Ubuntu.
My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. I am because we are.
20
Where's the condemnation here of the radical individualism in our politics that leads legislators and even our current President to disregard tradition, civility, and law in the quest for private wealth?
Where's the condemnation here of the radical individualism in our corporations, in which executives are paid hundreds of times more than those who do the actual work of the enterprise?
Where's the condemnation here of the radical individualism of the "Christian" right, whose leaders feel free to fleece gullible believers and hypocritically condemn those who seek love and companionship?
Where's the condemnation here of the radical individualism of the rich, who focus basically on their desire for more money, more property, more control of our politics and our economy and hardly at all, if even any, on the needs of society?
41
The most recent reports suggest the White House sweetened the deal to get Kennedy to retire. A perfect end to his questionable career—accepting major bribes from a crook to swing the court into Alt-Right territory. Put that on his tombstone. A total disgrace
37
Well written argument on the matter of license
to form one's own moral code from the ether.
Trump and his ilk perform as forces who determine facts, truths, and ideology resulting in intra-party chaos and it's consequent rippling effect world-wide. The chafe will settle out and the resulting damage will serve us well as a teaching tool long overdue by both left and right. God help us though.
8
Extreme inequality increases as democracy grows weaker. Funny how that works. Two brothers with billions at their disposal decide to push gov. towards a "red tooth and claw" libertarianism and voila, all of gov. is now their party. A foreign billionaire decides to create his own mouth piece of "fair and balanced news" where it is now the primary "news" for much of the country. His party now controls gov. Brook's hand wringing about morals and subtle philosophy doesn't begin to address our unraveling as a democracy into an Oligarchy. When persons in group A (no matter how small) controls so much power because of their wealth all those persons in group B (no matter how many) w/o access to real, fact based information or levers of influence) don't seem to have much of a pray.
17
Our historical common culture rejected diversity in service of privileged men, primarily white.
Any common culture for the future must embrace the increasing diversity of our citizens as its core instead of trying to keep it relegated to the margins.
6
Bullseye!
4
Interesting article, but Mr. Brooks seems to exaggerate the tension between I-ness and We-ness. People can have individual liberties and divergent opinions while still being deeply and comfortably embedded in a community.
27
While Mr. Brooks does not point to the grave damage done when "We the people" overwhelm individuals who are refugees, migrants, LGBTQ, Muslim, people of color, women, or simply "other", his fundamental point is certainly consistent with the founding principles of this nation. We cannot succeed where the common good and the common values are always suspect. I agree that "[t]he autonomy ethos forgets this."
6
Kennedy seems to be saying "believe whatever you please." Brooks seems to be saying "believe what your community tells you." I don't like either of these. I would prefer to believe what is true. This can take some work, and until we feel the evidence comes down pretty heavily on one side of an issue, we should withhold judgement. But our world view should not be determined by personal taste or accepting our own culture's assumptions.
17
Purity is pretending that noise and imperfections are meaningless. Somehow there is a clear path through the vast insanity of this Universe. A pretty pose, suitable for framing, in the sublimely tiny frame that limits it. Earth, and its communities, are wandering through an unknown space, to us. We can see outward, a bit, and try to imagine we have some meaning, greater than our obvious wants and desires. Such a preposterous vanity comes naturally to the poor beings so constrained. None of us is fit to lead, there is no purpose. We reproduce without regard to the limits of our tiny blob of organic material. We are too dim to survive in this reality, much less conquer it. Philosophy is simply beings spraying words on the dry desert. No flower can ever bloom. We are simply an echo in an empty cavern. It bounces around and falls silent. The truth we cannot accept.
3
Individual things are individual and collective things are collective. It's all about appropriateness. If you're practicing it you're missing out on a golden opportunity to get advantage. That is to say, the collective must be the arbiter of what is individual and what is collective, as the limits of the sea dictate where the island ends. But the collective has a broad array of possible choices and methods for determining those choices. Let us resolve not to be conned into picking empty calories.
1
I think Mr. Brooks is reading too much into Justice Kennedy's words. Regardless of the dominant social or moral order, people will arrive at different opinions on the "big questions." The point is do we impose our answers on others through the force of the laws or do we allow individuals to grapple with life's problems on their own terms? Obviously this philosophy could be taken to an unhealthy extreme, but I believe Mr. Brooks is trying to put a radical spin on Kennedy's words.
6
There always has been and always will be an uncomfortable tension between the needs of the individual and the needs of the collective. It's rarely clear which of the two are more guided by wisdom. But it abundantly clear that the needs of the collective tend to be more oppressive - unless conditioned and tempered by respect for the needs of the individual. I think that's where Kennedy came in, in occasionally insisting that the needs of the individual be considered paramount. I'm glad he did. For a man who depends on being able to express his own, individual, opinion for the very good living he generates by doing so, Mr Brooks is awfully sanctimonious about the moral superiority of collectivism over individualism. Perhaps, at a minimum, he should join a union.
13
Some of the safest, most mutually supportive cultures offer the least personal freedom. That is, they're safe and supportive so long as one conforms to expected norms: step out of line and the ostracism is insufferable. I applaud the gradual increase in personal freedom that has characterized much of US history (more gradual, of course, for some groups than for others). At the same time, I agree with Mr. Brooks that there have been non-trivial social costs, largely around increased freedom to be terrible to other people.
This is, perhaps, the great challenge of civilization: how do we balance individual freedom and the common good? How do we build a society in which people are free to behave as they wish, and then _choose_ to behave well?
11
Although we can thank Judge Kennedy for stepping in to acknowledge that gay people should be allowed to marry, he also stepped in to say that corporations (most of them global) should be able to basically buy politicians and insure that legislation in the future favors them over "we the people" if they have enough money. He seems to buy in to the "me generation" philosophy of novelist Ayn Rand, who by the way, was happy to accept Social Security benefits in her golden years. People like Eric Canter (GONE - thanks to an insurgent candidate) and Paul Ryan (GONE - thanks to the fact that the GOP is now the Trump Party) are the worst form of selfish. Ryan is a guy, who claimed to be a deficit hawk but was first in line for a bail out of his auto dealership!
10
Wow! This is important. I don't know enough about Kennedy but Brooks makes some mighty important points, whether they specifically apply to Kennedy or not.
3
Yes, we have matured to the point to see and accept the fact that we are not a melting pot: What a ridiculous notion! I can't even bear most of my relatives, much less 325 million strangers who are as different as different can be.
So Jesus' idea of loving thy neighbor as thyself has collapsed of its own weight: It was dead-on-arrival anyway.
But is there, as Plato believed, entities such as eternal Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Justice? Or is everything relative? Your trash is my treasure. I used to think so; but time has all but destroyed that thought. Old age makes cynics of us all.
God or nature seem to love a mixed bag. Where is reality? Modern physics seems to give us a paradigm shift every generation to believe in, leaving us to fight to survive in a world that's hardly worth the effort. We fear death and loathe life or, at least, the Other. We need, I think, a complete makeover; but I also thought the leisure suit was a good idea.
5
This piece is clearly an impassioned plea for a return the Puritan principles of America's earliest European settlers.
4
The article was excellent. A shared culture and moral code is critical to a successful society. However he goes too far in blaming Mr. Kennedy
3
The lack of common enterprise we are experiencing is a direct result of the policies of your Republican Party, Mr. Brooks. Those policies have been there for at least 100 years, but they have become worse and worse since Ronald Reagan declared that government is never the solution, but rather the problem. Your party has lost any shred of decency and common enterprise. Donald Trump is the logical successor to your party since it became morally bankrupt. Your party has engaged in voter suppression for years. Rehnquist got his start harassing African American and Latino voters in Arizona in the early 1960's and lied about it under oath. Republicans voted for the Voter Rights Act and extensions until 2006, but those decent Republicans have been run out of office by the indecent ones. And even as they voted for extensions of the VRA for cover, they worked behind the scenes to undermine it. In 1969, Nixon tried to strip section 5 (the heart) of the act. When he failed, his Justice Dept failed to enforce it vigorously and his 4 USSC Justices undermined it in several decisions. Reagan continued to undermine it administratively, and appointed 3 Justices that continued to attack it. Bush nominated Alito and Roberts, which led to the Shelby case, gutting the Act. State Republicans continue to try to suppress minority voters. Your Party gave us money as speech, corps. as people, attacks on the ACA, Medicaid, and Medicare, tax cuts for the wealthy. And an end to common enterprise.
19
Ethical and eloquent.
3
The only idea scarier than having to choose the meaning of one's own life is the idea that we should let some community choose for us without our own consent. Pre-Reformation Europe certainly shared a common belief about what reality was and what the purpose of life was. Few of us would want to return there.
Mr. Brooks is right that, as a homework assignment, coming to one's own terms with the world is a hard one and not everyone really wants to indulge in the kind of hard thought it takes. But making people free to do this is not a requirement: there are plenty of religions and social beliefs out there that are on offer. The alternative to giving people the freedom to choose either each his own belief or from one of the beliefs on offer, is to legislative one (even if we chose by vote, it would be the majority legislating for the minority). That would, of course, infringe the First Amendment far more than Kennedy's idea of the dignity of the individual infringes the doubtful significance Brooks finds in the phrase, "We the people."
4
If this is an excuse for Kennedy's fecklessness, it only appears that he is changing horses in the middle of the stream. personally, I hope he falls off. I feel betrayed.
9
Dare I say this? Kennedy, Alito, Thomas, Roberts, and Gorsuch are all Catholics which has formed their character.
The Catholic Church is replete with repression, a slow-moving, narcissistic behemoth interested in enhancing institutional power, antithetical to human progress at a time of desperate need for enlightened change.
"There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil affairs, our government soon would be destroyed…. Those who made our Constitution saw this, and used the most apt and comprehensive language in it to prevent such a catastrophe." Supreme Court of Wisconsin 1890
Originalists/textualists views are incongruent with the intentions of the Founders.
...that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." Thomas Jefferson
We can be sure that the person nominated to replace Kennedy will be an originalist/textualist and a practicing Catholic or an Evangelical. God forbid!
Like Gandi said, "Think of it!"
21
Amen.
5
Most of the Brooks column on Privatization of meaning is one of his best ever. Hooking it to Justice Kennedy "mystery of life" exhortation not so much. Context is important. Justice Kennedy's maybe too flowery phrase was not in support of diminishing the importance of community and shared culture, but the inappropriateness of government creating laws that infringe on choice or being of the individual person. The definition of freedom has been a continuing issue in our existence. There is always a healthy tension between the individual and the community. Justice Kennedy's exhortation in its context and David Brooks column in its are both right on..
2
Our collective unconscious militates against the success of Kennedy's autonomy ethos or, more generally, the postmodern Left's constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion. Actuarial mathematics, a seditious conspiracy, the durability of the American idea, and sublime irony combine to ensure Trump's re-election in 2020 and at least seven conservatives on the Supreme Court before the end of his tenure.
The very definition of "poetic justice."
2
"They began the Constitution with the phrase, “We the People.” We are all one thing — a people, a nation, a collective.
That people shares a moral order — rules that are true for all people in all times ...... the idea that all people are created equal."
Mr. Brooks, the writers of the constitution were referring only to White Land Owners. Slavery was good and slaves counted as a 3/5 person ; women could not vote ,indentured white trash were not equal to the land owners , the indigenous people of the colonies were things to be ethnically cleansed and their land stolen (eg Trail of Tears). So the teeter tauter may have swung to far down or up depending on which end you sit but your treatise today is too narrow. Like looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
8
Well said Duncan. We have made so much progress. Good to remember. But each generation must keep its commitment - look at all that liberalism in Germany in the early 30s and then they took their eye off the road for moment and.....
3
Going back a generation or two, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Who else remembers that. But, take heart, what goes around inevitably comes around. At some point, the Court will swing again.
4
Do you mean to say Kennedy actually believed all that stuff in Wealth of Nations and Moral Sentiments?
Well, Brooks, i gotta say, this was an extremely well written piece, that I completely agree with, and it's been along time since that happened. Why don't you just come on home, where you belong, because the republicans don't deserve you and they never did.
1
Justice Kennedy in the end left us with grave injustices to society. As a society it's a free for all and democracy will not survive. He allows a greater voice to some over the rights of others - the common good has no place.
Many say he was a swing vote. His parting shots say otherwise. Hopefully, the GOP in coming years will reap what they have sown. Good riddance 'Justice' Kennedy.
7
I really do have a great deal of sympathy for the points Mr. Brooks makes here. I read Darwin's Unfinished Symphony - How Culture Made the Human Mind a while back and I'm persuaded.
But, we would do very much better to return to the traditional values Mr. Brooks extols after we prune some traditions from our repertoire that caused enormous suffering for the majority for so long. The need to prune those things from our community's behavioral repertoire is the cause of the risky experimentation he regrets.
Tell you what. As soon as conservatives are no longer okay with the suppression of people of color, women, LGBT folk get back with us. Either that or provide some sensible reason for the retention of those traditions.
7
Perhaps Martin Buber's concept of the "I" and "Thou" is helpful in the current political landscape. The wise, compassionate leader is able to see an "I " and a "Thou"... an equally human other. This would be opposed to the immature narcissist who only sees an "I" and an "it."
3
Hm. So Anthony Kennedy has said, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
And to define one's own concept of legal precedent? For yourself and thereby for everyone else?
I'm beginning to understand the foundation for some of Kennedy's more recent and questionable rulings -- especially in Citizens United, where corporations are understood as people, with the right to define their own concept of the meaning of our democratic values.
So $$$ liberty for corporations $$$ -- that makes each of our individual human lives a tantalizing mystery, indeed. Of the people, by the people, for the people . . . .
4
Excellent essay Mr. Brooks, except for one small thing; our Founders may have believed in individual liberty, but they were pretty sparing in terms of how they spread that concept to the entirety of the American population.
It is a fact that our Founders only extended full rights to just 6% of the existing population (white property owners).
Thus, since the inception of our country, one can say that we claim we believe in individual liberty, but in order to achieve it, there always has to be a fight.
That is the real history of our country Mr. Brooks.
It is not about the Constitution in and of itself. It is about the struggle to apply the principles of the Constitution to everyone equally.
Furthermore Mr. Brooks, this supposition of a shared community in the days of yore?
How is that possible if only 6% of the population had full control of everything?
The only sense of a shared community happened when a fight occurred for these rights, a fight that is still happening 230 years later.
Anthony Kennedy, in his own perverse way, was an idealistic dreamer. He lived in a world where all things were equal and an individual can thrive.
But that is a dream Mr. Brooks.
The reality is that things have always been unequal.
They are still unequal!
Nonetheless, great essay!
7
Perhaps Kennedy's remark was intended to have the infinitely broad implications you suggest, in which case your comments could be taken as being relevant. However, I read the quote as being self-evident in this moment in time. There is no overarching view of reality and understanding of the mystery of life that can be accepted by all. There is no unity on religious views and even if science were accepted by all of the population, it is far too incomplete to meet the requirements of Kennedy's statement, referring only to the observable measurable aspects of existence. I'm afraid it is up to everyone to come up with their own understanding of reality, either by figuring it our for oneself or to buy into one of the available off-the-shelf belief systems. In any case both the necessity and freedom to do just that must be expected and respected. The only alternative to relativism is to come together on a view of things which transcends and yet includes all separate views, to see unity rather than the differences in all the apparent separate views, but that, of course, is a wishful future still to be fulfilled.
2
The two words left out of the op-ed are trust and cynicism. In 1964 after the Civil Rights Act the GOP led by Goldwater, Reagan and Nixon took a country based in the trust that defines citizenship and gave you cynicism in its stead.
In 1980 Reagan defined your common bond the government of the people as the enemy.
Here in Canada we are far from perfect but we have people like former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson telling us what it means to be a citizen while your ruling political party proudly salutes the Stars and Bars the flag dedicated to those wishing to destroy your country.
6
David,
I love pondering the thoughts you give us.....one major problem no one has addressed which I believe is the elephant in the room.....how did we get from a separation of church and state to
" the rules of my religion should be the law of the land."?
Whether we are community oriented or separate souls free to explore on our own..., each of these ideas conflict with " my beliefs have to be your beliefs". The issue is not abortion or gay rights or any other social issue, the issue is the Constitution forbids anyone's religious beliefs entering into the rules and governance of this country.
11
"If you privatize meaning so that people get to follow their unrestrained desires, they immediately start tramping on one another, and public pressure grows for restrictive laws, like hate speech regulation, to keep things from getting out of control" I love it when David tries to do philosophy; it becomes so much easier to point out his errors. First point. Most of the communal structures that served us well in the past and David rightly finds merit with, are no longer working for all of the big tent of America. Second point. No one who speaks to our new needs for a self embedded in a social order, believes this is a function of private meaning; especially philosophers instructed by Wittgenstein's argument against private meaning and language (actually Wittgenstein was more careful; there is no private language). Perhaps what Kennedy was fleshing out was the greater numbers of educated people, who would draw upon the shared concepts, take responsibility for that task, rather than the small elite who had cornered that market. Both Descarte and Kant advocated not letting theoretical work be left to just to the pros. See David saying we are too busy. No. We as Americans have ample time to tackle the abstractions at the heart of shared meaning. We spent our time, encouraged by the pros, to do our own thing, when we should have spent more time replacing the pros. The outcome of this was Trump. Will we change now?
1
We don't have laws to annoy people, David. We didn't create government to aggravate people. We created it to provide a framework. As life gets more complicated, the framework expands. We have laws and government to define what we stand for and how we operate, both to ourselves and to the other entities and nations we have to deal with every day.
You seem to think we wouldn't need an 'intrusive state' if we stopped being 'individuals' and were all just 'good.' Nonsense. There is no community comprised of human beings where everybody wants exactly the same thing, believes exactly the same thing, or defines 'the good' in exactly the same way. That's a pipe dream.
We're at a real crisis now because there are people who want what they think god is telling them is 'good' to supersede what the rest of us, who rely on reason, have defined as 'good.' We who use reason refuse to go back to pre-woman's rights, pre-civil rights, pre-LGBT rights days. That era is religion based. We are not a theocracy. "Freedom of religion" means people can follow their own religions individually or in groups, but they have no right to impose them on me, an agnostic secular humanist, when I come to the government for a marriage license or into a business establishment to buy a wedding cake.
What makes us great and unique is that we acknowledge the dignity and equality of everyone regardless of our personal religious beliefs. Losing that would be sad.
12
This is the second good piece from Mr. Brooks on what real "conservatism" looks like. As a developmental psychologist, let me add another perspective: we clearly evolved as members of small groups, and a lot of our social behavior reflects our primate origins. The notion of the individual took some time to emerge, maybe invented by the Greeks between the time the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed. People were defined by their roles even in the OT. There are still places in the world where the concept has not taken hold; it's why we can't deal with Iraq. We spend the early years of our lives learning how to live in institutions, families, schools, etc., and our conscious sense of ourselves as individuals does not emerge until at least our teen years--for some maybe never. Making the individual the center of all our legal and moral thinking is unnatural and denies an essential aspect of human nature. It is an interesting symptom of our times that we have a president who is all ego and who lacks empathy, a sense of other people, even a sense of humor.
8
It would be wrong to think of an institutional/societal perspective and an individualistic one as alternatives--as if you could have one without the other. Individualism is a societal doctrine--it has cultural and societal roots. At the same time, individuals have perspectives and goals of their own and act accordingly with consequences for social order at various levels: familial, occupational, political, and so on.
2
How is it that you and I can agree profoundly on our nation's need for a community of shared values and meanings, and yet one of us is a lifelong conservative and the other is a lifelong social democrat? I believe it is because, while you see an American "community" based on a nonexistent social and cultural homogeneity, I see a national community so large, so diverse, such a "rich mosaic" of differing, often competing, cultures and classes, that only a strong and activist federal government can ensure that all benefit from our deepest, most sacred American values. During the time when FDR, our most activist of presidents, gave Americans hope and leadership through a great depression and a world war, there was great solidarity and shared pride in our American system of values. Almost all believed that we must work hard, but that when we falter, the American "community" in the form of our shared government, will be there to see that we don't fall too far. With the exception of a disgruntled upper-class minority, we were a "community" then, in ways most Americans living today can barely imagine. The progressive loss of this sense of shared responsibility, as well as shared pride, through the rhetoric and actions of a series of right-wing governments since then has been at least as responsible as the huge social upheavals that have occurred in the decades since WW II for the loss of a sense of national community.
7
I think much of Mr. Brook's essay is based on a straw man. Justice Kennedy stated: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The important word here is "right." We all have a right to define our own meaning, but that in no way prevents us from accepting philosophies , beliefs, and customs we have inherited. We just aren't 'required' to adhere to these. Surely that is the very essence of political liberty.
4
Dear Mr. Brooks,
You have taken justice Kennedy‘s quote completely out of the context it was in. Justice Kennedy was saying that the heart of freedom requires an individual’s control over some minimal territory. It does not entail that each one of us has to set up our own constitution or civil code.
If you want to start adding laws quickly try to legislate what should happen during a physician-patient interaction. Should we all do calisthenics every morning like North Korea? It is not very David Brooks-like To want to legislate other peoples empty calories.
1
in other words he's just another self centered white man born into privilege and the legal profession/scam. he knows absolutely nothing about how the average person has to live..... oh, wait, he had a gay friend so he had empathy for gay people? too bad he didn't have more friends outside of his life of privilege.
4
It would seem that the main difference between modern day liberals and conservatives is that cons hate the idea of any impingement of their “freedoms” by the State and relish having them defined by multinational corporations who pay no taxes. As Rudy Giuliani declared during the campaign, paying taxes is for dummies and suckers. So, the Koch brothers are “free” to purchase Congressmen, Senators, mayors, police chefs, judges and justices who set the rules for the hoi polloi to live and die by. And if you’re the hoi polloi, you have the freedom to...what? Contemplate the Mystery of a nasty, brutish and short Life? Send your kids to the mines to get the black lung you are dying of today? This has been the case for most of history. Most of us believed we had overcome the wretchedness of monarchy, aristocracy and oligarchy. We are taking a centuries leap backward.
When we learn that Justice Kennedy’s son was trump’s primary financier at Deutschebank, his timely retirement suddenly becomes even more sinister.
14
I don't know of another country that is more besotted by money and material wealth as America.
It is rare to meet anyone who doesn't want more, or better or bigger. It is rare to have a lengthy conversation with someone when money doesn't come up. There is not an issue in life, large or small, that isn't measured in money.
In America and maybe elsewhere as well, money is the sole driving force of life itself.
And so, yes I agree that "(we) get enchained by (our) own selfishness, vanity and greed." When people are left to their own devices, few will impose civic/civil order upon themselves - why would they?
A few years ago, Denmark was annointed the "happiest country." A reporter asked a Dane why he thought Denmark rates as a happier country than America. He said something that really struck me. I will paraphrase, as I don't have the actual quote: "in Denmark, we are happy to come home after work and drink a glass of wine with family and friends. That's enough for us. Americans are never satisfied."
Here, net worth defines self worth, and there's always somebody out there with more than you, unless you're Jeff Bezos.
It's always about money and the so-called "American Dream" here. But, there are societies that raise their children to consider themselves part of a society. They don't teach them that being top-dog in that society is all that matters.
6
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
Thus sprach Nietzsche, would undoubtedly would have convulsed in laughter upon hearing his name invoked in a defense of morality.
Nice try, though!
2
Of course, a person is free to think whatever they like; this is a metaphysical right. If I understand you correctly though, the statement, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” is taken, not as a metaphysical statement of right but as a political one, in other words; as a political freedom. But a political freedom is only as good as one’s metaphysical right, that is; as something no one should be allowed to keep you from, like the right to vote, own property or think as you like. But having this right doesn’t imply one “ought” to exercise it; ought to then, make it available for public consumption and then make it as though universal law. Perhaps today’s relativism suffers from a paradox; that what I then think, is, oddly enough; ABSOLUTE. And if absolute, then—well; you’re playing make believe and exercising arbitrary power in the name of some private mantra, some “privatization of meaning” as you say. Ultimately, to get along as a nation or a family for that matter; we must agree on something, but if we all hold differing views, and then, through some reification of the spirit act as if those views are then supreme law; well, then good luck in the future—for it will be quite a rocky road...
If it is true that Judge Kennedy was such a staunch defender of the concept of individual liberty and autonomy, my respect for him has grown exponentially. Mr. Brooks’ nostalgia for “embeddedness in the community” stems from ignorance. Life in traditional societies where community is all and individual is nothing is suffocating, repressive and soul-crushing. Would you really like to live in an ISIS-run state, or in a Jewish Orthodox settlement, or in some ruined small town in the “heartland” where church and opioids are you only recreations? Had I been so unfortunate as to have been born in one of these community paradises, I would have killed myself or escaped, no matter the price. Yes, you do you; and if you can’t, that’s your problem.
Anthony Kennedy. After all your years on the Supreme Court, you have let Trump’s orb bring you down. By bending to his will, with your abrupt retirement, you, like everyone else in his orb are now tarnished. Your legacy now is letting my and your grandchildren grow up in medieval times. This is how you will be remembered.
10
Finally, a good column by David without the tired straw man arguments, "Democrats want high taxes and big government, while Republican want personal responsibility and low taxes and reverence toward authority."
I guess even he can't print that one any longer.
1
This column is another example of how uncomfortable David Brooks is in his own skin. Like his comments last week about how brilliant Charles Krauthammer was because he could count backwards while speeding in a car, David Brooks seems ever more lost trying to justify an underlying world view that is so full of contradictions it can’t support a cogent or morally consistent argument. Honestly, Anthony Kennedy was such a philosophical kindred spirit of David Brooks that I can only conclude that his closeness to that vision and it’s rampant hypocrisy is completely blinding to him.
5
Oh good lord, what is this essay supposed to be? Brooks is on his mission to recreate village life in the 1700's, or at least endlessly pine for it. I sometimes feel his mission to restore shared religion and community is only channeling his annoyance that we masses can't live happily and quietly, oppressed and in poverty, like in the good old days of the barons of land, oil, coal, railroads, stocks, ruled by people who knew how to run things, our betters, people who deserved things. All this noise and selfishness now! What will they want next!
Sorry, this is America, where each American must create the universe anew, the place where anything is possible, the original place to "get away" and make your own life, where everyone is can be their own king. What is the first thing every American kid learns? "Hey, it's a free country." (And the "Hey" is not optional.) So what's all the complaining about Kennedy's line? And who said we all have to therefore be selfish, and inconsiderate, irresponsible, and isolated, and living in anarchy? That's Donald Trump. And "Responsible freedom"? The last thing Republicans can be expected to honor. What else you got?
9
You essay is correct, insightful and somewhat relevant, but how about applying your erudition and sensibility to real problems like bad schools and a minimum wage that forces people living in Houston to work full-time for $15,080 a year, while passive investors can leave millions to their children and grandchildren who will then be able to go to college without drowning in debt.
With the recent passing of Charles Krauthammer, you are probably the best conservative columnist in America. He acknowledged, among other things, that a woman raped by her husband should not have to raise a fifth or sixth child she cannot afford.
We appreciate your insights into philosophical questions. But please also address real problems directly. You write for the New York Times, not First Things of the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy.
4
Come on. First, what Kennedy wrote is absolutely true. You're not free if the state, acting as the "will" of "the people," can tell you how you "must" think of yourself. This is a pretty binary difference: either you have a right to make your own decisions about who you are and what you're about, or someone else gets to tell you, and once someone else gets to tell you, then the difference of whether it's someone's mystical interpretation of "the Founding Fathers" or some guy like Trump or Hitler is a quantitative, not a qualitative distinction. And absolutely nothing in the Constitution gives any branch or division of government the authority to command people to think of themselves in a particular way, a power that would be quite close in fact to the power to establish a religion.
Second, by acknowledging that thoughts, even thoughts about our own nature and purpose, are free, Kennedy did not exclude communitarianism; he said that it's the right and responsibility of each of us decide for ourselves how we define our relationship with the community.
And third, the notion that nearly all of us are incapable of exercising the right Kennedy recognized is nonsense. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that the Times' fundamental purpose is to enable and assist us in doing just that. The idea that there's some common-denominator sense of identity comprehensible to all that we're obligated to adopt insults the intelligence of all of us reading this.
2
Solipsism is the GOP way.
1
Mr. Brooks must have been a charming little boy. Oh, to be white, male, wealthy, and given a slot to earn one's living writing blithe and soothing columns in The New York Times.
Aren't you lucky that you are not brown skinned, female, poor (and ill, too boot!), an immigrant (however legal), gay, non-Christian - or someone who cares for any of these folks - who now wake every day knowing that the leader of the country and his "supporters" are making great strides in actually diminishing the prospect of your health and happiness and the health and happiness of your families and friends.
When the facts are clear, Anthony Kennedy belongs with the monsters, not with the angels. A long black robe cannot hide one's absolute inability to absorb the meaning of justice. One has to look, really absorb, the effects of rulings he has made - and jump over the part where he is this nice old man with glasses.
6
But that is your philosophy, your party's reason for being.
When liberals/Democrats strive for health care for all or collective bargaining for workers, they are called socialists.
7
David Brooks has a template, an all-purpose premise for every article he writes: family, the local community, law and order, and personal responsibility with the suppression of individuality (?) -- kind of an oxymoronic Republican-collectivist approach.
And in these times which our lenders tell us are "not normal" his incongruent philosophy seems to fit right in with the bewildering inconsistencies of the Trump Doctrine: free trade protectionism, improving and destroying Obamacare, middle class tax cuts for billionaires, law-abiding law-breaking, fiscally conservative deficit spending...
4
"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." Kennedy's words sound quaint today. Always a hard sell, national identity is just a shadow now. It comes forward only when we face an existential threat. Trump knows this. He conjures up chimeras - Hispanic gangs and drug smugglers overrunning our America. His followers know it's a charade, though, just a cover for them to unleash their inner racist. So Trump needs a real war, a real existential threat. War, as Chris Hedges says, is the force that gives us meaning.
1
What nonsense.
We do know what "I" would look like...dirty, unshaven, eating squirrel for dinner, and cleaning the guns.
But try as you might, it is almost impossible to be an "I".
It is true that a lot of people pretend to be "i"s, essentially talking smack to life itself. Funny how "We" we become in times of need and fear.
David there are things that are absolutely decided, problems that have only one correct answer. But believing that, is apparently elusive to some.
More science and less religion David, you may be surprise how much happier you will be.
