There is a reason liberals tend to be more educated.
122
"Resentniks." Just another word for "Left-Behinds" -- people who won't adapt and then come together to blame their failures on those who sacrifice to succeed.
With a cheerleader like Trump, they make a lot of noise.
82
Democracy, even as an idea, is in retreat all over the Globe.
Trump is a symptom, not an original cause.
We must decide en mass what kind of a world we *want to live
in, and stop, at all costs, remaining enslaved to the kind of world
we are "saddled" with by the Global Corporate Oligarchy.
Swapping out the Corporate Puppet we *have for a Corporate Puppet (say, Hillary) that we have *previously had, is simply an
exercise in foolishness and futility.
The Oligarchy will only *allow us to VOTE FOR one puppet or the other. Tweedledee, or Tweedledum. This set of Midterms, we have shown the Oligarchy the "crack" in their armor. They only dare "rig" an election so that their candidate wins by a reasonable" margin. They are not yet ready to risk the 99% Favorable Vote Tallies of the Tin Horn World Dictators.
Our bastardized "democracies" are SO "not working". They
are badly corrupted. We must tear down and *rebuild a new system that we all DO want - be it based upon Ideal Democracy - or on something *else.
But change of ANY kind is IMPOSSIBLE until, as Sen. Gillibrand
of NY and *many others now recommend, we get the MONEY
out of politics. Period. We can start by repealing the silly and inane "Citizens United" ruling giving corporations LEGAL status
as "people", and allowing UNLIMITED amounts of money into the process as "protected" FREE SPEECH.
As long as *either concept is legal, we have our PROOF that we
do not live in anything resembling a REAL democracy.
44
To echo what others have commented....conservatism has long suffered from an ever festering intellectual and moral rot.
38
This article entirely misses the point due to an unwillingness of conservatism to look in the mirror. You say; “Compassionate conservatism and the dream of spreading global democracy were efforts to anchor conservatism around a moral ideal, but they did not work out.” And... And... Well, why didn’t they work out? What is needed at this point in the essay is what Alcoholics Anonymous calls a “fearless and searching moral inventory.” Several commenters— such as gemli and his 1936 quote from H.P. Lovecraft and Socrates in one of his ever-insightful comments— show that it was no idle happenstance that conservatism somehow just did not work out. They argue that at its heart, current— and indeed past— conservatism is selfish, self-centered, morally vacuous, and corrupt. It is Calvinism redux in the worse sense of Calvinism. I’m rich because God’s on my side along my one percenter pals. All you 99 percenters are not rich so you must be godless bums and that’s your own fault. And then these conservatives wonder why “it didn’t work out? Why their movement has not, as Mr. Brooks put it, found “a moral purpose large enough to displace the lure of blood-and-soil nationalism?” You haven’t looked hard enough, and if you truly do, you might not like what you find.
79
Literally David, what took you so long to say it this way? I imagine this has bothered you for a while. But seriously, this seems like the first to-the-point discussion from you on the poison of this neo-Republican philosophy. A philosophy that betrays you.
33
Your best work in a long time, David.
17
"...from here on out, it’s Whitakers all the way down."
This sent a shiver down my spine.
55
Are there any real conservatives left? Seriously, what there is now are truculent, self absorbed, white supremacists. Look at the photo of the incoming Republicans to Congress, it looks like the members of a 1950s Country Club Golf Club, no people of color or women...sorry one woman. So yes, conservatives need to stop trying to cheat to get power, and accept diversity. But that won't happen. What we have now is a white nationalist party of mostly whites led mostly by white men, and the rest of us.
51
I for one am getting really tired of the word Liberal being used as a label for someone that the perfect hardworking compassionate worker-loving but Communist hating "conservative" thinks is a disgusting greedy selfish God-hating person. Every Liberal I know, especially like my Aunt Ruth and my late uncle Presbyterian minister John, have spent a good part of their lives caring for others and certainly are not libertines. Even if some of us have fallen away from the formal church for various reasons, we still do charity work and donate cash as well as time. We have friends and often relatives of different nationalities, religions and "races," and in other countries. We don't just send "thoughts and prayers" over the public airwaves but get down on our knees in private to truly pray for others. We had an amazing Pastor back in Seattle who had six children and they were all involved in careers that gave back to the community, some in the US and four of them in foreign countries. And I can guarantee not one of them would consider themselves to be a conservative despite their attachment to their religion which they truly lived daily. The Liberal label should be a compliment, not a pejorative.
98
23% of Republican voters would vote for Jeffery Dahlmer for president if he could lower taxes and infuriate liberals. They would point to the gnawed upon human remains and claim that “just because they are in his frdge does not mean he ate them.”
I don’t know where you got your Idea of what “conservatism” should be. It probably hasn’t existed since Regan. The Grover Norquists and Fred C. Koch pretty much made sure such high ideals were relegated only to the egg heads of the party and had no bearing on actual policy.
27
I have given up on many conservative friends because they supported Trump as the 'alternative' to the horrid and evil nightmare they perceive(d) in Hillary Clinton.
And because they have become a science denying, fact and evidence ignoring, fake news loving and adoring, intelligence and wisdom hating party, and because they are have become so nasty and mean spirited.
I have a very difficult time with willful ignorance and the inability to reasonably and rationally approach a problem, subject or information without one's intellectual and logical mind engaged.
Most conservatives I know gave up on all of this to enjoy their ignorance is bliss and cult of personality approach.
69
Well they do have their job cut out for them. I also suspect their is a lesson in all this for Liberals.
3
Conservatism is like one of those bozo clown punching toys.
You can't punch it down because of its low center of mass.
The force that always pushes conservatism back up is the fear of collectivism, socialism, redistribution, or even the sudden imbalance of revolution. Liberals want to stop revolutionary movement by diminishing the causes of malaise: poverty, inequality and environmental destruction.
