capitalism is indeed manufactured; the real discussion should be "what things to do we do as individuals, and what do we do as a group (dare I say, as a collective)?" Without the labels and the extremists we could have a discussion between adults and come to a reasonable balance, and a system of rules to prevent cheating.
A Renaissance for me would be an American parliamentary system combining socialism and capitalism with plenty o' regulations.
2
IMHO, we have enough regulations, but we do not have the right regulations. They tend to miss their target, imposing a burden on honest people while allowing the cheaters to prosper.
Proportional representation is a great idea, but our winner-take-all system is enshrined in the Constitution. We'd have to stand Washington on its head to make it happen.
"Over the past five years, the Fallowses piloted their own small plane to dozens of cities, from Eastport, Me., to Redlands, Calif." We have a country that is in the throws of "cognitive dissonance". Look at the Philippines, Europe, several countries in Africa, Central and South America. You have the very poor who can't cope with or even look at what the future holds for them. And then there are those who can easily feed and house themselves. This is the true picture in America. Unfortunately, it will take money and a very big change in government policy to change the future picture. We are drowning in a sea of untrained and sometimes unmotivated young people caught up in the highly addictive world of vaping and tattoos. And that's just the way the 1% wants them.
5
Let's hear it for the Whigs! I've been thinking that the GOP as we know it is gone, no one likes the Swamp people who inhabit it, and therefore we need a new party. Hear, hear, let the Whigs rise from the ashes of the GOP, fitting turn of history.
5
This "Whig" program sounds an awful lot like social democracy as it is practiced in Europe. Look at health care, for example. Why leave that to the private market, when government is really more efficient? Having your health care tied to your employer limits your choices if someone in the family is sick. Shouldn't government provide higher education at a very low cost, instead of leaving students in debt for years?
5
It would look a lot like working for the common good. It would look a lot like the Democrats platform.
6
You can't do it without taxes. The Whigs need to enlist Republicans who want to stop the looting of the Treasury and then we can all prosper.
4
Progressives generally believe in...enhancing equality, David. You can characterize that as a lust for big government, but that's solely for purposes of your own Whiggish interpretation (which is convenient, but also self-serving, for you, and also untrue). We also believe in the possibility of progress, over the long run, and the improvability of sinful Man.
Your revisionist history suits your purposes, but Whigs did the right thing only reluctantly, and with great resistance, after doing the wrong thing, and presiding over widespread exploitation, for decades.
Let's not be coy: the Whig impulse is one of equivocation, delay, and resistance to change--followed by such screeds as your current offering, which has something to do with Sarah Palin's idea of combining lipstick and pigs to good effect.
2
Nothing is going to be solved and our country will decline further unless two things happen: the rich decide to be less greedy, including those in government, and to be taxed fairly and the resulting gains go to improve the lives of all, not just whites.
I'm not holding my breath.
Mr. Brooks, your ideal is just another version of MAGA... perhaps just not overtly racist.
4
Dear Mr. Brooks,
Since you are a Whig and I am a Peon, let us go,you and I, back to Oxford where Renaissance is celebrated as the revival of art and learning under the influence of classical models which began in Italy in the Middle Ages before reaching its peak in the 15th century.
Not far from your place of work, there are towns, villages and hamlets with a rich heritage of American history. They are failing for lack of funds, of interest and the farms are dying. It is the American Gothic that is prevailing for paucity of education, jobs, sanitation and clean water.
Can you not see this, and shall I send you a copy of David and the Phoenix.
1
The historical American political movement having a renaissance is the Know Nothings (i.e., what today's Republicans have become).
2
I always had assumed that Brooks' championed the 1950s as the "Golden Age of America" where WASP authority was unquestioned, and where women and minorities "knew" their secondary places in American society. Now I find that he is championing the 1850s where WASP authority was unquestioned, and where women and minorities "knew" their secondary places in American society. Oh wait ...
1
Perhaps you can get your Republican "conservative" friends who run the state governments and the vicious donors behind them to cease their war on local communities. Because they're working every day to destroy any local control of any urban area to the left of ancient Rome. That's on people like you, Mr. Brooks. Your fantasies of "up from local" must confront those who only allow local control that does not impede their corporate state agenda.
1
An energetic small or big government can enhance social mobility through Income Redistribution, or it can wait for the next Wall-Street induced meltdown, in which yet even more innocent citizens lose their homes and jobs, get sick and die.
But the fire next time will collapse our country. You can imagine how.
1
Would the plutocrats now dominating the GOP permit the emergence of a Whig breakaway?
48
GOP plutocrats ... Yeah, right ... nothing like the Clinton Inc.
For awhile these past number of months, I thought David was on a good streak of reflective and thoughtful writing. Something has gone akilter now because his observations seem to have lost their luster ... and more like an apologia for extreme capitalism. David, face it. Extreme capitalism is last century.
1
David, would you please stop calling cowardly liberals, progressives. The actual Progressive Party stood against oppressive corporations - most specifically the railroads - and for a social programs like Social Security. The actual Progressive party was founded first by TR and later reincarnated by the the La Follettes.
The Progressive Party is consigned to history just like the Whigs.
Well, I can tell you from my travels that not very many of these "Whigs" are Trump supporting Republicans. Like maybe 24.
2
Let's get real here!
We are a huge country filled with success stories of bright caring competent souls working together to enhance their lives-present and future.
Some 50 million americans voted for a proven vulgar grifter who has led a movement to trash our most sacred institutiona (the fact based press and a free and fair judiciary and turn our key support agencies into tools of right wing demagogues like Scott Pruit -Betsy de Voss and Ben Carson.
Women's rights and education initiatives trashed and a give away tax plan to the rich that will starve our growth for decades with massive deficits.
The trump white house is a partner for right wing bible belting regressives and plutotarchs.
Period!
2
"...Columbus, Ohio, the libraries zero in on programs for infants to 3-year-olds, so children enter school ready to learn"
Good for Columbus, a beautiful Eastern Midwestern City risen from the ashes of failed Republican economic policies favoring the executive and the rich.
Double good for libraries.
What you fail to mention is that thanks to Republicans, when those three year-olds are ready for school, they'll find their districts underfunded, cut off by the State and its aw-shucks-Republican governor.
They'll see underpaid, disrespected, frustrated teachers, tired of being targets of sarcasm and even hatred from other Ohioans, now also tired of living without jobs they and their hard-right leaders drove away.