7
I have little nostalgia for large parts of the we. I believe that the ‘we” of past times left a lot to be desired. That “we” was not made for everyone and many people felt choked by its hold on their personal lives. Individualism has provided many opputrtunities that many of us would have never had if they had listened to the “we”. I would have never done more than half of the things I have been so lucky to have done in my life if I had merely stayed a part of the we. Overall my life is much better than if I had stayed too much in the “we”. With that said I believe there is a balance point to be part of the “we” and still respect the individual. Large swaths of this country has not found that balance.
I agree wholeheartedly with Brooks, while admitting that many -perhaps all - social institutions oppress some of their members: that's the trade-off with community standards. Family, tribe, church, business, university faculty - they all are guilty, to some extent, of crushing individuals who don't fit in, and we need ways of protecting these individuals.
But the big omission from Brooks's anatomy of the downside of individualism is that it is the heart-and-soul of the dogma of Capitalism, that sees society as nothing but an economy, and the economy as nothing but a collection of individuals trying to get ahead of each other to rise to the top of the heap. Thus Justice Kennedy's last vote was to weaken public labor unions by "freeing" individual workers from having to contribute to the union's ability to bargain for the workers' collective well being. Whoopie! I'm now free to opt out of a community that looks out for my welfare, 'cause I gotta be ME!
12
David I am the same age as you. At 57 I don’t want to be bullied micro managed and told do this do that follow this covenant follow our Foubdubg father’s dreams of liberty justice freedom for all (except those African slaves you know...and then all those immigrants who followed).
I am worried about my daughter and her friends who have taken their own bodies as free, not dictated by Supreme Court justices with narrow distorted visions. They are going to fight back hard and fight fight all the way. Even Ireland has finally win the right to abortion the women no longer have to sneak into the UK to take care of their bodies. Do you have a daughter? If you do..and a young wife...you should be shouting louder!!
5
Why is it the most overtly and loudly religious are the meanest, cruelest, vicious people?
5
David is always so simplistic and every article is morality. Yet the US is under severe moral decline and it's the GOP's fault.
6
Thanks, David.
This is a guy who did not have the decency of standing for Obamacare and you are pontificating about philosophy, ethics, monadology and all sorts of other name throwing? Be a mensch for once and call the congress to postpone the appointment until after the November elections consistent with what McConnell conned us all to accept earlier on. I am sick of your meaningless, sophomoric essays that are as boneless as they essays can be.
4
excellent use of the word "monad".....great article David.
Sorry, man, your country is falling apart, its future uncertain, democracy on the ropes, and conservative columnists are hesitant to say what's going on....time to challenge Trump and FoxNews....summon your inner Edward R. Murrow....if you are truly despairing, then read "Lament For a Nation" by George Grant....get out of your bubble Mr. Brooks....you're avoiding....even George Will came out.....
5
Spoken like a navel gazing elite. Kennedy was appointed by Regan, the sainted one. Remember ??? Enough of the philosophy lessons and meandering. What, EXACTLY, are you suggestions for immediate improvements within our shared Community ? I'm very interested, I'm willing to listen, and possibly learn. Are you ???
4
This opinion is pure and clear. There is a kind of narcissism that thinks it is important to bear responsibility for controlling events. It can't bear to think that can only be local, a ripple in a tide. One guy told me he did it all himself, nobody ever gave him a favor and he didn't intend to return any. I asked him if he was born in outer space, or did someone teach him to speak English and read a height gage. How about his surly teenager; did he do that all by himself? All I can say is, it is a big load off your mind to think that you are a minor note, and there is a harmony to things that can be found and shared without much effort. Why be a monad, Dr Kant, Dr Hume?
1
I had stopped reading Brooks ever since the day he proclaimed that Jordan Peterson was the greatest living public intellectual (he probably had not read/seen peterson's misogynist rants).
But this piece is good. Forget all the praise for him, Kennedy was just a corporate shill and a tool (rsee: Citizens united)
this reminds me that 'increasing affluence tends to increasing individuation'
poor folk tend to stick together for survival - to support each other through tough times
rich folk tend to imagine that they 'did it all themselves' and shouldn’t have to pay tax as anyone who doesn't have their wealth is just lazy, and poor folk are obviously just trash, to be ignored or regarded like cockroaches.
the attribution bias:-
if I'm rich and successful it's because I'm smart and hardworking
if you're rich and successful it's because you were just lucky
if you're poor and failed it's because you're stupid and lazy
If I'm poor and failed it's because I was just unlucky.
5
Kennedy is, and always was, a Ronald Reagan plant and far right-wing narcissistic freak who managed to get a somewhat "moderating" tag due to a few cherry-picked cases. Overall he voted with the right wing immoral thieves who stole elections, and upheld evil policies. Now, he showed his true colors yet again by not waiting until the end of the next SCOTUS term after the November election and giving the manchurian candidate criminal grifter russian traitor a decisive SCOTUS pick. It can not happen and if it happens, they Republican creeps need to be brought down.
3
On a good day when all the stars and planets are lined up correctly and his biorhythms are optimal Justice Kennedy (both a moron and oxymoron) at best approaches mediocre, and that's working from the bottom up. His LTGB decisions when compared to the damage he's done is like saying "haven't had a cold for years, blood pressure is great, now if I could just do something about the AIDs".
The millennium has been marked by two of the worst presidents in history, both Republicans. Whenever the Republicans have had control over either the House or Senate they've done nothing more than block efforts at positive change or else feathered their own nests. Anyone agree with loading them all on a boat for a one-way voyage to St. Petersburg so they can have leaders who match their aspirations?
5
Rules and norms are only as good as the intent and wisdom of those who made them. In the antebellum south the rules and norms allowed slave owners to continue their horrid practice. In 30's Germany it allowed Hitler to wipe out swaths of 'unacceptable' people. The same goes for Stalinist Russia and every tyrannical state throughout history.
We in this country are now in the process of reevaluating the rules and norms we adopted to ensure the rights of people previously excluded, such as women, the poor, the elderly and minorities of all colors. We thought it was established law that everyone had the vote and a voice. Now it turns out that those with the most money, the right color of skin or gender are granted those rights and everyone else need not apply.
As the supreme Court is allowed to make its new rulings wiping away history we must be aware that what will be left will be closer to the antebellum south than the idea of an inclusive society where everyone is honored.
5
Contrary to David Brooks, I read Kennedy's “mystery of life” concept of individual rights as necessarily implying that individuals are "embedded in a social order". If not, what is the context which gives those rights meaning? Brooks implies that American and western society have degenerated "over the decades". One suspects he has the 60s in mind. I think he ignores the stone that really upset the stream of western history - WWII, the Holocaust and then the Nuremberg trials. Hitler and the Nazi party represented the will of the majority and were the legitimate authority. Yet virtue resided in preserving an individual morality in opposition. It was not enough to argue that one merely followed orders. The Great Generation, and certainly many of their children, took this lesson to heart: that ALL societies need dissent, need the individual mind to preserve the capacity for morality when the social order has lost it. THIS is the once-shared belief that those ugly commencement cliches betray. Brooks also ignores the traditions of people like Mark Twain, who has Huck Finn, that most courageous of innocents, say to himself that he will go to a literally imagined hell rather than betray Jim the runaway slave, who (Huck concedes) is the "legitimate" property of the Widow Douglas. Of course, the individual conscience is not an orphan. Social rebels choose a suppressed over a dominant structure, but they have to make this choice within their own minds, and oftentimes literally alone.
2
Iv'e never read a completely illogical/muddled commentary from you before this rambling blathering excercize in tautology.
A dozen points of view wrapped around even more inconclusions!
Has the incrompehensible tsunami of trumpthink worn you down?
Think vacation.
3
Liberty you shall seek, or death in slavery you shall receive.
If the article in the New York Times this morning in regards to Trump pressuring Justice Kennedy to step down WE who believe in DEOCRACY have a giant problem. We need to be taking to the street and stop turkey neck from controlling the process. If not we the Americans of today are responsible for the destruction of American Democracy. Trump a failed businessman, a liar, hater has the nerve to think he will go unchecked. If we don't have brilliant people on the Supreme Court excluding Mr. Thomas what do we have left?. A bunch of morons destroying the country. Where are those two thousand children Trump, Sanders, where are they ? Brooks you should of started the conversation about Justice Kennedy talking about the missing.
3
Justice Kennedy was just another republican Trump toady. Because of this the Supreme Court has become another republican biased hate group and will become more so when another even more hateful, bigoted, amoral, unethical, liar replaces him. Why not just nominate a skinhead or white supremacist instead of a jurist in black robes? Same thing to the sordid republican party led by their sick baby bully ignorant leader and abetted by the toady do-nothing but obstruct republican anti-American congress. Hitler had his Jews as scapegoats. Trump has his latinos. Remember all this citizens when you vote in November.
5
Every so often I submit essentially the same comments about Brooks so here we go again.
Whenever David Brooks starts bloviating about our lost sense of national community etc. remember this:
Brooks had no problem with Ronald Reagan opening his 1980 presidential campaign by giving a speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi about the wonders of states rights.
That surely made black Americans feel a sense of national community
Brooks thought that Rick Santorum was fine presidential timber. Santorum surely made gay Americans feel a sense of national community.
Brooks called people who opposed the 2003 Iraq war cowards. That ill begotten war has done more to destroy America than any other action I can think of. He still seems to think it was a good idea.
He supported the Bust tax cuts in the middle of that war. No comment necessary.
He was the leading exponent of the deranged myth of Paul Ryan as serious policy wonk. To quote Brooks on one of Ryan's budget scams "The brave Paul Ryan".
One could go on forever.
He supported Reagan, and both Bushes, and now that we've reached the inevitable conclusion of 50 years of Republican madness with Trump he's concerned about our sense of national purpose. Brooks has been wrong on every important issue for he last 40 years and he makes several million dollars a year lecturing us about our faults.
What an Ahole
7
I think you must have recently read the book Homo Deus and the chapter on Humanism. Or, maybe the parts on Immanuel Kant. Or maybe, yes that's it, Larry Slade.
"I was born to be one of those who has to see all sides of a question. When you are damned like that the questions multiply for you until in the end it's all questions and no answer. "The Iceman Cometh"
3
A shared community, yes, but one that respects the rights of each. A community of individuals committted to caring about the welfare of all, while being true to themselves.
A balance between individual rights and individual responsibilities - to one's self, one's family, one's community, one's country, one's world.
The founders of our country tried to embody this balance into our Constitution - to form a government that would protect the rights of the individual by making it the responsibility of individuals under the law, to protect the rights of all.
The antithesis of the zero-sum game practiced by our current president.
He and his followers have adopted the belief that the world is made up of winners and losers, that they will be the winners, and to hell with the losers, who deserve to lose anyway.
These two world views are incompatible and cannot coexist in the principles and practices of one government.
If the majority of the country likes what it sees in the movement that Trump made his own and endorses its governmental philosophy at the polls, the government formed by the founders of our country will be transformed into the board upon which Trump's zero-sum game will be played.
But if the majority of voters reject the cynicism of the zero-sum game, we might yet be able to protect the balance of rights and responsibilities that promote both community and individual liberty as embodied in the rule of law, our Constitution, and the principles on which they stand.
2
Mr. Brooks, this story about Kennedy's son giving over $1Billion in loans to the corrupt, sleazy real estate man, Donald Trump, while the younger Kennedy was at Deutsche Bank, just broke:
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21999314/anthony-kennedy...
Republicans are rotten to the core, starting with the corrupt Republican president, spreading to the corrupt Republican leader of the Senate and the corrupt Republican Speaker of the House, ending with the last stand for We, the people, the corrupt Republican-appointed judges, starring your "mysterious Kennedy."
Disgusting.
3
As usual, Mr. Brooks does not mention the economic aspect of the autonomy ethos and the connection of this ethos to capitalism. The behavior of Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Pharma, our financial overlords, Facebook, Volkswagen, and nearly all our other large economic actors shows that they too must be embedded in and formed by a shared moral and civic order, and what happens when they are not.
Even more than people, corporations need the restraint of their individual desires. And this restraint will not come from the restraint of their employees, who will not get promoted if their restraint or moral scruples keep them from serving the bottom line. A cigarette company executive troubled by lung cancer either leaves the company or is used as window dressing to promote the illusion of a company that cares.
Corporate desires must be restrained by governments, unions, and (most important because it underlies support of the others) public suspicion and mistrust. Corporations spend billions in public relations efforts to overcome this suspicion; this includes supporting politicians who help them quell the suspicion and/or put up with the corporations anyway because of the jobs they bring or take away. By not mentioning corporate desires and how to control them, Mr. Brooks shows that he is still part of the problem, hiding it while pretending to want to solve it.
5
I'm a great fan of David Brooks and while I'm a liberal who firmly supports individual rights and liberties within a market system governed by the rule of law, his emphasis on the importance of community is well taken. Two things, though.
First, let us be clear that in the ruling (PP v. Casey) from which the mystery of life passage is taken, Kennedy joined those Justices who refused to overrule Roe.
Second, and related, the concrete facts of Casey remind us that women who would have been subject to the Penn law challenged as unconstitutional faced the monumental decision not just what the universe means to them but whether they were to carry a pregnancy to term. In other words, there was much more at stake there, in terms of the very real impact on women's lives, than simply refining one's philosophical outlook on the world.
6
"We are all monads who walk around with our own individual opinions about existence, meaning and the universe. Each person is a self-created choosing individual, pursuing individual desires."
But there are still plenty of tribal "values" and credo and ritual banks out there and most of us, as children, are likely to have one of those "values" and credo and ritual banks recommended to us as superior to others or at least more "ours" than others, if we are not in effect something like brainwashed with them. The amount of demonstrable fact in any of these tribal systems is, however, pretty close to the zero level. I can't imagine that you, David, as a defender of liberty, could want to deprive any of us -- Catholic, Jew, Evangelical Protestant, non-Evangelical Protestant, Muslim, Communist, kardecista or other -- of the right to turn our backs on them.
I would myself not be sorry to see Kennedy go if only his successor didn't promise to be worse. But in many instances the "concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life" that the individual finds for himself is an awful lot better than the inherited one.
3
And now Anthony Kennedy goes to pursue his own 'mystery of life' with not a whit of accountability for the mayhem that he has unleashed on the rest of us prior to the next elections. And why should he, if he finds social structures, community norms in which individuals operate to be irrelevant. His majority participation in Citizens United and other similar decisions showed his lack of interest in the consequences of his decisions.
3
A faulty premise of this column is the idea that autonomy and community are mutually exclusive values. In this time of great polarization and rampant groupthink, I propose that we need more independent thought, not less. The values of autonomy and community can and do live in creative tension in many individuals and societies. Mr. Brooks often falls into the either/or fallacy in his columns--it's his favorite logical fallacy--and he does so again here.
5
Sorry but I do not buy much of David's thinking on this. I am proud to be a card-carrying liberal, but I will never surrender my individual autonomy, including the right, power and ability to decide for myself the great questions that life poses.
Certainly my opinions and beliefs have been filtered through the collective but they are finally shaped by ME and emerge as my own.
2
OK, Mr. Brooks. We get it. You have never not wanted to go back to the 1950s where straight white men get to organize the world and everybody else just has to stay in their place. But you're wrong. Equality means that I have the right, and the responsibility, to make my own choices. The leap from alternative opinions to alternative facts is not necessary, and it is all coming from your side. We the people get to decide how we're going to govern ourselves, and the Constitution was written to make sure that minorities were protected -- as the Federalists said, the majorities can take care of themselves. Justice Kennedy's insight in the same-sex marriage decision, which your ilk tends to consider a violation of "our" morality, is that injustice by its nature hides and can be corrected only when it is revealed. You call it "privatization," but it is "personalization." Without it, there is no liberty and no expression of equality. The trampling of others' rights is a contradiction to it, not a feature. Again, that feature is pretty much all on our side, Red Hen excepted.
Why is it that as Brooks bemoans the loss of a fundamentally righteous conservatism he cannot seem to embrace the core community values of liberalism (or progressivism not to be confused with classical economic liberalism). I fail to identify with his and other conservatives characterization of the core values of progressives. I see no culture of victimization but an expanding inclusiveness and kindness. When you consider the public policies put forth by conservatives and the Koch lead libertarians do you see policies of kindness or inclusion? There is a basic fundamental meanness to their policies. In a time of increasing inequality, lack of shared values, and the politics of demonization, I kindly suggest that Brooks and his ilk at least listen for once to voices on their left rather than fall into the right's stereotypes.
3
"The second problem is that Professor Kennedy gives us a homework assignment that almost none of us can actually fulfill. Each of us has to define our own “concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
Wow! That requires a lot of background reading. If your name is Aristotle or Nietzsche, maybe you can do it, but for the rest of us it’s going to be tough. We’re busy!"
Is it an issue that many of the GOP are Any Rand disciples who don't worry too much about mysteries or meaning - just the virtues of selfishness.
4
Anthony Kennedy, nihilist? Mr. Brooks, your essay flies in the face of 30 years' of opinions and what we know of Justice Kennedy, and stretches the quoted passage way past it's context. Neither Mr. Kennedy nor any except the most extreme libertarians would subscribe to the position you write about.
What IS true is that in the past 50 years, our country has gone through dramatic and perhaps fundamental change. We can see the day when people of Caucasian descent will not be a majority. People of all colors and religions have immigrated here and enriched our economic and cultural life. The Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements have brought to the light attitudes and behaviors that were overdue to be exposed for what they are: oppressive and cruel tools to maintain structures of power. We're now in the midst of an Administration that daily shows it's disregard for truth, civility, and for people who can't fight for themselves.
In this context, I would argue that we're undergoing a radical and painful reexamination of the structures that have been in place in our country for a century or more, between those with reactionary conservative/traditional tendencies and those who embrace change and diversity.
At such a time, when structures are being questioned and challenged, it seems natural--and healthy--for individuals to come up with their own questions and search for their own answers.
1
@A Lee. Brooks wouldn’t say an unkind word about Tony Kennedy if the words Windsor and Obergefell weren’t in the picture. And Brooks seems to forget rather often that the vote on Roe was 7-2. That’s how the community felt then, including those famous left-wing nuts named Burger and Powell. Brooks doesn’t want a sense of community for the rest of us. He wants all of us to join HIS community. He’ll be happy real soon when the Republican Party is the permanent party of rule forever and that’ll be the only community left.
1
"Over the decades, that sense of we-ness began to turn into a sense of I-ness or you-ness." As usual Mr Brooks pretends that this just sort of happened. But Ronald Reagan's sustained assault on the common good, and his party's continuation of that assault. is the main reason it happened, and Mr Brooks was always a great cheerleader for that. Reagan said that government wasn't the solution, it was the problem, that somehow our government -- which Lincoln had said was of the people, by the people, and for the people -- was the enemy, like those old tyrannies in Europe, where the only freedom was in resisting the oppressive power of the government. Everything that pertains to the common good was assailed, undermined, insulted, in deference to the all-important freedom of the individual. Which has only ever meant, the rich and powerful individual, of the kind that owns and runs the Republican Party, in whose service Mr Brooks has faithfully labored. He is now upset, as are many of his fellow conservatives, at what he has wrought. I will start to listen to his lament as soon as he takes responsibility for the world he has so energetically helped to create.
2
@AW. What? Brooks is upset at what he has wrought? Whatever gave you that idea? This column smugly assets that he’s been right all along: stop being an individual and fall in line, or else. Ain’t that the message? (And by the way if you don’t fall in line, you will pretty quickly because John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch won’t give you a choice.)
1
Reading this, I am reminded of the contrasting leadership of FDR and Donald Trump. FDR's speeches and especially his fireside chats pulled a frightened, demoralized country together and gave it purpose and hope. His words were always about the "we", not the "me".
Compare that achievement of leadership to the divisive, demeaning, angry tone of Donald Trump's rallies. We all have frustrations, misgivings, and fears. Trump has manipulated those negative emotions among his supporters and pointed the blame for them at Democrats, 'elites', immigrants, other countries including our closest allies, Hollywood, etc., etc.
We deserve better.
2
Is Brooks taking Kennedy where it was not intended to be taken? The “mystery of life” dies not preclude acknowledging parts of ourselves that we inherit — family, race, social roles.
If in fact one is so constrained by what we are handed down then there is no Galileo, Picasso, Steve Jobs.
Indeed Kennedy is right. Each person is a self-created choosing individual, sovereign in body and thought.
I think the Framers meant “We the People”, “All men are created equal” to guide the formation of a more egalitarian society, as a departure from “We the Nobility” and “Nobility is better than others” structure from the yokes of which they broke free.
2
Beginning with Nixon who was a master at manipulation through anger and fear, Republican strategy has been to divide us. They have succeeded admirably. Thay have championed the concept of autonomy. It has brought us a rise in hate groups, mass shootings, gerrymandering, stabbing our allies in the back. It has culminated in the trump presidency. Yes Hillary Clinton once said "it takes a Village" Mr Brooks, Republicans threw gasoline on that and lit a match.
2
If "It takes a village", I'd rather read the original than Yuval Levin's.
1
I appreciate that in this column David Brooks has resisted the temptation to proclaim religion as the solution to our problems. As a "Christian atheist," I am not one to declare that religion is always evil, but I do feel like Christianity is going through one of its periods of grave corruption and harm to society, perhaps the last gasp of a dying creed. I don't much care if the Christian religion survives, but I also don't think it would be such a bad idea to have the teachings of Jesus, sans the supernatural fealty, as part of a public school ethics curriculum. Really, it's his dad I don't like – a bit too Trumpish for my taste.
1
@John B.
“I appreciate that in this column David Brooks has resisted the temptation to proclaim religion as the solution to our problems.“
Your take is confusing. It looks to me like that’s exactly what he does.
3
David; I agree (who wouldn't); so now let us take it a step further: what are the forces of individualism, of anti-communal greed, of decisiveness in today's' Society? Only the blind would argue that it is the coastal elitist mandarins (aka the democrat party). They are the ones who instituted the policy of selling the American worker to the highest bidder abroad (aka NAFTA), they have fostered the all-penetrating mindset of lack of social responsibility for oneself and one's family (aka welfare checks), they are attempting to destroy what little is left of the blue-collar (aka "lower-class") jobs in manufacturing and services by propagating illegal immigration. The rich readership of this paper doesn't care that Joe plumber's job wages will be undercut in half (or more) by Jose the illegal immigrant from Guatemala who is willing to work for peanuts. I have nothing against Jose's desire to live a better life, but NOT at the expense of Joe. The democrat party is destroying the tapestry of our society. Trump is the silent majority's answer to that destruction. you better get rid of your schizophrenic world outlook, the democrat party, and see what you are doing to our country - you are destroying it. trump is the only one who can help us, save us.
Good column; of a piece with other attempts by Mr. Brooks to lament the lack of what was called communitarianism back in the day (Hillary was mad about it!). Whinging on about Trump seems to be the default criticism in the comments. My take: Too little, too late and alas, too tepid.
Again, your hero Reagan started calling us "taxpayers" rather than "citizens", and everything went downhill from there (the "makers" and the "takers", diluting the Judiciary by forcing "arbitration" rather than litigation against the powerful, etc.). Liberals might be a little heavy on government, but at least they always try to unite us as a community.
Keep trying, tough. You have the right to believe that you can return to the 50s. You have the liberty to "define your own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe."
1
Mr. Brooks, you may choose to define "Conservatism" any which why choose, and all your recent musings about "community" notwithstanding, but it has been the worst form of oppressive state one can imagine. The only end state of the current form of "conservatism" is the Taliban.
And you have been part and parcel of it all along. Had best of intentions, but none-the-less a willing participant.
The right wing uses language to distort and glorify. Brooks is covering this time for a right wing hack who has codified too many bad things.
The court won't change that much. Kennedy will be replaced by another right wing hack.
3
I discovered a truth many years ago that sustains me to this day in my dealings with my fellow human beings: We are all one.
If I see everybody in the world as myself I will do very little to make their lives miserable, instead I will offer them my smile.
And it has worked very well these last 50 years.
And I still get to be myself.
Brooks, it does indeed "take a village" and how I remember the yowling from your side of the political aisle when Hillary Clinton used that meme. You would have thought she was wearing a hammer and sickle on her lapel.
So what are you about, Mr. Brooks? How about using your influence to help turn some of the minds of your party's voting base back to the concept of democracy and compromise. And away from the all out war they wage against opposing IDEAS.
How about a few columns on some practical advice instead of these lectures from your ivory tower.
With his retirement at this precise time Kennedy has shown that he is no more a patriot and real American than the so called president he is gifting with his departure. His legacy is finished.
4
"Wow! That requires a lot of background reading. If your name is Aristotle or Nietzsche, maybe you can do it, but for the rest of us it’s going to be tough. We’re busy!"
Chill, snowflake! Astounding though it may be that a professional opinion columnist can be so obtuse regarding the 'mystery of life', it is appalling still that the pursuit of life's meaning should be painted in such a distasteful manner.
Justice Kennedy is moral relativism in human form. Perhaps it's time to see past this mythology of morality and accept the reality conveyed by the Bard: "All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players."
I believe Kennedy's legacy will suffer greatly bc he has abandoned the American people at the worse time in our history. According to this article he has also let Trump manipulate him sweetly while the White house put pressure on him to retire.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/us/politics/trump-anthony-kennedy-ret...
I deeply hate Trump.
3
Roe v. Wade did not come with a deed to the moral high ground.
@Larry. Exactly what high moral ground gives the state control over anybody’s body? Of course if you live in North Korea or Russia they have control over your body because they can kill you at will and do. So maybe they have the deed to high moral ground. If you don’t think Roe v Wade gives anybody the deed you might be much happier somewhere where the high moral ground is completely different than here. On the other hand, give the Supreme Court six or eight months and you can have all the high moral ground back because there won’t be any left for the rest of us.
So what has happened to you to bring this realization after years of supporting the Mitch McConnells of the world, the Koch brothers, the Ted Cruzes.
Your journey toward reality would be a worthy column.
2
Shame on you Mr. Brooks. That community in We The People was for white men only and in too many ways still is. I am an atheist, where do I belong in your community? I am female, what have the institutions of this country given to me. We are all in this together as someone pointed out but the 'this' is our planet, our universal basic needs and our universal value. Not your morals nor religious morality nor the tyranny of the majority has a place for me and the multitude of not white men.
Conservatives love their institutions & their own established power those institutions support and it is not because it takes a village but because they cannot see beyond their own piles of loot or at the very least their self righteous sanctimony.
Conservatives are just milder versions of reactionaries, shame on you, Mr. Brooks. Maybe your Judeo - Christian morality feels like the answer to all life's dilemmas but imo they are a blight the rest of us will eventually consign to the dustbin.
1
Kennedy's definition of freedom is pretty accurate for the Hobbesian world towards which we are moving
"Community" is crucial but can oppress. Ask minorities and, increasingly, women. Founders built in adjustment mechanisms which are being broken down. US has almost been contentious but large social and tech changes over-stress system as in 1850's. We need to restore political balance and yet follw Kennedy but not a outrance. Hope you cottinue to explore issues.
Mr. Brooks quotes a right-wing, nearly fundamentalist website — one that essentially says “natural law” means whatever Christians think it means — to attack the jurisprudence of “fairness” of Anthony Kennedy. Something has gone wrong. Terribly wrong. When Brooks says we can’t be responsible human beings without being taught morality — read: religion — in our schools, he is, first, dismissing the First Amendment out of hand, and second, demonizing and dismissing a large chunk of the American population, specifically those of us who know what morality is without being told by the church. What is happening at the Times when it endorses this kind of fundamentalist sophistry? When did the Times become a shill for organized religion
and an attacker of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom from religion? This is truly scary.
"... — read: religion — in our schools"
"... without being told by the church."
Brooks never mentions "religion" or "church", so you are putting words into his mouth. Further, Brooks refers to "schools, the public culture, even the parents", so you need to address each item in that list.
"What is happening at the Times when it endorses ..."
"When did the Times become ..."
Opinion columnists do not represent the views of the Times. If you want the Times to stop publishing Brooks's columns, you should just say so. Or you could just not read them.
Thanks so much, David. Justice Kennedy’s retirement may have generated undue praise. Let’s not forget that in Trump v. Hawaii, after voting with the majority, he seemed to be assuaging his conscience by stating in his concurrence:
“An anxious world must know that our Government remains committed always to the liberties the Constitution seeks to preserve and protect, so that freedom extends outward, and lasts.”
Lasts until it doesn’t, that is. Thanks for nothing, Justice Kennedy.
1
I think that Mr. Brooks is saying something simple and true and all-encompassing. That is, we have personal and civic duties as well as responsibilities to ourselves. Balancing these demands is what living in society is about. And sometimes it requires immense personal sacrifice. Well, Donne said it better than I: “No man is an island unto himself. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
You forgot to add, "You kids get off my lawn!" Mr. Brooks.
It is not necessarily "a short road from getting to define your own truth to getting to define your own facts." The essential element is a society that denigrates the pursuit of knowledge, that minimizes acquired expertise, that ignores plainly apparent fact. Someone, or a group of someones, bears the burden of that.
What's happened to America is not an inevitability. There are cultures, both current and historical, that have found a balance between personal expression and social commitment. A common thread among them is they tend to not worship money.
4
"That people shares a moral order — rules that are true for all people in all times and that govern us in our freedom. Among them, for example, is the idea that all people are created equal."
I get what Brooks is saying. There's value in community. But communities can be very selfish themselves. Affluent communities routinely complain about their tax dollars being used to build resources in poorer communities. Consider the disparate communal response to Puerto Rico versus, say, Houston. Or consider how readily so many communities were to "get tough" on urban/minority communities decimated by drug addiction, but so committed to "treatment and rehabilitation" now that they face their own.
And while community may sound traditional and conservative, the idea of community seems to be out of favor with conservative leadership. Communities are told that people with whom they've lived in peace for years should be given no sanctuary from ICE. In an era of record-profits and technical innovation, we condemn some communities (like Appalachia) to send generation after generation into mines rather than giving them an educational pathway into the modern economy. We essentially tell members of the Muslim community to leave anyone they might know overseas to the slaughter. And it speaks volumes that a politician could successfully campaign on a platform of unapologetic bigotry and that our highest court would feign ignorance when such bigotry is memorialized in policy.
3
If one only has to please and take responsibility for him or herself, we are lost to all the beauty in the world. Participating and loving and doing good to and for others. Just because a person believes this or that doesn't give the right to impose that view on anyone. Nor does it give the right to say this or that must be and so, in essense, "I get my way, you like it or lump it".