Whereas the conservatives entered into the grand bargain known as the GOP. Their impulse is to trade favors with the powerful increasing their "class power" but exasperating inequality and doing little to help the less fortunate.
A lot of conservatives who care deeply about one thing, abortion, their wealth, Israel,their guns accept the bargain for that sake of the one thing the care about.
But the demographics and gutting of the middle class are working against the republicans: Trump's answer is to add "racist nationalism" to the GOP bargain.
This is just too much for principled conservatives and those aware of history to accept. It looks like trump is pushing out the competent and the A students out.
Perhaps its not even deliberate, as he simply has no basis from which to judge competence.
His area of competence is theater, and we are all dumbstruck as his hubris propels him into tragedy.
24
Mr. Brooks,
You have often expressed your admiration, loyalty, even deep affection for James F. Buckley, Jr. He remains your hero, idol, and, I imagine, ideal. I found Mr. Buckley, at least in his public pronouncements, debates, and persona arrogant and, like so many "conservatives," blind to the vicissitudes of fortune that seem to afflict the non-wealthy; in short, a well-educated, well-spoken prig. At the same time Buckley was fulminating on TV, young Bob Dylan sang this phrase, "don't follow leaders, and watch those parking meters," which always seemed to me to be a great up date to Jesus saying, "render unto Caesar etc."
I watched your public, punditorial persona struggle with all our country's metaphorical "parking meters" while trying to stay true to your hero's erudite yet vacuous teachings.
Here's a suggestion, forget "conservatism." Start from scratch by putting the good your country and countrymen first and see if you can come up with a coherent political philosophy that conforms to your or Judaic or Judeo/Christian morality, you expressed desire for a good" society, and holds to a true, non-Scalian understanding of the Constitution. You might really have something to say then.
33
Actually, a lot of people around the world mistakenly celebrated the new millennium ONE YEAR EARLY too!
6
It sure would help some of us, okay me, if these terms were defined. What is a "conservative"? A "new-liberal"? I think I know but y'all NYT people could set me straight.
You see, to me, being a conservative in many arenas is a good thing. I want to conserve natural resources, reduce pollution, encourage intelligent decisions, conserve water, etc.
Trump and his crowd do not at all seem "conservative" in these ways. He seems utterly profligate, unwise, shoot from the hip, doesn't even spell check! How could he be a conservative. More like a spendthrift, foolish person. See, the word conservative is misused by both faux conservatives and so-called liberals. Even in the NYT.
18
Is this an effort to redress your nationalism column? Now "patriotism" is in the quotation marks in which nationalism belongs. And, fyi -- I don't see the word racist in this column. What an oversight. It's the glue that holds the Republican party together (as well as their compatriots in Poland). We're clearly not talking about fiscal conservatism, now are we?
22
Why does conservatism HAVE to find "a moral purpose large enough to displace ...blood-and-soil nationalism"? In order to retain or gain power? If you have to go looking for a moral purpose, maybe the desire for power (and the economic benefit for your class resulting therefrom) is your only reason for being. (As another commenter implied, maybe Mr Brooks is looking for a new moral purpose because he is not so comfortable with the "moral" positions conservatives do still take, that are against women's interests, inclusion of LGBT persons and reduction of gun violence. Maybe the conservatives are just on the "immoral" side of issues now.) Whatever happened to a moral purpose driving (even compelling) ones political beliefs and actions, rather than a desire for political self-preservation driving a search for acceptable moral positions (which of course have to be contrary to liberal or progressive positions) in which to dress it up?
17
Brooks is right that blood and soil patriotism--in a substitute way-- fulfills longing to be part of a community, what he calls a moral purpose. But why does he consistently NOT talk about the ways that conservatism has ALWAYS rested on a determination to defend the rights of ruling elites and reward them politically and economically? He talks about entitlement reform AS IF that isn't -always-an attack on poor and working class people and is-always-coupled with programs to reward the elites. Is it because this sounds too ..what...Marxist? But he needn't worry about that. But his ignoring class is one of his main liabilities...
16
Mr. Brook's column and all the comments following it fail to see one simple but inconvenient truth: They all suffer from the "parable of the seven blind men and the elephant" syndrome (different people, with individual experience and perspective, create their own versions of reality from that limited experience and perspective). Thus the large, amorphous "conservative" party is not homogeneous, but a tapestry of many separate pieces.
Some of them are paleo-Buckley conservatives; some are Southern white boys with the Stars and Bars flying over their homes; others are evangelical Christians fixated on controlling women; others still are MAGAtts, resentful of their foundering American dream; and, of course, there are the 1% who just want to have more, more money even if it breaks the backs of the other 99%.
The only common thread to this motley crew is that, like fish and family, they all smell bad after a few days.
18
What makes David Brooks a Republican? It is utterly mystifying. Is it a love of small government? What does that mean? Fewer roads, less safety nets, lower taxes to pay for the things we need because we don'treally need them? Is it patriotism and moral internationalism, buttressed by a super strong military? Throw our muscle around with huge defense expenditures and moral guidance to the rest of the world? Is it religion and the need for a spiritual authority? Oh, we would all be just so much better off if we only believed.
What, pray tell, is it that keeps him "bound" to this party? Is it dislike for the notion that government can actually help individuals to live better lives? Is it perverted Ayn Rand thinking? Does he relate to the miner, the construction worker, and the bus driver? What is it? I would love to know.
39
As with Many of Mr. Brooks' columns this one contains insightful and salient points. The morality of his ilk of conventional conservatism can be debated on the merit and effectiveness of its ideas. But to gloss over the white supremacist tribalism by softening it as only "blood and soil nationalism" as he does numerous times in this piece raises serious questions about his position. The trump philosophy is ethnic cleansing all dressed up and marketed for whites to fall into the nostalgic haze of a mythic dream America that only existed for a portion of the population. Is this really all that different from the goals of those that promoted "limited government" and "entitlement reform"?