They'll find once-grand Georgian brick school buildings in vast disrepair. Poorly maintained, crumbling, unsuitable for modern classrooms.
If they somehow do well and graduate they'll be in a state that hosts contests to find the most creative ways to cut college funding and dis professors who, obviously, are only there to indoctrinate students in their putrid liberal ways.
Let's say students manage to graduate. They'll be in a state that drove away a potentially burgeoning solar and wind energy sector. A state deciding what to do about its elderly, disabled, otherwise challenged in terms of support and healthcare.
Bully for you Columbus; boo on David for pretending his Republican-lite mini-party has any interest in helping people not already doing well.
3
The Economist magazine said that America needs a center right political party, and implied that the GOP is too intellectually dishonest to fill that role. May I nominate Michael Bloomberg as leader of the New Whig Party to replace the GOP and give conservatives like me an alternative to voting for Democrats?
2
Good article and insight from David. Yes I find there is considerable conversation in social settings what the digital revolution and globalization have spawned and therefore changed Americans way of life. Obviously much has been beneficial . Economist tell us imports replacing domestic made goods have kept our consumption prices down. The tech complex has made various communities and vast geographic locals very desirable for employment at improved wages. As we have also learned few benefited in comparison to all the changes. People will push back and small communities and Boomer retirees will help that happen.
Certainly we could use all the good news about renewal we could find, and David isn't the only one promoting the benefits of a more local focus. It can have the benefits he cites, as well as others: supposedly, more responsive government; more sufficiency and independence from expensive and wasteful imports; a rare place where people can put aside their usually dueling ideologies, and focus on what they have in common.
But it is important to not let the story determine the full picture.
There are important questions to raise. Are there hidden subsidies from other levels of government? What if not everyone is "emotionally balanced," with help needed from trained professionals not nearby, with the work of the latter underpinned by scientific research performed, say, in Europe? Are some residents dependent on prescriptions, which without there being aware of it, contain ingredients from far away places? What if Town Council members think the most important thing they to do is fight with each other, usually over trivial things; or too many next door neighbors nurse grudges? And people still want to travel internationally, or host visitors from susceptible places, increasing risks from pandemic diseases. First class health care, informed by the latest thinking on screening will be crucial. How comfortable are the non-conformists? Or, in the biggie usually overlooked, are the ecosystems upon which local economies depend crumbling?
Beyond-local fixing is still very necessary.
In short, these communities are progressive?
140
"Whig" = "Progressive" before Hegel and Marx and Darwin and Spencer...before, say, 1848.
Don't know about the others, but Fresno is not progressive; it's in the region that "gave" us Devin Nunes.
I was debating whether I wanted to start off with "I hope you are right" or "I wish you were right," Mr Brooks, but I wanted to be positive. So, I hope you are right about American Renaissance.
To be fair, there are good things in this world even though America is partially responsible for the flair up of violence between the Israelis and Palestinians. There are selfless people and generous strangers even though gun violences on a mass scale happen on almost a daily basis across this land.
However, considering the riches and advancements in science and humanities of this country, and elsewhere for that matter, the small victories you cited in your column is quite pitiful. Using the worldwide financial crisis, China was able to upgrade its physical infrastructure to world class status; during that time, the Republican Party was engaging full scale obstruction against its own country. Now that it has all the power, the pillaging continues unabated. Scott Pruitt is such a poster child!
So, unless the American Whig has become real, I fear this is just another version of "Let them eat cakes!"
1
David, gracious Whig that he is, seeks desperately to find a glass, any glass, half full. What he has to ignore to celebrate a bridge here, a training program there is too much. Are there immigrants huddled and hiding beneath that bridge? Are families being yanked apart if someone lands in a training program meant for citizenry?
Had the spirit of today's GOP prevailed over the past two centuries, we would not have the National Institute of Health, the transcontinental highway system, the interstate highway system, safe air travel, a robust auto industry, and a free press.
The legacies of the modern GOP will most likely be an unsightly Wall of Hate along our southern border and a grossly degraded government.
6
Thank you for this chapter of "A Whig's Progress", as usual, well written by Mr. Brooks. I only wish he would read and review my new book, "Stress R Us", with equal zest. As I read through the many thoughtful comments, I must call out the missing elephant on the couch: human overpopulation. The Capitalist system that has fueled urban growth (and its inevitable decay) depends on endless population growth and an ever expanding fiat money supply in order to reward those higher-ups in our dominance hierarchies. Now we have a Globalist national governing body, in which one on one relationships between dominant "players", defined by their accumulation of monetary wealth, determines the financial interests and investments for the nation. Human overpopulation is the core problem leading us into the 6th and 7th extinctions. Our species will be eliminated in the 7th extinction as infertility continues to rise: 100% increase in 34 years: 8% in 1982, but 16.7% in 2016. The same phenomenon is occurring in crowded cities all over the world. How's that IVF coming? Our world-wide population increases 220,000 every day. Happy Mother's Day! Stress R Us
2
Mr Brooks
Many others have pointed out the fallacies in this argument - that the authors themselves say that one of the keys to success is that this is local only - people must know each other, see each other every day. That won’t scale to the whole country. I don’t want to impugn your intent, but why did you leave this out of your argument? We also know that focusing resources on local only, we must by necessity give up a lot of what makes America as a country, not a collection of independent hamlets (as it was in Whig Times).
Finally, the premise itself, that small cities are doing great, is not even true. Amusing that Fresno, pictured at the top of your article, currently has an unemployment rate of almost 9%, more than double the national average. It’s like arguing that we should follow the lead of American manufacturers because they’re having a Renaissance at a factory-by-factory level. Huh.
8
While this all sounds very well and good, the fact remains that none of this will ever come to pass as long as there's a president like Donald Trump in the White House, and the narcoleptic Republican Congress that supports him.
We all know that the only thing that motivates them is the chance to make a profit, hence any action undertaken for the good of the PEOPLE is a long way down on their list of priorities.
And then there's the fact that this president has divided the nation to such an extent that it's hard to imagine it could ever come together enough to do anything remotely constructive -- especially if it comes to rebuilding locally through strong vocationals schools and community colleges.
Or, have you forgotten what current Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos has in mind?
Unlike yourself, Mr. Brooks, I am not so hopeful of any party being able to have much effect these days, certainly not when the current president resembles Andrew Jackson far more than those who sought to oppose him.
For all practical purposes we have no modern Henry Clay, Daniel Webster or Horace Greeley.
And if we do, they all need to stand up...Now.