Buried in the middle of this article about Kennedy is the relationship between his son/Deutschebank and Trump Shocking stuff. I've put in some details over there, with links to two New Yorker exposes of Deutschebank, one of Trump's links with Russia and moneylaundering.
https://nyti.ms/2IDJcct
1
I rarely agree with you, Mr. Brooks, and this is one of such occasions. There is no mystery of life more transparent than the rise to power of Mr. Trump (his own hair included) in the troubled history of this proud country. Your piece ads a thoughtful dimension to that solvable puzzle. It also lights the path to understand why, following the drumbeat of his very own heart of dark matter, Mr. Kennedy picked this most troubled of times to retire.
2
This is a country that is well down the list of every index of quality of life, prosperity, life span, public safety. No other country has mass shootings in everyday life. The poor, children and those most disadvantaged are treated with minimal empathy and compassion, and many conservatives would eliminate most funding of what there is if they could.
The singular problem, fault, source of why the US is far less great than it pretends is worshiping the individual while having disdain for the greater good. It is the country's most prominent defect, and at odds with other successful — sometimes more successful — capitalistic democracies. It doesn't occur to far too many, mostly white by the way, citizens that the greater good give everyone, not just the fortunate, a decent quality of life...and dignity.
Trump is what happens when the most ignorant, selfish and self-absorbed vote and those who know better do not. Kennedy was, except for an important handful of socio-cultural issues, invariably on the wrong side...far too obsessed with individuals and not with the greater good.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
1
Thank you, David Brooks for this very important column. I agree completely. The only thing I would add is that in the name of profit and efficiency, we are doing away with more and more human connections: we can see it in medicine where the drive for shorter and shorter appointments and more and more streamlined, computerized records are doing away from the vital connection between patient and doctor and also in chain stores where you can now check yourself out: no need for human contact. There are many other examples, but it seems the current goals of our society are rapidly breaking more and more community ties.
2
The extreme forms of individualism are rebuked by three quite different forces. The three great monotheistic religions all insist that loving and cooperating with our fellow man is an essential element of salvation. The “school of hard knocks” constantly reminds us that our earthly home will always present us with challenges and dilemmas that simply cannot be solved without cooperative effort – our first ancestors quickly discovered this. Finally, though it may sound formally dry, scientific logic constantly reminds us that in our highly connected, interactive world, efficient collaboration is not only the path to great accomplishment and societal triumph – it is plainly required for human survival. The “human mystery” is far less “mysterious” if we accept at some level the miracle of cooperative human triumph.
3
A thoughtful article, but it seems that Kennedy links liberty and freedom with the right to discover, articulate and define a world view, not necessarily create one. That's the difference between what is true, whether I believe it or not, and "my truth," which means thinking red when everyone thinks green.
I can't disagree with Kennedy's statement on liberty. That isn't the problem. The problem is that there is no balance between the existential position of the individual and the necessity of communal values.
When enough people take on the individual responsibility to look for themselves, communal values are brought into question. When enough people do this and come to the conclusion that the society no longer reflects the truth, then change in the larger institutions will happen.
The Republican party lost its association with truth was then easy pickings for the narcissistic and autocratic among us.
Balance will be restored as the individuals who have discovered truth for themselves, find that it is common, and shared.
Truth is not relative, but discovering it for oneself is not a bad thing.
1
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a conservative liberitarian who passionately said in the same sentence "We don't need government. People should work together to try and solve problems in their communities themselves." To which I replied "government is the way we the people come together to solve problems". He didnt seem to get it...
2
The point is, Republicans long ago forgot about, "we, the people". Beginning with Reagan, it became, "us rich, white boys, and to heck with everyone else". And one one the decade long defenders of this Party...David Brooks.
1
Save us from the sanctimony of Anthony Kennedy. He's another right winger, narrow minded and bathing in sophistry.
He ain't no Brandeis, he ain't no Warren, he ain't no Holmes, he ain't no Black, and he ain't no Brennan.
2
In a famous homily written nearly 4 centuries ago John Donne captured the essence of humanity in words that have resonated across the years: "No man is an island." What Americans neglect in their mad search for individual liberty, personal autonomy, is that a just society must be based upon an intuitive recognition that we depend on one another and the burden of human existence is lightest when it is shared. "Every man's death diminishes me because I am a part of mankind. Therefore do not send to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
2
Isaac Hecker, an American spiritual seeker, founded the Paulist Fathers, a Catholic community of priests, in New York City in 1858 with the goal to serve the American people by encouraging religious and secular dialog and cooperative civic action that stressed the essential relationship between American individualism with community and service. Today, David Brooks punctuated that same indispensable marriage in his critical assessment of Anthony Kennedy's legacy. As a Paulist Father I applaud Mr. Brooks (as I frequently do) for the insight and the strong moral commitment his Op-Eds so often convey. Yay!
1
The two poles of independence v conformity seem to be epitomized today by the US and China. Both relatively successful in economic terms. We have lost all concept of the commons as illustrated by the fact that we willingly let many people suffer and die needlessly because they can't afford costly private insurance. China, on the other hand, imprisons all outliers even when their ideas would clearly be helpful.
There was a time after WWII when Europe seemed to have reached the successful middle ground with Social-Democracy. A genuine concern with the commons in the form of fair taxation to provide health care, old age security etc. But they found it increasingly difficult to be successful against the bottom line individualistic mentality and ruthlessness of the American model and lately the collectivist bottom line mentality and ruthlessness of the Chinese model. Thus we saw Thatcherism and now Macronism as well as movements in other European countries eroding social democracy.
Perhaps since extremism in both collectivism and individualism seem to inevitably lead excess and ruthlessness, we are doomed to repeat the cycle .
Individual autonomy is, and must be, bounded by the rules of living in a community. Those who are truly autonomous are antisocial, often psychopathic, criminals who don't recognize or simply refuse to comply with societal boundaries. What Kennedy was referring to was not the criminal but the average person whose autonomy is of belief and action within and consistent with community. Self interest is ordinary human behavior, not the product of modernity. We can exercise individual freedom while supporting the needs of community - they are not exclusive of each other.
2
And why then were you not an ardent supporter of Hillary Mr. Brooks. You speak out of both sides of your mouth and therefor what you say has no power.
1
You are failing us by not mentioning that the timing of his retirement was actually bought! Insuring Donald gets the pick in exchange for Federal Justice seats for his loyal valets! The Supreme Court is being bought. That is Kennedy's true legacy!!!
3
So often when I read your pieces, Mr. Brooks, I find myself murmuring, "Well, yes. . . .yes. . .okay. . . .yes. . . .
"AND YET. . . . . ."
This is one of those pieces.
There's a mysterious passage in Horace. What does it mean? Well, one interpretation is pretty simple:
There's a lot of land between the Rhine (Germany) and the Don (Russia).
A lot of land indeed! Hundreds upon hundreds of miles.
There's a lot of room, Mr. Brooks, between the lawless autonomy you deprecate so feelingly. . . .
. . .and governments which take it away. Governments which are intrusive--overbearing--tyrannical.
History is FULL of overbearing and tyrannical governments. Isn't it? I'm reading a life of Bismarck right now--and my goodness! Prussian society of two hundred years ago was pretty rigid. Stratified. Unbending.
I seriously question, sir, whether that one quote from Justice Kennedy is enough to pin him as a wild-eyed individualist. An antinomian. A lawless radical.
I doubt, sir, whether he--or anyone on the Court--is quite the avowed foe of social norms--institutions--forms of community that you describe in your piece.
We all want SOME form of personal liberty. But none of us (by the same token) want to do away with churches--or Boy Scout troops--or bridge clubs--or bowling leagues.
We want a happy medium. Don't we? Don't YOU, Mr. Brooks? 'Cause after all. .. .
. .. there's a lot of land between the Rhine and the Don.
Isn't there?
You tell me.
2
Kennedy is an opportunist who got the reputation of an honest broker for all the wrong reasons. It was Judge Roberts in the end of the day who felt he couldn’t face himself in the mirror and let Obamacare live not your wonderful Kennedy. Good riddance I say and await for your brilliant essays arguing for his replacement to be nominated after the November elections. Will you do that David? I much doubt it.
1
I completely agree.
Sorry, I don't understand this column at all, Mr Brooks
You seem to lament the destruction of community in face of individual liberty; yet, the libertarians have been silent on the reactionary destruction of the same liberties like reproduction rights.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for a compassionate community, even if it is compassionate conservatism. But President W Bush has only paid lip service to such a possibility.
Look, I spent some times in Kansas in my youth. The Kassebaum Kansas. It had a heartland conservative with a live-and-let-live attitude. It took it 20 years to finish a highway extension. Then the Koches and Sam Brownback have taken over and Kansas now is the worst of possible worlds for public education. Even after the Court stepped in. There is neither community nor liberty.
The world is not binary. Relativism is not wrong in the gray areas. Sure, there are some sacrosanct areas. Like not using children as a weapon in any ways. Trump's psycho warfare on illegal immigrants and asylum seekers is not better than Boko Haram kidnapping girls and indoctrinating boys to be its foot soldiers. This is not about community, liberty, relativism or absolutism. This is about basic human decency!
1
Well.... David, yes.
So what does this mean for you?
Are you going to renounce your present and former life as spokesperson for the Anthony Kennedy's of this world? the William Rehnquists? the Ronald Regans? the Bushes? the - God forbid - Dick Cheneys
Surely Trump is well beyond your stomach..
You are a good man, David. You've tried hard to remain the good and loyal soldier of Conservatism but it has cratered into a miasma of immorality under Trump and Bush/Cheney.
That's all I have to say about that but BTW, Levin writes: "A key goal of progressive taxation and the modern welfare state is to increase significantly the liberty of the poor at a relatively minimal cost to the liberty of the rich." Not really
Rather, we are interested in taxation as justice and fairness. Try that. You will be surprised how all else falls in line.
Good luck, David.
In the "libertarian"/Kennedy/Randian system of thought only the psycopath is truly free.
The USA is doing a great job creating and enabling psycopaths.
America needs to get its head on straight and start rejecting this kind of nonsense. Regaining your sense of morals might be a good start.
2
So, you hated the '60's and women's liberation and the new freedoms that gave us the street demonstrations that ended Vietnam? You hate "Arab Springs"?
There is a passive aggressive tone to most of what you write these days, as if you are just aching to explode with a manifesto of how we should all act. That's ok, most of we geezers are that way.
Let it out.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
1
By all means, let's spend a lot of time pondering the proper balance between "I" and "We." Meanwhile, the president - aided and abetted by the Republican "We" - is tearing apart the Constitution.
1
Freedom's just another word for the powers that conservatives want to grant themselves while denying to others the powers that they want. There's the freedom to own weapons of war without limitation; the freedom to refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple; the freedom to refuse to fill a prescription for a woman having a miscarriage; the freedom of a "crisis pregnancy center" to mislead women about their motives, the services they offer, and the alternatives available elsewhere; and so on.
Then there's the flip side -- women should not expect the freedom to control their own reproductive health; people should not expect that their votes and opportunity to vote will be protected against partisan laws that suppress both; people should not expect that the government they elected will exercise the power to examine the public health implications of living in a country with more guns than people and little in the way of protections against being a victim of gun violence; and so on.
In other words, it really comes down to the power of one group over another. One group is guaranteed "individual freedom" while the other is penned in by the political and economic power wielded by the other.
1
Brooks has a point. Sort of.
Under the zeitgeist of 'individual liberty' that extends dowards to Disney telling kids to be unique, the message says that you're on your own. No normative commands will be given. There is no culture that requires conformity.
Now the Traditional Left sees this situation as commodity and consumption replacing traditional culture as the form of identity. We are what we buy. Reversing this sad state requires either a seizure of strict control of the means of production. Etcetera.
Not withstanding, the metaphysics (Aristotle vs Nietzsche?) informs us that, even at the very top of the discursive chain, there's serious disagreement.
All traditional cultures were/are maintained by godly commands. Therefore, questioning god means questioning the commands; 'individualism' extends upwards to the metaphysical.
So by giving ourselves the rights to question and to deny,the god that once held everything together necessarily becomes personalized.
Well, sorry, David, this cat's out of the bag and long gone. So reher then bemoaning the loss of theological glue, we're far better off seeking out what Dworkin called, "Discursive truths".
My contribution is to begin with science. Dare to know prior to giving metaphysical meaning to what you don't know...
"We are all one thing — a people, a nation, a collective."
Really? You're living in a dream, Mr. Brooks. Your president is tearing apart your country and the world order. That was what he was elected to do, and that's what he's doing. Wake up!
2
It's a very short slippery hop from the inanity of the "mystery of life" to the utter blasphemy of the "self-made man."
Firstly, we need to recognize that the SCOTUS is a fully politicized institution that needs reforming, perhaps term or age limits.
But Brooks doesn’t want to talk about practical solutions for our corrupted system; he wants to spin out his gauzy philosophy and myopic history that conform to HIS “concepts” and HIS “meaning of the universe.” He is doing exactly what he condemns Kennedy of suggesting each of us do.
To wit:
• Brooks: The founding fathers said “’We the People.’ We are all one thing — a people, a nation, a collective. That people shares a moral order.”
Reality: “We” for the founding fathers meant white, male, land owners – not everyone - and that privileged group defined the “moral order.”
• Brooks: “That people shares a common enterprise…We are parts of a covenant and pass down our shared order to our posterity.
Reality: Kumbaya was never the prevailing energy the US history. Conflict defined our history: race against race, religion v religion, class v class etc.
• Brooks: “family, race, social roles, historical legacies of oppression, our bodies, the habits that are handed down to us by our common culture.”
Reality: Brooks offers these as proof of our shared narrative, but in fact they are tribal affiliations that divide us.
Conservatives always want to call the shots, to define things, to claim moral authority and thus the sanction to write history and say who stays and who goes, and how we pray and how we define the “mystery of human life.”
2
I guess you forgot to mention why "shared morality" had to be redefine instead of eliminated as you suggest. This "shared morality" included slavery, gender oppression, Jim Crow, and discrimination against homosexuality. What you should have said is we are a society that accepts individuality on the basis that it does not harm others. We chose not to judge someone based on the color of their skin, sexual orientation, or place of origin. Policing speech is not about government intrusion rather it is a reflection of society that realizes that these words are associated with atrocities committed by the majority on the minority. No one is advocated unrestrained desires (whatever that means). However, allowing people to live their lives free from discrimination or condemnation is the highest morality. Hurting others that you disagree with or hate has absolutely nothing to do with morality. I am surprise you can not see the difference.
Once again Brooks, unwittingly, perfectly describes both himself and his Party of Trump. The right is completely "enchained by their own selfishness, vanity and greed", with no true commitment to any larger social good. From a "President" who seeks only personal gain from his office to a loyal member of the right-wing Commentariat who assuages his aging male angst with a daughter-wife, Republicans betray their own claims of moral and social superiority as just words meant to impress low-effort thinkers.
1
The founding fathers also believed in collective gun rights -- not in the idea of private arsenals. Come on Democrats -- get your heads out of the wedding cake. You might actually win an election or two.
Statements by Brooks are almost verbatim to H. Clinton (it takes a village) and Obama (you didn’t build this). They understood the collective and institution and also rugged individualism.
H. Clinton always working for the women and children of the world who are 90% the basis of strong families and sticking it out and working for Obama and Obama pulling himself up to become the first black president.
Possibly commencement speeches stating “follow your dreams” is a result of decades working for a company only to have the rug ripped out from under you after 25 years.
The GOP sees “we the people” as a very small incestuous group that had none of the qualities of rugged individualism and lifting your self up to overcome very real road blocks. They “the people” inherited daddy’s business, went to school for virtually nothing and got out of the workforce before labor got stomped all over.
1
This a truly repulsive example of Brooks hiding the ball. What Kennedy was deciding in 1992 was whether the state should be able to put consenting adults in jail for expressing their sexuality. What we'll be talking about pretty soon is whether the state can tell women whether their fetus dies or they do.
If the shared "moral order" for which Brooks so longs can only be perpetuated by freeing the state and the majority to persecute disfavored groups, then it's neither "moral" nor "order." It's the war of the majority against the rest, the powerful against the powerless.
It is precisely to preserve the potential for all individuals to participate fully in our community that the protection of the personal, individual liberty that Brooks so denigrates is essential.
1
Dear David Brooks:
May I respectfully take issue with your characterization of addiction as an “enchain[ment] by[addicts'] own selfishness, vanity and greed.” Rather, addiction is a biochemical event, exacerbated not by desire but by personal and social desperation, and ignited by no more reprehensible a process than that which led you to a lifetime appreciation of Burgundy and Sancerre.
Quite the opposite, there is no group more collectively organized around a common enterprise than the doctrinaire right wing organized around a handful of checkboxes ... Trickle-down economics, American Exceptionalism, Theocracy aka "religious freedom", gun worship, science denial. Any deviation risks being outcast as not a "true conservative". Whereas powerless minorities always of necessity identified with their minority group, now the white majority is being galvanized to do so as well. Leading to one additional checkbox, accusing anyone who does not subscribe to this identity politics of identity politics.
2
Sorry David, but the "shared moral order" you pine for never existed, at least not in a form anyone should miss. At one time the "shared moral order" held that it was perfectly OK for whites to own blacks. That women could not be raped by their husbands and had no right to own property or vote. That homosexuality should be punishable by death. It still arguably holds that unarmed black men innocent of any crime who refuse to submit to police deserve to be shot. That children deserve to go hungry simply because their parents can't afford to feed them. That the living earth is property that we are free to abuse and destroy because we are morally and intellectually superior to mere plants and animals. The notion that values are by definition good or even workable as long as they emerge from families or communities and come to be held by a majority in society is rubbish. I'm prepared to assume that Anthony Kennedy recognized this and was attempting to say majoritarian viewpoints in certain realms were not automatically valid. I'll take that "relativism" any day over Antonin Scalia's assertion that homosexuals deserved the "moral opprobrium" society had traditionally heaped upon them.
3
The three founding principles, Mr. Brooks, were genocide, slavery, and hypocrisy. The hypocrisy was most evident in the blather about equality and liberty, which was well buried in the reality. These principles basically remain until today, although we cover our tracks fairly well, and we have managed to take the chattel out of the slavery. But this week's court ruling on unions is motivated by the same desire of capital ownership to exploit the worker without real compensation, and a country with 5% of the world's population holds about 25% of the world's prisoners, an absurdly large proportion of whom are descendants of chattel slaves. We have not slipped so far from the founding principles.
2
David’s got it right. We are losing our common morality and that is very harmful to our society.
One major factor attributing to this loss is the decline in religion, which provides rules of common morality. Ironically, those whose interest is in preserving religion are willing to sanction immorality if the end result is to preserve certain religious fundamentals.
What is needed is a return to common morality, with or without religion. In the past the great majority have agreed on certain moral principles. The 10 Commandments (or the last seven Commandments that deal with non-religious-specific rules) has been a standard of common morality for thousands of years. The great majority of Americans today would probably agree on what are the character traits of a moral individual. The key would seem to be an open challenge to all: do you or do you not believe that honesty, integrity and selflessness are desirable traits for you, your children, and others. Through this open challenge, we can start a dialogue that might begin our return to basic morality.
1
I regret the conservative imbalance on the Supreme Court that his retirement will enable, but I don't think it's fair for so many to be piling on to Anthony Kennedy for retiring. For all we know, he hung on much longer than he wanted or expected to but just couldn't do it anymore. In any case, it is not Anthony Kennedy's job to save us from ourselves.
While I agree philosophically, I hope Mr. Brooks is not making a veiled condemnation on the Janus Ruling. Remember the 2010 documentary (made by a progressive director) called "Waiting For Superman"? It plainly displayed the intractable and corrosive power of the public unions on education, the burden they place on minority students, and the massive pensions they lined their members with. Here in Cali, pensions are often between 60 & 90 percent of their final salaries. The Janus ruling was LONG overdue, and will help weaken the power of the very jealous monolith which has made sure subservient politicians were elected and did their status quo bidding. In the end, all teachers and minority students should cheer. Only those who continue to get their news from knee-jerk ideological sources are permanently blind to the good the ruling will ultimately be for many educational systems. As for Kennedy, he had his faults (as we all do, no?) but I would say a "shared moral order" dissolved long ago -- and little to do with our robed legal clergy. Do not blame blame the post modern fish for the post modern pond they swim in.
Even as a former Philosophy major, with the retirement of J. Kennedy and so much at stake, I am in no mood for this today.
But here we go: Mr. Brooks, you take J. Kennedy's words completely out of context. I believe that the quote you discuss is from the SCOTUS case of Planned Parenthood v Casey (which you might have mentioned, so that others could read the entire original source). I believe that J. Kennedy meant that a woman - and not THE STATE - has the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, based on her own views as to, inter alia, the "meaning" of life. What is the meaning of "meaning"? J. Kennedy was certainly not espousing any theories of individualism. He was simply stating that a woman has the right to act, based on HER OWN views of the "meaning" of life. He was essentially acknowledging that different people may have different views (religious or otherwise) on the meaning of life, and they are entitled to make choices based on their own views. The alternative is for THE STATE to make decisions.
That, simply put, is what is at stake here. Not some theory about the decline of community, etc. You may be correct that there has been a general decline of the community ethic in the U.S. Unlike you, however, I trace that decline to the Reagan, Me-first, individualistic Randian ethos that has prevailed since the 1980s. It is progressives who have supported the "community", such as, e.g., by supporting universal health care.
Dee, Esq.
6
It's hard to believe that someone can be tepid and boiling at the same time, but Brooks has finally achieved it in this column. Perhaps if he read the "great philosophers" a bit more closely, he could appreciate the contradictions and simultaneous continuities between different communities, including nation states, and desires for personal autonomy and meaning.
2
How can we repair the damage done to our younger citizens who grew up with the DO IT YOUR OWN WAY message? One of my students told me just two days ago that it is his right to choose not to vote. What will it take to change that belief?
He does have the right to not vote. It would be better if he did. If he doesn’t, it makes my vote more valuable.
AND
The problem is “and.” It may be the most difficult word in American history. Freedom “and” equality. As opposed to freedom “or” equality. “Or” is the given. “And” requires work. David Brooks tries to build “and” from the equality side of equation. Anthony Kennedy apparently tried to build “and” from the freedom side of the equation. Pulling back for a wider view, artists build from the freedom side and governments build from the equality side, with culture as the tug-of-war in the middle.
I don’t know what the answer is. But it starts with the acceptance of complexity and a healthy suspicion of all forms of purity—with the understanding that all answers are imperfect and that they each require constant vigilance to smooth out the inevitable kinks. Which means awareness.
Awareness before ideology. Let’s start there.
1
Kennedy's legacy for me will never be his role as mediator on the Supreme Court. True, he was a swing vote with progressives on a few issues, but he was primarily a right-wing voice. His ruling on union agency fees is symptomatic of years of Republicans' conservative animus towards unions. The union is a worker's collective, indeed community, means of negotiating a better life for himself, and the union, as a collective, also allows management to negotiate efficiency in the workplace. I don't know exactly when the middle-class lives of American workers championed after WWII began to falter. But the conservative Republican attack on unions was surely the most insidious cause. From the loss of textile and clothing manufacturing in the Northeast down to the South for its "right to work" policies, to Reagan's vicious attack on air controllers, to nasty conservative propaganda that unions diminish the individual rights of workers, the demise of union membership in the United States is the real reason workers have lost their economic footing -- not global trade, not immigration. While Democratic progressives champion individual identity they also stress the need for community, not limited to family or church, but, that our entire society must protect its most vulnerable. For Republican conservatives the primary mantra has always been individual responsibility and the unspoken corollary that the individual must take care of himself. So, here we are now.
2
I'm surprised that you don't mention the role of organized religion. In a large city this can provide a family with a sense of community among a sea of people. After Harvey hit Houston my church opened a food bank that remains open today. The mosque a couple of miles down the street started a free health clinic that is now expanding. To conserve our freedom we must organize society as much as we can without government doing it for us. Of course there is an important role for government but we must not let our social institutions such as organized religion shrivel and die.
Mr. Brooks blithely sidestepped the real and present threat to liberty in our country today - and it has nothing to do with alcohol, drugs, or empty calories. The threat is Trump's "selfishness, vanity and greed" as he gleefully replaces Justice Kennedy with an alt-right civil rights, environmental safety and reproductive choice destroyer - a young one who will serve for at least forty years. Trump is the threat, to all of us.
3
The author writes, regarding his reading of ‘We the people’: “That people shares a moral order — rules that are true for all people in all times and that govern us in our freedom. Among them, for example, is the idea that all people are created equal.”
Only of course the referrent of the signifier “all” in “all people are created equal” has shifted rather a lot since those words were written. A society’s moral order is never fixed.
1
We the People need to vote.
2
Brooks writes:
"There is no acknowledgment of the parts of ourselves that we don’t choose but inherit — family, race, social roles, historical legacies of oppression, our bodies, the habits that are handed down to us by our common culture."
But whose concept of the common culture? Christians? Evangelicals? Jews? Jim Jones? Scientology? The 'greed is good' community? Republicans? Democrats? ETC. The list is endless. 'America' is the only common culture, the only bridge we have. Because 'America' allows us to have our own individual cultures, singularly or group.
Common culture is a myth. Or, as they say, It's pretty to think so".
1
The GOP has worked relentlessly for decades to marginalize and exclude... women, non-whites, gays, the poor, the middle class, etc. etc. etc... from the very process of building a shared “moral order – rules that are true for all people in all times”... and NOW (!) old-school GOPers want to lament the current zeitgeist – that there is “no sense that we are a part of a common flow connecting the past, present and future.” ? ... that “there are no truths, only ‘concepts’”??
Give me a break Mr. Brooks! Climate change denial? Trickle-Down (“Voodoo”) Economics? The list of vital issues on which the GOP has INSISTED that THEY ‘get to define their own truth’ (and Ours) is as long as my arm, and getting longer every day!
Ultimately, what the GOP deeply resents is the very idea that We The People should participate as equals in defining the “shared civic order.” What they pine for is a return to paternalism – a few self-anointed rich (very) white men deciding ‘what’s best’ for their poor ignorant charges.
You're several decades too late Mr. Brooks. “Conservatives” have had more than enough chances to prove that they want to build a shared community. They Don’t.
Blame the civil rights Movement. Blame feminists. Blame atheists. Blame academia. Blame rampant individualism.
Or... look in the mirror. The GOP itself is the root cause.
5
Brooks: 'In this sentence, which became famous as the “mystery of life” passage, there is no sense that individuals are embedded in a social order.'
That's a straw man. Individuals have liberty, not "social order[s]".
A more pertinent criticism is that Kennedy omits any mention of *actions*. Liberty is not simply a "right to define one’s own concept[s]", but a right to *act* without restraints.
Hobbes explicitly refers to "a mans power to do what hee would":
"By LIBERTY, is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of externall Impediments: which Impediments, may oft take away part of a mans power to do what hee would; but cannot hinder him from using the power left him, according as his judgement, and reason shall dictate to him."
And to "motion":
"Liberty, or FREEDOME, signifieth (properly) the absence of Opposition; (by Opposition, I mean externall Impediments of motion;) and may be applyed no lesse to Irrational, and Inanimate creatures, than to Rationall."
The quotes are from "Leviathan".
Individualists built America, and individualists are tearing it down . . .
Its really simple - treat others they way you want to be treated.
4
The philosophically grounded are as afflicted as the unmoored. I give you as examples the libertarians and the evangelicals as well as conservative Catholics as the most obvious examples.
Put 'em all together..and you have a great melting pot.
As intended...by the Founders.
Tiresome. Enough. Mr. Brooks bangs the same old drum incessantly to accompany his dirge-like chanting of the “loss of community”. And his proposition, his cause, is built on an entirely false premise. Community is every bit as robust as it has always been. It’s just more inclusive and much of it is different in ethos from Mr. Brooks’ fantasy idyll of Dwight Eisenhower’s America. The folks who threw Sarah Sanders out of the Red Hen were part of a group, a community of people with shared values, exercising a moral principle. Mr. Brooks, the Young Republicans and the White House Correspondents Association thinks they were wrong, that they somehow violated some sense of community. Sorry, David, their—our—community will only grow stronger and David’s, Paul Ryan’s, Franklin Graham’s, Alex Jones’, and Sean Hannity’s will end up in the same dustbin of history as the Whig Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the communities that still preach hatred and exclusion for those who are “not like us”. In our community, David, we just bake cakes for people regardless of who they’re marrying.
2
From what I have read of Kennedy's son and his relationship as a Deutsche Bank banker with Trump's corrupt businesses, he couldn't even teach basic morality to his son. He should have recused himself from any decisions involving the banking industry.
1
Yes, Mr. Brooks. It does take a village. Somehow, when you say it, rather than the last Democratic Presidential candidate, it’s supposed to stand as a conservative wisdom, rather than as a liberal’s bad joke.
1
Interesting bit of perspective. I recall the inability to come to terms with the community vs the individual issue was the source of the 'social schizophrenia' described by Deleuze and Guattari. Aristotle said we are social (political) beings. But our current mores say we must be individuals in order to 'be' - in order to not be lost in the crowd. Maybe its the crowd that's the problem - an urbanization problem? Is that the root of the urban v. rural divide - people lost in a crowd vs people loosing the crowd they thought they belonged to.
One of David's best; one of his most Hamiltonian.
I applaud conservative David Brooks for his criticism of Justice Kennedy's "right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
Kennedy's philosophy, embraced tacitly by many, has led to a pernicious rugged individualism and the atomization of community.
Unless you choose to live as a hermit living off the grid or in a Nietzschean garret, then you are a member of a society.
Then not only will you have to acknowledge other humans, their property and contractual obligations, you will have to live with a government which should protect us from lawlessness and the impersonal predation of corporations.
All of these relations in toto are called "the system." In the industrial or postindustrial world, there is no getting around it. One must acknowledge the system and use it, or take flight from the system through art. There is no true autonomous liberty in this world of systems.
A modern denizen does not get to define his or her own self, but only in the context of a system. It boggles the mind that a Supreme Court Justice would propose otherwise.
The elevated few determine the system. Sometimes humanity fosters FDR or Gandi as leaders of a system. At other times and places we receive Hitler or Trump.
And make no mistake about it, the virtual world of social media is part of the system with smiley face ephemera.
1
Actually, Professor Kennedy tells us what all wise men and women know – moral behaviour is learned by living, making mistakes and learning from them. What we eventually learn is that we live in a Uni-verse. All lives, all things are intimately connected. Hurt another you only hurt yourself.