6
Buffett has said, show me a person's incentive and I'll show you how they act. Republican's have made it their business not to serve ALL of America's citizens, McConnell the circus ringleader the head of this ethos has created incentives moving the rank and file so far right there is no one in the middle who thinks like the average american willing to work in the administration.
7
One of the far right traits Applebaum writes about and Brooks fails to mention, is the deliberate promotion of lies. As with Trump, this is done with a knowledge of the truth and a confidence that it will be believed by the “faithful”. No lie seems to too far fetched to be doubted by those who find refuge in right wing ideology.
Democracy is difficult to navigate when steered by facts. When guided by lies and fantasies It becomes impossible. That so many in the U. S. and through out the world are easily susceptible to anti-democratic ideology is truly worrisome. The world has over come these forces before and will again. What remains to be seen is at what price.
26
The people you describe here don't sound particularly conservative. They sound like people in ANY society where competition for wealth and status increases and results in "winners" and "losers".
Wouldn't everyone like to be considered "excellent" if they could be, and failing that, don't most of them try to find something larger than themselves to identify with, so they can still feel special even though they themselves may not have ever done anything particularly special?
What you might have here in Poland is more simply the strains of life under free market globalization--or more exactly a version of it that is shaped by their own culture and history.
5
Alas, Mr. Brooks will always see "conservatism" through a thick and rose (red?) colored lens, as though being "anti-Communist and pro-market" was all there is to it. He'll never glimpse the fact that his "moral cause" of conservatism was always founded on a moral rot, that of narrow and self-interested tribalism, not to mention a pious conviction that "conservative" oh-so righteous ends justify any dishonest means.
It is obvious to those with clearer vision that this is precisely why and how a creature like Trump is a Republican and why he has succeeded so grandly as a Republican.
Those awful capital "L" Liberals, in contrast, at least in large part had the decency to seek the greater good and to hew closer to the golden rule.
17
In a setting where John Kelly and John Bolton represent the best of the best, the English alphabet is not long enough to designate to which team the staff of the Trump Administration belongs. Would the Cyrillic script perform this task better?
5
David only touches on why Applebaum’s article in Atlantic magazine is a “ must read” that explores many of the issues common to Europe, as well as USA as Russia.
Her article is one of the finest I have read in months, in any publication.
3
Why I got to this part, I had to laugh out loud!
“During the Cold War, being a conservative was a moral cause. “
Keep tell yourself that. That’s the kind of nonsense that’s gotten us here to our current situation.
9
My goodness David, why do conservatives need a moral purpose to adhere to if the goal is to blow it all up? Purdue Pruitt, Zinke et al don't seem to need a moral compass to tear down the agencies they oversee, do you expect them to destroy in a morally ethical manner?
Ever since Paul Weyrich, Grover Norquist, the Koch Bros and Rush Limbaugh took over the republican party, there has been a demonstration of integrity and craftsmanship in the destruction of our body politic that would have made Attila the Hun proud.
Conservatives just could not decide between partial and total destruction. Either way, moral purpose and political craftsmanship have proven as cumbersome as the regulations they have sworn to destroy
14
Brook's opinion is simply a framing of conservatism to support his current beliefs. It is ignorant and lazy to assume that all people who describe themselves as "conservative" or even "Republican" fit you ridiculous generalizations.
The citizens in Southern states like mine will typically vote 60% for GOP candidates - this last election was no different. I'm a moderate Republican who didn't vote for Trump (and consider him a terrible president) but I know many people who did. Their personal beliefs range all over the political spectrum. If I were to identify the primary reason many held their collective noses and voted for Trump, it was a concern over what has become an activist judiciary. That's not in the way you (especially you, Brooks) want to characterize it. It's a belief that the responsibility to make laws and set policy belong to the Legislative and Executive branches, even when you don't like the laws passed and policies adopted. After that issue, I can't point to an obvious thing and many support things like expanding healthcare, protecting the environment, adding fairness to tax laws, fix redistricting and campaign finance rules.
You have a lot to learn Brooks. So does the Democratic Party, because there are many people like me that have voted for Democratic candidates and would love to get rid of Trump. Maybe Democrats will wake up to the fact that a big center of the country wants smart, ethical, leaders (real leaders) who represent all Americans.
7
One obvious flaw with a vision of meritocracy is who gets to define the merit. I suspect we are a long way from any agreeable solution. There are a number of theories about just desert: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/#EquOppMer .
Our two party system has been with us for over two centuries. In terms of what it has done, maybe it has kept us from having elections with ten parties (with ten views of merit?), kept us from even more factionalism than we see today.
With respect to Mr. Brooks' concluding paragraph, it is utterly impossible to see much posited recovery with the likes of the House Freedom Caucus or the current Republican Senate leadership. The atmosphere will improve little if all we get is a vengeful Democratic majority in congress. How do we begin any fix as long as the opposing parties view each other as enemies of the people and a threat to the nation?
2
Mr. Brooks writes, "Then with the election of Reagan and Thatcher and in the years afterward, conservatives built their own counter-establishment — think tanks, publications, broadcasting outlets. As conservatism professionalized, it despiritualized."
I'm sympathetic to his argument that we've lost our soul as a country but what Mr. Brooks fails to recognize in conservatism's history of building its own "counter-establishment" is that morality, social norms, honesty, and support for democratic institutions were not core to the conservative project. Instead, they created purely partisan organizations with a zero-sum focus and an ends-justifies-the-means morality. Talk radio, Fox News, and right-wing media -- which are conservative legacies -- are inherently dishonest.
What I have never understood about conservatives who are concerned about the mores of society is why they never make the connection between a loss of morality and the GOPs aggressive approach to turning every institution into a profit-making corporation and making money the only measure that matters in our society. On virtually every complex issue that faces our nation -- immigration, health care, education to name three -- the GOP approach is dishonest, partisan, and anti-democratic. Human beings or profit? The GOP chooses profit every time.