8
Most of the scenarios that Brooks describes are made possible because of one or both of these factors:
- A local large business donates materials, support, manpower, etc.;
- Local; residents support the project with donated money or volunteer time.
These things can be done regardless of whether one's a Whig, Republican, Democrat, Conservative, or Liberal.
Brook's rosy-colored vison is always clouded because he always conflates the sociological dynamics of communities with broad political-economic philosophies. He posits and yearns for a one-size-fits-all solution and narrative for different and complex problems in different communities with diverse values.
But within that framework, Liberal social values are more likely to support community projects like these than Conservative social values. Why? Because Liberalism is based on the notion of supporting the common good regardless of whether one agrees with the project and/or will personally benefit from it. Conversely, Conservatism usually will only support a project if it matches their narrow socio-religious agenda, and/or they derive direct capitalistic gain from it.
The example of Mack trucks donating materials is nothing different that the "socialist redistribution of wealth" that Conservatives loathe. In order for a library to create pre-school programs (which serve children regardless of religion), they must be supported by taxes, which Conservatives loathe.
Brooks is a closet Communist, but doesn't realize it.
6
Paul, I agree with your comments except for the last sentence, I believe Mr. Brooks is a closet socialist, not communist.
So David; what is our government that we are paying for through our taxes doing? Do we as citizens need to set up a shadow government to accomplish the goals and do the tasks that a good government is supposed to perform? We pay them for doing what they no longer do and generate our own "government services?"
6
To successfully nationalize what is happening in these communities given the many differences among them as well as possibly some commonalities, it would be important to first identify those commonalities in communities, if any, and select those projects, if any, that have shown promise in those similar communities.
1
Free market evangelists like the idea of decentralized power for several reasons. First, it's easier to get legislation through a state legislature or city/county commission without a lot of fanfare or publicity, especially in this age of dying local print journalism. And, since much legislation favored by the business community would be highly unpopular if people were aware of it and understood it, this is a huge advantage. Second, it's much cheaper to bribe a state legislator, mayor, or city councilman than a U.S. senator or congressman. Third, if you are funding a propaganda campaign for or against legislation or ballot initiatives, it's much easier to tailor your message to smaller communities, which are more likely to be less diverse demographically and ideologically than the nation as a whole.
8
Benevolent Dictatorships work a whole lot better, dont they?
So you'd rather have WalMart, Amazon, or Koch industries calling the shots instead of elected officials? Last I checked they weren't run like democracies.
The magic and the failure of small scale government occur simultaneously. Around here, where we have lots of communities with very different characteristics and track records, we are having huge debates about the unavailability / high price of housing and about the related issue of traffic / transit. We can’t get neighboring towns and cities to agree on joint action, let alone on regional solutions.
I don’t think these feel-good stories scale, certainly not to the national level. Let’s hope they continue at the local level and maybe that they can in some cases become joint successes between communities. If all politics is local, maybe all enduring political progress will turn out to be local as well. It certainly hasn’t worked out that the national level, where the main objective of the current administration is to destroy the progress made by the last one.
5
The Fallows book is inspiring in describing local action to revive and revitalize communities across the country. Many of the best approaches are in my opinion mirror images of what the Democratic Party espouses and tries to bring to fruition. Perhaps, the Whig party can do likewise. The GOP has abandoned its core philosophy, and is in danger of becoming the Trump party. Ultimately, the GOP will disintegrate and became a party of division, and of white resentment. If it does the Whigs can replace it as the voice of reason and tolerance for fair minded Republicans.
7
What I liked best in the examples Brooks gives were the companies investing in local talent. That is a vital connection that it seems has completely withered on the vine as companies narrowly focus on immediate results for distant cold-blooded investors. There’s a social and economic efficiency in promoting and training people in companies’ backyards, many of whom are crying out for opportunity that mis-directed and usually under-funded education systems fail to meaningfully help.
9
Mr. Brooks can’t shake his longing for the 18th and 19th centuries. Local civic engagement is a very nice thing and good for maintaining parks and all that, but just as it wasn’t much help in ending slavery, today it’s not much help in fighting such problems as air and water pollution, global warming and civil rights. Sorry it’s become so simple, Mr. Brooks, but you need Democrats in power at the federal level to tackle any of these things.
22
Change ...and the future scares you, doesnt it?
It sounds to me that many of the local initiatives that you are extolling here are the kinds of things that Democrats would gladly support. However your final point that they remain scattered and hit-or-miss efforts is revealing and important. In my view it’s because one party says that government is the problem and these things can only be achieved through a private, catch-as-catch-can approach because otherwise people would lose their “freedom” and “choice” to some kind of tyrannical government. I, and I believe, most Democrats believe these forward-looking ideas, promoting universal pre-school access for example, as opposed to leaving it up to volunteers in a public library, is the way to go. That way “freedom and “choice” get extended to all citizens. By the way this actually happens in nearly all European countries so it can be done. So, for me it’s like taking a series of best practices, which Mr. Brooks seems to think are positive and practical, and spreading them as far as possible. This can’t happen when people are made to fear the government, “of and by the People”, and are told that only some private, usually for profit outfit can solve a problem.
An anecdote. At the Player’s golf tournament last week a company sponsor was donating 1500 textbooks for every eagle the players made?? Fine, but shouldn’t school systems provide their students with books as a matter of core policy?
30
As a few have pointed out, much of the success described is based on unpaid volunteerism, corporate donations, and mid life career shifts to lower paid positions. I think these inclinations run deep in many people (in communities big and small), and it is stronger for it to grow from the ground up. However, with the instability of housing, health and a productive position in the world for ourselves and our children it seems like a foolhardy risk. Perhaps we all need to play different and changing roles to strengthen our futures. I feel like the wise and compassionate elders of our communities need to work to minimize the perceived and actual personal risk of undertaking the changes that we are born to take.
9
Expanding this community spirit to America as a whole would require the governing party, and indeed a good chunk of the opposition, giving up the for-me-and-not-for-thee/NIMBYism attitude that has worked so well for those of power and means.
What do we peg those odds at?
5
I have observed another element that is always present in small towns and cities that are revitalizing - they all have a strong commitment to museums and the arts. Greenville, SC is an excellent example.