At its foundation all moral law is based on understanding who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. The sages of the world all understand this – not because they are better than any other being but because they are experienced
“old souls”. It’s all Ivolution (the evolution of human self-consciousness)
The wise have no interest in “background reading” –truth comes only to those who are ready for it – those who know that the truth we are looking for is not in books but in our hearts.
1
Just a minor correction to Mr. Brook's (whitewashed) American origin story: When groups of white protestant males joined together as "We the People," they were agreed on various principles about the political community they were creating, including that only white protestant males were to possess political authority.
2
If they believed that, they wouldn't have allowed the Constitution to have been amended.
At the time..slavery was a contentious issue.
The whole 3/5 of a human was designed by those progressive intellectuals in New York and Boston who didn't want the South to gain any more power than necessary (that would have happened had each slave been counted as a full human).
See..the electoral vs. popular vs. gerrymandering issues we face today existed even back then.
The beautiful thing about the US Constitution is that it's the only common thing that binds us together as a nation no matter your politics.
Everywhere around the world they marvel at this..yet you reject it as some side work by a bunch of racists.
Nice.
Another reason terms of Supreme Court justices should be limited, 10yrs is ample. The circus that is about to come to town will present an abundance of other reasons for term limitations. Too much $$$$$, not enough justice.
I was waiting for it & suddenly there it was.."the big intrusive state."You are so compelling, Brooks, so Dickensonian, when you bring up community.
Millions only know of the poor houses & bread lines through literature & hearsay. What great communal & socially intimate times those were, when disparate peoples broke bread & spilled their hearts out to one another, unlike the cloistered & greedy New Dealers wanting grandmother to live by bread alone.
Apple & pencil sellers disappeared from the social scene, leaving the lonely, alienated government check cashers to themselves & a dismal programmed future.
Where is Pete Peterson when we really need him? Who will carry on the holy work of this saver of souls from from the Devil's handmaiden, Big Government.
2
We are the biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit heirs of primate apes who arose in Africa 300,000 years ago as one human race species. We are driven to crave fat, salt, sugar, habiitat, water, kin and sex by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation.
There is no "mystery of life". Neither socioeconomics nor politics nor theology nor law nor education nor history can alter our biological science animal mammal nature. Anthony Kennedy is no John Marshall Harlan nor Thurgood Marshall.
2
How does David Brooks know what the founding fathers believed? No one can crawl inside their heads. The historical record is irredeemably incomplete. You can't learn this stuff in books. SCOTUS wouldn't exist if we knew precisely what the founding fathers believed. Their job is to guess. Would we even want to listen to them now anyway? Brooks is projecting again. He word-drops "community" in the first sentence. This is a telltale sign.
When will Brooks realize you can't run a global order on conservative theory. Not sustainably anyway. Communities of whatever scale do exist. You can have a congregation or a neighborhood. However, communities don't aggregate well.
Think of it this way: Brooks is attempting to apply microeconomic theory to a macroeconomic problem. The theory certainly holds but not when misapplied. You can't shove a round peg into a mathematical operator. Doesn't work. You can't use community as the basic economic unit. Not if you want to achieve a functioning global whole.
The problem with conservatism is conservatives make every community the center of the universe. From their perspective, everything orbits around their sphere of interest. They therefore are really only self-interested. Circle of trust: Are you in or are you out? The entire enterprise is soft and fuzzy but misguided. The world, dare I say galaxy, doesn't operate like that.
There are as many centers to the universe as there are people in the world. Brooks would be wise to remember that.
Over the past 4 years, David Brooks has been entirely consistent in his writing. It feel like the country has changed...not for the better...and I am reading a columnist who used to be considered "conservative" who I now perceive as center-left. Well, at least David's principals are consistent...even though the Republican party no longer has any principals.
And of course exemplified by his sneaking out the door.
Intentionally nieve on Citizens United. A Republican to the core, not necessarily a judge.
1
Are you planning to work past 81? We don’t chain the guy to the bench.
Kennedy's plaque is already hanging on the Hall of Fame wall at the Koch Institute. His opinion in Citizens United will be his eternal legacy of shame.
1
Remember: it was socializers of meaning who put Socrates on trial.
1
"I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat." This is what happens when a political party puts all the money on wedding cakes.
This sentence from Mr. Brooks:
"It takes a village to do both these things." Hillary must be sorry she read this column. I bet Brooks has neither read her book with that title nor discussed the meaning of the title with her or anyone else.
1
What one says or believes is meaningless when confronted with Truth, Beauty and Goodness. Justice Kennedy isn’t retiring for any other reason than he knows by retiring before the mid-terms, the court will continue to dominate Far Right Ideology for many years to come. Justice Kennedy is a moral coward; Period!!!
1
One of your best columns in a while. You channeled the things you've been writing about into a very concise message this time.
What good is the "heart of liberty" if the requisite of/by&fors to sustain said liberty is still based on an antiquated electoral college originally bent on slavery's universal existence and meaning? Hence the utter mystery how MAGA's somehow okay despite being immune to Constitutional provisions whence constancy precludes completion. After all, if raising the young and pursuing the good -- on relativity alone -- isn't perpetual, our Founders would've ABSOLUTELY ascertained order's attainable reach on a perfection somehow free from oppression and slavery, yes?
"people are only capable of exercising responsible freedom when they are embedded in and formed by social institutions — like family, schools that take morality seriously and a shared civic order. "
So does this morality extend to the version of capitalism currently practiced in the United States? It can accurately be described as "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost".
1
I respect Mr. Brooks a lot, but the problem with his more traditional formulation of communally defined roles to protect our freedom is that it too often results in brutalizing anyone who doesn't fit those roles. How does the community enforce its will on those who don't conform? By denying them freedom. This isn't about people choosing destructive paths so much as choosing paths that others find annoying to acknowledge. Brooks's challenge to live within the regulations of a community condemns many of us who don't fit to lives of quiet desperation.
2
"If you strip away all the communal commitments that help people govern themselves from within, then very soon you find you have to pass all sorts of laws to govern them from without. If you privatize meaning so that people get to follow their unrestrained desires, they immediately start tramping on one another, and public pressure grows for restrictive laws.......[it leads to a big, intrusive state]."
Never do I hear about the necessity for "restrictive laws" based on the exponential increase in population density our nation has endured. 200 years ago if you diverted a stream to build a grain mill, it was no big deal. If you (alone) dumped toxic materials into that stream, the stream had the capacity to break down that small quantity. If you performed either of those actions today, you could be threatening a downstream reservoir supplying a hundred thousand people.
The main driver of regulatory laws is the recognition that we must share resources. Environmental regulation, firearms regulation, noise regulations all evolved not from unbridled selfishness, but from the a communal moral commitment to the community's right to clean water and peaceful coexistence. This trumps the unfettered freedom of an individual to exploit those resources.
5
Rawls and Sandel note everyone does not start out at the same position in life. Kennedy seems to think we all have an equal ability to shape their lives. His ignorance is manifest yet he sits on the Supreme Court. The affluent pass their benefits to their children by where they live, their education and social networks. These people should be allowed to inherit $100,000 and after that the inheritance tax should be 95 percent. Let the rich kids EARN their position in life. Bush junior would have been lucky to be drive a Shiner Bock beer truck in Waco Texas if his last name had not been Bush.
The course of history from aristocracy to democracy has been about the evolution of individual, reproductive, gender and collective rights whether they are voting, health care, union representation to counter affluence and plutocracy, the 40 hour week. The course of conservative thought has been to thwart that progress.
Kennedy, Alito, Scalia, Gorsuch, Roberts were all born on third base and they think they hit a triple They slide into home plate, scored a run and now want to lecture us on how to be successful. They wrap it all in pseudo intellectual sophistry and call it “legal reasoning”.
The supreme court is now the court of the 1 percent. We now have the tyranny of the minority. ALEC and the Federalist society now own Congress and the Supreme Court.
The republicans believe that one dollar equals one vote and the democrats believe one person should have one vote.
4
.
“Privatization of meaning” or an over-emphasis on subjectivity has many causes, including those not born of individual will or short-sighted philosophy.
It is in part a consequence of a car culture that encapsulates individuals (think of rail travel as a community experience) and such modern amenities as air-conditioned housing that delivers personal autonomy and convenience at the expense of community experience (think of front porches and everyone going to movies to escape the heat).
The counter-balance to solipsism and hyper-individualism is to engage socially. Find meaning through relationships with others, whether that is a short-term encounter or a long-term friendship.
Thank you, David. You have been writing about this for quite a long time and sometimes I have had difficulties following your thoughts. Not this time: Clear, Straight and Right-on. Beautiful
Ronald Reagan made “me“ more important than “us“ as the guiding principle of the Republican party when he railed against taxes with his repeated assertions about it being “your money“ that the government was trying to take. His message was very clear; the community is always a distant second, and shouldn’t have claims on what you earn in in order to support the community.
David’s phrase “autonomy ethos” is very apt, as is his insight about the need for intrusive government in the presence of such an ethos. We have to look no further than the White House to see this dynamic in action. Trump, the “champion” deal maker, sees himself as a master transactionalist. He makes no attempt to give the other side a fair deal. He has little concern for reputation or for building long term relationships. His is a zero-sum world absent all charity. The corollary to all this is Trump the “strong man,” who will use the government to contain the very disorder that he himself is all too happy to create. So Trump is the very embodiment of the "autonomy ethos". Really, could there be a more perfect union?
1
"...enchained to alcohol..." etc., followed by a host of other things; however, the author left out the most debilitating, often destructive factor of all: religion.
The statement would have been far more realistic and true if it included religion in that list.
1
Where do you place the tradition of "rugged individualism"? Think of Emerson's canonical essay, "Self-Reliance." Or Thoreau's _Walden_? Coming of age often means "You're on your own now." The writings of the American philosopher, Stanley Cavell, are worth reading in this connection.
It is not difficult to read in this essay a radical attack on the basic rationale for capitalism: Each individual striving for his own advancement somehow makes life better for all. And the perverted notion that human worth is to measured by financial net worth makes that individual striving into a highly corrosive force that is in fact destroying whatever is left of the ideal of community which Brooks is so ardent to champion. It is to the body politic (the self-governing organ of society) what cancer is to a body: the striving of single cells to "make it big" with the result that the cell thrives (for a while) but the organism dies ---and, of course, the cell dies with it.
What you refer to as a "moral order" was the "Great Oz" of institutions before we got a glimpse behind the curtain. The "moral order" gave us Jim Crow and Redlining and systemic racism and institutionalized poverty and on and on. That "moral order" allows individuals to fly the confederate flag in the name of "heritage" and ignore the fact that it represents treason. Not just against the union, but against humanity. Your "moral order" is just another way of saying "Make America Great Again."
Yes, Kennedy's "mystery of life" statement is difficult, but so is a representative democracy. It demands curiosity; the abolition of ignorance. Few remember that the last have of the saying "curiosity killed the cat" is "and satisfaction brought him back."
Moral order is not what is missing, what is missing is ethics. And yes, societal ethics are different than a moral order and no less difficult than Justice Kennedy's "mystery of life statement," Because societal ethics makes us have to consider all members of the society. You call it relativism, I call it being a good citizen.
Ethics says that a person should do more than they are required to do, but less than they are allowed. That requires a higher level of thinking and avoiding a race to the bottom. Your idea of moral order would have race to the bottom and then keep going down.
2
Man's evolution began as a solitary hunter gatherer and, if things continue as they have been recently, our species will die out that way.
1
David, I appreciate your continual push to bring readers to think the great thoughts of life, such as morality.
It makes me ill to think that a decent and moral person would make a choice to step away from SCOTUS knowing the immoral choice made by McConnell to hatchet the very core of our democracy by using his power to rob President Obama of a SCOTUS appointment.
Shame on you Mr. Kennedy to play into the hands of a psychopathic authoritarian wannabe and a vicious political by hack.
Unfortunately, you may have no conscience either and will not have to consider in retirement how many years it will take to regain any sense of the wobble Republic that worked well before the 2000 election when you were part of choosing the president you wanted.
Perhaps McConnell isn't the only political in the headlines these days.
2
"It takes a village..."
It seems to me that someone else used that phrase long before you decided that it was an important governing concept. "But her emails...."
And thank you for admitting that the main reason that Democrats have to employ "big government" solutions (see Obamacare) is that Republicans' decades-old "small government" mantra has provided convenient cover for allowing corporate and individual greed, nationalism, racism and anti-science religious bigotry to run rampant upon the once great American landscape. And yet you remain too timid to say, "I am now a Democrat".
1
I’m sorry, but the meaning I created for myself—a life of intellectual adventure, spiritual exploration, and artistic creativity—is 1000 times better than the one my community tried to serve me up when I was young—a life of never ending work for never enough wealth (with beer and sports to wash it down on Saturday and church to dream of an afterlife on Sunday). Get back to me when my community comes to its senses. Until then, my ear plugs are in, and I can’t hear you, Mr. Brooks. Signed—One Happy Monad.
2
More philosophizing. We the People meant white men and only Protestant ones, except that Quakers were no included either. If this chapter in the country's history does anything, it points up the complete fiction of our narrative.
America has systematically oppressed Native Americans, Africans, Roman Catholics, women, Irish, Jews, Americans of Japanese descent, the Chinese, and various of the "darker races" (a quote from Ellis Island): Italians, Hispanics, and now people of Muslim religion.
We are not a good people, have never been "exceptional", and now have an opportunity to make things right before it's too late. But first we'll need to confront the facts of our national mythology. And get armchair philosophers like David Brooks to stop harking back to a past that never did exist for most Americans.
2
David Brooks is talking about the I/We dichotomy again. Do we stand for ourselves, for individuals, or for the rights of the crowd. Where is our primary responsibility?
We are not really in a moment of individualism - you do you thing, I' do mine. We are caught in a time of tyranny of the minority. My small group wants your large group to act like us. We are community, not individual, but our communities are tribes. Our tribes don't see eye to eye and refuse to compromise.
And more to the point, each tribe lives with the myth, as David Brooks seems to, that there is one absolute morality. Only each tribe thinks it is their own, and others are evil.
Justice Kennedy navigated the tribalism a bit differently from others on the Court, in that he did not twist the logic of his decisions to always fit his own tribal answer. So he supported the ACA and the right for gays to marry, even though his support for businesses to choose not give women full benefits of the ACA and for cake bakers to discriminate against the gays who want to marry were more his philosophy.
I will miss Kennedy - the trust that he was the one we could depend on to look at the case through a lens that was not purely partisan, even if his lens did not match mine. But he did see the possibility that his own druthers were not the only moral way to look at a conundrum.
Given Kennedy's final opinion (listen to The Daily) was against strong unions that act in the interests of their communities I find today's offering from Brooks a bit less credible than his usual works.
"Over the decades, that sense of we-ness began to turn into a sense of I-ness or you-ness".
That's right Mr Brooks, and where and when and with who did that start?
You can put that change right onto the back of one man who became President in 1981 - Ronald Reagan. Reagan's "conservative" message - "look out for yourself, that is all that matters". "Do what's best for you and everything else will just fall into place." "Don't worry about or care for your neighbor or brother, just look out for #1." "Greed is good." "Selfishness is clarity." "Government and all the institutions there to protect you from the most powerful and wicked of the greedy is bad." "Government isn't the solution, it's the problem."
Americans bought that lie - hook, line, and sinker. And now, here we are. This is the predictable end result of Reaganism. Something you, Mr. Brooks, fully supported and still do. Welcome to the Randian fascist world you and your fellow "conservative" frauds created.
1
I'm not particularly a fan of Kennedy or his writing style, nor am I a fan of focusing exclusively on the individual. But does anyone involuntarily cringe in terrible, vicarious embarrassment to see David Brooks, in the midst of yammering tepidly about freedom and truth and self, complains that he's too busy to examine his own life, because he's "busy?"
Maybe this finally explains why he writes incessantly about pop-psychology and self-help instead of actual philosophy or science. He's too busy.
1
Mr. Brooks would have us live in the darkness of received wisdom that is beyond challenge.
It is control that he and his fellow travelers want - dominion over the private and personal that might get out of hand with too much pleasure.
It is smash-mouth old testament judgement and dehumanization that a large swath of the people of this country apparently need in order to feel better about themselves.
It is sadomasochism masquerading as salvation.
1
The beauty of the mystery of life is this: its exact meaning will never be pinned down, not by any individual, not by any government.
1
Reinhold Niebuhr would be proud Mr. Brooke.
Why didn’t Kennedy wait until the election was over to begin his retirement?
Could he be ill?
I find it hard to believe that he -- or any of the Justices -- really believes that Trump is a worthy and mentally balanced President.
2
I think David Brooks, that you and I exist in different planes.
You live in a world where morality has to be dictated down via rules. Where those rules/"guardrails" are the only things that keep madness and chaos from ensuing.
I think you give people too little credit---and I think you give religion too big a pass.
I grew up Catholic and hispanic. You want to talk about hierarchical? Nothing more so than a hispanic Catholic with ideas about machismo, sexual purity and heteronormative behavior.
You know what cured me of that pathos? Two things. 1) My belief that we women were not just as capable as men, but that our intuition often was missing from the calculus of the men in charge. The other thing was a gay sibling, tormented to the point of wanting to die--not by his friends--but by the teachings of his church. Only when he began to live a life of truth and acceptance, did the beautiful human being he was emerge.
Those things shaped me. They gave me a lifelong disdain of religion and of people who prioritize rules over what is right in front of them.
Truly--the only coda ever needed is this one: "treat others as you would like to be treated" with perhaps an amendment to "not judge until you've been in people's shoes."
There. Problem solved in 12000 character.
4
This is a great example of an entire column premised on a false foundation. The argument here is premised on the idea that "Over the decades, that sense of we-ness began to turn into a sense of I-ness or you-ness." If this is not true, nothing in the column makes sense. Unfortunately for the column, it is not true. So we are left with speculation premised on of fallacy - like an essay describing the impacts on today's society of the fact that humans are less ethical than they were 250 years ago. Oh yes, this is another fallacious premise found here.
Let's start, as Brooks does, with the founders. A cursory knowledge of that time demonstrates that self-interest, corruption, "tramping on one another" were MORE, not less, prevalent then relative to today. In addition, their "we-ness" didn't include colored people, women, or non-land-owners.
Second - we don't have morals today? What parent doesn't instill morality and a worldview into their child? Everyone I have ever known can tell you exactly how their mother taught them to do the right thing. Even if the person became a criminal, a ne'er do-well, or a dubious newspaper columnist, they still can recite the ethics code their mother instilled in them.
Unfortunately, as Brooks' Tuesday column made clear, he truly believes these things about human nature at a "pre-rational" level. He also doesn't ever read this feedback. So he won't ever improve his logic. Time for us to self-improve and leave behind this wasted space.
2
Have you read your colleagues', Liptak and Haberman's, explosive expose published today revealing the brazen, successful Trump influence campaign to cause an early retirement by Justice Kennedy, before the midterm elections? Besides probably leading to the shredding of his judicial reputation, the effects from this nefarious politicalization of the Roberts Supreme Court could be profoundly damaging.
Actually, most of America DOES have a shared moral order, to the tune of 65,844,954 voters.
(https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-pop...
Learning that Justice Kennedy's son helped Trump with billions of dollars in loans and that Kennedy himself is a friend of the family says it all. Justice Kennedy knows what he is doing, and he's doing it deliberately and without a care for democracy. This blatant politicization of justice is profoundly sickening.
Shame on Kennedy and shame on America for being so politically apathetic that conditions like this could arise in the first place.
1
There is a balance to be achieved between Randian individualism and Mother Teresa altruism, but both facets are part of an individual human sinner/saint. While we seem to have left that concept behind as a society, it is still valid. One can be committed to individual liberty in a community only if willing to embrace the idea that my liberty stops where yours begins. Do we have to express, for example, that I cannot, to cite a terrible instance, walk into a newsroom with a shotgun and smoke bombs and shoot people because I have a grievance against the newspaper, even if the current president of the nation keeps suggesting it is all right to use violence to express my feelings of having been wronged. It is going to take a long time to repair the moral and spiritual damage done by the irresponsible narcissist.
There was a time that justice was defined from the particular family/tribe experience of each justice. We have morphed into an even more convuloted decision based on the twisted loigic to follow party or etiology dogma.
There is a WE. It is We Women, We Gays, We People of Color, We Elderly, We Old White Males, etc. Each has a valid perspective, each claims a valid complaint. But until we stop limiting these We’s and start to see US, we are all doomed. It is only when we begin to think in terms of the grander US that we can expand into the community we claim to want.
David, you either don't know or ignore the fact that "We the People" was chosen in opposition to the majority of humans who were "non-people": indentured people, non-property-owning people, non-Christian people, female people, Native people, and, most obviously, African-American people. (LGBTQ people probably weren't even considered to exist, except as depraved sinners.) A more accurate view would be to recognize that the "tepid relativism" you abhor results from the demand by each group to be included in the We the People covered by the American covenant. Justice Kennedy's response to those demands that reached his desk was, excepting Oberkfell, a denial as firm as those of Taney in Dred Scott, or Brown in Plessy.
First:
"In this sentence, which became famous as the “mystery of life” passage, there is no sense that individuals are embedded in a social order. There is no acknowledgment of the parts of ourselves that we don’t choose but inherit — family, race, social roles, historical legacies of oppression, our bodies, the habits that are handed down to us by our common culture.”
Maybe that is because it is just one sentence. It is difficult to believe Justice Kennedy consistently ignored 'these parts of ourselves' over the course of 30 years of deliberations as Associate Justice and 13 previous years as Judge.
Second:
“the heart of liberty” (paragraph 1) is not identical to “this definition of freedom” (paragraph 4)
Finally:
"Each of us has to define our own “concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.””
We don’t have to; we have the right to.
1
Maybe reading some Emerson and Whitman would help. Oh, and some Reinhold Niebuhr.
A gloriously sensational heading for an opinion column, something about meaning.
But what does it mean?
America is a country of mavericks, pioneers, refugees, immigrants. We had a civil war. Over and over we don't like one another, exploit one another. And then we do or don't. It shifts, rises, falls, lulls, builds, vanishes.
Mr. Brooks lamenting is MAGA. Nostalgia for what never was.
If he had shepherded his party responsibly maybe he wouldn't need to blame everyone else.
It is not the disparate cultures, the wide range of intellectual and artistic views and lifestyles, that threatens us. All that is healthy and wholesome. Most people agree that water should be clean and schools good.
The predominant philosophy that is destroying our country is an embodiment of greed. A politic which believes that income inequality of massive proportions is tolerable. That selfishly living for oneself, and one's massive wealth is tolerable, even when it causes the suffering of many, or perhaps the destruction of a healthy planet that fosters life.
The idiotic belief that an international community which cares for others cannot possibly serve national interests. Malnutrition in Venezuela, and a million Africans are facing starvation. Shrugs.
Meanwhile our oligarchs have taken over our political system and haven't the slightest interest in policing themselves.
And Brooks can only think of himself.
3
I am confused. I thought conservatives, including Brooks, valued "liberty" of the individual above all else. Is Brooks not a true conservative, or am I not understanding conservatives correctly. Someone please enlighten me.
"It takes a village..." I'm at a loss for words to the cruelty of using that phrase in this moment.
3
Your recent argument that George Washington and Sam Adams, despite being revolutionaries who overthrew royalty, were conservatives is wrongheaded. In fact they were enlightenment liberals in the mold of English puritans and Oliver Cromwell. The real conservatives were the tories who fled to Canada during and after the revolution.
The people who actually do believe that there is no such thing as "society" (hello Margaret Thatcher!) are conservatives. Well, not all conservatives are of this ilk. The God and Family types who populate the Christian Right and the white supremacists of the Alt-Right who deify the Volk are intolerant of dissident individuals (sinners! race traitors!). But the Libertarians who helped bring about the Reagan Revolution are in agreement with Thatcher --there ain't no such thing as "society," only sovereign individuals who deserve to be left alone. Brooks should be addressing his own kind, not hectoring liberals.
Liberals do favor individual liberty, including the liberty to judge for oneself the big questions of life celebrated by Justice Kennedy. But liberals are also aware that we ponder eternity and our place in it as members of a community, where the freedom of each is dependent on the freedom of all and mutuality is required to make the whole thing work. That's why liberals fought for civil rights for all persons and it's why liberals (unlike conservatives) support universal health care.
Brooks prefers to dwell on abstractions and is content to speak in platitudes, which mask conservatism's connections with the very phenomenon he decries. Is it because he is, in the end, a shallow thinker, or is it a deliberate attempt at obfuscation? I'm not sure it matters.
1
We the people? Created equal? A shared morality? The people were white, property owning men. Equal, excluded women and Blacks. Please define what that shared morality was.
I understand that you have been grieving for the loss of community in this country. You have been grieving for a loss of a moral canon. But David, you are nostalgic for an America that really never was. And perhaps never will be
You know, David, even Marx was nostalgic about feudal society with its set roles for everyone and its apparent harmony. It can be thought of as the "How green was my valley" sensibility. The problem, of course, is that we can't roll back the clock--assuming, that is, one is foolish enough to let nostalgia fog our understanding of just what earlier ages were like.
1
"Any society has to perform at least two big related tasks — raising the young and pursuing of the good. It takes a village to do both these things." Remember someone named Hillary who said something on these lines and she was mocked by the whole conservative establishment as a socialist trying to destroy America and American culture?
1
The two words left out of the op-ed are trust and cynicism. In 1964 after the Civil Rights Act the GOP led by Goldwater, Reagan and Nixon took a country based in the trust that defines citizenship and gave you cynicism in its stead.
In 1980 Reagan defined your common bond the government of the people as the enemy.
Here in Canada we are far from perfect but we have people like former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson telling us what it means to be a citizen while your ruling political party proudly salutes the Stars and Bars the flag dedicated to those wishing to destroy your country.
The opening words "We the People" are followed by "to form a more perfect Union ... and secure the Blessings of Liberty." The Constitution reflects the humanist views of the Founders. Kennedy's words echo those humanist views, which require that the community cannot impose a 'shared morality,' in Brooks' words, on the individual. Brooks does a disservice to the humanism at the heart of the US Constitution, which is the bedrock of US society, by characterizing the protection of individual liberty as promoting selfish 'autonomy.' It does nothing of the sort.
Our "actual" identity has never been remotely in the same ballpark of our "aspirational" identity.
When we do something terrible, for example, separate children from their families, we say "that's not us", or the equally banal "we're better than this".
Oh, really? Based upon what?
Native American genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, Donald Trump?
But we're all created equal, so they say, and working together to create a more perfect union.
The reality is that despite the persistent cognitive dissonance between what we actually are and what we dishonestly insist that we are, we did possess a capacity for real civic progress and societal improvement.
But that ability is being violently ripped away from us before our eyes, and half of us seem to be totally OK with it.
Even Justice Kennedy.
This column certainly has an argument to make--and many of the comments have equally cogent arguments.
But if I had to simplify this down to its essence, I'd go with Uncle Ben Parker (later repeated by his nephew Peter):
"With great power, comes great responsibility".
The power to define one's existence comes with the responsibility to NOT assume that one's definition, or even the process of struggling towards it, is the same as everyone else's, or, even the same as ANYONE else's.
And therefore, one has to be responsible not to impose one's viewpoint on anyone else.
Cajole, argue, persuade, maybe. IMPOSE, no. And notice I've said viewpoint. I didn't say reality--and too many people confuse the two; facts are not disputable, though implications of them certainly may be.
This does NOT mean unfettered libertarianism. Comments here are accurate in noting that tends to lead to people with less power being stepped on. The purpose of government--why we need it at all--IS to try to minimize the possibility of getting stepped on; to try to equalize the power relationships in the public sphere, so that advantages in earning power--which depend on what skills are rewarded and which are not (and that DOES vary across civilizations, it's not all supply and demand)--do not become advantages of political coercion.
So, if you have power, take your responsibility to wield it seriously, not just for you and yours (and support government structures that level).
3
While I see value in these conservative principles, one must be careful in becoming trapped into conservative vs. liberal dualisms. Ideological belief systems tend to trap believers in either or thinking. Yes, I would agree that liberal, "do your own thing," beliefs leave individuals unmoored from valued communal patterns. At the same time, however, they can also trap individuals into inherited cultural beliefs systems that deny individuals freedom to question and break from beliefs that are not about the common good, but "my groups good." The freedoms we all enjoy today---freedom of religion (Luther), freedom from arbitrary rule (Locke), free markets (Smith), freedom from tyranny of the majority (Mill), freedom from exploitation by the 1% (Croly)---were all products of liberal thinkers who rebelled against cultural norms that stifled individual social, emotional, and intellectual growth.
I've often said that the difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals value the process, while conservatives value the outcome. This doesn't necessarily translate into perfect policy by either side, and certainly balance between the two is necessary, but when we place all the emphasis on the outcome it's inevitable that the self interest of individuals will overwhelm the greater good.
I believe this is what we're living with in this time of conservative dominance of the 3 branches of government. The process of building community and common benefit has been displaced by an obsession with measuring the cost/benefit ratio of everything, and the result of the calculation is a near universal belief that somebody else is getting something I'm not, and at my expense.
Justice Kennedy's pronouncement, ironically, flies directly in the face of another Kennedy, whose admonition to the country was to elevate the process of the common good above the outcome for the individual. The promise has always been that by doing so, we all benefit. Somewhere along the line we came to believe that whatever those benefits were, they weren't enough to satisfy our needs and wants.
The process of providing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to everyone has been replaced by the calculus of the outcome as measured by each individual. Despite the wealth and freedom we enjoy, apparently it's not enough.
One persons "Mystery of Life" phrase is another persons exscape cluase. Mystery of life is what a guy in his forites says to his wife after a one night stand, at the life insurance sales annual trade show.
Somebody, tax payers, always end up paying the bill for the damage done to our society by the Mystery of Life phrase people.
1
Brooks talks about the loss of the community and the rise of the individual. What has been responsible? Hasn't it been the GOP? The supposed party of 'liberty' and individual responsibility?
If anything the Democrats have been the party of the community. Look at Obama's actions, from the ACA to Dodd-Frank, those actions were about the community. Nothing more communal then trying to keep ALL citizens healthy or ensure banks are responsible for their actions. Community doesn't happen in a vacuum, it is nourished by all of our institutions, from local community organizations to the Federal government. They all play a part.