And then they complain about the loss of morality? The GOP is implicit in any decline. Today's Democratic Party has become the party of personal responsibility.
63
David
Most people would agree on some basic tenets of strong and good fatherhood. A father must be patient, guiding and teaching by word and example, making clear right from wrong, even-handed among his children, supportive of their merits, encouraging of their failures and constantly helping them strive to be the best people they can be.
Applying this to the body politic, it is hard to see how modern political conservatism, compassionate or otherwise, meets any of these litmus tests.
Nick
19
Their is the Republican driven diminuation of Science, and Scientists, and Academics in general.
The largest, potentially most devastating "small-town of" elitist intellectuals who OVERPOWER policy, justice, law and influence, BEYOND - FAR BEYOND their worth and % of population - is the Federalist Society.
This Elite, mostly secret, ultra conservative group is a threat to fair play in America. I want to see Judges without Law degrees. Scientists who use scientific reasoning (and method) to adjuticate. I want to see labor union leader. The farmer.
We need to decide some of these Supreme Court decisions by the more common American.
10
While the US has not had a significant democratic socialist or social democratic Party since the 1930s, the experience within such Parties in Western Europe (& Canada where I'm from) is instructive.
With few exceptions, these Parties have experienced episodes during which Trotskyist & other ideology obsessed authoritarian factions tried (but usually failed) to dominate or seize control. Through such bitter experiences, the majority in those Parties that value their liberal democratic traditions as much as their commitment to building a more equitable society learned that they must take a firm stand against such authoritarian factions.
My point is that just as we social democrats in the past needed to draw a clear distinction between ourselves & our aims & those, in turn, of authoritarian factions seeking to gain influence & power for themselves in the guise of our Party's democratic reputation & history, true democratic conservatives (with whom I generally disagree but respect) currently need to draw a similar clear distinction between democratic conservatism & authoritarian reaction in its several current forms.
If our experience on the left is any indication, such a struggle within conservative circles will be difficult, protracted but crucial if conservative Parties are to continue to make a useful contribution to society.
13
I propose a new definition of conservatism:
1. Conserve clean air.
2. Conserve clean water.
3. Conserve clean soil.
4. Conserve the species that presently inhabit our planet.
5. When there's a conflict between the quest for profit and power and numbers 1-4, choose 1-4.
55
Yes, the irony of the resentments of the Trump supporters is that most of the causes were visited upon those people by Republican policies, beginning with Ronald Reagan. So, for example, "free trade" is now out of fashion with the GOP rank and file, but the same voters loved it when Reagan promoted it. They never understood that "we must open up foreign markets" meant "we must have access to cheap foreign workers."
29
@Beth: And yet free trade is now an Act of Faith among the Democrats.
The Sunday before the election the Jesuit pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Jesuit Church in Detroit stated the election was critical with free trade being preferred to tariffs.
Who'd of though?
Have to weigh in, Mr. Brooks, on this tired thinking called "meritocracy". I know, I know ... I think we all believe in our hearts that this fairly recent ideology has no foundation: Those who are positioned for "merit" already have a leg up, some exceptions (notably immigrants who have "fire in the belly" to succeed).
As a woman living in this recent history of America ... it hasn't been easy, sir.
I am a Progressive because I do not want to conserve/preserve the past. (Except the environment!)
I believe in an evolving, forward-thinking, reasonable society; one in which we grow and change.
How is it that the term "conservative" has become synonymous with "[US] Republican"? Why is it that we want to go back in time? Was it that wonderful? (Not according to my parents - 1920-2000). Why don't we learn from history and ... open discussions about choosing the institutions, the structure, about how we want our life to be in the future?
I won't be here, but my children and grandchildren will.
25
I have an alternate theory: the Reaganites and Thatcherites used the guise of capitalism to set us on the path of massive wealth from the working class to the ultra-wealthy. Eventually, the working class realized they had been fleeced, so they protested. But they didn't know what or whom to protest. No matter, the ruling class designated convenient scapegoats for them, while continuing to pick their pockets.
There is a reason liberals tend to be more educated. If people generally valued education more, and were less gullible, we would not be in this mess.
50
Brooks should read "Democracy in Chains." The conservative "philosophy" is largely a fabrication, inspired by fear and resentment of the civil rights movement and financed by some now-familiar wealthy figures, who have acted out of personal interest. The high minded ideas have just been a cover.
37
precisely wrong. the system is not a meritocracy but rather has many institutional biases and huge differences in opportunities depending on birth location, especially whether in world metropolis or elsewhere. David Brooks doesn't have more merit he was lucky. nativism is fed by accelerating inequality and insecurity caused by technology change. meritocratic and liberal/socialist rhetoric actually means 'I don't have a clue how to adapt people to technology change and I don't care because I have an income niche'
8
The United States doesn't have many real conservatives. Most of the real ones were driven out or fled in the 1780s and 1790s. What remained were various species of radical individualist, some members of elites or aspiring to be and some not.
6
@B Hunter
The ones that left were monarchists.
1
In 1963, my late mother—a lifelong, straight-ticket Democrat— told me, "I did not vote for Dwight Eisenhower either time, but he was the President of the United States. As an American, I supported him, even when I disagreed with him." A year later, the GOP candidate for president was Barry Goldwater. Conservatism turned a corner long before 1999.
9
I think Mr. Brooks constructed a false dichotomy. The beliefs so many Conservatives espoused during the Cold War remain.
These include the disdain for entire array of programs such as Social Security and Medicare; the preference for a monocultural society rather than the multicultural alternative, and the support for military adventures abroad. The Cold War tune may no longer be part of the Conservative hymnal, but the basic chants remain.