9
Economic inequality permeates every corner of America and cast a broad shadow on the idealized America that you write about. Too often, civic projects only serve to gild the lilly. Forget the ball pit in the rec center, around here, we're trying to provide affordable housing to working families, and our libraries carry narcan to counteract the drug overdoses that occur regularly in the bathrooms. Meanwhile real estate developers are more concerned with building luxury housing and corporations are angling for tax breaks to help subsidize their profits. Until we free ourselves from the mindset that poverty is a choice, we will never provide the help that's really needed in our communities --Including taxing ourselves and our businesses to pay for better schools and services.
64
edv, I was with you until your last sentence. The thing is that you believe that taxes are necessary to support goverment operations. While that may be true on a state and local level, it is the wrong way to think about federal taxes.
If you ask yourself the question "Where does the money I use to pay my taxes come from in the first place?", you will see you are putting the cart before the horse.
The federal government can create as much money as it needs. It then spends this money on government operations, e.g. the military, roads & bridges, research, education, etc. In this way money gets to you.
Now while there is no theoretical limit on the creation of money, there is a practical one. If too much money is sent to the private sector, there will be excessive inflation. Taxes take some of this money back. Hence the purpose of taxes is to adjust the amount of money in the economy.
Note, however, if the budget is balanced, there will be no new money sent to the private sector to support a growing economy. Even worse, if the government shows a surplus & pays down the debt, money will be leeched out of the private sector. If enough money is taken out of the private sector, the economy will crash. This has happened every time, 6 times, the debt has been paid down 10% or more.
Also due to globalization, recently, money has been flowing out of the country. If this money is not replaced by federal deficit spending, the economy will crash. This is what happened in 2008.
4
It's understandable that local communities are taking it upon themselves to improve the quality of life for their local residents. I am very familiar with Greenville and they have done a remarkable job investing in their community to improve the quality of life there. But Greenville's success can not be easily replicated in less affluent communities. Brooks uses these rare examples to make his case for an America where every community sinks or swims based upon their ability to envision, fund, and execute such projects. But what about the rest of America where poverty is rampant and money is not so readily available? Brooks as usual is serving up the typical Conservative Ayn Randian utopia all wrapped up in a bright and shiny new wrapper of do it yourself localism. Once again it will only accelerate the stratification of society into the haves and those who suffer in abject poverty.
19
I share Mr. Brooks's appreciation for the local initiatives that are making many of America's smaller cities more attractive. But much as I love "gorgeous walks" along once-polluted rivers, I can't help but notice the accompanying rise of home prices that is making living in or near these oases impossible for many in the middle and working classes. Until the new urbanists start applying their imagination to the creation of affordable housing, not just to new parks and cafes, their work will be glaringly incomplete.
27
David, these are lovely stories, but they are from a world most of us no longer live in.
For decades, we have been transferred or have moved to find work.
We are not embedded in small communities that have civic time; we are retraining for the next skill we need to stay viable.
We will move again before we know our neighbors well.
We were hit hard in the last recession and are earning less now because of growing inequality.
Medical care is out of reach in small as well as large communities. Education is underfunded as a national trend. And climate change and foolish ideas like tariffs will matter more than a new civic center.
56
I'm with you on this one, as I often am on most other topics. While your identification with Whigs might be tongue in cheek, there really is a need for another political party in this country. But first we need to unlock the stranglehold the duopoly parties have on the electoral process. A good start would be to eliminate winner-take-all plurality elections and require majority elections. Right wing or left wing extremist views lose out in those scenarios and the centrists get a foothold.
6
But you don't want what we have up here in Maine where the system allows the least liked candidate to win with only 34% of the vote when there is a Democrat and and Independent running as well. The more centrist voters split their votes and the extremist wins and he "rules" like a dictator, running roughshod over the desires of the majority.
5
I can agree with most of what you write here in this column. But we have a government that is so pro military that there is little left over time, money or interest to bring some of your ideas into practice. Well that, and those that want no regulations of any kind that tell them that BLM land does not belong to them and carrying guns around is not a good idea.
Inferstructure is far more productive than building extremely expensive military equipment that all ends up in a junk pile sooner or later.
15
One reason military suppliers are so profitable is that what they produce is destroyed constantly (along with huge numbers of men, women and children)n so they have to produce more. If we weren't so busy hating, they wouldn't be so profitable.
A retiree for a few years know, I am pondering the how the advancement of knowledge, and changes in culture inexorably lead all but the few into being intellectually or culturally unhelpful. This article is an example of Mr. Brooks inability to communicate to anybody under 40. The idea that communities benefit from corporate development is shaken. He is right that communities with strong local civic leadership and an engaged, educated, prosperous population combined with an enlightened vision of sustainable growth, can re-engineer the outcomes for an area. It is the rare business that helps when it is not building the bottom line. It is too often that companies use civil duty as a way to get another few percentage points out of an activity. Me. Brooks forgets that the business of business is business. Cities are built in the minds and efforts of the citizens and their accountable democratic leadership. Few people born after 1990 will buy buy Mr. Brooks limp apology for the forces that got American urban spaces into trouble in the first place.
15
A common error in the neoliberal philosophy, which seems similar to the Whigs, is that the opposite of entrepreneurs is big government. That is a false dichotomy.
The opposite of entrepreneurs (small business) is big business.
The opposite of large federal government is local government.
If there is a move away from big business, I am all for it. But I don't see this as a trend.
15
Take away the labels (Democrat, Republican, Whig, Libertarian) and we would find we have a lot more in common than not. While I am progressive, I would prefer to say pragmatist. In other words “Here’s the problem, let’s get busy and solve it!” Diversity is our strength. When we come at a problem from all angles, we create a wonderful solution. Let’s focus on resolution of the problem not “winning”, let go of ideology and let’s get to work!
18
The "problem" is that we can't agree on what the problem is.
The flaw in the Whig scenario is the requirement to be led by leaders with great minds--e.g. Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln, TR. Whether it be Republicans or Democrats--I just do not see those kinds of minds in any party.
13
But please note brooks distains to name any Democrats or identify any blacks in his article. The usual white wash in more ways than one
I moved to a neighborhood in Boston in 1980 because it was the cheapest place I could find. Fast forward, lots of grass roots action to improve the neighborhood, make it a really great place to live, good local government, beautiful parks and lots of restaurants and arts...and a two-bedroom home costs almost a million dollars. I couldn't afford to buy my own home today. People can do only so much to improve their communities when an unrestrained market drives out the very people who brought about the improvement.
55
So, the next person does what you did - finds the next cheap neighborhood, invests, builds, improves on and on.
I see no reason whatsoever to “constrain” the market.