Brooks I ask you, why have you been a Republican all three years? Hasn't the writing been on the wall for the GOP for decades?
2
The values that "we" upheld in the past were suspect anyways. Perhaps what is happening is the prelude to a new type of enlightenment, one that goes beyond democracy and the power of individual freedoms and equality, which was held up by a grossly unfair system: capitalism. "We the people" in action always really meant that "we the people" will make money, by any means necessary -- exploitation, deception, let the buyer beware, greed, profit, we the people agreed on that. That rebirth got us a long ways; now we have seen the end of its tenure. "We the people" now need a new mantra, more explicit in value and mission. Not merely a community of shared moneymaking values able to splinter into factions of values dressed up in different ways. We now need a global community of one value: Save Planet Earth from Climate Change Doom. Now: We, all people on Earth, need to share. Now: We, all people on Earth, need to conserve. Now it's not about We the people. Not, America First. Earth First. All the people. We now need the globalization of meaning in order to survive and thrive. Sadly, an "All the People" value it is the opposite of the populism that has infected the world.
1
“Governments must not be allowed to force persons to express a message contrary to their deepest convictions. Freedom of speech secures freedom of thought and belief.” Speech takes on many forms as every artist knows. Morality and beliefs are the exclusive domain of non-governmental institutions like family, private schools, churches, and even business.
The limited role of government also echoed the words of Justice Thomas in the case of the Colorado bakery and the gay wedding reception. Justice Thomas reminded us that if the purpose of the law is to eliminate hate; the law is, per se, illegal. The government may not favor one idea over a competing idea and declare one to be unlawful. We are free to discriminate in our hearts, our politics, and our religion – with the assurance that the government will be nonaligned.
There is a different rule for elected officials who may discriminate in hiring subordinates or making discretionary policy for almost any political reason not clearly prohibited by statute or the constitution.
The problem with David Brooks and the liberal Justices on the court is that they fail to appreciate the freedom of all non-governmental entities and the restrictions that must be placed on all levels of government.
Public schools may not promote any morality. Governments may not favor minorities (including white males). Motives and intentions, if they exist at all, are beyond government’s ability to regulate and fairly judge.
1
I, for one, refuse to concede that individual liberty is incompatible with shared community values.
To insist on liberty is not to abdicate responsibility.
1
Excellent piece, yet one that I think underestimates how smart and altruistic people CAN be, if raised with an adequate education in history, science and civics. If our children learn the basics of how human beings and societies behave (e.g., by studying evolutionary psychology/ anthropology/history) and the basics of civics (e.g. understanding Federalist 51, the concept of separation of powers and the First Amendment), then we don't need to each be an Aristotle or a Nietzsche. We need only be educated, informed citizens and our society will work.
1
This opinion assumes that the community, the culture, society, the tribe are always right, always moral, and always make the right moral choices. There is ample evidence in history where that is not the case. The lone individual, or individuals who oppose a society's wrong imperatives are not only moral but extremely courageous.
It is not an either/or, a black or white issue, sometimes the society and culture should be affirmed and supported; sometimes not. It all comes down to the morality and conscience of the individual whether to support a culture's world view or to oppose it.
4
Aah yes, the liberal-communitarian debate, the endless push-me pull-you of American life. Conservatives like Mr. Brooks want it both both ways - individual freedom in markets (for the rich) and collective morality (for the poor). The strength of the latter ensures the security of the former. And whenever rampant inequality (in its several forms) works to loosen the bonds of civic culture, elite voices form a chorus to lament the decay of morals, intentionally mistaking symptom for cause. That is the definition of a conservative.
Does Mr. Brooks' yearning for collectivity extend to the economy? Perhaps, but only the sort of economic community that would preserve, rather than strive to eliminate, material inequality (his column reads like a prayer for the return of feudalism).
The culture of American liberalism that added a veneer of civility to the inequalities of American capitalism is giving way. It will not be restored, only replaced. The question is: by what? Conservatives who fondly hope they will be able to revive their community with all the old homilies will be disappointed. The fight over what form the new culture of equality will take is now underway and it is, quite literally, beneath them.
10
I would love to see a response by Kennedy to this interpretation. Brooks concluded: "Any society has to perform at least two big related tasks — raising the young and pursuing of the good. It takes a village to do both these things. As Yuval Levin reminded us in an essay in First Things a few years ago, people are only capable of exercising responsible freedom when they are embedded in and formed by social institutions — like family, schools that take morality seriously and a shared civic order. It’s not a do-it-yourself job.The autonomy ethos forgets this. Justice Kennedy channeled it in its purest form." If Kennedy would indicate that he agreed, that this did indeed state his view after all his experience on the court, it would be quite disturbing indeed. This might be a case against life time appointments for Supreme Court judges.
So you're saying the mass media ideology of post-truth hyper-individualism shouldn't* be wholeheartedly implemented? What I find disingenuous is that these concepts are turned back on the public, as if this project was a product of our own organic doing. If any rational critique is to be made, it's to simply object to the plurality of powerful organizations deliberately atomizing people and upending social norms to re-shape collectivism in their own image.
2
I agree with you Mr. Brooks. Many of the late 19th century and early 20th century popes warned of the errors of moral relativism and modernism, and the prophetic warnings of Pope Paul VI in his Humanae Vitae have all unfortunately now become true.
What Mr. Brooks doesn't mention here is how do we return to an age of solidarity and subsidiarity?
"that sense of we-ness began to turn into a sense of I-ness or you-ness." Perhaps, David, the "we-ness"of glorious memory excluded so many people that they rebelled, and decided that they would no longer be defined by the previous rules. We have overshot the mark perhaps towards only having personal objectives, but as with the previous column about "sacred spaces" you are nostalgic for a past that just wasn't that good for women, minorities, the poor, the uninsured, etc..
4
While he doesn't come right out and say it here (he has in the past), David Brooks is always trying to figure out a way to reinsert religion in our culture as if it's a virtue-driven, steadying force. It depends on the brand and the particular god you're talking about. Virtue and religious belief are at war in this country. Religious belief is winning; consequently, the country's losing.
6
Excellent points.
Rather ironic that the GOP mantra is removing government, removing social and economic safety nets, etc, which sounds a lot like "every man for himself", "survival of the fittest", or as we now know it, evolution. Of course evolution is only a theory, right?
And evolution is anathema to Republicans because they rely heavily on the support of the religious right to gain and retain power. So we have GOP stalwarts professing to base their policies and philosophies on christian morality so they can loot the treasury for the benefits of the mega wealthy
I would not jump to this conclusion about what Mr. Brooks wrote. Saying that individuals are part of their tribe does not mean that religion is needed (even though all tribes, for evolutionary psychological reasons, have their religions).
"Virtue and religious belief are at war in this country. Religious belief is winning; consequently, the country's losing."
Religious belief gets tangled up in wars almost every time. Particular brands and gods are not what throws off the balance of civilization. Wars, winners and losers emerge when religious belief is replaced by its ugly cousin religious dogma.
I enjoy reading David Brooks so much and his writing has enlightened and provoked me over the years. I even think that I would like him as a person and would enjoy having a conversation with him. But how far would we go before I would be compelled to point out his occasional bouts of disingenuousness? Today's column doesn't point out or even mention that the opinion referenced was in an abortion case. It doesn't mention other interpretations of the comments prior to this week that pointed out not only its conservative underpinnings but the considerable legal precedents.
Clifford R. Goldstein provided a wonderful example:
http://libertymagazine.org/article/justice-kennedys-notorious-mystery-pa...
Community and autonomy are not an 'either/or' proposition. In order for our great country to succeed there had to be a 'both/and' deal on these concepts, which did not require everyone to have a grounding in Aristotelian thought. Of course, cherishing both community and autonomy is a paradox. The United States of America has been a paradox since its founding. that's why we are often polarized. As a wise person once said to me, when you find yourself in a polarized situation your first step must be towards the other pole. I wish that David Brooks had given us a column today in which he talked about how to embrace both community and autonomy rather than making it a zero-sum game. But I will keep reading.
3
Did someone outlaw churches and other religious institutions or forbid parents from raising their children within a robust practice of such traditions? Kids can't learn not to hit or steal unless we're all singing from the same hymnal? Insisting on a single shared meaning in our "communal spaces" has colonial Salem as one possible conclusion. Our cultural legacies inform our beliefs and give us a sense of place in the universe, but taken to extremes, those beliefs can be as misguided as anything a soulless state can dream up, and personal religious conviction, untethered and insulated from any logical inquiry, is the most solipsistic and private meaning of all.
3
Goodness comes in another way, David.
When you raise babies according to what they need (an enormous amount of compassionate, attentive, empathic presence), you magically wind up with people who function very well. You don't have to impose philosophies from the outside. Compassion blossoms on its own, by being received.
In 1977, Dr James W Prescott of the NIH studied indigenous peoples to see whether high-functioning societies (low violence, low suicide) shared common childrearing practices. There was one practice that predicted happy societies 90% of the time: they carried their small babies around.
If a society both carried their babies AND did not punish sexual expression, happy societies resulted 100% of the time. And, in these happy societies, there was VERY LOW religiosity. He found that the more physical care and physical pleasure a society contains, the less violent it ends up.
Compassion is learned at the breast of the mother. If a human being is parented attentively, responsibly, soothingly, and gently, a good person results. A person raised with care will embody caring principles.
5
It seems to me that Kennedy ratified what was already the case in our society; that is, he read our contemporary "constitution" aright. And as much as I agree with the concerns expressed here, I shudder in horror imagining the Robespierres waiting eagerly in the wings to shove communal meaning down our throats (see the White House). Like it or not, we are a society of strangers--this should be the premise of any jurisprudence bearing on personal liberty. The "lifestyle liberties" Kennedy defended may be a mere consolation for the viscissitudes of life in a "joint stock company for the mutual getting of ones bread" but they're no less than that either.
3
Dear Mr. Brooks,
As someone born and raised in Mexico, where certain institutions, like family and community, are much more important, I've always walked around in this country feeling like there was something wrong with Americans' understanding of freedom. It was a freedom that left me feeling empty and alone. I wondered if I was the only person who didn't appreciate this kind of freedom but who longed for the social structures that used to give meaning to my life. Thank you for articulating my own thoughts, for pointing to the words that express my feelings.
3
I've never understood why Republicans have such a low opinion of the 'res publica.' We the People are the state—or we were supposed to be until Reagan set us on the path to oligarchy.
I appreciate David's efforts at this politically terrifying time to articulate traditional conservative ideas. But there is no philosophically defensible definition of morality that says a person can possess it merely from being a member of a community. Morality is always about defining yourself through choices. The person who follows only 'unrestrained desires' self-destructs quickly. If you were to argue that free will doesn't exist, then you call into question whether an individual can choose, and morality becomes an illusion. There's just an agreed-upon set of behaviors that offers the individual the security of belonging to a group. But that certainly isn't what conservatives believe—not with all their blather about personal accountability.
So this belief in community over individualism makes sense only if the community is willing to provide for the individual's needs. But I don't have a whole column to explore how in a civilized society natural rights (inherent to the individual) and civil rights (granted by the community) have to be brought into balance. I can only say that a human being is a zoon politikon—no, not a "political animal," but a social being—and it's fatuous to exclude the political community from those other communities that shape and sustain us.
1
His perspective doesn't seem to be all that different from the liberal Justice Brandies who gave us the constitutional "right to be left alone".
A healthy society needs both a commitment to the commons and also space for each of us to nurture our idiosyncracies and march to our own drum on occasion.
Maybe that's why we need a diverse court; we want both voices there.
But in fact there is no right, constitutional or otherwise, to be "left alone" in a general sweeping sense. Laws, constitutional laws, impinge on that right every day.
I can't dive too deep here, but why would Brooks pick on Kennedy by parsing one short phrase of his? Kennedy is about as mainstream/right as one can get, both in his life and in his court opinions. Ironically, the thinkers who have developed a possible answer to Brook's problem of too much individual freedom are the social constructionists. The irony lies in the fact that most of these thinkers shy away from Brooks's standard bromides of church, patriotism, and paternalism.
2
.."as mainstream/right as one can get."
The Republican Party devalues the lives of the poor.
1
Good riddance, Anthony Kennedy!
All the respect accorded by the bar and popular imagination was due entirely to him finding himself in the middle of an increasingly fractured court. Well, it will be fractured no longer.
Now that Kennedy's career is entirely in the rearview mirror, it seems fair on balance to characterize him as a weak-willed, intellectually feeble kind of clown, and perhaps, considering the timing of his retirement, a dupe (or complicit, considering that his son was Trump’s banker at Deutschebank).
Kennedy gave a few crumbs on affirmative action and gay rights, but he was wrong on issues core to democracy: he cast deciding votes destroying campaign finance regulation and removing the eye teeth from the Voting Rights Act, among others.
I'm not sympathetic to Kennedy's age or the pleadings of his wife. You take the top Court job and you sign on to higher priorities. Soldiers and cops die for their country every day. Where the fate of democracy is in the balance, it's not too much to ask the same of a Supreme Court justice. In fact, the timing of his retirement not only ensures a hard right successor, but will also juice Republican turnout in the mid-terms.
What a legacy.
Progressives have put way too much emphasis on top-down judicial process for way too long. Maybe now with Kennedy gone, scales will fall from eyes, and progressives will return to their roots of organizing the people and seeking change thru the legislature where it will be better rooted.
12
Justice Kennedy gets much praise for his opinions on LGBT rights and abortion rights.
It seems he really got down into the deep weeds of investigating these issues to inform his opinions.
Why could he not see the basic rights of "the people" screaming to be upheld in so many of his other opinions: Citizens United (a new description of corporations?); the recent travel ban of Muslims from troubled countries; and on and on?
While the Supreme Court is supposed to be above politics (clearly impossible), they should all be intelligent enough to foresee the terrible consequences of their decisions on people' s livess, communities, and our democracy.
We are, in fact, not a self-governing nation. We are governed by the ghosts of the men who founded this country, who thought that their greatest problem was mustering the firepower to defend their new nation from the king of England, even as they failed to resolve the tensions between the colonial structure they inherited from him and the desire for freedom on the part of all of its people.
2
The notion of autonomy bounded by reason was at the heart of the Enlightenment, which was at the heart of America's founding. It's taken 500 years of "progress" to finally bring its empty claims home to roost.
2
It takes more than cultural norms to foster liberty. If it's just culture, then on what basis do we appeal to those who reject the culture? Is there anything real about humans that makes some cultural norms right and others wrong? That is what Justice Kennedy threw overboard: not just culture, but humanity itself.
If we really -- that is, in objective, hard reality -- have value and dignity, then cultural norms (such as Kennedy's) which impair that value and dignity are not just wrong: popular embrace of such norms will be disastrous. That is what we are witnessing.
Historically, intrinsic human value and dignity derived from the biblical doctrine of creation: humans have value because we are created in the image of God. Now we have renounced that doctrine, with nothing to replace it.
1
The farce of asking courts to judge what are "sincerely held beliefs" betrays a naivete one hardly expects from an 81 year old man.
1
We might also take into consideration that the Reagan years, the “Me Decade” began nearly a half-century of individual greed resulting in today’s enormous socio-economic disparity; political parties more like warring armies; and the abomination that sits in the Oval Office. However accurate is Brooks’ lament over our current state of personal truth, it gets more unlikely with each passing day that we’ll ever recapture the kind of collective agreement we need to shore up our teetering democracy.
3
Just as 9/11 transformed us from a flexible democracy to a proto-police state, so will worldwide environmental traumas compel us to adopt a more collective world view. These crises will unite us once again into a new version of our original "one people, one cause."
It would be possible for us to find common purpose and common values if we were not prisoners of a capitalistic market economy that pits us all against each other. Our extreme individualism is as much an advertising ploy as a real philosophical position. We could come together about protecting the planet, helping each other but not in our current market economy.
7
Every person in America should read this op-ed, and not because of what it says about Justice Kennedy, but because of what it says about America. Great piece!
6
I agree with David Brooks's wise editorial. I believe, however, that the rise of individualism actually began in the 60's when we broke away from the confining stereotypical attitudes of the 50's and recognized that individual choices were available. We ran too far with that theory, unfortunately. We need reasonable balance between individual freedoms and recognition of group values. That's the real challenge of democracy! Our real problem is that we can't listen to one another anymore and negotiate about what is reasonable balance. It's all about winning and losing!
1
We broke down the rules and norms of our society to fight the racism and sexism that were entrenched in those rules and norms. In the joy of that new freedom we suffered the hubris that new rules and new norms were not necessary for a coherent, functioning society, that the lack of rules and norms was a new paradise. But a lack of rules and norms always allows the rich and strong to prey on the weak and poor, be that in sexual politics, in daily commerce, in high finance, or in politics. We are left adrift because two generations after abandoning our old rules and norms we are unable to agree on a new set. But I think there is hope. There is no longer a generation that remembers and wishes to return to the rules and norms pre-1965; that generation has passed on or lost significance. The baby boomers still preach libertarian values of anarchism, but their voices will fade too as we see the end of the Trumps, McConnells, Sanders and Pelosis, eventually. The Ayn Randians have been discredited on the right, and the revolutionaries and sexual libertines on the left (what could be more pro-rule and norm than gay marriage). We can all see the need for a new solution. I think we're closer than we can see, today. Look to new, younger leaders who embrace solutions for all, rather than one interest group or another.
4
"We the people" actually referred to the aristocratic leaders of our country who adopted the Constitution with no direct voter ratification -- not that most people had the right to vote anyhow. Those leaders were suspicious of government and sought to limit its authority. They gave us as much individual liberty as possible while restricting the federal government's powers. Nonetheless, those powers have been greatly enlarged over time by the Supreme Court. Now we have a president who, despite the scant verbiage about his role in the Constitution, seeks to arrogate more and more power to himself. Only the Court can limit that power. A Republican-controlled Congress has and will not. Of course, the president is going to appoint justices and judges who support his viewpoints. And the current Senate will confirm them unless they lack meaningful legal experience. That's the Constitution. In retrospect, not the kind of charter for individual or communal rights and responsibilities many of us would like.
2
Many of the commenters here so far are taking exception to various parts Mr. Brooks' column. Many of those are lauding "logic" as the basis for their criticisms.
Which gets us right back to Mr. Brooks' point - we are all rapidly becoming legends in our own minds, without a sense of shared morality or ethics on which to base our sense of right and wrong. Our own logic (even though it's not shared by our neighbor) should reign supreme.
All laws, all politics, all regulations, flow from our collective determinations of what is "right" and what is "wrong." We have a smaller and smaller pool of agreed-upon rights and wrongs from which to draw. And less and less tolerance for those who disagree with us.
Trying to divorce public policy from morality and ethics is the height of illogic, if logic is your god. Please do us all the favor of honesty by recognizing that you are asking us all to bow down to your god, who is in fact, you.
13
Ahhhh, thankful for the wisdom of the great American Midwest...aka "flyover" country. Well said. Please let this be the way
This philosophical take down of Kennedy goes way over my head. For me, Kennedy is the guy who just voted to gut the viability of labor unions; to permit the undermining of democratic rule by gerrymandering, and to warn against rule by demagoguery while voting to enable our demagogue president. Yes, he ruled with fairness and compassion with respect to gay rights, and respected "honest"religious conviction (which somehow requires the imposition of those beliefs on others),but his replacement on the Court will differ in degree, not in "legal"philosophy.
5
I felt that our society was becoming more democratic and more tolerant. When one examines the amendments to the Constitution, many are concerned with expanding rights. Famous Supreme Court cases in the past overturned injustices. "Truth" is not a constant, it too changes or evolves with changes to our society. Now the"conservatives" view the Supreme Court as a means of turning back the clock in their cultural wars whether it be gay rights, public aid to religious schools, police power, enforcement of a Muslim ban, etc. We have a chief executive noted for his racism and anti democratic speeches and actions. Our system of checks and balances is not working. The GOP in Congress are supporting him and a conservative court will uphold his actions. Kennedy's replacement will probably be another "corporate" lawyer, not one concerned with the Constitution.
5
"Truth is not a constant." That belief right there is the essence of what is wrong with society in five words.
I don't often agree with David Brooks but this one is spot-on; as Benjamin Franklin's illustration expressed in 1754, "JOIN, Or DIE". Our nation needs to be united by common values and purpose to move forward.
8
This is, of course, the result of postmodernism run amok, of a sort that is largely not thought out and simply accepted as the way to be, irrespective of what the consequences are.
Modernity (not modernism) through technology provided the tools to define ourselves as we see fit, to be the masters of our own universes. Modernism and postmodernism have been able to thrive in this environment. In the former case, we have detached ourselves from any past notion of the sublime outside of ourselves (God is dead, in the Nietschzean sense). In the latter case, we have unmoored ourselves from ourselves.
As Mr. Brooks points out, the practical results show the relative "truthiness" of these points of view. And while one would think we would thrive in his age of self-definition, what we have reaped is a kind of chaos that requires governmental intervention at every turn.
2
These musings would all be well and good if we lived in a society where all was functional and boring and we had the time and inclination to think about the existential meaning of existence.
But we now live under an Oligarchy that owns or controls just about anything it wants to control. The Middle Class is shrinking and struggling to keep up. The Working Class is hopelessly broke and behind the Eight Ball. Politicians promise to help us and protect us, but are just as much a part of the Oligarchy as the blatant Oligarchs.
The Blatant Oligarchs are out to destroy the Public Sector, the Commonwealth of Public Education, National Parks, the Safety Net. They know who they are and what they want, and they don't waste time musing about the meaning of it all. They need the money, and they are going where money still is, in the pockets, bank accounts, wages, homes, and personal items of the rest of us. There is even money in our bodies and our labor and demeaning our dignity for their sport.
I have thought these existential thoughts also, having lived in France for 11 years and having read Sartre and Camus, etc. But, as I said, such thoughts are predicated on the leisure to have such thoughts in decent times. We are now in a serious situation where we are fighting for the basics, like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our basic dignity....
17
I would happily be spared the philosophical musings of both Anthony Kennedy and David Brooks. What this country needs is decency and respect for the rule of law. If we could achieve that, we could figure the rest of it out.
2
Actually, the issue is who's law.
The idea of individualism is easier than you've offered. In fact, the constitution is based on individual right and not community. You, Mr. Brooks, need to read Shirley Jacksons' short story, The Lottery, to understand why community-thought is flawed as a system of government.
2
And maybe you need to read the Constitution. It is not "based" on individual rights. It is all about creating a community - a government - within which individual rights are protected.
Actually I agree with Kennedy more than Brooks.
America's most successful institutions were based upon thinking as individuals not as groups.
Consider the jury system. 12 individuals should weigh the evidence independently, then argue it out---did the prosecution prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?
Yes, it is awkward and time consuming. But when people reason as groups they too often let the others in the group do the thinking.
They often wind up believing with fervor things which turn out to be false.
There are many issues which the NY Times never discusses. One of them is population growth.
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published the Population Bomb, in 1972 a group of four authors published Limits to Growth. These authors argued that population growth threatened to destroy planet earth. Although it did not precisely describe global warming, the Limits to Growth did raise the specters of running out of resources and accumulating too much waste.
A solution was provided: birth control. But we needed to take collective action.
We haven't.
Now, we see the dissolution of order in Guatemala, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, but still people miss the connection.
The reason is that they follow group leaders who provide pat answers. All you need to do is be compassionate.
Medicare is slated to start running out of funds in 8 years. The decisions now made in places like Bangladesh will then be made in LA.
Religious group think tells us that abortion is murder. It is wrong.
1
"If you strip away all the communal commitments that help people govern themselves from within, then very soon you find you have to pass all sorts of laws to govern them from without. " That is not logical: you are describing conservatives, not liberals, and they demand a free hand to prosper without the hindrance of regulation or fair taxes or the public good. On the contrary, Mr. Brooks, you imply a strong case for social programs that benefit society in general, economic equality, and a liberal democratic state. We all want our SUVs but we need the state to regulate carbon or we wreck havoc on the world. And you reveal that the true source of our ills today is that selfish individualism championed by Mr. Kennedy, the apotheosis of which is his decision to award the nomination of his replacement to a brutish, materialistic, race-bating, plutocrat instead of a moderate centrist like Obama. I don't think we'll miss Kennedy as much as people think-- he was a reliable Republican hack who brought shame to a court that once upon a time at least gave a semblance of non-partisanship. His replacement will not likely be worse.
4
What interests me the most in this article is the underlying religious argument. David Brooks's argument for communal relationships is indeed an essential tenet of religion. Brooks is himself Jewish and he quotes a modern Jewish thinker, Yuval Levin. He even uses the word covenant. There seems to be something very theological in his analysis: Too much individual freedom without a transcendent relationship leads to selfishness. We must establish a covenant that allows us to resist sin and do good. This covenant demands social norms and collective action.
These maxims are not just central to Jewish theology, but also to Catholic theology. The dual understanding of freedom that Brooks presents (that we must also have the freedom to use our freedom well) is even more explicit in the Catechism than the Talmud.
Many people are going to find their own politcal opinions represented or unrepresented in this column and comment as such. But what I see in this column is evidence of a deteriorating Judeo-Catholic culture. 6 of the SC Justices were raised Catholic, the other 3 are Jewish. And yet all 9 have taken stances that are against their Judeo-Catholic philosophy. Steve Bannon, Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Cuomo, Mike Pence, Bernie Sanders, Bill O'Reilly; all of these American leaders are Catholic or Jewish, but none of them are consistent with their religious beliefs. What US culture is witnessing is a decline in Jewish intellect and an embracing of an irrelevant cultural war.
4
Brooks, like conservative "thought", is incoherent. He has some good realizations such as the libertarian notion of people as monads in "liberty" is nonsense. But his romantic Burkean conservative description of what else there is in our social make-up is the usual gibberish regarding traditional roles and institutions.
He needs to embrace logic more fully. Something Kennedy struggled with as well. (Kennedy's so-called reasoning regarding corruption in Citizens United is disgusting). And he needs to embrace humanity and modern reality more realistically. For example, the idea that "liberty" is discussed ONLY in terms of government power. When the reality is that Money IS Power. To suggest that "liberty" is proportional to lack of government interference is to ignore the real world altogether. In our world, what gives some people power over others is money. The notion that an individual in the 99% can negotiate their own contract with a large corporation is absurd. Individuals have NO power in a Plutocratic Oligopoly. Sure, you can 'choose' not to work or not to consume, but 99% of you have no control, no negotiating power whatsoever. You negotiate terms with your bank? no, take it or leave it. same with ALL banks so no, you have zero agency to negotiate. Same with employment at anything but the smallest of companies. This is what you do, this is what you get, take it or get out.
"Liberty" has to include freedom from control by the wealthy.
5
With any discussion of self-actualization I am reminded of the works of the late Joseph Campbell, author of numerous works on comparative mythology. He is often remembered for the phrase "follow your bliss." Later in life he regretted the utterance, saying that he should have emphasized "follow your blisters."
I do not know what he would have said about our lack of shared national experience, the lack of any obligation to public service.
There are a number of ways to analyze our modern moment, some that appear to transcend moral obligations: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dirty-hands/ ("The Problem of Dirty Hands").
David, you may be right that the Justice’s philosophy elevated the individual over the community in some harmful way, but your evidence is pretty flimsy isn’t it? A single set of phrases from a single writing? This man wrote a lot of thoughtful arguments over decades. Where the evidence and analysis to support your theory and critique?
In 1956 a Republican Congress passed, and President Eisenhower signed, a bill eliminating "E pluribus unum" as the national motto and substituting in its place "In God We Trust," perhaps not even noticing that the greatest illusion of God is that any two of us have the same God in mind. One man's God endorses slavery while another forbids it; one man's God forbids homicide while another says if you're not willing to kill for your beliefs then you don't really have any beliefs, do you? I am grateful to Mr. Brooks for reminding us of Justice Kennedy's remarkable statement, but Kennedy was only echoing the GOP's standard line that competition, not cooperation, is all the law and the profits.
3
Unrestrained individuality and greed have created this mess. People no longer see their fellow time travelers as fellow stakeholders in the world. Other people are reduced to unwanted competition to beat. Friends and family often ask me why I care so much and get upset with the things I’m seeing and hearing. I’m dumbfounded that they don’t know. I want to leave the world in better condition than when I entered it. Alas I am now forlorn because it won’t be. Maybe it’s my silly idealism. I shed a tear as I type this.
3
Sharon, I understand and appreciate your perspective after reading Mr. Brooks' column.
Like you, I'm thinking the crux of the matter is not actually Justice Kennedy, nor the US Constitution, or even US history. It's contained in Brooks' words here, which have to do with the lack of handing down a moral and spiritual heritage:
"You wind up with a society in which the schools, the public culture, even the parents say: It’s not our job to instill a shared morality and worldview from scratch. That’s something you have to do on your own. The practical result, given this impossible task, is that most people wind up without a moral vocabulary, with only scattered shards of values, with no firm foundations for when times get tough."
I'm also dumbfounded by how much we, as a society, seem to forget. We seem not able to remember and learn moral lessons.
And maybe, the biggest lesson that seems to have been lost, is what you point out, which is simply, life goes a whole lot better when we treat others as we would like to be treated.
3
Sharon:
We are told by the Founders: Amongst the things that all healthy human individuals desire are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That contention is made obvious to us on a daily basis as we observe (if we bother to) our neighbors, our fellow citizens, and (if we travel abroad) people everywhere.
I am not so sure what you mean by ‘unrestrained’ individuality, but greed - one of the surest indicators of an unhealthy individual, one who compromises the health/life, liberties and happiness of your neighbors, your fellow citizens, and the world at large - has certainly created ‘this mess’. Restraining greed is an imperative; sadly, there are periods of human history during which this is not the case, and we are living in one right now - at least in the USA.
As for your personal pain, I tell myself that the world may not be better than it was 5 years ago, but it is in many ways a better place than it was when I was born nearly 70 years ago. Take solace in the belief that in the absence of your individual but unselfish life - and millions/billions like it - the world would indeed be worse off.
But how much better off we and the world would be if we could restrain greed.
Here's Kennedy's ultimate legacy: His ruling in the Citizens United case that hastened the destruction of U.S. democracy. He asserted that “independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption.” So, donating millions of dollars to someone doesn't even look like corruption. Sure, all these millionaires and corporate executives are giving money just because they're generous...they don't expect anything in return. If it wasn't so sad and damaging, it would be laughable.
6
I'll admit it. I haven't read a Brooks' column word for word in years. It's too painful.