27
As far as I can determine, the yearning for monoculture has arisen in many Euro-descended peoples of the New World (this includes the Antipodes) due to the perception that both other ethno-cultural descendants and their Euro-liberal champions seek not equality for all but simply to invert the “oppressive, patriarchal tyranny” as they euphemise Western Civilisation - and then punch down as hard as they can for the slight of building the most impressive political, technical, economic edifice the world has ever seen. Imagine the mood at Versailles upon hearing the street mobs approaching and the sound of thirsty guillotines...
Conservatism has been exposed as a fraud. What it really means is tax breaks for the wealthy, and less of everything for everyone. They socialize the costs and privatize the profits .01%. The ones who tout smaller government are the first ones to eliminate and stave the agencies that make civil society civil. They don't want a functioning well run civil society they just want more and they don't care at whose expense
75
@Deirdre Seems like you are right. They want more for themselves and if you are less affluent or, God forbid, struggling, tough shot. You're on your own. No compassion, no concern for the plight of others, not an ounce of empathy. Entitlements, which we paid for, are spoken of as welfare which they would love to get rid of or at least reduce. As Brooks noted it's all economics all the time and only if it benefits the modern version of conservative, which has no heart or soul. Very sad, pathetic actually. And they have the audacity to speak of liberals or even moderates as if they are to blame for our woes. Reagan coined the phrase welfare queen and that's their number one motivator. But then look at Amazon and it's legalized shakedown of American cities for the privilege of building an h.q. in their town. Chicago "lost" that competition for corporate welfare handouts, which work just fine in the conservative's world. Phonies.
4
Neither the defeat of communism nor nationalism is a moral purpose. A suitable moral purpose of government is to allow its citizens to meet their potential and live lives of meaning, freedom, dignity. Is this not something we can agree on? From there, we can discuss as a community to what extent we are obliged to provide the same opportunity to the rest of the world.
29
@Ernie Cohen: Many people want freedom from guns, while others want freedom to carry them anywhere. Freedoms are often contradictory. I consider liberty a more practical objective. That is the power to negotiate the gives and gets of one's contractual commitments equitably.
12
I would offer a narrative that runs counter to Mr. Brook’s:
In the past Conservatives controlled the universities, most media and large portions of the government. But this control became threatened as greater public education, changing demographics, and evolving world consciousness proved that their beliefs were not held by a growing majority of people.
Conservatives were faced with a choice: Either become liberals or, modify and improve conservative doctrine using the tools and information at hand or, set about to lie to the public, seek to disenfranchise those likely to object to conservative policy, and adopt rhetoric of fear and scapegoating to create and motivate a poorly educated base.
We can see the results of this course today.
43
Loyalty to this particular "great leader" deflates the currency to the lowest common denominator of all currencies.
Are we ready yet for the Venezuelan bolívar soberano of leadership quality?
6
More conservative apologia for a system that is as old as time and only serves the top: Capitalism is just another thinly veiled justification for oligarchy. As Jared Diamond would say, the moment humans settled down to live with their crops, a ruling class arose to take what wasn't theirs with the thinly veiled guise of providing protection. Those at the top will always take as much as they can until they are ousted.
171
@Ritch66 I am having trouble grasping your point. You say "e moment humans settled down to live with their crops, a ruling class arose to take what wasn't theirs with the thinly veiled guise of providing protection. " Well, life in the middle ages was tough. The state receded as a force throughout Christendom. Brigands and highwaymen roamed the roads, and pirates the seas. We may not think that the feudal order was very fair. But living in the manor did provide some protection, though it came with many obligations. It also, however, came with many rights, including cottage, field, woodlot, and others. Those in the feudal villages had the means of subsistence - which is a lot more than many in the modern city. And when the lords had better uses for the land and threw their serfs out, few went willingly. They understood well that they were being thrown to the wolves of the emerging capitalist order. Nothing was "thinly veiled".
10
@Leonard Waks
actually, i think Ritch66 means at the beginning of settled agriculture, not medieval times. He's talking about the earliest origins of social stratification. But I think its also going to far to claim that ALL the leaders did was steal crops and justify it by providing protection. The earliest settled human societies DID require protection, from all sorts of roaming peoples, and also from other, more war-like settled peoples.
9
@Ritch66: The most common cause of war between humans is perception that one tribe or another will corner some essential or coveted limited resource.
6
For once I agree with David Brooks. Until the Republicans get a new vision, integrity and competence they will forever be beholden to Trump
91
"Compassionate conservatism and the dream of spreading global democracy were efforts to anchor conservatism around a moral ideal, but they did not work out."
Indeed good sir. Indeed.
6
Mr Brooks words calls to mind the sinking of the Titanic. The captain was awakened long after the insult to the ship. Alas, too late. His long delayed presence on the deck of this sinking administration cannot be saved Byrne occasional column professing the obvious. I am saddened by Mr. Brooks long silence . And I was once a long and “loyal” fan of this capitan
of conservatism.
5
In the past forty years, Republicans have been ignoring some basic truths:
1. That supply side economics is a scam to enrich the rich in an economy that lives or dies on consumer demand
2. That turning everything over to what right-wingers see as The Great and Infallible God Known as Market Forces leads to chasm-like inequality and a debased, lowest common denominator on the cultural front
3. That a leftist government that is sincerely trying to improve the lot of its people (the Marxist revolutionaries in Afghanistan in 1978 or the Sandinistas in 1979) may be better than a self-declared anti-Communist government that imposes a theocracy (the Taliban) or murders entire villages of its own people (the Guatemalan and Salvadoran governments of the 1980s)
4. That there's a difference between a strong military that is adequate for defending the country and an overfed military that eats up over half of income tax receipts and gives politicians an irresistible temptation to intervene in countries that pose no threat
5. That playing to the worst elements in American society (bigots of all kinds, con men, pseudo-Christian televangelists, anti-intellectual yahoos) leads to their taking over the party
Sad to say, the Democrats have been weak in resisting these pernicious tendencies, but the current president is the result of the Republicans making these deals with the devil on their on.