This is good but doesn't go far enough. You are right we do need to nationalize this trend and it needs to encompass Angus Maddison's 4 pillars which you've written about here. The most important is acceptance of scientific rationalism which education promotes. With that, this could become a national movement and that's what would separate us from Italy.
16
"The world is made up by the people who show up for the job."
The kind of civic engagement Mr. Brooks praises is vital. Government works when ordinary people participate in it and their voices are heard. This is a welcome counter to the holy gospel of Saint Reagan, who preached "Government isn't the solution to our problems; government IS the problem."
While Mr. Brooks suggests this can only work at an immediate, local level, it should be noted the party he now separates himself from is actively engaged in sabotaging that connection. Gerrymandered voting districts, making it harder to vote - this disenfranchises the local heroes he celebrates.
When towns act to become sanctuary cities or pass gun control laws, the Republicans in control of state governments pass laws to override the will of the people. When states pass laws to protect their environment or control predatory financial institutions, Republicans at the national level go after them.
The American Renaissance will not really begin to take off until the corporate oligarchy and the power of big money is reined in. Call it Socialism, call it populism with a moral compass, even call it neo-Whigism... that's what needs to happen.
81
There are at least two more modern whigs in this household (albeit the reform wing of the modern whig party). When the "republicans" abandoned the principles of the whig party, that was the problem.
7
I believe you are right and I see it every day. local people. who need support to galvanize the community to action. we need places with tested ideas to apply, not just one rule to follow. if the head is dead, the body can't live. we need a healthy government that inspires our better angels, not creates grinding rules or parochial fantasies. a new centering party that supports us not ridicules and divides us can succeed.
7
At the local level, it's very rare to have groups of people with wildly divergent beliefs about what their town is like, none of which is anywhere close to the reality. At the national level, that's very common, almost the rule.
11
Larry that is not my experience. In my former town often the business community's goals were not shared by the retired folks. Natives (as in born here) opinions not shared by snowbirds. Comments during city commission meetings could get pointed, but rarely mean spirited, and I think we'd all make a point of talking to one another outside of official meetings because while we disagreed on some projects and proposals we knew that we all wanted what we thought best for the community, and respected that fact.
3
Mr Brooks's conclusion is misguided. Based on what he likes about the Fallowses findings at the local community level and what he dislikes at the national level, he should be a libertarian at the national level and a Whig at the local level.
A limited libertarian national gov't means less taxes siphoned from local communities to be used at the chaotic national level. National libertarians are perfectly aligned with local Whigs, allowing local communities to use more of their tax money locally--where they can control it. That’s the kind of freedom national libertarians like.
If small-town Greenville needs a new pedestrian bridge in the downtown area, why should local workers send most of their tax money to the national gov't first? Just as all politics is local, so are all renaissances. The less the national gov't is involved, the more successful the local renaissance.
31
Absolutely. The Fallows and Brooks are amazed that we yokels and cornballs actually have indoor plumbing. Y’all come back now, hear! (Just not too quick).
3
Unfortunately not every community is as full of old money as Greenville.
67
The counter to this is the local communities are not as self-reliant as their residents would like to believe. Many of the projects cited as positives in local communities came into being with substantial federal assistance, and probably would not have been considered without that assistance. Also, let's not forget that some of the general prosperity in these communities is due to federal assistance - local small community air service that is subsidized by a federal program; a local interstate highway connection that carries a fraction of the daily traffic of a highway in LA or Chicago but that costs the same per mile in federal dollars to build and maintain; AMTRAK service; plus a demographic that tends to be on the older rather than younger side of the scale and that depends on Medicare and Social Security, which keeps the local hospital and medical community functioning at a higher level than would otherwise be possible; and in the Midwest and South, a farm economy that depends heavily on federal support. There is an enduring myth that smaller communities are self-sufficient and are sending all of their tax dollars away to be spent elsewhere, but the reality is that small communities get a more than fair return on dollars sent to Washington.
22
The problem with civic involvement is that it requires a certain personal stability and the time and energy to invest. Before we can see that happen, we have to undo the trend over the last 40 years that requires some people to overwork and other people to have no self-sustaining work at all. In the 1960s, I was taught that automation would shorten the work week, providing workers with more time for recreation and civic involvement, while maintaining adequate income. Whatever happened to that concept? It never materialized. Instead, it now takes two parents working 50 hour weeks to maintain a middle class lifestyle. Who has time for civic involvement? Also, Mr. Brooks should read Bowling Alone, if he has not done so. We had great possibilities for improvements in cultural and civic life in the early days of the computer revolution, and we blew it.
24
Randomly picking out a scholarly work by a sociologist or psychologist here and describing anecdotes written up by a journalist there does not make for more than sophisticated gossip. It adds up to selective (not really random at all) use of disconnected data points to support an already determined conclusion.
This does not make some of these data points false or uninteresting; just a bit inconclusive and manipulable.
Why not report on data on health care in the US, on climate change, on polluted water and air coming back to our land, and the swamp being cultivated by the Trump administration?
Sure, we should recognize nice people, even if they are naive at times (and nice to their "own kind" more than to strangers who look different) and we should be hopeful.
But some basic decent structural change at the national level cannot hurt.
30
Your closing paragraphs were a needed splash of cold water on the idea that local success stories can overcome national dysfunction. While we shouldn't ignore the role of strivers and social capital, national policies encouraging polarization in both economic and political senses will undo us as a nation.
I do agree though that we can't impose this as top-down only. It also needs to be bottom-up and coalitions are vital. That means hard left, and hard right, dial back the atomization of our society into racial, ethnic, gender etc., etc., groupings. See us instead as humans with some common desires, needs, aspirations and goals.
3
I love local action and this discussion highlights the success when the ingredients are there. I also like the example of the Reedy River in South Carolina. For the last 20 to 30 years, local watershed groups have used the elements and grants from the federal Clean Water Act to make sure the river was cleaned up. They continue that work now.
How nice would those riverside walks and cafes be with a polluted river from upstream sources that can't be controlled by the locals? This is why the proper merging of national elements, like pollution control, with local civic action is the best. Our national partner is missing now and will soon make the local efforts harder if not fixed.
14
Fallows' book makes a great deal of sense to me. I live in a city that was the poster child for America's problems: Birmingham, Alabama. A grimy, Southern industrial town with a notorious history of racism. It was a company town where US Steel pitted locals against one another in order to hold sway over the city's fate. Then US Steel shut down the plant. For a couple of years, Birmingham had the same unemployment rate as Flint, Michigan.