But I suspect he and Kennedy are cut from the same cloth.
Two men ensconced in their own little worlds, with no real awareness of anything other than their own minds, and their own words.
I think Brooks' blurb was critical of Kennedy - but am not sure. As I said - I simply cannot tolerate the man or his writing.
But make no mistake - Kennedy retired because he is clueless as to the repercussions - which is what happens to some people when they get old - even supreme court justices.
4
Chuck Todd at the end of MTP last Sunday ended with a statement, maybe we should get back to the Golden Rule. When he said it I thought " Corny!". But now I am thinking he was absolutely correct. Applying the Golden Rule is both a collective and individual choice, we seem to be in attack mode so much these days, there is no room for putting someone else on equal footing with ourselves.
Problem is, can we or have we crossed some line and can't return to those roots? The answer to that question makes me fearful for our country, the ever increasing hate, separation, violence.
4
Kennedy showed himself to be a true Conservative to the very end, a man with only a few centrist lapses over the years. Even the timing of his retirement reflects Conservative narcissism : "I have to do what is good for me, now", regardless of the terrible divisions in the country, the terrible leadership we endure, and the awful prospect of what is to come. His decisions in this very legislative session reflect the narcissism which is the cornerstone of Republican Conservatism: me before you, us before them, mine not yours. Remember.... "House divided cannot stand".
5
>
Kennedy wrote and sided with a lot of awful rulings. Just because he was for choice and a select other few rulings doesn't make him a great Justice.
He must think that DJT is perfectly experienced and sane enough to pick his successor, and so for that his motives and/or senses must be questioned. He could have said he's retiring after the election..........
It's just another day that I wake up and say: thank the Gods that I didn't have the hubris to bring my babies out of the void into this world.
1
We the people stated our loyalty best in our Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, with unalienable rights, for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Such a declaration, “that all men are created equal,” (of 1776) we now know needed more work. It would need to include more races, more genders, and more expansiveness.
But, thankfully, now it does! Quite gloriously, this rather divine pronouncement, that “all persons are created equal”, never looked so good legally as it does today, even though this inclusive social compact is now being threatened by our present administration. These gains, with much help from Judge Kennedy, must not be reversed even though racism, homophobia, sexism, and xenophobia are still menacing around us. It is indeed frightening that Mr. Trump will nominate Kennedy's successor.
Someday, just once, even just one time, I would like for David Brooks to have the epiphany that allows him to recognize that the underpinnings of his morality, his sacred space, is white male supremacy. "Certain enforced guardrails" - enforced by whom, for what? David Brooks is at the center of his preferred universe. I remain unpersuaded that he cares about the common good.
1
It's nice that David Brooks is interested in political theory, but his analysis is poor. In liberal political theory, the individual is not the disembodied chooser free from all commitments that communitarians complain about. But although we are clearly shaped by our culture, family, and institutions, we have fundamental rights to criticize these and change them, if we find the need. This is what Kennedy is talking about, not the absurd distortion that Brooks has unearthed.
Either David is much thicker than his writing implies, or he's still deeply attached to the Right that is eating his country in great, bloody chunks.
Take this, for example: "You wind up with a society in which the schools, the public culture, even the parents say: It’s not our job to instill a shared morality and worldview from scratch."
I've taught in places from middle school through graduate school. I have yet to hear a single person say "It's not my job" to the challenge of instilling a sense of ethics, of shared morality, of a commitment to whatever community students consider home.
That comes directly from David's beloved Right. From people so frightened of their neighbors they can't abide someone else teaching their little darlings morality and ethics.
Neither can they bothered to teach them at home. So baby Trumps get none, or they're indoctrinated in Neo-Calvinist, Evangelical, anti-Christian Prosperity Gospel, all of which run counter to the Bible, Jesus, and the words of God, if you're into that; and all of which say, "Do what you want. Try not to hurt anybody too badly. If its business we're talking about, go for the gold. And the jugular".
Upright conservatives will sue the school, abuse the teacher, open a sub-par charter before they allow in-class discussion of morality, ethics, the national community.
As with so much else, David, when it comes to disintegrating communities or the abandonment of ethics, look over there to the Right first.
3
I absolutely agree with your points, having spent 50 years arguing religion and morals with my born-again mother. Her church teaches that women must always be subordinate to men, that whites are superior to darker-skinned people, that the Bible is the literal word of God and could be read like today's headlines, that only Fox News speaks the truth (because it reflected her biases), that authority was always to be obeyed (even if it was Hitler) because God put them into power, that the world was only 6500 years old, that everyone who didn't accept Jesus (even if they were born thousands of years before he was) was going to burn in hell, that being wealthy is a sign of God's endorsement, that abortion, homosexuality and even contraception are mortal sins.... I could go on and on, but you get the point. You can't communicate with people like that. No wonder the evangelicals worship at the feet of today's version of the golden calf, Trump.
2
I grew up in an America that, while certainly imperfect, had a concept, at least, of a sort of "community of Americans." Certain practices reinforced this idea: the existence of public schools, the morning pledge of allegiance, and a media environment that upheld normal social standards by not permitting displays of excessive violence, bad language or graphic sex, etc. Of course, there were big problems then. Obviously, the stated American ideals of equality of opportunity were not lived up to in practice. But at least those ideals were stated -- and presented as something we should work toward. What went wrong? In a word, Reaganism. Reaganism begat tribalism. "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?" That view of the world enshrined the "me-me-me" approach more than anything else. It replaced something far less selfish - "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." For historically pro-Reagan thinkers to deplore the emergence of the "autonomy ethos" just seems maddeningly lacking in self-awareness.
2
The social order should result from individuals free to live as full human beings. It's funny how conservative white men honor socialism over individuality when the concerns of others are free to reshape the social order to be more inclusive and respectful of all of humanity. When society embraces the full individual potentials of humanity in this way, it welcomes the immigrant seeking membership in conditions that flourish in freedom. "I"s and "You"s are a fundamental truth of We and can live harmoniously. America's current crisis is that a minority of "I"s want to preserve a social order that is more about Me than We.
2
Here is another perspective on our Founders. They were all white blue blood from the 13 original colonies. They were the economic and intellectual elite of their time. They were all really quite intelligent. Being intelligent they understood that the mass of people were not as intelligent as they were, so they wrote up a document that would appear to appeal to the non- elites. "We the People." Kind of vague when you think about it. For sure they didn't mean slaves or women, at least not at the time, because they let slavery stand and no women were included, legally. But maybe this was the genius of our Founders (Madison primarily, but probably his wife Dolly as well): They realized that there wasn't much they could do at the time for slaves and women, but they wrote up a document that they thought over time would make them equal citizens. Along with the Civil War that forced US Constitutional principles on the Southern States and the legacy of fits and starts of Supreme Court Rulings over the past 250 years, all Americans have the same Rights today.
1
Early in your article
you write:
"...we all play a role in that enterprise by fulfilling the roles that define us — father, mother, neighbor, citizen and legislator. We are parts of a covenant and pass down our shared order to our posterity."
This is illustrative of your right-wing "conservative" fallacy.
According to your doctrine, people are born into pre-assigned roles which conform to and which accommodate
a certain "order".
Social stasis is no prescription for social progress.
1
Kennedy clearly had a significant libertarian streak which resulted in his more puzzling decisions (to conservatives) regarding gay rights and Roe.
As far as his musings regarding the "mysteries of life", he obviously fancied himself as some kind of half baked supreme court philosopher, in keeping with his generally second rate mind.
Democrats are obviously having a freak out about replacing his "swing" vote, and not without good reason.
But the incremental harm that his replacement may do, other than with Roe, is actually pretty slight.
His departure is nothing to mourn.
2
JayK from CT, I think you've pretty much nailed it on Kennedy, a really light weight guy who fancied himself as above the fray. He had those couple of issues he used to pretend that he was different from the others but when it came to the big ones, e.g. Bush v Gore, bowing to Trumpism at the end, he revealed his true character. The replacement will be worse only in being younger, otherwise how much worse can you get, really. As for Roe, it will be overturned, and we can thank Mitch for that one. Thank you. Pete McGuire, Atlanta
1
Progressives aren't mourning Kennedy's departure, per se. They're mourning his departure during the tenure of an uncompromising hard-right president and an uncompromising hard-right Senate majority who will certainly replace Kennedy with a much more loyal partisan, like Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas.
And of course conservatives aren't mourning Kennedy's departure at all. They're celebrating their opportunity to replace him with a much more loyal partisan, like Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas.
Oh and by the way, as a gay man who owes my constitutional right to marry to Kennedy's vote, and as a liberal who values a woman's right to choose, I hardly think Kennedy's departure will do merely "incremental" harm.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
1
Supreme Judge Kenedy had perhaps unknown personal urgency and right to resign but to do so at this particular point throws more fire and disorder into our country and removes any vestiges of democracy by not deferring past primaries to announce and resign. And that possibility of disorder was known. Unfortunate very unfortunate for the nation to further distract debate
There's a big difference between what Kennedy said and what Brooks contends Kennedy meant. Kennedy said that a person is entitled (not obligated, by the way) to determine her own concept of existence and of the mystery of human life. Brooks contends that Kennedy meant that truth is relative to the individual.
To me, Kennedy's statement is so bland as to be self-evident. To me, he said nothing more than that each individual is entitled to hold her own values, and to decide what is most important to her in her own life. Ultimately I don't think even Brooks himself disagrees - and indeed Brooks has decided that what he values in his own life are certain kinds of social connection and generational "flow."
But Kennedy most emphatically did not say that truth is relative. Even if all the world is blind and no longer values sight, the sky is still blue, and even if all the world is deaf and no longer values hearing, the tree falling in the woods still makes a sound. Evolution is real, and humanity is not a few thousand years old, no matter what individuals' religious values are.
Values are individual, Kennedy said. He never said that facts are individual. Or, as the saying goes, people are entitled to their own opinions, but they're not entitled to their own facts.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
1
The drama of this plays out well in Patrick McGoohan's seminal series, "The Prisoner." Though somewhat dated for the effects and scenery overall, the ideas McGoohan explores are still very real today. In the current era of databases collecting all sorts of information about everybody, McGoohan's character's rallying cry of "I am not a number, I am a free man," is a plea for humanity.
Brooks invokes "it takes a village" to form a society. Ironically, in the series, McGoohan's character is a prisoner of and most of the drama takes place in "The Village," an isolated environment where the authorities running it try and get information from people who had been in positions of high authority, who suddenly left or had other reason for coming into question. Social conformity is paramount. Run too far afoul and you could be ostracized as "unmutual."
Both the series and Brooks' arguments make the case for balance. Too much conformity is a prison, too much individuality is anarchy. "Questions are a burden for others, answers a prison for oneself." Popular, perhaps, in Turkey right now, and are we all that far behind? Be seeing you.
3
I'm generally a fan of David's work, but I don't see anywhere in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution where the founding fathers were focused on ensuring a shared moral and social order. With Article 1 of the Bill of Rights they prohibited Congress from establishing a shared religion, and they were also concerned with preventing the Federal government from imposing norms on founding states that had meaningfully different cultures and norms. I agree with David that people and society benefit from a moral foundation and that our ethical beliefs are influenced by family, religion, culture, community and our exposure to the great thinkers and sages of the ages, but I agree with Justice Kennedy that ultimately individuals have to define their own meaning. I think the founding fathers would agree.
1
Mr Brooks has something meaningful to say, even if his reference to Justice Kennedy is just an excuse to say it.
Fundamentally, the issue Mr Brooks raises is the inherent tension between individual free will and the constraints and encouragements imposed on the individual by the community.
Community creates culture. Individuals add to or subtract from culture. Or they destroy it.
Conscience and a questioning intellect govern whether individuals will accept or reject the community's cultural dictates.
The key as to whether thinking individuals will support the community's dictates is determined by how the community's dictates are established, how they are enforced and by whom. So long as a critical mass of individuals believe the community's rules and leaders best reflect their interests, the culture will be sustained, may even thrive.
Such a sustained culture may / not be moral. Consider the Confederacy and slavery or Nazi Germany or pick any current theocracy.
One challenge is for the individuals in the community to have a meaningful say in how the community regulates itself. It's choice of leaders, of laws. Just as important, the community's ability to redress grievances and correct mistakes.
A second, more difficult challenge in our country, is the national community's ability to exert its will over local communities who choose divergent paths. This is the partisan tensions we are experiencing today.
Is our community a nation or a collection of villages?
8
The issue isn't "shared morality" vs. "unrestrained desire," it's what that shared morality should look like. Many people on the left share a morality based on not judging or discriminating against people for things outside their control. Many on the right share a morality based on personal responsibility and loyalty to one's family, religion, or country, which is inherently in tension with the morality of non-discrimination. And many libertarians would put minding one's own business at the center of morality. Any of these moralities could lead to a peaceful cohesive society if everyone shared them. So which one do we pick, and what do we do about the people who disagree?
If you want to have peace between groups with different worldviews, the only solution is a liberal state that does not try to "instill a shared morality" over the objections of groups that do not actually share it but instead carves out the maximum room for individuals and voluntary groups to live their values in their private life.
10
David is far too smart to not recognize that the Constitution had its genesis in the individualism of the Alexis de Tocqueville and J.S Mill's On Liberty.
The French Revolution failed for exactly the reasons that Davis extolls. The failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals.
Nietzsche mocked those very ideas of fellowship and shared values over three most excellent essays in On the Genealogy of Morality.
If we start by accepting a radical notion of individual belief [perspectivism] then we can chart a path to the future - exactly as Nietzsche suggested.
1
Kennedy didn't say that each of us is required to define our own concept of meaning; he said that we have a right to -- and as he was writing as a judge, that means "a legal right to." Thus most of Brooks' criticisms miss the mark. And to deny that we do or should have a legal right to think for ourselves about our relationship to the mystery of life is the same as rejecting religious freedom itself.
10
The Citizen's United ruling pretty much crystalized for me the problem with SCOTUS and Kennedy in particular. Democracy in the US has been perverted by rumination of person freedom and 1st Amendment Rights taken to Kafkaesque levels of illogic backed by a political agenda. First order of business, vote. Second order of business, amend the constitution to incorporate term limits on Justices. We are still trying to fit 21st Century problems into a 300 hundred year old document. The average life span in 1776 was about 35 years and most early Justices only served for 8 - 10 years. We can't continue to govern ourselves by denying historical changes in the last 300 years. Ditto with the 2nd Amendment.
16
Brilliant! I want you to be on SCOTUS.
"There is no acknowledgment of the parts of ourselves that we don't choose but inherit...that are handed down to us by our common culture."
What common culture? Does anybody really believe that the United States of today is a "society"? Aren't we really just a raucous collection of tribes with very little in the way of shared values? And isn't our current president exploiting and deepening our divisions, making the creation of a national unity ever more distant and tribalism our dominant mode for years to come?
4
The fundamental right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life flows directly from the proposition that all people are created equal.
So how then do we get to E Pluribus Unum?
We can start by ensuring that each person has equal standing before the law. We can ensure that people are free to worship as they wish, to speak as they wish, to associate with whom they wish. We can ensure that no person will be discriminated against based on race, color, gender, national origin, religion, or handicap.
By treating everyone as best we can, equal in respect to their private ideas and ideals, we can make a great nation.
Anyone who attempts to give preference to, or discriminate against, one race over another, one religion over another, one gender over another, one ethnicity over another, or one social order over another, that person is specifically undermining the American ideal.
It's not that difficult to understand.
8
The rights of women to control their own reproductive lives and have full equality under national law are conspicuously absent from your official list of those who deserve to have "equal standing before the law".
You also left out gay Americans. Duly noted.
And "associate with whom they wish" has segregationist/Libertarian, if not racist overtones.
"Worship as they wish" - to attack the lives and prospects of others not part of their sect and try to codify their sectarian bigotries into law?
"Speak as they wish"- It's too bad that your rightwing bigot agitators are unwelcome on college campuses but people didn't attend University to have to walk past hate-speech shouting "conservatives" on their way to their next class.
In spite of using the liberal language of fairness you betray yourself as hostile to the very idea of a level playing field, instead preferring your historical entitlement and privilege. Well this is not a level playing field, some groups STILL don't have equality under the law and we're not equal *until* we're equal.
The rest is deflection and equivocation. People can not be "almost equal" or half-free. And "everyone" means just that, not just those on your curated list of the deserving.
It's not that difficult to understand.
The constitution does begin with "We the People". but goes on to protect individual rights. It is in protecting individual rights that Justice Kennedy joined the liberals on the court to do the right thing. All the conservatives historically don't protect the individual. But even he sometimes failed us, as in the citizens United case. But we will probably not be kept in suspense on how decisions will come out after the next Republican appointee.
2
I do not share the belief that at one point in our history we were "one thing - a people, a nation, a collective." While the intent of the sentence that begins, "We the People of the United States," is a good one, Justice has not been established for so, so many people, nor has domestic Tranquility been insured, nor have we provided for the common defense, or promoted the general Welfare.
The Constitution has from the beginning been interpreted by individuals for their own gain, for their own power. There is no common understanding or agreement about what "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" means. It has been a battle since the get-go, leaving out women, minorities, people of color, and doling out honor and respect according to whichever individual or subset 'group' has more power.
We have always been a nation dividing itself into clubs and cabals, precisely because it is so very difficult to feel like part of a cohesive, respected and protective 'whole." We prevent so many people from inclusion in the idea that 'all men are created equal.' It is merely an idea that fundamentally has always excluded women.
Our Constitution is an extraordinary document. Yet it is one written by persons of only the male gender, and of white skin. That simple and irrefutable fact has from the very beginning made it impossible for so many of our citizens to feel as one with others - as One People.
The beginning is everything.
6
"...there is no such thing as society..."
UK Prime minister Margaret Thatcher, October 31 1987
Ronald Reagan, Kennedy's appointer, and Margaret Thatcher shared this viewpoint, common to the US and the UK but not to the rest of the western democracies.
It is an utterly corrosive concept and is leading to the fall of two great nations. Only "We the People" acting together can live in harmony.
It took until Teddy Roosevelt and Lloyd George at the turn of the 20th century for that to be understood, and both nations then strove for the best part of 100 years to make society more just, equal and harmonious. It wasn't completely successful, and there were may flaws, but it was a work in progress and better by far than the current state of either nation.
It is dispiriting that one person can undo so much good work, but one can be comforted that we managed before and we, The People, will rise again.
4
Interesting take from a non-lawyer. But to use one snippet from a single Kennedy opinion is hardly strong evidence of an overarching judicial philosophy. A focus on societal values runs through some of Kennedy's more important rulings like Romer and Obergefell broadening the rights of LBGTQ community participation and especially Roper striking down the execution of minors.
Also, there is a more complicated history to "We the People" (as opposed to the "states") reflecting that the Constitution originated from the "People" via special state constitutional conventions rather than through state legislatures. Here, there is a collective meaning to "the People," which after all is not phrased "We as individuals" or something similar.
1
In "The Challenge Of The Greek And Other Essays," Terrot R. Glover spoke of "the ancient quarrel between Law and Freedom." Though they aren't here to defend themselves, the authors of the Constitution wanted to create a society in which the individual could pursue personal happiness without harassment: The biblical fig tree under which to sit. Surely, they didn't mean that the fig tree would serve as shade for the oligarch's harem. Thoreau—the different drummer—and his mentor, Emerson, extended the goal of the founders into an uniquely American school of philosophy. Stepping to one's inner music, no matter what the beat or how far away, is an affirmation of the frugal self—frugal being a key concept of Transcendentalism—not a license to acquire and consume. A modern day conservative likes to blame bureaucracy for inhibiting individual freedom, but this is not the drumbeat Thoreau was talking about. Laws that discourage overconsumption and encourage a certain amount of common sharing are in line with what the founders were thinking, and what Thoreau and Emerson believed.
3
Anthony Kennedy:
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” - Anthony Kennedy
Lewis Carrol:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
1
"Anthony Kennedy: ..."
"Lewis Carrol: ..."
Two quotes do not make an argument. Anyway, Kennedy is not using the word "define" in the way that a dictionary defines words, so the Carroll quote is inapt.
"Define" has several senses, but this one seems to be what Kennedy means:
"define: 1.2 Make up or establish the character or essence of." (Oxford online dictionary)
@MUQ - your post is Exhibit A in support of Humpty Dumpty's exact point.
1
If Mr. Brooks is going to write about what Justice Kennedy did NOT say, why bother quoting him at all?
"... the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence..." If rights exist, the right to think what one thinks is the most bedrock of them all. It is the ultimate of authoritarianism to argue otherwise.
Nowhere in this simple statement of truth is there a discussion of the source of one's self definition, nor a discussion of one's duties and obligations to society.
David writes powerfully of the importance of culture, family, institutions, and community. I hear clearly his warning against overemphasizing I-ness vs. We-ness. In his columns he argues that various cultural norms are often foundational in how we create a sense of self, and that is a valid and important argument.
But David's comments stand alone. There is no need to offer them in contrast to things Justice Kennedy did not say, and any implied meaning in the quote is reader dependent.
More importantly, by arguing against "the right to define one's own concept", David is arguing for mind control.
4
I grew up in a small town community such as you describe. It was repressive and focused on conforming to rigid standards. Even asking questions with the purpose of trying to understand how conflicting standards of love your neighbor and hate the "other" were frowned upon. Thank you for reminding me that commitment to humanist values that recognize that while we all share common needs, we have differences that are uncommon but equally valid. It is our diversity that defines our humanity. Yes rules and laws are critcal. The collective we has a long way to go to understand each other's individual needs and to balance yours with mine.
6
Has meaning been privatized?
What corporation is going to get the supply contract?
It would be a good investment, at this moment in our cataclysmically conflicted and confused world, if we could make meaning a lot more available, and cut the price.
But really, beyond our basic human understandings, which have been recognized and accepted for hundreds of years (although still debated somewhere) like human needs, human wants, human life and human values, what is there to buy?
We are still renting-out the same old value systems that have been broken and obsolescent for hundreds of years.
And millions are still paying for them, every day.
My dog and I share the same life, but at this point, neither of us is worries about the mystery.
There is no mystery.
The world is round, not flat.
3
An interesting critique of the current libertarian radical individualism of our society. Brooks neglects to identify the wellsprings of Kennedy’s perspective: Movement Conservatism’s aggressively maximalist interpretation of the First Amendment. From Goldwater to Reagan to Gingrich, the U.S. political right midwifed a sweeping reframing of American ideas of both free speech and religious liberty.
Cite Kennedy if you like, but the contemporary SCOTUS stance that any set of ideas sincerely held by any one single person can be regarded as a religion and must be afforded full state deference was driven by Justice Scalia more than anyone. Berkeley gets the credit, but it was anti-government activists opposed to state action for equality, integration, business regulation, taxes, and poverty relief that did the majority of the work expanding the idea freedom of political speech to encompass corporate entities, political contributions, and limitations on public authorities ability to balance speech rights in arenas like schools, the media, public places, workplaces, and labor elections.
Kennedy’s quote was reviled by many on the right because it came in an opinion reaffirming Roe v. Wade (and because Kennedy later used the same logic to LGBT rights) but he was really only applying the right’s own principles of radical individualism to the issue at hand.
16
Brooks writes "The second problem is that Professor Kennedy gives us a homework assignment that almost none of us can actually fulfill. Each of us has to define our own 'concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.' ”
As a transgender person born with an intersex body I had to do that simply to survive. When faced with a biological reality that defies society's definition of "human" I had to work out just who and what I am for myself.
4
Marx was wrong about many things, but he understood one thing extraordinarily well in 1848: unfettered free markets destroy the traditional arrangements among human beings.
"Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned..."
It may be that free markets and the cash nexus made possible both the rights movements and liberations that many of us have cherished, *and* the individualist societal sociopathy that is now tearing us apart.
No western society is managing the relentless disruption and destruction wrought by global free markets especially well. But some (perhaps Canada) are doing better than others. Few are doing worse than the United States.
15
The tension between the "we" and "I" is as old as time. What I find bemusing is the way our two main parties approach/mythologize this tension.
The democrats champion individual freedom in the private sphere, but see government regulation (The "we)as the preferred solution to commerce.
The republicans tend to embrace individual freedom in the commercial sphere, but have no compunctions using the hand of government to regulate the private.
Republicans look backward to the fifties, a peaceful time of stable families and discrimination against women and blacks.
Democrats embrace the sixties and seventies, when discrimination began to lessen, and single parent households were on the rise.
13
The WE is long gone. That is now a dream. WE won the 2000 presidential election, but they got the office. WE won the 2016 election but they gave us Trump. When on a national basis WE have lost this power it is scary. Same with gun control, WE want more control, but they don't want it. When the majority loses, it's hard not to believe that America is losing it's democracy.
72
I don't understand why you interpret Kennedy's "mystery of human life" as excluding community. Indeed, nothing in his expression excludes anything you discuss.
But we should be able to choose our communities, our contexts, within reason. I would never choose evangelical Christianity as mine and neither would Brooks, but it is being chosen for us because of the insatiable narcissism of our President and above all, because of the cynicism of Mitch McConnell. There are two people whose communities--if they indeed have any--I will NEVER join.
15
Sorry but "all people are created equal" was not evident in our initial political system, which limited voting to a tiny fraction of the adult population. Many other "rights" were also greatly restricted.
14
"It takes a village..."
Does Brooks even comprehend the irony in that sentence?
David ties himself in a rhetorical knot condemning the libertarian philosophy as somehow separate and at odds with the columnist's classical conservatism when both entities are kindred spirits.
Humans need government composed of their fellow citizens to regulate our jungle tendencies and to attempt to improve the lives of their brothers and sisters knowing full well the limitations of our species.
Brooks sees the tragedy of our present situation and rightly condemns the authors but fails to see that he is part of the problem.
5
The issue is not (negative) liberty itself, which no government or person has the right to take from someone else. The issue instead is, as you describe, that people assume that merely because government should not enforce a given norm, it's not a norm at all, and that people can't even judge or shun people from deviating from moral norms. Modern liberalism (except for free speech) leaves only two options: it's immoral and should be banned, it can't be banned by government and (thus) it's moral. But, the reality is that the set of things that can be legitimately banned by a government is a small subset of things that are immoral.
2
David says: “If you strip away all the communal commitments that help people govern themselves from within, then very soon you find you have to pass all sorts of laws to govern them from without.” This is true, but I think Brooks misses the point. Communal commitments of the sort that he is alluding too are often not agreed to by the community at all. Many times, they are simply inherited with no real purpose or meaning. Other times they simply reflect the desires of the people with power in the community.
Government base rule in a democracy are a very different thing. We the People, get to at least influence what those rules are. Looking at many of the problems we have today I see people wanted to force people to obey communal laws that they do not believe in. If Justice Kennedy’s legacy is that he stood against these forces in defense of democratic rule, he really did ok.
2
I think Brooks identifies the problem correctly -- as a society we have become monads with people trying to define existence rather than deeply embedded in a community of values which we try to live up to and to pass on. But the bigger issue that he doesn't address is defining a community of values that both secular and religious traditions can agree on to create integrated communities. Most of what we see is what you say -- commitments without real meaning (or justification), or, more often, values which appear mainly the reflection of the desires of people who hold power at the expense of thwarting the desires of those who lack it.
2
David Brooks can write about anything that pleases him and causes his readership to react. It might be of interest to the author, while some of us are trying to convert him into a moderate Democrat, to find out if his writings are expanding to a larger audience, or regressing in the times we are living.
This latest of his in homage to Judge Anthony Kennedy, while some of us are preparing to celebrate a long weekend. America is not top dog this summer of 2018 but scrambled eggs which have passed their expiration date. If you were to ask for a brief summary of the welding of Democracy and Capitalism whether we would be able to answer with clarity is a matter for another day.
Torrid weather is expected this weekend and tempers may flare in the heat. We are more divided and vulnerable than ever; our Allies cast aside; our young Nation led by a man who could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it; We The People in a horror novel by a leading popular novelist; it is no wonder that some of us have our heads buried in facts and figures; others in a stupor; and there is little one can do about this state of affairs, except to take selfies, and vote in the Fall.
6
Let's see :
1. Kennedy was the prime driver in the 5-to-4 SCOTUS vote to give Bush the presidency, taking the vote out of people's hands and giving us the lies to fight in Iraq.
2. He was the swing 5-to-4 vote to give us Citizens United.
Result of Kennedy's votes: we still suffer sorely from them.
Then, he says goodbye at a precise TIME he knows Trump will deliver a new judge to wreak further harm to democracy and workers' rights to earn a decent living; further damage to women's
rights and post - secondary education further out of reach for millions; and an even worse health care system than we now endure.
59
Ron Krate has got it right.
Have we forgotten so soon?
Defining freedom as the ability to unilaterally follow one's desires is a concept both old, as by the Greek philosophers and as new as tomorrow. We all want what is free to us, that is as in raises for federal employees who do not want to contribute to the fight to get the raises. The recent Janus decision by the Supreme Court fully endorsed and validated that desire. Other cases have had similar outcomes.
Where do these decisions lead us? The Koch Brothers and Bill Gates point to one kind of autonomy of the rich that is the result. The homeless bum on the streets is the exemplar of the other extreme. The autonomy of the rich stems from their ability to buy anything they want. The poor have freedom due to their status as throwaways. Both gain more by being anti-social than by playing by the rules. The middle supports both, a burden that keeps this class stuck in a supporting rut rather than actuating their own freedom through respect for their neighbors' goals.
6
All life is a balance, a negotiation, between "I" and "we." Surely Mr. Brooks knows this also. Is it possible when he went through a divorce a few years ago that he experienced the tough balance so many adults face: self and family, personal happiness and social cohesion? Not to pass judgment on his actions or those of others, but the reality is more complex than his essay suggests.
1
This is an essay, not a treatise, it is a starting point from which to engage in the complexity to which you refer at at time when individualism has dominated our cultural conversation, with some serious negative consequences.
1
Yes, the "mystery of life" passage is awfully trippy language for a U.S. Supreme Court opinion. And yes, Americans have become too individualistic and would do well to be more communitarian. Still, David Brooks willfully misrepresents Justice Kennedy's point, which was this: those who believe that human life begins at conception and that abortion is murder have no prerogative under the U.S. Constitution to impose their view of morality on citizens who legitimately have a different definition of human life. Excess individualism may be misguided, but it is scarcely as dangerous as allowing intolerant groups of citizens--or judges--to intrude on others' rights and compel them to abide by a definition of morality that they do not share.
12
But what if those who believe life begins at conception are actually right?