42
@Pdxtran
I am a 53 year old victim of a arxist government. My grand-aunt lost a hand in one of the soviet concentration camps where she was sent at a ripe age of 21. She forever lost the desire to go out, let alone marry after the atrocities she endured and never gained weight. My parents survived the bloody purges of Stalinist times and my father would always tell me to speak in low voice and NEVER say anything on the phone or confess anything to a friend. Almost anyone of my generation has a grand parent or relative repressed by the communists.
There has never been a benevolent marxist government, ever. the communists in USSR, China, Cambodia etc. killed more people than all military juntas, nazis and the rest of the murderers together.
BTW. I am a liberal feminist center left. Not a trumpet
6
I've been saying it for years. Republicans have basically become haters, and Trump has convinced them to not only hate the players, but also the game.
28
@gperrone
Yes, heretofore not everyone who identified as a Republican was mean-spirited. Not every Republican was a racist.
But the Republican Party has definitely become over the last several decades the party of the mean-spirited that welcomes all the racist descendants of the Confederates (not all the descendants of the Confederates are racist; they are Southern Democrats) and the racist descendants of the Northerners that fought against the Confederates.
1
It's funny how it never seems to occur to Mr. Brooks that maybe those who question the "meritocracy" might be right. He never asks whether those who question whether the competition is fair might have a point.
Some see that the supposedly fair competition is in fact a rigged game, set up to ensure that those who are already winners keep winning. Some, rather than blame the losers, the "permanent outsiders," for their plight, question why a society should have a permanent class of losers at all, and how it could ever be fair for a few to gain so much that they leave everyone else fighting for crumbs, and leave the environment in ruins.
That is the moral issue of the day, Mr. Brooks. And not all the people who see it are bitter, envious losers mad because they didn't get the brass ring. Many of them are compassionate, generous souls. Some are religious, some not. But they are called liberals or progressives, not conservatives.
21
@Nikki: Yes, I think one reason so many college professors are liberal and cynical about the notion of "meritocracy" is that they've seen too many rich kids of only average talent coast through prestigious schools, be forgiven for all their failings, and land in plum jobs handed out by their families or friends of their families, while more naturally talented students from poor families have to struggle for every academic achievement, can be ruined by one misstep, and lack the kinds of social connections that open career doors.
22
The column I was waiting so long to read and what quite honestly might make the writer "must read" again.
Complete 360 from the writers last column embracing blood and soil nationalism/fascism. My head just won't stop spinning. Finally Mr. Brooks takes time out of his busy embrace of neo-fascism and blaming democrats for it all and seeks the answers to how the GOP and maybe he got here.
9
Mr Brooks,
I would love for conservatives to take the moral high ground on healthcare, but they won’t/can’t.
I would love for them to take the moral high ground on education, but they won’t/can’t.
I would love for them to take the moral high ground on gun control, but the won’t/can’t.
So, how about taking the moral high ground against racism! This is an area that would truly require courage on the part of conservatives. Reject the southern strategy, reject both sides have good people, reject voter suppression, reject the dog whistles. Embrace how far we still have to go. Prior to the 1960s, many conservatives were beacons in the fight against racism, but now the refrain is there is no longer any racism. If conservatives did this, they would expand their base, but better yet they would change the world.
29
David Brooks does a nice job of explaining what happened to the elites who have run the Republican can party in the last 40 years, and why they have become "resentniks," but he fails to address why they the most recent incarnation of operatives have so many followers and voters. Surely all these people aren't resentful of either excellent people or excellence as a standard. It seems easy enough to explain the appeal of populist political ideals (nation, race, fear-mongering), but a lot harder to identify the complex social and economic reasons that attract people to them. We need to analyze these things if we want keep the visible smoke from turning into an inferno.
2
I respect Mr. Brooks' point about mediocrity but every society produces lots of average skilled people. Or policies and our politicians -- whether right or left center -- could do a better job taking into account how national policy impacts this group. For many years pre-Trump mainstream liberals and conservatives goofed up, arguably, with excessive or poorly managed free trade and too much low skilled immigration. A slight down turn in both is what the Trump administration seems to be doing, arguably with a view to tightening labor markets and increasing wages just a bit for the average skill group. This is how Democracy works. The free market will endure as will our national commitment to have an open heart to legit refugees (of which there are very many). While I am not a conservative, it is fair for future conservatives to pay attention to the people who elected Trump, while stepping way from Trump's rhetoric. This chatter about A, B, C and even D teams is not helpful (too elitist), even if Whitaker is a terrible choice for Attorney General.
3
Excellence is highly overrated. I am a Jew looking for balance.
Conservatism is a search for something that cannot exist.
Milton's Paradise Lost was the most important poem in the English language in 1776 and prose was in its infancy.
Satan and Jesus respond to the exact same question; is it better to serve in Heaven or rule in Hell?
My tradition has no polarities, there is only somewhere in the middle. The founders had it right and looked to a balancing point.
You've gone from a nation of small towns and villages to suburbanites in the blink of an eye. The arrogance of conservatives and liberals is deeply depressing we are not evolving fast enough. We are living in the Brave New World and we are savages.
9
I agree that Conservatives were adrift after the fall of the Soviet Union, so Conservatives identified a new boogie-man: Democrats. I suspect it's just deflection, a way to keep the lesser-informed masses attention, but it is working way too well.
18
@Peggy Bussell: They justify their own nastiness as essential because somebody else is nastier.
We know that part of our thought process is to categorize and align ourselves with our various tribes but the ill effects of "unbridled nationalism" hinders the progress of humanity. Keeping a healthy dose of patriotism is fine but we must quell the nationalism in order to align ourselves with the world of humanity. The results of not doing so have so far been disastrous. It is very difficult to step out of your tribe to converse with those whose values are the opposite of yours but it can be very gratifying. I commend the author for reaching out to her estranged friend. Don't give up but be ready to listen and understand and drop your labels and alignments if only temporarily.