Yet, thirty years later, it's a different kind of town. Downtown is going through a remarkable renaissance. New industries have emerged left and right. And, now that the mossbacks are dying off, the civic culture is a great deal healthier. Leadership in the city and suburbs, black and white, seem to understand that our destiny is linked. When the black mayor of Birmingham and the white mayors of the suburbs all site on the same stage and kick around ideas about collective metro development, you know we are on the right path.
Hey, is it perfect here? Of course not. But the past ten years have seen a remarkable change in the atmosphere, propelled by the knowledge that no one will take care of us the way we can.
11
National Good Neighbor Day is September 28, 2018. This might be a wonderful time for communities, schools, churches and other social service agencies to work together to put forth the suggestions and ideas that David has indicate in this article. A small does of listening, happiness, sharing, respect, helpfulness and kindness might go a long way to archiving the goals of a better country for all of us.
9
But do these entrepreneurs pay their taxes? I havebecome fixated on tax fairness because of the supposed lack of government money for the social safety net that some European countries take for granted. Figuring out the theory behind tax havens is not rocket science.
Your solution leaves in place the Wall St. shenanigans moving these townspeople around like chess pieces, lending them money for riverwalks and stadiums; and when they are unable to pay the interest, having to lay off police and firemen or not funding their pensions.
Privatization is the name of the game. Your local system fails and corporation X is there to fix it. But corporation X is not interested in being local--it wants to be national or even global. And so it goes.
Yes, let's work from the bottom up. Let's educate people about fair taxation and regulation of corporate monopolies.
17
That is a brilliant idea :)
With social mobility small and on the decline in this country, perhaps Mr. Brooks and the other Whigs should rethink their strategy. ( See Sweden, etc for better mobility)
The Moral Majority, Prosperity-Evangelicals and Conservative Values Voters have taken over the Whigs, ,the GOP and the Libertarians to some degree. They are driving this country into an expensive, elite encampment for their type only. Play the tape forward and you'll see the end is violent and destructive.
Mr. Brooks need not opine for the past, he needs to be active for the future. Yes people promote the many small town success and re-inventions (mainly driven by immigrants) but the great majority of these 19th century towns continue to die. Education of the masses would be a good first step. Unions and working class craft values would also be good.
9
A political philosophy constricts the ability to govern . Our current division that prohibits problem solving has been caused by the success of the conservatives that have made the Republican right extreme.
An example is our current tax law passed only after Republicans forgot their philosophy of balanced budget. Of course this example resulted in a poor law, It could not have been possible without forgetting philosophy.
We need practical politics. FDR used practical solutions regardless of philosophy, which enabled him to bring the world out of the Great Depression. Presidents Bush and Obama stopped our slide into Great Depression 2, by forgetting philosophy and baled out our auto industry.
What caused our slide toward Great Depression 2 was the return of Republican philosophy against restraining banks from foolish investments. When left unencumbered they made reckless investments.
So let's do what's right and vote for those unencumbered by a philosophy but guided by practical solutions.
6
Hi Tom - I too am a pragmatist in my daily activities. But the problem with the current Republican Party is not their stated philosophy, but the hypocritical manner in which they ignore it. Blue collar workers are fervently courted during election time, then shafted once power has been procured (literally with stacks of mega-millionaire money). If you are trying to identify a party whose philosophy is impractical, I would offer you up the Democrats. Bernie’s idea of free college for all is nice but unless we get health care and war-making more efficient and less costly the budget is not there for it.
4
I live in one of those small cities that Brooks talks about. It's called Concord, NH. Over the past several years a combination of entrepreneurial businessmen, one who was the head of the State Republican Party, and local politicians who do not aspire to higher office beyond the city have worked to revitalize our city and it's been wonderful. Our revitalized downtown now is bustling with new restaurants and shops. Young people are now seen on the streets and Concord is becoming a tourist destination.
Ironically, the biggest fight we have had is with State politicians who attempted to push through a 'school choice' voucher bill that would have undercut our community schools. It got temporarily defeated as angry citizens showed up to protest its passage. Many citizens of this town fought that attempt to undermine one aspect of civic life. This is the new world we live in. Ideological politicians march on with their libertarian goals while local citizens are busy rebuilding their civic institutions.
18
The America of the 19th C disappeared, and with it went the Whigs. By the beginning of the 20th C, the population of America was about 65 million and was largely rural/farming. Now that we are at about 330 million and packed into cities, the horse and buggy politics of the Whigs won't cut it. In his History of the English Speaking People, Churchill saw a different America from that of Brookes: “…There was much poverty in the big cities, especially among recent immigrants… There were sharp, sudden financial panics, causing loss and ruin, and there were many strikes, which sometimes broke into violence.” The pressing duty of politics today is to salvage the lives wrecked by the excesses of America's unregulated capitalism. We add insult to injury if we blame people for being victims of exploitation.
25
Churchill's book was published in the 50's. Its conclusions would be a bit out of date by this time, I would think.
BTW I loved that book. Great writer.
1
you would think, but, sadly, not...
The natural bridge between locally focused policies and federal policies is Congress and specifically the House of Representatives. Unfortunately the House is poisoned, dualistic and politically partisan. I don’t doubt that many young legislators start out independent and civic-minded, but they are eventually molded into ardent partisans. As long as we have a rigid two party system propped up by moneyed special interest groups, our ability to come together as a nation and tackle big projects is compromised.
16
Love this article. Along the same vein, as my husband and I have driven across the country, we’ve noticed many small and medium sized solar panel installations. On a local level Americans are using renewable energy sources.
17
Many small communities have come to believe that sending revenue to the federal government amounts to feeding the hand that bites you. Such communities are motivated to invest in themselves because there is often little controversy behind addressing the realities that they face. If all politics is local, then self-interested projects provide an equally compelling impetus to pull together and make the sacrifices necessary for the much more contained common good.
Not so on the federal level, where competing interests, political calculations and score-settling, not to mention other priorities, often prevent the forming of a consensus sufficient to drive the largesse necessary to fund programs that benefit a relatively small, localized number of people. Ultimately, spending on infrastructure and economic development requires tradeoffs, and there are far fewer bargains of importance than bargaining for survival, something locals care about far more than others who think they are unaffected by the well-being of others. In this respect, balkanization, to mix a metaphor, knows no bounds.
Communities that can afford to take care of themselves will generally fare better than those which, to some extent because of scale, are unable to do so. Relying on the federal government has always been understandable to some extent, but given today's political and economic realities, isn't necessarily going to be a recipe for success.