I am not certain that there is a "right" answer here. Fair-minded people could reasonably disagree about when a human life begins. Justice Blackmun acknowledged this in Roe, pointing out that scientists, doctors, theologians, philosophers, and Americans disagree over this issue--so how could nine un-elected jurists possibly be expected to settle it? Personally, some degree of self-consciousness is an essential criterion in my definition (and I am not alone, but borrow this criterion from philosopers much smarter than I am). So I do not think that a fertilized ovum is a human life or a human being or a person entitled to rights under the U.S. Constitution equal to the rights of a pregnant woman. I don't foist my view on others, and I expect them not to foist theirs on me.
When we start letting someone else define for us our "concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life " we are in deep trouble. One of the beauties of these concepts is that no one truly knows "the answers" , therefore we are free to form our own concepts.
I agree with your opinion on community, family, etc. but I don't connect your logic that Justice Kennedy's statement undermines community, family, etc. In fact I think it strengthens these institutions.
3
> Each of us has to define our own “concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
That is not what Justice Kennedy said. He asserted a right to do those things, and there is ample Supreme Court precedent asserting that right is not duty.
2
"That is not what Justice Kennedy said."
Earlier, Brooks gives the complete Kennedy quote. IIUC, you are criticizing Brooks's subsequent paraphrase. Or is it a deduction?
"He asserted a right ..."
Yes, a "right" that Kennedy apparently invented.
Brooks: 'They [America’s founders] began the Constitution with the phrase, “We the People.” We are all one thing — a people, a nation, a collective.'
The framers were presuming to speak for everyone in the Colonies, but they had no such mandate.
Further, they posit the existence of the "United States" before it has been created when they say: "We the People of the United States ..."
And the US Constitution does not use the word "nation" -- the framers use the word "union" and the phrase "United States".
Brooks: "Among them [rules of a moral order], for example, is the idea that all people are created equal."
Brooks is conflating the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The US Constitution does not say that "all people are created equal". Indeed, the US Constitution uses the word "equal" exclusively in the mathematical sense except in the 14th Amendment:
"No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
7
MUQ: "... everyone in the Colonies ..."
MUQ: '... they posit the existence of the "United States" before it has been created ...'
Correcting myself on both those points:
The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War and predates the US Constitution, refers to the "United States".
I think this is very well put description of the fact although Justice Kennedy was a powerful Supreme Court justice, he ultimately fails at being a great man of US Constitutional justice. There was not enough "we the people " in him.
'
3
I really appreciate Mr. Brooks’ commentary on these big philosophical topics, but he keeps tip toeing around the “morality” problem as it relates to religious belief. As I discarded my previous catholic upbringing, I did not lose my moral bearings. Indeed, it seems like the religious are often willing to sacrifice the so called golden rule (“And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”).
This is good advice no matter your world view. It’s live and let live with an embedded responsibility to respect others. Most people just want to be left alone... that is, not subject to harassment over trivial rules imposed by a superstitious religious orthodoxy. Lots of people seem incapable of the “let live” aspect of the golden rule and this is the challenge of a modern society with global mass media. My “let live” attitude must now extend to people all over the world who often have quite different ideas about morality. This to going to be inherently disruptive to an existing social order based on one religious tradition. How can orthodox Jews coexist with Christians who have a different set of values and traditions? Each must respect the others way of living. So also must they tolerate atheists or those who are less devout than the clerical class.
In an isolated society, rule / norm enforcement is easy. Shaming and shunning the cheaters is the preferred method. In a global society, tolerance becomes critical to peaceful coexistence.
9
Sadly the “golden rule” as been co-opted and now means that “whom ever has the gold, makes the rules”...
1
David makes it sound like an either/or situation, ie, individualism or communalism. The tension is real, but I think it has to be both/and. The thing is, individuals must find themselves, but it takes the wisdom of shared institutions to assist in that process.
4
The elegiac tone of this column matches that of numerous similar pieces by Mr. Brooks over the last few years. In these brief essays, he analyzes a variety of ways in which America has lost its way or left behind a better age when its strengths and virtues more than compensated for its shortcomings. Brooks unconsciously echoes Trump's main campaign theme, but without the simplistic confidence that he can reverse the country's apparent decline.
Like other Jeremiahs, David selects his evidence carefully, to buttress his pessimistic thesis. In this case, he laments the decline of a sense of community which bound together the disparate elements of this large, diverse country. Democratic nations that seek to preserve individual rights always face challenges to unity, especially one that draws its population from the four corners of the world.
Throughout the period that culminated in the Civil War, the US confronted threats far greater than our current ones. The Great Depression, moreover, spawned problems which encouraged even some reasonable people to favor dictatorship. In each case, the leaders who emerged to combat the crisis encountered much skepticism about their abilities.
Our current president, of course, bears much of the responsibility for our difficulties. But the resistance stimulated by his policies may yet produce the officials we need. It has always been a mistake to underestimate the resilience of the American people.
3
Try this on for size:
At the heart of liberty is obedience to prevailing concepts of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
That seems to be Mr. Brook's suggestion. It has nothing to do with the American Constitution. Thomas Jefferson would tear it up, and throw it into the fire, gathering its ashes to pile into the ashbin of history.
The real way to put the saying would be this:
At the heart of tyranny lies obedience to prevailing concepts of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
9
"Thomas Jefferson would tear it up, and throw it into the fire, gathering its ashes to pile into the ashbin of history."
More likely Mr. Jefferson would have his slaves do such dirty work as throwing ashes into the ashbin. So much for freedom or equality.
"Whether we like it or not, individuality is the product of a collective experience." - Clive James
I would advise a young person to find her place in the world. This still encourages one to pursue her passion, yet puts it in the framework of "we're all in this together." Follow your dream and give it a seat at the community table.
We are a big family living in a huge house with innumerable rooms. There's a place for every dream.
2
I feel sorry for practicing Christians who have had their faith hijacked by a bunch of pulpit profiteers and political operatives who have twisted Jesus's teachings and the gospels out of all recognition.
Hatred, exclusion, greed, and pride are not spiritual. Babies are more valuable after they are born, along with their families, and they need affordable health care.
We all need a habitable hospitable planet more than corporate profiteers giving themselves more.
All the deadly sins are forgiven if you are their kind of Republican. The old kind of Republicans have been eliminated.
13
I remember, a passage, from the English playwright, J.B. Priestley's, seminal play, "An Inspector Calls,"
"We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And...the time will soon come when if men will not learn, that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire an blood and anguish."
I believe in individual liberty, but I also believe in civic responsibility. Our duty and responsibility as citizens is to find a balance in between.
This undertaking is so difficult, specially with a President who has no morals, character, respect for the truth and decency.
13
Finding one’s own “concept of existence, of meaning, ... and the mystery of human life” can be done rather quickly when one is faced with an unplanned pregnancy.
Those who are faced with this decision do not need to retreat to a mass of background reading; neither do they need to be told what to do by their family or community.
Justice Kennedy’s opinion in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision affirmed the need and the right of individuals to make their own decisions in matters concerning their personal life.
13
another personalized liberty right created by scotus: abortion. abortion is no longer considered an issue that may contravene a societal norm, but rather an act to be decided solely by the carrying mother, in consultation with her doctor.
one can go on, since liberty almost demands that the qualifier, individual, be conjoined in its utterance.
but why not? isn't this an affirmation that we do not obtain our rights from government, but rather possess inalienable rights, each his and herself?
sounds right by me, brooks.
3
Actually, historically, abortion has always been a private matter. Conservatives in their quest for power, allied with the christian right, and politicized it.
Yes, our society may have become too individualistic. Possibly more than some our Founders may have liked, as Mr. Brooks argues. Yet: isn’t individual freedom at the core of the Bill of Rights? Also, while some social cohesiveness is desirable, we must be weary of attempts to socialize meaning. Extreme socialization of meaning is just as dangerous for our society as its opposite.
4
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
This quote is from the Casey decision authored by Kennedy that reaffirmed Roe v Wade in 1992 but it could just as easily have been applied to any of the decisions Kennedy authored that affirmed gay rights and finally, marriage equality in 2015.
This is not an affront to community but an embrace of it, welcoming those holding beliefs opposed by some to take their places equally among all. I thank Justice Kennedy for his decisions that expanded human rights and vindicated the right to choose.
Conservatives have always hated this passage but I've always thought it represented the best of Justice Kennedy.
I disagree with Justice Kennedy on many things (business over labor, money as speech, etc.) but not on these words and his decisions on abortion rights and gay rights.
18
There is a solution for the problem Brooks identifies in this piece: travel. Go to a non-western part of the world where people are still embedded in deep traditions and moral codes. Live there, work there, make friends there. I did that myself for a few years in an Asian country, going all the way to marrying into and living with a family. I came back with the feeling that something enormous was missing from this country, and that the individualism we preach is cutting us off from so much of what we need.
It doesn't mean "going native" and never coming back. It doesn't mean believing that another people have all the answers. It doesn't even mean liking or approving of all their ways. It does mean seeing what being part of something infinity larger and deeper means. If you can't travel, there are plenty of immigrant communities that would probably be happy to take you in and show you something of the old way of life that beyond the "Culture day" sort of thing. Just spend some time being part of a people whose lives are part of something greater, and something deeply rooted. Then read this piece by David Brooks again. You'll see it in a whole new light.
11
I lived alongside many traditional and religious communities in the Middle East. The lives of their members are narrow, boring, circumscribed and repressive, especially to the women, the young, and the smart. Those who can leave them, do; the rest suffer. Traditional communities have nothing to teach us.
Brooks is to be commended as an honest soul, searching as we all are for a comprehensive, internally consistent framework of meaning. He is seeking in the spiritual and philosophical realms the same thing Stephen Hawking sought in science: The Theory of Everything.
However, this assertion makes me bristle:
"Most of us require communal patterns and shared cultural norms and certain enforced guardrails to help us restrain our desires and keep us free."
Individual sensibilities born of personal experience place some of us outside the circle he refers to as "most of us". Some of us have deliberately broken through externally imposed restraints and consciously shaped ourselves as acts of resistance against the confining and suffocating circumstances in which we found ourselves as awareness dawned. We have done the work of processing received wisdom into two piles: toss or keep. Those we kept came to define us, and the knowledge that we got there on our own forms a solid foundation for who we are.
For example, one does not need religious indoctrination to realize that treating others as we would like to be treated ourselves is a sound principle to live by. Any sentient person can get there based on nothing more than the experience of living. We do not need a buffoon like Roy Moore erecting a marble monument of the Ten Commandments in a public space.
The thought of having the boundaries of my life ("guardrails") defined by others is anathema to me, and I suspect I am not alone.
28
I agree. I have always thought that a fundamental key to becoming a mature person is to think out for oneself those values and opinions by which one lives.
One can draw on what one felt to be positive influences (and discard those that were not), but it is the responsibility of the individual to go through this process.
1
Kirsten, thanks for chiming in. I was fascinated by Socrates' (the historical figure) assertion that "an unexamined life is not worth living" when I first encountered it, though on first blush it seems stark and uncompromising, and have internalized it since. Now it strikes me as an unadorned truth that applies to oneself no less than to others.
I appreciate your agreement. It's reassuring to know there are kindred spirits across this land, from Oregon to New York, and everywhere in between, who recognize one another's experience.
1
I lament with Brooks. But what of this passage:
'In ... the “mystery of life” passage, there is no sense that individuals are embedded in a social order. There is no acknowledgment of the parts of ourselves that we don’t choose but inherit — family, race, social roles, historical legacies of oppression, our bodies, the habits that are handed down to us by our common culture.'
True, but there is an unlimited number of things that are NOT in this passage. Many of the rights enumerated in the founding documents are "individual" rights, expressed no doubt by and for the collective, but necessarily inherent in the individual. Kennedy wasn't denying in this passage the existence of community. Please, Mr. Brooks, spare us the straw man beloved of op-ed writers, not least in the Era of Trump!
4
The analysis of Anthony Kennedy's singular interpretation of liberty provides a fascinating contrast with Stephen Breyer's support for active liberty, interpretation grounded in the importance of citizen participation in government. Oddly enough, these recent 5-4 decisions may offer a spur to just that citizen participation.
6
It seems to me that the longer we've all had to spend in Donald Trump's America the more time David Brooks has spent contemplating the BIG issues of life (along with his own navel) in the op/ed pages of The Times. Where once we had a relatively enlightened conservative offering an alternative view of war and peace and the economy and the liberties that some of our most vulnerable citizens had finally been accorded by our courts and our government, we now have an erudite professor of philosophy who's been noticeably withdrawing from the political arena possibly because he can't make heads or tails of our immediate circumstances. (Or possibly because he can but simply can't face them.) I can appreciate how The Donald and those Republicans who remain in political office have turned American conservatism into something both toxic and unrecognizable but the effect they seem to have had on Mr. Brooks has been downright startling. Come back to us, David. I'd much rather argue with the old you than be bored silly by the new one.
77
Excellent reflection, Mr Brooks. In light of your sentiments, U. San Francisco Professor Marvin Brown's book: "Civilizing the Economy: A New Economics of Provision" (2010) would be well worth the reading and disseminating to those who are wondering how to reclaim American civil society.
2
@Casa Phoenix. It’s hardly likely Brooks is going to endorse that particular book since it stands in opposition to pretty much everything he stands for. He’s about as likely to recommend that as he is to tell us to read Marx on capitalism, which also wouldn’t be a bad idea.
1
I believe very much in the concept of society, of the people of a nation putting together a government that will attend to some of our shared needs. A government that will regulate capitalism sufficiently that 'regular folk' aren't exploited to terribly. In other words, I believe in the assumptions and policies that characterized the New Deal.
So why am I so very much at odds with Brooks? He talks about it taking a village. But for policy, he has always - always - come down on the side of the exploiters, the reactionaries masquerading as conservatives, the 'you're on your own' crowd. He refers to the retirement insurance I paid into for 40 years as an entitlement. He's a confused, conflicted man who can't even fully renounce what his GOP has become.
109
@kgeographer. Confused and conflicted? Boy, that’s a really odd way of putting it. How about giving him credit for what he says and assume he is not confused and conflicted? Why believe that he is making some sort of mistake, or doesn’t actually believe what he says? Assume that he does, in which case you could just call him intellectually fraudulent.
So true. Brilliant analysis of why Mr. Brooks is fast becoming irrelevant. His desperate attempts to blame liberals for the decline of American democracy and not placing accountability squarely on the proto-fascist Republican Party is a sight to behold. He's Ahab, with a fervent belief in the great white "male" in the sky and its human manifestation here on earth.
1
Yes, David, it takes a village to raise the young (it occurs to me that I've heard that somewhere before) and pursue the good. But what happens when that village exists at the sufferance of autonomous economic entities that are able to determine when that village is no longer attractive or useful for their purposes? It seemed you recognized the conundrum in your last column with your surprisingly biting critique of "free market fundamentalism" - but no mention here. Until we figure out how to design an economic system that exists to sustain the viability of our villages rather than vice versa, then all the talk about the priority of community is idle talk.
32
The NYT is striking out on all counts with even just comprehending Justice Anthony Kennedy. First Adam Liptak and Maggie Haberman try to convince us that a factor in Justice Kennedy's agreeing to resign was the fact that Deutsche Bank lent Donald Trump money while Kennedy's son worked at the bank, long ago--I kid you not.
Now David Brooks completely misconstrues Kennedy with his gross binary oversimplification of individuality and community. Of course individuals define the meaning and mystery of life against the background understandings that have been passed down to them by their families, communities, culture, language. Kennedy is not denying that. He is insisting, though that individuals have rights in these matters that no group can legitimately take away from them.
This is the heart of American liberty. We are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and among these are the pursuit of happiness as we each define our happiness. Not the President, not congress, not the gang on our street, not even NYT columnists. This is an individual right. It is the right of each and every one of us to pursue our own happiness.
It is also our individual right to define the mystery of life for ourselves, as individuals. That doesn't mean we make it up arbitrarily for ourselves. It does mean that we are the ones who are individually related to that mystery and no government can interfere with that relation.
That's called religious freedom, David. Remember that?
24
@Nathan. Well, no, actually. He doesn’t remember that at all. His notions of morality trump your freedom of and freedom from religion. The verb in that sentence is well chosen, since that, no matter what he says, is precisely where his sympathies lie.
"There are no truths, only “concepts."" This, challengingly, is our slice of reality. I would replace "concepts" with "working models." From infancy on, we learn to navigate a world we don't and can't understand, and whose essence yields to the probings of science with reluctance--largely because we cannot grasp it all. What is gravity? What is time? Scientists can take a good stab at answering these questions, but few of my relatives would have understood (except the young lady with a Ph.D. in quantum physics.) One trick in life is to accept uncertainty. Goethe again: the feeling is everything. Rational progressives need to learn that, and to give up trying to argue rationally with Republicans.
5
What follows from there being no truths is that it must not be true that there are no truths.
It takes careful attention and self-regulation to stop, think, and pay attention to what one one is really saying and what is really happening.
Feelings are deeply important, but feeling is not everything.
1
The phrase that troubles me the most in David’s column is, “Over the decades, that sense of we-ness began to turn into a sense of I-ness or you-ness.” That phrase would most likely be said by a privileged white male who chooses to believe in the myth of the American melting pot. Was the settling of the West an exercise in we-ness? Was the intolerance toward each wave of immigrants a sign of our we-ness? Did the civil war demonstrate how we-ness we were? Were the riots demanding civil rights in the 60’s signs of our we-ness? We are and always have been a nation grounded in I-ness and you-ness. Such self-interest is fundamental to the very nature of our capitalist economy and has been the Republican mantra forever, and is not a wholly bad thing. But, unfortunately the phrase now links directly to Trump’s calling to make America great again - as if we were somehow greater at some point in the past. To think that, one must ask the questions - greater in what way, and when and what about all those people that didn’t share in that mythical feeling of greatness? The fact is, finding a balance between we-ness and I-ness is the function of a democracy, but what we are experiencing right now is a dangerous demand for too much we-ness by a few individuals who want nothing less than to define, control and put walls around who “we” are.
52
The notion that an ideal of shared responsibility bound early Americans, inspiring them to rise above me-first instincts, is typical of David Brooks' charming elementary-school fantasies.
The "collective" envisioned in the founders' prose was easily overwhelmed by communal initiatives to rout indigenous people through genocide, build an economy based on enslavement, hang women for witchcraft when property rights were in dispute, and hunt bison nearly to extinction simply for sport.
Even before the Union was a Union, Gen. George Washington was plagued by unfulfilled pledges of aid and troops from the colonies. The Revolutionary War required rescue by France for America to achieve independence and the chance to aspire to become "We the people."
Our work continues toward delivering on that ideal, by including everyone, not just Judeo-Christian sentimentalists, in the meaning of "We."
19
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
Well, yes. He's correct. We do have those rights. But we have to add the caution I always want to give to libertarians and others of that ilk:
Yes, liberty is a very important value. But it's not the only important value. There are also integrity, fairness, compassion,community, and the decency to support a state which protects its citizens from grave misfortune - which recognizes the disgrace (in J.K.Galbraith's words) of private affluence and public squalor.
8
As usual, Brooks exaggerates and stretches logic in order to make a point (which for him must always be framed as absolute dichotomies):
"“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” In this sentence, which became famous as the “mystery of life” passage, there is no sense that individuals are embedded in a social order. There is no acknowledgment of the parts of ourselves that we don’t choose but inherit — family, race, social roles, historical legacies of oppression, our bodies, the habits that are handed down to us by our common culture."
Huh? Defining one's own concept of existence and meaning in no way prevents acknowledgement of families, race, social roles, common culture, etc. They're not mutually exclusive. In fact, from a liberal-constructivist perspective, one's concept of meaning and understanding of the world is constructed from these things.
Of course, conservative-absolutists like Brooks have a hard time understanding the world from a constructivist-relativist perspective. But one would think (or hope) that someone as intelligent and broadly knowledgeable as Brooks would understand that the complexities of the human experience rarely fit into tidy little boxes.
7
United we stand, divided we fall. And we are in freefall. Prevailing standards are below what used to be the common denominators of society. Politics reflect social behavior and norms.
7
Maybe we are shedding a skin or a cocoon, and that skin/cocoon is the community and its values of the past 50 years. It may look like community is totally shattered and non existent, but the skin/cocoon is translucent and you can see the next community developing beneath, growing, hardening and hopeful enveloping the living body, forming it and protecting it. Maybe guys like Kennedy were necessary to shatter the old community - the old community in the early 1990s was in its prime, spreading its wings and testing out the ideals of libertarian individualism. Maybe it worked in some sense for a while, but now it's run its course, performed its service and is now aged, tired, cranky and sluffing off its skin.
4
This concept of ‘We’ has never included me, a transgender person. When the We-people are in charge, I am pushed to the margins, and forced to hide in poverty and shame.
I’ll take my chances with the I people, at least I stand a chance with them.
17
I believe the problem is that you are demanding acceptance while not giving a care about how strange the demand is to those around you. I don’t care how you behave or what you think about yourself, but I’m probably not going to be your friend since we have nothing in common. We make these decisions about our interactions with people every day. I might steer clear of someone with intense religious belief because I am atheist. Older folks may not befriend other peoples children. Surely you won’t demand that I engage with you. The best we can do is stay out of each other’s way. I won’t bother you.
1
So, you're the reason why I'm nailing myself to the cross. Do you have any more Trumps in store for me?
Brooks takes one of Justice Kennedy's quotes out of context so he can pretend that Kennedy capriciously privatized meaning in order to remove "individuals" from a meritorious "embedded…social order". We must first ask why Brooks considers an "embedded social order" such an inherently wonderful thing since for 150 years the dominant American social order was defined by slavery. Right-wing pundits like Brooks keep trying to convince us that somehow the 1950's, which was rife with racism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and every form of discrimination, remains the true American social order. The answer to Brooks comes from a true conservative, Justice Kennedy. Kennedy stated: "A democracy has the capacity-and the duty-to learn from its past mistakes; to discover and confront persisting biases; and by respectful, rationale deliberation to rise above those flaws and injustices". Justice Kennedy further stated: "We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be". Here Kennedy upholds natural law and champions pure Enlightenment ideals. He affirms that universal meaning does exist yet must be grounded in justice. Brooks should also consider President Lincoln's exhortation that the "proposition" of "equality" is "unfinished work." The toxic "embedded social order" of Lincoln’s time required that a war be waged to bring about a "new birth of freedom".
18
Each age has it sins. Perhaps Brooks sees the community of the future as one that is much more inclusive - a rainbow coalition of individuals with common values like family regardless of color, tradition gender roles, sexual orientation. Perhaps the community of the future will include the family values of conservatives and the inclusive values of liberals. Don't laugh - the younger generations would be all in on that. If we could just get the 65+ hard core conservatives to step off the stage.
I used to have an ambivalent admiration & respect for Kennedy but that he has left us blowing the random winds of DT & the servile Congress has erased any positive feelings I had. I have morals & ethics & values & beliefs - one of those beliefs is that he has betrayed his country.
57
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence"
But couldn't you have waited till after November?
12
"Mystery of life," Mr. Brooks?
And you think that the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy had the answer(s)? Were they there in Citizens United, his lead opinion worshiping disembodied "corporations are people, my friend" and "money" as speech?
We are a flawed nation from the germ and kernel. The Founders may have believed in a "shared community" that that was open to white males only. Where was "the moral order then? One might reasonably ask, "where is it now, today?"
They did not believe "that all people are created equal." They were slave owners. Where was the moral center that began this country on its way to "money is speech" and "corporations are people, my friend?"
"Over the decades, that sense of we-ness began to turn into a sense of I-ness or you-ness." That ripping divisiveness was hastened, sir, by the inherent inequality of American life: for indigenous people; for African-Americans; for immigrants; for the poor in general. Where would people, marginalized and clinging, find a "moral order?" Surely Justice Kennedy saw those divides and, being "conservative," i.e., blessing "limited government," sought to widen them.
You are correct about one thing here, sir: "There’s no we." And we are less "monads" than we are "nomads," wandering cluelessly, bound to tribe and ideology and separateness.
I really am annoyed that you lavishly praise Justice Kennedy for opening the stitching that will eventually undo us. Perhaps your revered Founders would be proud.
You are.
11
The Golden Rule is the epitome of balance between self and society. Using the self as measure, one understands how others should be treated. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This is the simplest but most profound advice; so easy a child can understand it. But if you try practicing it every day, you'll find that you often fall short. It's a measuring technique, a continual goal and, in my opinion, the best rule ever devised.
36
The Golden Rule is precisely the problem. It provides a rationale and justification, even out of genuinely good intentions, for someone to impose their values onto you. It is the opt out standard.
I much prefer the opt in, "Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you."
2
Well said; I am keeping a copy of your comment. The Golden Rule has been my moral framework for living my life and raising my children without religion. (They turned out great.) But you are right — it is a very high standard.
1
Sure. That's fine with me.
Brooks is proof that while a stopped clock will be twice a day, one that is off and running will always be off.
Historically, you have it completely wrong. At our founding, there was no social safety net. In fact, we had people dying of starvation in the 1800's. There wasn't even employer-provided healthcare until rationing occurred in WWII.
America has gotten worse because we have moved from the rugged individualism and shaming people for right or wrong behavior based on Judeo-Christian values. It is the incessant wussification of America that has made us weaker. We lack the will to engage the fights that we routinely had. Look and see how many wars we fought in and won.
1
Yes, but why is that? That is what Brooks is getting at with his assessment of Kennedy - it is thinking like Kennedy's that leads people to think all there is is the individual and his or her beliefs/opinions untethered to any other common, overarching value system. And so, we have millions of individuals, each with their own unique fingerprint of a world view and each nurtured and empowered to believe that theirs is correct. And so, we get millions of people shouting at each other and then we get people passing laws to stop some people from shouting and so on until all we have is one big shouting match - which is what we have with Trump as president. There is no common community with norms that can check the behavior of people, so people deputize themselves to do this. Brooks isn't saying we doin't need individuals, we do, but we need individuals tempered by common standards developed within a common community.
3
While I agree with a great deal David is saying, women and minorities were suffering at the hands of white men creating a society to satisfy their desires long before Justice Kennedy came along.These men were saying what "roles that define us" were, justified usually by some god.
Just because that was the community we had didn't mean that it was a morally just one. People aren't worker ants so some were bound to realize that fulfilling the roles that define us weren't making them feel fulfilled.And this very often meant having to get a stronger, i.e. impartial power, government, on your side.
I think David should look into feminist philosophy where he might find what he is seeking: a sense that "we are indeed all in this together" and each of us is equal in rights and regard.
4
I'm not so sure that Brooks hasn't thought about what you are saying, but I think you bring up good points. To think that government is 'impartial' is a bit of a stretch, I think. 'Community' can never be a static thing. Roles will change based upon the particularities of situations, temperaments, proclivities, etc..., but I think the idea of 'we are all in this together' is good, but for the people who are like 'why should I care about kids in Bangladesh' the answer needs to go deeper. I suggest Dependent Rational Animals by Alasdair MacIntyre, although there probably are very similar ideas in feminist philosophy.
2
@Nathan Lewis. The idea that “we’re all in this together” sounds good — if your white, male, heterosexual, and Christian. But black, Hispanic, Muslim, and gay people, not to mention women, aren’t suckered by that baloney. They know all too well that “we” doesn’t include them. Certainly Brooks’s notion of “we” usually doesn’t. But every so often Anthony Kennedy’s did.
The idea that all people are created equally doesn’t go over well with conservative Republicans. One result is promoting the belief that rather than being equal, some people are merely animals who don’t deserve basic human rights. Equality offends those who believe their god has privileged them with money and power because they’re better; that they’ve been chosen because they’re favored. Equal means everyone, but the christian patriarchy continues to demand that white males retain rule over all the rest of. You’re allowed in the game but only if you accept their hierarchy and their rules. Those rules only work when some people are more equal than others. So what is it, Mr. Brooks? Does equal mean everyone? Or are some people more equal than others?
11
From my own point of view, I realize I'm not 'equal' to others all the time. In some things I'm quite good, in others not so much. I think one of the main lessons we can teach our children and anyone else is that that's OK- in the sense that we can always improve, and we should spend most of our concern on this process of improvement and not on the hierarchy in relation to others.
2
"white males retain rule over all the rest of. You’re allowed in the game but only if you accept their hierarchy and their rules." You mean some white males, right? And when you say "their" hierarchy, you realize that most white males probably fight that hierarchy for most of their lives, right? You realize, don't you, that boys, including white boys, are toward the bottom of most hierarchies, now, right?
By the way "equal" doesn't mean just "everyone," It means each and every one, regardless and despite of the groups into which so many people want to put them.
"it’s a short road from getting to define your own truth to getting to define your own facts."
And yet it's those who oppose individual autonomy and self-determination and support "traditional values" (White values) who are inventing their own facts. So Brooks got this point entirely wrong.
12
I think there's some conflation of "traditional values". In stark terms think Mother Theresea vs. Donald Trump's prosperity gospel which leads to him bragging about the size of his golf courses, etc..., etc...- Those 'traditional values' have been steamrolled by greed and those other vices Brooks talks about.
It is not overly complicated. We don't need a philosophical format. Basics include: respect for self and others, kindness, fairness and self-reliance (with compassion and exception for those not having the capacity or opportunity to exercise self-reliance).
8
Add a third task: protect ourselves from each other. This is also a task that has gone down the tubes. More and more the court has extended the right of the religious zealot to impose his beliefs on the rest of us. The baker in Denver and Hobby Lobby are two bad examples of the court failing to protect us from those who would impose their beliefs on the rest of us.
15
What a farce we've become, America and Americans.
Religious people are dictating how we should live, a country founded on the idea of separation of church and state. Yet these pious people support a man who sleeps with a porn star, pays her hush money.
We have a president who collaborated -- since he doesn't like the word collusion -- with an enemy state to win election in 2016.
We have a Republican leader of the Senate doing everything in his power to undermine our democracy. This leader, when told that an enemy of our country was trying to undermine our election, refused to issue a joint statement to We, the People, that we were under attack.
Finally, we have a coward retiring from the Supreme Court.
This man is allowing a president who is under investigation to choose a judge who will be the ultimate judge of his fate.
Charlatans.
Talk is cheap and all this talk about individuals and mystery is to keep us distracted from the disaster unfolding before our eyes, aided and abetted by our very own Vichy representatives in the form of Republicans and judges.