1
Between W. and Trump, conservatism has taken a beating. Don't know which of those two presidents was/is more dangerous. Under the flag of conservatism, one fouled up foreign policy so badly it'll take a generation to fix it, and the other is undermining the spirit of America here at home so thoroughly it'll take a prophet to restore it. Yet, the flag of conservatism flies high, with multitudes of adherents voting for "conservatism." Mr. Brooks has a point. After the grinding conservatism has taken, what's left except...the the tribe and its flag.
5
RE: "First, it has to find a moral purpose large enough to displace the lure of blood-and-soil nationalism." You mean like crippling women's health, demonizing gays and transgenders, and protecting gun ownership despite near-constant mass shootings, even inside a church? Oh, I forgot: tax cuts for the uber-rich, which only starve the system of historical tax base to pay for infrastructure and schools, for instance. Seems these 4 causes have been rallying cries of conservatives since the 1980s. Not sure if you're proposing an end to these phobias or not. I like the idea of integrity for conservatives and an end to false piety. All a tall order.
13
IMHO "conservatives" have adopted the tactics and strategy of their nemesis, the communists. Their scorched earth politics has the smell of desperation, not for their survival like the communists, but the survival of their 18th century concept of dictatorship led by a natural aristocracy. This is why they appear so unconcerned with the lying and cheating and thieving in the Republican party. That immorality is rationalized as necessary to ensure they, the natural aristocrats, do hold all the reins of power. Its a pretty sick notion but its the Republican vision. Throw in the notion that the wealthy are blessed by god and you have the perfect marriage of religion and politics without formally creating a state religion.
8
If conservatism is ever to recover every Republican officeholder should resign and do some soul searching until they discover the correct choice between right and wrong.
5
@Eddie Allen
You mean like the choice we made between Trump and HRC? For all his faults DJT was the lesser of two evils. I say that because, not being a professional politician his lies are obvious and easily called out. HRC was/is a professional prevaritcator whose corruption is legendary, not to mention her clear obstruction of justice by destroying subpoenaed cell phones and other electronic equipment in the investigation of her email practices.
1
Captialist survival of the fittest -- just means most people aren't fit enough to survive. So what? They should all just die?
I am a high achiever - and I like having a place to achieve - but not everyone is. That's OK. I don't see people who need a little more help as my enemy. They are part of my community, my family, my fellow citizens. People are not just the dollar they make.
Life is about so much more. The richest people aren't the most fun - trust me.
But conservatives preached the opposite of that for decades. Remember 'Makers and Takers' dogma?
Conservative were dividing us way before the orange menace ever showed up.
And now here we are.... And it's all of our mess.
13
Never anything about Republicans' embrace of racism: Nixon's silent majority/law and order trope; Reagan's campaign launch from Philadelphia, Mississippi where 3 civil rights workers were murdered; Bush's Willie Horton scare mongering/stereotyping; W's surrogates claiming McCain fathered a black baby out of wedlock; Trump's Birtherism?
The GOP should start by letting go of its blatant racism. Then they can start another cold war with a bogeyman a little more menacing than a caravan of destitute refugees.
13
Conservatism "became a technocratic, economics-focused movement concerned with small government and entitlement reform."
Odd. At the same time, liberalism "became a technocratic, economics-focused movement concerned with [slightly bigger] government and [slightly less] entitlement reform."
4
What's going on right now is that the selfishness and the tribalism that has always under-girded conservatism is being taken towards its logical extreme, which is fascism. A political philosophy that is all about self-interest or self's-tribe-interest will inevitably devolve into something horrible.
Liberalism, with its messy, sometimes bleeding-heart philosophies, can also wind up at a point of excess, but that usually takes the form of spending too much on social programs, or creating welfare cheats. These problems are much more easy to solve than dictatorship and war.
19
The Republican party (the operational mechanism for "conservatism") has always been a coalition of the greedy, the mean-spirited, and the ignorant, who are susceptible to the first two.
Nowadays, most of the varnish of smooth wording has been removed, and we see this unholy alliance for what it is.
12
The irony in those "Promises Made, Promises Kept" signs and banners is that the only person on earth who has seen his deepest desires fulfilled is Vladimir Putin.
11
It's a lot simpler than that, Mr Brooks.
Republicans (there are no more 'conservatives') just need to stop hating 'liberals' more than they love their country, or apparently even more than they love their own daughters.
Don't be confused; it's a straightforward choice.
8
There was once two systems, Capitalism and Communism. Communism lost, leaving just Capitalism. Capitalism Kool-Aid was had by all. An attitude developed that the more Capitalism the better. If the bottom 80% wants to join the top 20% they only have to work harder. I think we can see the flaw in this logic, and we have to work through this flaw while dealing with climate change and galloping technological change. Gidday-up!
8
"If conservatism is ever to recover it has to achieve two large tasks. First, it has to find a moral purpose large enough to displace the lure of blood-and-soil nationalism."
Is it just me? Or is David Brooks always harping about what "conservatism" has to do, but never touching with a ten-foot pole what "conservatism" has to be?
I think the latter. That's because Brooks cannot define either what "conservatism" is, or ever was, or what it should be. And that's because "conservatism" is simply an ideology, with no connection to an empirical engine. It never responds to facts, to evidence. It just maintains its evidence-free "reasons," arriving at the same "conclusion," no matter what. Instead of being based on critical reasoning, with conclusions based on reasons based on facts.
Oh, but there are "stories." In the face of everything pointing to any conclusion but "conservatism," there are always the fairy tales: "Supply side economics," etc. Always how things should be, never how they are, never what actually works, never how people actually behave.
People continue to urge Brooks to abandon "Republicanism," his real religion. But this is futile. Brooks belongs in a cadre of no ideas, because he has, and has never had, ideas. Brooks has only had, and will ever have, his fairy talk ideologies, in his fairy tale world.