3
There is a small city in upstate NY called Gloversville that is working along these lines. Once the site of prosperous leather glove factories that ‘left town’, it now has a dedicated group of people working on downtown revitalization. In education, we are the site of a very successful P-Tech program that will be graduating its first class this year, a multi-million dollar project to upgrade and update their beautiful Carnegie Library.
Richard Russo came from Gloversville. Whatever small town he writes about, it’s always Gloversville. The Schine family that started the Lowes Theater chain started in Gloversville. It’s an interesting little city.
5
We live in a country where income inequality is as bad if not worse than it was before the Great Depression. Citizens are not guaranteed a living wage, adequate and affordable health care, or a good education. Ignorance of science, for at least 1/3 of the population, is to be celebrated. Our government is not for the people; instead, it is for corporate and monied interests. Every four years all of the country's citizens of voting age have an opportunity to vote, but most do not because they know that they have absolutely no say in how their country should be governed. We are "governed" by a congress that continues to set a low bar, year-after-year, for lack of productivity and civic discourse. This same congress also knows about significant foreign interference from a hostile power in our elections and, yet, does nothing to endeavor to protect election integrity. Tribalism dominates the discourse in this country, exacerbated, generally, by a media that used to be objective and journalistic (excluding the NYT, WaPo, and a few others, of course). Some renaissance, David.
33
The key is Infrastructure. We have halted the building of America, we have become stagnant and are letting the post WWII building of America by the Greatest Generation rot before our eyes.
With infrastructure comes all of the associated community development and jobs that are necessary to build the projects and then the jobs that are created after the building, mostly unforeseen in the original plans.
In Anne Arundel County was the Baltimore Annapolis Railroad line, last trains run in the 1960's. We walked the tracks or ran the tracks for exercise. In the early days of rails to trails it was paved and became a park. My father, a bicycle enthusiast would ride the B&A Trail but there was nothing along the trail as it cut through the little suburban strip areas. He along with the park rangers helped create the Friends of the B&A Trail. They got garden clubs involved to spruce up the adjoining lands, small businesses began to cater to trail users and existing businesses realized they had a free new market and advertised from the backs of their stores.
Hilary Clinton came to dedicate it as one of the first legs of the cross country bike path. Today it is a real estate selling point for families and is in full use everyday with parents ans strollers, runners, walkers, and cyclists. It helped forge a new local economy along the trail. It is also home to the Planetary Walk where you walk from the Sun Station to Pluto or stop and workout at exercise stops
28
I hear quite a bit about infrastructure. Don’t you think that part of the problem is that our large infrastructure projects are bloated overpriced messes like the NYC subway and CA bullet train?
I live in a region where the downward spiral is continuing to pull us down. Changes in the dairy industry have undermined local economies. Decay accelerated after the economic collapse of 2008. Our young people are fleeing for better lives and more opportunity. I do not see how local initiative can change our prognosis.
It's great that some small cities are experiencing rebirth. I'm willing to learn whatever I can from that experience. To me, it looks as if the rebirth is related to some wealthy patron taking an interest and the success stories Mr. Brooks cites reinforce that impression.
It's ironic that libraries are mentioned as civic centers. The New York Library Association used to have a slogan: Libraries can't live on love alone. Public investment is needed to help them function. Devoted volunteers are admirable, but they need a healthy organization within which to function.
43
Look, nothing is going to change for the lasting better until the underlying cultural paradigm changes. Until we get over these dualist, creationist, dominionist, anthropocentric fallacies it's just going to more of the same old struggle, polarization, pollution, war, and division. Meanwhile, people like David, supposedly intelligent, continue to defend the very beliefs that brought us to this sorry state of affairs.
21
This was pretty good until the end. One thing I really liked was that the mayors were more interested in their town than in using it as a staging point for the next campaign for higher office.
Then you closed by saying that the federal government should nationalize this trend. No. That's been tried before and failed.
The federal government needs to do its job: Guarantee equal rights for all; Properly fund infrastructure improvements because urban renaissance is not possible when the town and its citizens are isolated; and use the massive federal tax base to support a generous social safety net so that workers and families are free to move to these thriving communities.
51
If life could just be so simple, but it is not. This fascination that Brooks has with the Whigs and a message in its own times that was more propaganda than a reality, seems even more strange when it is being advanced in a world that is rapidly changing and is becoming more interdependent than ever. No doubt there are some communities that are better than others for the very reasons that Mr. Brooks cites, but he does not have an answer for the communities that are failing, whether they be inner cities or rural communities. We can all go back in time and select out the beliefs and the heroes that please us, but it does little for the understanding of history or our present moment, and the difficulties we face as a country.
11
This 0ped is a sweet example of 19th century "all politics is local" wishful thinking. This country is, for good and lately more for bad, a world power. As such we ought to finally recognize the primacy of foreign policy. Not only Washington, DC but every citizen of this nation needs to focus on what we, the United States of America, are doing or not doing in the rest of the world and what this costs in terms of dollars and in terms of moral currency. The mess America is in is due to our inability to turn the end of the Cold War into a constructive, multilateral peace process. Instead we started throwing our weight around in a fit of misguided triumphalism and military power projection, trying nothing less than to rule the world. The American Renaissance that is necessary will have to start in the White House, the State Department and the Defense Department. Make Peace, foreign and domestic, the primary objective of government, and this country will be reborn to pursue the ideals which the founding fathers imagined.
17
"The mess America is in is due to our inability to turn the end of the Cold War into a constructive, multilateral peace process. Instead we started throwing our weight around in a fit of misguided triumphalism and military power projection, trying nothing less than to rule the world".
Sure, that and far right moneyed interests starting a propoganda campaign via am radio, news networks (Fox and Sinclair) selling hatred for anything on the left not to mention an inability to admit their idea of policy is wrong (complete deregulation, trickle down economics) all of which has put us in a death lock to work out any of the problems affecting us today. But by all means keep giving cover to the people responsible.
10
You were on it until you got to the part where you call for the renaissance to begin with government, but giving you the benefit of doubt, I presume you mean, "if we successfully throw out the corporate lackeys currently operating government for corporate America", and replace them with salt of the earth home grown genuine caring, empathetic, socially concerned representatives, then yes, let's begin the revolution with the midterms, not that I hold out any hope the midterms will change anything, given the stranglehold both corrupt parties, Republicans and Democrats have on how the game is played.