Three Americans have as much wealth as 160 million Americans, but five judges on the Supreme Court get to decide that 99% of Americans don't need healthcare or protection from corporations or clean water or a well-regulated militia, that speech=money.
We have the freedom to die of preventable diseases, the freedom to die of preventable gunfire, the freedom to die of preventable pollution.
What a bunch of rubbish.
546
"Pious people?" Who are they? I see few who fit that description--unless we count rank tribalism as piety.
You know..I'm not an overly religious person, but I am conservative.
I'm struggling to see how you think for a moment that WE are dictating how you live.
Please explain, because I'm willing to bet anything in the world that your life today and your life a year from today and your life 10 years from today will be no different; driven largely by decisions that you and you alone make..in context with community values, standards and mores.
For instance, I wouldn't suggest you start eating cats or jumping into hottubs with 8 year old girls, even though in some parts of the world, those are the norms.
Sadly, I think you have this flipped. Conservatives see progressives using the powers of the State to compel behavior.
Don't forget that rural and small town people rule this country through the insane and antiquated Electoral College.
If Justice Kennedy really believed in the Constitution of the US and if he believed in the ability of the electorate to choose those who represent their vision, he would have waited until after the election to retire. (That is, unless he has some undisclosed medical problem that requires him to spend "more time with his family" and hospice nurse.)
No. He elected to retire when he was sure the next Justice will be very far right on the political spectrum. He is tacitly giving DJT the opportunity to nominate a right-wing ideologue while he is reasonably sure such a nominee will have relatively clear sailing through the confirmation. Shame on Kennedy for not trusting we, the people.
180
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor did even worse...she joined the majority in Bush v Gore, stating that she voted to end the recount in Florida because she wanted Bush, a Republican, in the White House to name her replacement when she retired as planned.
You might be too hasty in coming to your conclusion. Let's wait and see.
Agree on the weakness of Kennedy's view of liberty and autonomy--if he had a more communitarian vision he could have underpinned his Obergefell ruling with the 14th Amendment, which would have been a stronger and more *constitutional* rationale.
6
The passage by Kennedy cited in this op-ed sounds like the private sort of moral musings one has in one’s spare time, when one is off duty and deliberately NOT thinking of one’s regular responsibilities, and there’s no evidence presented here that it represents a main current in his thought. I don’t think Kennedy’s philosophizing here is particularly profound; I mean, it rises above the level of what you’d find on a greeting card, but not my much.
I’m less concerned about what Kennedy THINKS than by what he has DONE, by resigning now: turned us over to the far right in this country, for the foreseeable future, and basically turned his back on all he presumably stood for in the last 30 years. Based on his opinions in the Court, I thought Kennedy had beliefs about reproductive rights and marriage equality (among others); but I guess not. He’s just going to walk away from these causes, knowing full well what his successor is going to do about them. The least Kennedy could have done was to stick around for two more years, until the next presidential election; to see what the American people really wanted in a chief executive, when Russia wasn’t interfering in the choice.
113
Very well done, Constance. Yours is a brilliant light shone on a problematic man at the end of his life.
As it should be but extraordinarily sad in the case of Kennedy.
8
I don't know why Kennedy is retiring right now, but you may be overestimating what he stood for all these years. He was not the swing vote until O'Connor retired, & had always been more conservative than she was. He has voted with the liberal wing a few important times, but he was always a conservative at heart. Clearly, he was not up for holding the line. He was simply the best the left could do & now Roberts will be the best we can do. Very discouraging.
17
He only had to stick around until November!
On the contrary: we are living in a time when "meaning", including prescriptions for how to live and what our place in life is/will be is collectively determined by a far-right minority that celebrates its christianity inflicting cruelties on poor peoples of central America, finds friendship in dictators, and patriotism in corrupting the institutions of our government so as to keep political power in Trump's GOP.
I am in no position to write Justice Kennedy's legal biography, but, and whatever his intentions might have been, his political legacy is to assist the soft fascism that is Trump's presidency.
192
We talk about government as if it is some monolithic, inhuman thing. In a democracy, the people are the government. Or are supposed to be. Ideally we all contribute a fair amount of our treasure to support the community. We know that the community includes some who are highly capable, others not as much. We value all as human beings deserving of dignity and respect. I realize we have never met that ideal in our history. I think at one time it at least was a goal. Now money is the only thing that matters. And for some the desire to see others suffer.
21
"If you strip away all the communal commitments that help people govern themselves from within, then very soon you find you have to pass all sorts of laws to govern them from without."
This is a critical point and the source of much of our ongoing conflict. Lack of a shared framework of internal values ultimately results in an expansion of government regulation as society struggles to fill the void -- which in turn creates a backlash of its own against excessive government control.
In an increasingly crowded and complex world, unfettered individual egotism is a recipe for disaster as ever more people compete for larger pieces of the pie. In the end, only the rich and powerful will enjoy the luxury of ordering off a menu of self-indulgent choices.
15
The main problem I always have with David's almost monomaniacal peans to "communal commitments" including family, church etc. is that this reasoning is what was always wielded against me and my kind (gay people) to justify the insistence that we live at best a half-life. It was never explained HOW we were helping family or community by denying to ourselves the simple human joy we were wired to experience but David's litany of reasons were always deployed against us. That's my problem and I'm not likely ever to forget it.
216
I’ve read a lot of comments about a lot of things over the years here in the NYT and I have to say this one is truly exceptional. Thank you.
2
I think your point is well taken. My brother is gay and we've had many a philosophical discussion about just what you are saying. I read a number of books by Alasdair MacIntyre (who Brooks has referenced before) so I see a lot of my own philosophy in Brooks'. One of the points that MacIntyre makes is that there are in fact good and bad communities-just like there are good and bad governments. Certainly if you are stuck in one of those 'bad' communities at any point in history your life will be filled with injustice. But I think going to far (and I think this is the point Brooks is making) and saying- I as an individual shouldn't (don't) have any obligation to those who raised me, those who provide me food and warmth every day, etc... can also happen when we lose any sense of 'community'".
Nathan, I am totally in favor of the social contract. And I certainly agree with you about obligations to those who raised and nurtured me. But it is destructive to the community to permit family to become clan. And religion? It offers nothing but a clan or cult.
Leave it to David to proceed at right-angles to everyone else in HIS analysis of Anthony Kennedy. Everyone else is focused not on the man exiting stage kinda-right, but on the Neolith we’re likely to see in his successor, who some claim likely will be instrumental in transforming us into … a Christian version of Iran.
I enjoyed David’s column immensely. In part this was due to his insistence on parsing the essence of Anthony Kennedy’s true impact on our society and not on the arc the highest court in our land likely now will take, but also because cultural fence posts – what David calls “enforced guardrails” -- is a favorite recurring theme of mine here as well, a theme we ignore in our pursuit of “me-ness” to the detriment of our ability to understand who we really are and how to move forward while cohering given our manifold differences.
It really is all about “community”, folks: how to strengthen it along benign and more inclusive lines, how to pass it down to our posterity, and how to find a measure of peace and contentment within its shared fence posts.
Thank you, David, for returning us, if only for a while, to what is real. “Real” isn’t really comprised of our differences, but of those things that bind us to one another.
23
@ Richard Luettgen: My sense of 'community' is now down to those who think like me and my friends, and they can live in NYC, or LA, or in rural America or urban America, or England or Italy for that matter, may live in my neighborhood or not, or in the suburbs or not, gay and straight, and multi-racial, but that community is dwindling with every passing moment under this administration. How do I find 'community' when those in the minority government in charge, and their rabid supporters, are intent on slapping me in the face at every opportunity with the intention of curtailing my very liberty, which you are convinced they are trying to broaden? "Enforced Guardrails." Is that a euphemism for criminalizing all behavior outside the bounds of that which Conservatives deem "correct"? I find no 'community' with those people, and I really don't know what you're talking about when you mention "those things that bind us to one another." There is no broad 'community' that I see, and whatever ties that bind are very, very weak.
11
Chicago Richard:
Battle those things with which you disagree, but search for those things that you share with others, even your ideological adversaries.
(My sideline writing fortunes for Chinese cookies has always been lucrative -- the problem is that they often pay me off with stolen and obsolete versions of MS Office.)
You are aware of Justice Kennedy's son's ties to Trump through Deutschebank?
"— Deutsche Bank has loaned Donald Trump over $2.5 billion since 1998
"— Deutsche bank was fined $630 million for a $10 billion Russian-Money Laundering scheme in 2017
"— Retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son was TRUMP’S BANKER at Deutsche Bank
"THAT’S WAY TOO MANY “COINCIDENCES”"
All caps, not edited, because this is important!
from @ProudResister
3
This is an excellent summary of the challenges our "commons" have faced in the past and will continue to face in the future. The "commons" are what we do together for individuals and collections of overlapping individuals or communities. These challenges include protecting our freedoms and promoting fairness. While Justice Kennedy, in his 1992 comment. certainly focused on the liberty to define one's own concept of existence, that existence certainly had context. It might be a family, community, collection of communities, etc.. How well the self-defined concept of existence fits with the "commons" has a dependency on access to and the ability of society to educate and grow individuals to understand, engage, support and grow the "we" that our founders envisioned. If we want to build a better balance between the ideals of the founders, the challenges from Justice Kennedy, and performing the tasks outlined by Levin, we need to raise our commitment to education.
9
It is very interesting and ironic that Brooks chooses to extol the virtues of 'WE' as opposed to 'I' in this column after railing against unions, national healthcare and such for the past few decades. This trend has many authors, but leading the list must be conservative pundits and the GOP that has consistently argued against any form of government investments for public welfare. Most recently Obama was opposed tooth and nail in his effort to get funding for infrastructure; a clear example of not caring for the 'WE' whose loss Brooks laments about.
The notion that one's individual liberty and freedom has to coexist with that of the public is a well discussed concept that is best captured in A. G. Gardiner's essay "On the Rule of the Road" in which he writes that one has to submit ". . to a curtailment of private liberty in order that you may enjoy a social orderwhich makes your liberty a reality."
http://student.allied.edu/uploadedfiles/Docs/c07efed8-98b2-402b-ae75-166...
61
You're from Massachusetts, so this will make sense to you.
You guys got $20 Billion more for your big dig than you promised it was going to take from the federal government.
Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice? Not gonna happen.
You want your roads and bridges fixed in MA? Raise taxes in MA.
Simple as that.
"That people shares a moral order — rules that are true for all people in all times and that govern us in our freedom. Among them, for example, is the idea that all people are created equal."
Americans don't share a moral order anymore, Lord Brooks.
Many do believe in democracy, fairness, pluralism and reasoned discourse, but a sizable minority of Americans believe in authoritarianism, tribalism, cheating, lying, bullying, religiosity, selfishness and that White Christians are the Chosen People.
The Confederacy has been reborn, new and improved 157 years later under new Trump Management, and what it's delivering is the freedom to hate like it's 1861 again, the freedom to shoot your neighbor and schoolchildren like it's the Wild West again, the freedom to enslave workers with zero benefits and microscopic wages again, the freedom to suppress votes again, and the freedom for Robber Barons to extract all the gold while making the government a wholly owned subsidiary.
Anthony Kennedy played an important role in the New Confederacy, helping to catastrophically suspend democracy in 2000's Jim Crow Florida vote, and again in 2010 by catastrophically validating Citizens United and ordaining the 'freedom' of 'corporate people' and 'corporate speech', thereby permanently sinking America into a right-wing billionaire cesspool of greed wrapped in a racist, religious, regressive candy wrapper.
When one's morality is nothing but 'winning' and 'power', then one is morally bankrupt.
576
The revelation that Kennedy's son, working for Deutch Bank, played a major role in financing Trump's real estate investments (no doubt with the ill-gotten gains of Russian oligarchs) when US banks would not loan Trump a penny helps explain the Kennedy sell out.
7
Citizens United is the working person's biggest obstacle. Get rid of big money and we start to get things right for our ailing democracy.
5
The question is what is fairness, pluralism and reasoned discourse. With only individual honored conceptions of morality and reality, one's reference point for those noble platitudes become somewhat useless. "Reason" fails when in difficult discussion, one can (and often does) pull the trump card "your reason has no meaning to me since you don't share my reality". The witty but too often empty responses to thoughtful discussions like Brooks offers today is a pretty good example. (by Middle3's husband, she wouldn't write such things.)
To me, Justice Kennedy's statement doesn't imply that we're self-created, but rather that we get to decide how much "the parts of ourselves that we don't choose but inherit" mean to us. Not feeling indebted to those who came before us may make us vain. On the other hand, it may be easier to feel genuine gratitude out of choice than out of obligation. The liberty to define what matters to us has its risks but also its rewards.
14
I feel an 'obligation' every day for the people who have grown and processed my food, are providing me energy and water, my parents for raising me, my brothers for helping me along in many ways, for policemen, firefighters, EMT's that will come to my door in a moment's notice, etc... Do I have a 'choice'? Should I have a 'choice'? I think this gets to the heart of what Brooks is saying. It's not so much that 'society' should force me to feel this obligation (by law or threat of punishment, per se), but should I not be at least made to feel some guilt if I don't feel (and better yet act on) some obligation to these others?
And it turns out that the only way to measure the differences between us is with the universal metric called money. Those with the highest values score highest on the metric and thus we have our current society in which the richest demand to be treated as if they are above the rest of us. Who is to judge? The great adjudicator - the mighty dollar. That's who. Why who? Well, it turns out money is speech and speech is a property of a who, not a what.
44
We tend to forget that the constitution was written at a time when America was a small, more-or-less culturally and ethnically unified agrarian society. Since the vast majority of Americans then shared the same cultural 'guardrails' it was OK for them to be free-acting individualists within those limits. Times have changed. We now live in an enormous, culturally and economically diverse, nation in which simple self-imposed rules no longer work so well (one size does not fit all). We have four choices: 1. The easy answer is that those who do not fit into the mold understood by the framers of the constitution should leave. 2. 'Others' should understand that they live in a society designed for a particular cultural and ethnic group and they must learn over time to accommodate themselves to the norms of that group. 3. Progressive atomization of the society with continual political instability arising from the attempt to accommodate (paper over) so many diverse needs,(Democrat Party identity politics). 4. Some form of political organization we know not of. The right likes choices 1 and 2. The left wants choice 3 tending to choice 4. Choice 4 is outright revolution, which I think accounts for increasing talk among extreme leftists about the need for, or inevitability of, civil war. The likely ultimate futility of choice 3 and the calamitous results of choice 4 might go some way to explain why the right is so unified behind Mr. Trump.
10
BTW I do not think choice 1 is a real choice, it's there as what is sometimes called a 'blind' or 'false' window intended to balance the composition. But, even though it's a fantasy it belongs there because I think it helps explain the intensity of rightist feeling about the immigration issue (and race). Why don't these people just go away, or at the very least, don't let any more of them in. So, it would be a mistake to dismiss choice 1 as meaningless.
1
Having lived overseas for most of my adult life, I have had to correct some misperceptions of the USA.
For example, some think that US Americans are a race.
I gently counter that notion by pointing out that America is an idea, which any country apply.
2
Ronald,
You stated that "...America was a small, more-or-less culturally and ethnically unified agrarian society." However, even at the time of the Declaration of Independence there were approximately 500,000 slaves who were, by force, not participants in this society. For purposes of southern state representation, they were deemed to be 3/5 of a person, but for purposes of acting as autonomous human beings were deemed to be property.
I would argue that this "peculiar institution" deeply effected the American psyche - and politics - and meant that we never were the ethnically unified, freedom loving individuals that we championed ourselves to be. I would further argue that, in spite of the Civil War, and all that has happened before or since, we have never completely overcome this "great stain," and that the continuance of claims to a mythical time of ethnic - and hence cultural - unity has led directly to the person that now occupies the WH who uses these myths in a myriad of destructive ways to encourage increasing divisions and hostility between different segments of society. We have always been diverse, we just have never been able to embrace that diversity in full.
3
In deciding to resign now Kennedy has shown us that he believes an incompetent president and a bigoted elitist party will make the best choice for another lifelong appointment to the Supreme Court. And what do they favor for America? Not the interests or needs of the many but those of the economic elite whether they are corporations or those few who are fabulously wealthy. In other words those who don't have any real needs in terms of assistance or community.
Trump himself has no idea how 99% of us live. Kennedy might have at one time. He and the rest of the conservatives on the court might have realized that access to good health care ought to be a right. The same goes for unfettered access to abortion given how stingy this country is with families and others who might have needs.
The issues facing Americans today will not disappear because the GOP ignores them. They will not improve when our politicians fight over who deserves what. When the leaders of our country choose to ignore the people part in the sentence that opens the Declaration of Independence they are letting us know that America is a privatized country and doing business with, for, and in favor of the moneyed elite.
It's not about Anthony Kennedy. It's about who we elect to serve us. As long as we believe that tax cuts help in the long run, that only some people deserve to have rights, that the only ones who need government assistance are ne'er do wells we are doing ourselves a disservice.
228
@hen3ry
Indeed, the timing wipes out all pretense as to what his affiliations and leanings might be. (incredibly bad timing if you think human rights should be a priority, let alone freedom) I wonder what is more important - a Congress and Presidency (Democrats) that work in tandem to promote said equal rights or a Supreme Court (radically right) that strikes them down.
We are going to find out. Sadly so...
51
The courts have no business determining that “access to good healthcare ought to be a right”. Elect representatives who will legislate that “right”.
2
@David. Unless I missed something they did legislate that right. Or came close. But by the time this Court is done that legislation won’t matter. Only they will matter, as John Roberts made perfectly clear when he relentlessly lied his way through his confirmation hearings, and as he has made completely clear ever since.
5
What Mr. Brooks calls a big, intrusive state is actually one that worries about the “we” that he's so concerned about.
WE get old. WE need health care. WE deserve a living wage. WE need to keep our roads and bridges from collapsing under us. But a cadre of like-minded conservatives decided that THEY needed all the money, and there wasn’t enough for US.
But they sure do like to talk about moral behavior, by which they mean those things they prohibit us from doing because they don’t like them. They can’t stand for other people to enjoy sex. Sex for them is supposed to be sinful and secret. (Sometimes you even have to pay porn stars to keep it that way.)
They think gay people are icky. They hate the idea of a woman choosing not to bring a fetus to term if she doesn’t have the resources or strength to take care of it. Life should be a burden for mother and child.
It's not their fault if the rules are tough. They claim morality comes from a wrathful God whose edicts I must obey even if I have no reason to believe He exists. But these edicts don’t come from some deity, of which there have been thousands, but from conservatives who can’t stand to see people enjoying themselves.
Government is supposed to take care of the things that WE all need so that we can find our own unique path. But Mr. Brooks should take heart. We can be pretty sure that the next Supreme Court justice won’t be having any of it.
460
I agree completely, with the caveat that "they" are exempt from all of the above. The laws and rules for "us" don't apply to the chosen few.
6
That, people, was a great comment!
4
"But they sure do like to talk about moral behavior, by which they mean those things they prohibit us from doing because they don’t like them. They can’t stand for other people to enjoy sex. Sex for them is supposed to be sinful and secret. (Sometimes you even have to pay porn stars to keep it that way.)"
Beautiful.
I've always liked to say that people like another Kennedy—John Fitzgerald[1]—believe in shared *responsibility* where everyone's Their Brother's and Sister's Keeper, while people like "covfefe" and his GOP believe in shared *misery*, where everyone (else) "enjoys" the fruit of their hate, indifference, and malcompetence.
[1] Shockingly unmentioned, in this article that bemoans the drift away from a communal moral order!
From the moment we take our first breath out of the womb (and even before that), we are part of the collective or the ''we'' .The Supreme Court has regulated that in multiple decisions of what it means to have inalienable rights in the pursuit of life. liberty and happiness.
As soon as we are born. we are given a number. Our parents or guardians are entrusted with responsibilities in our upbringing until we reach legal age. We must go to school and follow all laws. If we need any help, then we are to apply to the state and ask for it with all sorts or restrictions, yet are not guaranteed anything in return. We can be conscripted and sent to war or ultimately pay the highest price. If we want to move around, then again, we must apply to the state to just get across lines on a map.
All throughout our lives, we are rigidly regulated and watched by the state. (now more and more) We must abide by the laws of society regardless of whether we like them or not. There is no I, even if we just wanted to stay put and harm no one. We are then loitering.
The dichotomy of the court has always been a push and pull of how many rights and freedoms we will have against how many restrictions there will be.
Justice Kennedy gave us some, but took away a whole lot more.
17
This essay is, perhaps, one of Mr. Brook's finest. This analysis of what ails us as a country and a culture offers an explanation for why there is so much distress in our body politic. Justice Kennedy is certainly not responsible for this but he unwittingly provided a sad moral justification for the increasingly "selfie" oriented world we find ourselves in. We find so much emphasis on individualism that one wonders if there is much glue left to keep us bound on any meaningful level. Both the Right and the Left are guilty of this. The elevation of greed as embodied by Ayn Rand has become a sick morality among the Right, while the Left's narcissistic preoccupation with the victimhood in small group identity politics clouds it's ability to ever see anything positive about just being an American first and a (fill in the blank) second. One recommendation I offer is to start by reading the ethics found in the Boy Scout manual - they are all about both taking care of yourself and being of service to others through your public and private institutions.
79
it is his finest in the sense that he unmasked himself completely. His conservatism is that of Israel's type: built on the backs of the lower class. it is Arabs in Israel, and blue-collar workers whose jobs left for Mexico and China in this country. David's collectivism is not for everybody. Hypocrisy at its finest.
Why limit these good thoughts to "just being an American"? Are we not, more basically, Earthians - sharing our needs; opportunities; and personal moral and practical decisions with all the others on the planet?
North Carolina, hmmm racist state much? I love how republicans attempt to equate evil with justice. Spewing hate, led by a mentally ill traitor beholden to dictators and our enemies, damaging age old relationships with his childish ego and ignorance. The democratic party isn't blameless, but the republican party has morphed into a plain evil, a soulless, obstructionist, misogynistic, unethical, immoral, do-nothing, party.
1
"There is no acknowledgment of the parts of ourselves that we don’t choose but inherit — family, race, social roles, historical legacies of oppression, our bodies, the habits that are handed down to us by our common culture."
We no longer have a common culture.
This country used to have foundational culture that every one understood and agreed upon. On top of that basic foundation you had multiculturalism.
Now the common culture is gone and all that's left is the multiculturalism which has led us to the next phase....Which is Tribalism..
42
That's nonsense. The german immigrants who predominated prior to WWI had little to do with the African-Americans who preceded them nor my English-Scottish culture nor my husband's French, also as old We were always multicultural. This is nothing new in this.
Don't despair. Your'e underestimating the power of the USA to assimilate those from "other cultures."
First Nations People as well as descendants of slaves and indentured servants might say that we never actually had a common culture.
I seldom agree with Mr. Brooks, but I can't help but agree that America no longer even pretends to have a shared moral order. A bunch of little tribes, living in mirrored bubbles have their own sense of shared beliefs and not only want to shove them down everyone else's throat, but the present *minority* Trumpian Party is being successful at doing that.
Citizens United was the epitome accomplishment of Anthony Kennedy that defined exceptionally rich people as having the most important right to free speech and the right to control all elections by buying the best candidates for the rest of us to vote for. Kennedy and the rest of the conservative jurists on the Supreme Court cared not a whit for the real effect of their decision. The Koch brothers have at least 100,000 times the effect that I do on elections which means, practically, that I have no impact at all.
If forced to respond, these dimwitted jurors would tell us that they were interpreting the Constitution exactly as it was written and if we don't like it then perform the virtually impossible task of changing it.
But what about the phrase "we the people ..."? The justices don't want to consider that, they are among the rich elite who have their own plan of what we need to believe.
402
Your morality can't trump my morality, so exactly whose morals are we supposed to subscribe to?
"We the People" didn't include women or people of color, or even poor people, as only landowners had right to vote in those days. It was all for the "rich elite" even then.
1
Regardless of which side you're on this is the most thought-provoking and substantive article I have read on the state of our body politic
An interesting perspective. It reminds me of Mitch McConnell's theft of the Supreme Court seat. He did it because he could, within the letter of the law. But he broke the community and possibly whatever was left of the fabric of the nation. Its the same thing as those state legislators jerrymandering districts to pick their voters. Apparently that is OK with Kennedy as well even if it subverts democracy, the rule of the people. Libertarians must be nihilists, out only for themselves.
323
No..he did it because Joe Biden and Harry Reid made it so.
And , are we to believe that the fact that Mrs. Mitch McConnell is the daughter of a Chinese billionaire has no influence on Mr. McConnells decision making?
Our nation is being sold out to the highest bidders; Koch brothers, Chinese, Walton family, Russia, et al.
This is the reason it’s mere scapegoating to blame Donald Trump for the discord that is raging through the country and its politics. The president, instead, is the inevitable outcome of a broken national ethos cunningly advanced by others far more intellectual and disciplined than he. They avoid real scrutiny (some lionised) with a façade of temperance, but make no mistake their philosophy is anti society. Justice O’Connor must have felt faint upon reading Kennedy’s resignation letter.
46
She was complicit in the Iraq war. Her vote enabled it to occur.
Thank you for the lesson on Burkean conservatism, Professor Brooks. . I'm reading your Kennedy man-of-the ages piece on my iPad. Alone. My NYT subscription is delivered to me every morning, with minimal human commerce. I don't even have risk engaging my neighbor on the driveway to retrieve it.
The homework you've assigned us is more challenging than Justice Kennedy's reading list. You're asking us to embrace a common truth; to eschew modern liberalism; to accept that we are part of a larger whole.
Justices Kennedy's legacy is now in the hands of the iPresident. Isolated. Atomistic. Self-obsessed. Petty. And most ironically, empowered by "conservatives."
I'm sure humankind has travelled along way from 18th C Scotland, Professor. I'm just not sure in which direction.
56
Mr. Brooks is correct. Justice Kennedy (with the other conservatives on the court) epitomized the concept of right of the individual above all. Freedom trumps the common good in his mind and can be seen in his decisions on most if not all his recent votes. Here are some, grossly simplified:
Hobby Lobby: You don't like family planning, you don't have to provide birth control medication to your employees.
Baker vs. Gay wedding: You don't like gays. You don't have to bake a cake for them.
Union dues: You don't want to pay Union dues, don't.
Arbitration clauses vs. class action suits: You are on your own if you want to challenge your employer. Don't rely on your co-workers.
Gay Marriage: Even there, as much as it pleases the LGBT community, the concept of his views on individual rights is reflected. You are gay and you want to marry. Go ahead.
Citizen United: Corporation are people, and people have the absolute right to spend their money as they please, even buy lawmakers if they want.
Muslim Ban: You elected Trump. You have to live with his decisions. You, the individual voter is responsible for your actions.
Of course, the whole thing is clouded in lawyerly constitutional law language as justification -Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech - Presidential Powers- but at its core, it's you at the center and everyone else at the periphery.
It's no way to run anything, much less a society.
179
Citizens United also covered unions
Be careful, David. You're sounding more like a democratic socialist all the time. Pretty soon you're going to have to sit to the left of Shields instead of the right. Of course, a true conservative must also believe in the conservation of human community. We are living through the commercialization of culture itself. Community is not just getting together to watch television, even if it's our team playing, but only grows out of the traditions and institutions of a living culture. But, realize that it's the inherent dynamic of capitalism itself that has created man as consumer. It's only "we the people" who can rise up to defend the human community from this disintegration. It's not a choice between community and the free autonomous individual. You can't have one without the other. The modern self-affirming person-all of thes millions of little Nietzsches- is a slave to spending his money on his "lifestyle."
45
I think Kennedy was spot on, and Brooks (sadly) misses the mark.
We each need to come to a very personal understanding and appreciation of where we each fit into the larger collective(s) in this country.
Yet, it's not the government's role to compel you to participate. That individual right to opt-in or opt-out is embedded in the Bill of Rights, not in Apple or Google's Terms of Service.
Therein lies a fundamental difference between progressives and conservatives.
Conservatives believe citizens should be largely left alone and let the individual determine how they cooperate and participate with other like-minded souls to make a better nation.
Progressives believe it's the State's role to compel such activity in order to create the perfectly planned 'community.' It's why you hear such passionate pleas such as "you need to care more and get involved! The future depends on it!"
Look...the power of any collective is only as strong as its weakest link. If the weakest links don't want to join in the circled wagons of society, don't force it; or you'll only make the collective weaker.
21
This is a great statement. With your permission, I'd like to supplement it, only because I think it misses the mark right at the end with regard to conservatives and their contributions to the greater whole.
You are absolutely correct that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Even more correct is your assertion that conscripting the unwilling is how and why the chain we now have is so weak.
The only thing I would like to add is to offer the perspective here that conservatives as a whole genuinely want to be part of the chain. Indeed we feel like we can be among the strongest links.
The only real problem is our frustration with the fact that urban liberalism, simply by nature of population density and the concentration of control over society's resources and the reigns of public policy, has arranged the chain in such a way that the best values and principles of rural conservatism are not being leveraged to their greatest benefit, but rather they are being dismissed, rejected and misunderstood in the halls of power, and we as conservatives are being told that the only way to be a strong link is to adopt an urban progressive lifestyle whose poor economy of scale and depersonalization of contributions and resource allocation actually weakens communities when applied in the lower population densities of rural America.
Conservatives don't ask to be excluded at all. We ask to be included on the merits of how our own unique perspectives help to strengthen the chain.
Today's conservarives know they can get more votes and money by telling people they can do whatever they want and labelng this "freedom." Liberals believe, cynically perhaps, that left to their own devices people will not always do what's right and all of us will suffer the consequences. So things like buying health insurance or locking up guns are considered an infringement of a person's rights. But ultimately each of us pays for somebody else's "freedom."
Always nice to hear from the weakest link.
1
You nailed it, Mr. Brooks. It's Margaret Thatcher all over again: there's no such thing as society. Not to mention Ayn Rand. How does a person like Kennedy, presumably steeped in the institutions of the law, come up with such nonsense? With Trump, we've reached the reductio ad absurdum of that doctrine.
118
Enough of the sanctimonious We, privileged white man. If you are going to engage this argument, Mr. Brooks, engage it. Don't simply evade its complications with sermonizing platitudes that ignore the shadows they cast and, in fact, have cast at every point in history they have been uttered. There are no more oppressive forms of tyranny than the family, the village, the collectivist nation, than religion, if one is marked as "the Other," within or without. There are indeed problems with the autonomous Me but they are not magically cured by the monolithic We.
119