I've been an optimist for all of my 68 years on the planet, insofar as our nations ability to weather any situation was concerned, but now I fear we have handed control of our future to a powerful group of worldwide corporatists, all of whom see the masses as the tools and implements they need to use, and when the need arises, abuse, on the way to total unopposed control of the wealth of the planet.
1
Mr. Brooks - we don't have to go back into the 19th century for the "Whig Renaissance", just to the New Deal and FDR! His policies pulled this country out of the Great Depression, put people to work and unified the country as WWII approached. FDR was not a Whig, so I can only guess that is why you have ignored him?
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FDR was a great president and did his best in the tough economic times that he inherited, but it is historically inaccurate to claim that his policies pulled the country out of the Great Depression. The Great Depression was finally ended by the frightening military build-up in Germany, which caused US and European governments to run big fiscal deficits to re-arm for war. Prior to that stimulus from re-armament, FDR's attempts at economic stimulus were largely unsuccessful.
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As an American that left the U.S. in 1998, at the age of 36, I too wonder if the time has come to return to the U.S., for my retirement. But I worry about the Dollar.
Better to remain working in France and add more years to my retirement account for the system in France. The Euro is a sure thing. What were the Greeks doing 2 years ago ? They were taking Euros out of the bank, and putting them in a safe place. They had no faith in their government, but the Euro they trusted, rightfully.
But it is obvious that with these Trump years, the nation has turned the corner.
Some people will look at this and wonder if I am being sarcastic, but in fact, no, I am quite serious.
Better days lie ahead for the U.S. ... the long, long downward slide from the 1950s has bottomed out.
But ouf, the summers are better in Europe, and it still isn’t clear how much the Donny Years are going to cost.
Normally, he bankrupts everything he touches.
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Best of luck in trying to nationalize the civic programs and governing philosophy you praise.
Sadly, given our current national leadership, it isn't likely to happen.
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You must forgive Mr. Brooks' view from the Ivory Tower. He reads a book, and, subsequently, is whimsical about a country that doesn't exist. It exists only in his mind.
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I grew up in a small New England manufacturing town. It went from being middle class to impoverished over the last six decades, and is not experiencing a renaissance of any kind. It's a big country, I'm sure you can find some towns that are doing OK, but don't draw conclusions without looking at the rest of them. Federal cuts to health care and education aren't going to magically create a local network of healthy, educated, self-sufficient citizens. Look more closely: it's robber barons that are having a renaissance.
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Whigs of the 19th century also contained Abolitionists who were not interested in giving potential former slaves Equal Rights. The Whigs died with Lincoln, by the way. It took a strong central government to pass laws that recognized Civil and equal treatment of all citizens across the nation.
Leveling the playing field for Americans meant providing access to equal opportunities to thrive - public education, food assistance, social programs for the disabled and elderly, etc. Asymmetry in basic human social conditions does not result in liberty or freedom for all. Self-centered, “individualistic” Libertarians cannot put themselves in another’s shoes and most are born with all the basic opportunities denied to many others.
While it is uplifting to hear some small towns and cities can pull together to enhance their communities, the whole idea of constitutional “Common Good” is being attacked by the Republican majorities in Congress. Basic means for survival and maintaining a health society are being stripped away. This stress to society will result in squalor, poverty, illness, and hunger, which will impact all communities making all localized, small-scale efforts to improve education, jobs, industries, and infrastructure moot.
America needs a government that addresses the basic human needs of its citizens.
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With all due respect, Mr. Brooks, “Whigs promoted infrastructure projects, public education, public-private investments and character-building programs to create dynamic, capitalist communities in which poor boys and girls could rise and succeed,” much of this is how I view the Democratic Party.
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It certainly stands to reason. When you look at your options as a community, you can welcome in conglomerates to provide jobs and such. All these places vying for Amazon east is but one example. The communities give tax breaks, pay for all the infrastructure work, and many jobs are created. And it results in a big, impersonal corporate feel. Then you consider the alternative: fix the infrastructure, create an environment that fits in well with the local historical lifestyle, and allow the resident population to take it from there. When you stop and think about it, the pay at both for the average workers will be more or less the same, but the workers will be so much happier if it reflects who they are and keeps decisions local. Rather than having to kowtow to the one size fits all mantra. The biggest problem then becomes keeping everyone on the same page and telling CVS and McDonald's and Amazon. etc that you are not interested in what they are offering. The sales pitch may sound good, but the price you pay to sell the community's soul is not worth it.
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It is one thing to ink a deal but the real success is when it works. Trump is not the path to renaissance. We need real heros to lead a renaissance. We need people like David Brooks to take his ideas further and start writing about real renaissance candidates, either party 2020. I live 30 miles from Greenville SC. That renaissance started a good 30 years ago. It was rooted in one major player, backed by an army of like minded followers. The Greenville renaissance mostly centers on downtown Greenville. But the surrounding communities like Asheville,Spartanburg and small towns like Greer, Travlers Rest SC and Hendersonville, Flat Rock NC are doing well in modeling from Greenville. Poverty rooted in lost industries is one renaissance enemy. It still abides in the mountains of the Carolina’s. But the support and infrastructure is there to expand and sustain resurgence. And the picture get bigger if you think states like NC and SC. An environment for a person to reinvent themselves is key to any renaissance movement it just takes leaders with vision. Find them, identify them and David’s renaissance era will come.
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David, I was always a Whig, too, because we had solved, with big government, a lot of the things that only big government could solve.
We had restricted child labor, promoted safe and fair labor, promoted fair wages and got rid of piece rate work. We promoted competition, reducing monopoly power in a series of laws and court cases. We eliminated the Robber Baron. We promoted education. When trouble hit, we created jobs, created a safety net for starving grandparents. After a desperately expensive war, we paid our taxes. We again protected the weak and elderly with Medicare and Medicaid.
The table was set and the Whigs invited, and they did a lot.
But now we are busily undoing everything from clean air to robber barons to full time work and fair pay. We don't want to pay for our disastrous wars. It's a free market folks! If you can't pay grasshopper, find a bush to crawl under and die. Education is another place for people to make a profit and we are starving our government so we can starve our grandparents later. Then they will die from lack of healthcare.
We don't need Whigs. We need Teddy Roosevelt.
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Grandparents have been outliving their money and increasing numbers are food insecure.
Midwestern public universities are a shadow of their once great selves.
Young people have been losing their futures for a decade.
And the beat goes on.
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