8
@roberthenryellner. James Brooks is a smart guy, full of ideas, a great observer of culture and a brave soul to bare his soul in every column he writes.
Mr. Brooks is waxing nostalgic for a time that never existed. He should realize that nostalgia ain't what it used to be. Besides, how can conservatives in chaos be a bad thing?
7
"Normal Republican Administration". The best oxymoron of the last 50 years years, starting with perfectly respectable Richard Nixon and the advent of the Southern Strategy. Followed by St. Reagan who perfected the dog whistle with Lee Atwater and jingoism with Ollie North and Iran contra. Followed by Bush pere, the creator of Willie Horton and who replaced the great Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas . Not to be outdone by his father, George bush fils gave us... (fill in the blanks). We are currently "enjoying" the apotheosis of "normal Republican administrations , making columnists like Brooks hanker for the "good old days".
10
@Pessoa: Ronald Reagan was spot on about welfare.
I lived next door to a welfare prince on the near east side of Detroit. At the beginning of the month he would offer to sell food stamps to me. Near the end of the month he would ask for money because as he would say: his "mother is hungry". In the interim there was a good deal of partying going on. As I said, spot on.
Unfortunately it wasn't until WJC that meaningful welfare reforms were passed.
When Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" he was again, spot on. Liberals were dumbfounded. The revolutions of the late 1960's and 1970's established you could not vilify the Soviet Union. It jus wasn't done. And who'd have thought it would be back in style again in its present incarnation of Putin-hating.
Reagan would touch on topics liberals felt were off-limits to discussion and it drove liberals crazy.
1
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Mr.Brooks, you have treated us to a lot of high minded cocktails over the years, but where is your outrage? ...from Newt to Mitch, these folks have robbed the roost on your silent watch (a generous characterization here, keeping it civil you know)....and now we drift toward the rocks. Whittakers’s all around, on the house, indeed...all the way down we go.
172
David Brooks offers a highly selective "history" of the devolution of what people have called "conservatism". For example, he ignores the roots of Republican political amorality, expressed by Robert A. Taft, "Mister Republican" of the 1940s: "The duty of the opposition is to oppose."
That could describe Mitch McConnell's exhorting Congressional Republicans to deny Barak Obama any policy successes, whatever the merits of the policies. Or Newt Gingrich opposing, opposing, and opposing, until Republicans shut down the federal government refusing to enact appropriations or even continuing resolutions.
Republican "anticommunism" practiced by Republicans during the 1940s and 1950s (which Mr. Brooks cites obliquely), was couched in moralistic language but was not so moral. Many liberals of those times were tarred by Ciongressional "investigatory" Committees; many of them had their careers wrecked unjustly.
For a long time, the guiding principle of Republican "conservatism" was as much "anything that works at the ballot box" as the moral principles Mr. Brooks lauds.
9
Who resents whom for why? The answer could be multiple. I’m strongly against anyone, who gave neither consent nor permission, is posted on social media by snap shots, taken secretly, and commented on for any reasons, but for laugh and fun in particular. That is a mass harassement in a digital form. Dear David Brooks, (yes, this is an open letter), please detect “Tomoko Entertainer” video, and find how certain people are “méchants” in their capacity. For all reasons, you can ignore my conjuration (yes, this is such a thing); nevertheless I expect highly your excellence in competence with your resourceful network of decency and intelligence.
1
Gee, David, you missed the part about it all being the Democrat party's fault. The "conservative" thought of Reagan and Thatcher was lies, misrepresentations and half truths. And palpable racism. Reagan was a happy face on Goldwater conservatives, who opposed the Federal Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Fair Housing laws because, like Medicare, their tiny minds couldn't imagine how any justice for the poor, non-white people could possibly NOT take money out of their pockets. And sharing was Communism, plain and simple.
I was there, I remember. Brave Ronnie got 241 U.S/, 58 French and 6 six civilians killed in Beirut for... for... for wagging the dog. We traded arms for hostages, straight up sent tires and missile spare parts to Iran, along with a bible and a chocolate cake. Own it David. Look in the mirror. The murderous moral vacuum of the far right was the dimes worth of difference between, for example, Reagan, and, and the people who voted for him. He was a very bad president, but his supporters were worse. And boy do they love Trump!
Go look-up Kirkpatrick's famous essay about how repressive Right dictatorships were not as bad as repressive Left dictatorships, because dictatorships of the Right let people move from the farms to the cities. Mean Leftists restrict free migration, so the Argentine junta is less repressive than China, North Korea or Cuba. Own that, and own Reagan's after dinner description of freeing survivors in a Nazi death camp. Which he never did.
10
Please tell me what a conservative is.
What I see and hear right now is --
Denial of: social equality by gender, race, cultural origin; the horrendous onset of the effects of man-made climate change; social safety nets; strengthening education and the sciences; the value of tax supported (government) institutions; woman's right to choose her health outcomes;...
Support for: gun rights; autocrats; lack of accountability for actions; dismantling of proven institutions -- EPA, Energy, Education,...; protection of zygotes (but throw new borns to the wolves); a bloated military with no multiplier effect (v infrastructure support) for resources expended; disregard for the majority; maintaining power within a narrowing/diminishing base;...
Seriously, your column closings should include the platform you think conservative stands for as right now the fact pattern seems wholly regressive.
16
Conservatism has not died; it's embodied in the politics of leaders like Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Look at the the policies they support, very conservative. I argue, conservatism is alive and well in parts of the democratic party, and parts of the Republican party. It's the labels and teams that create all the division. Without those, reasonable minds agree, largely. Trump and his nationalism, and nationalism around the globe, is largely an economic issue which has been seized upon grifters looking for power, not real leaders. Solve the economic issues with solid healthcare, living wages, security, home ownership and the rage and rage goes away; and, more than that, anyone who does not value these things is a dangerous radical. Trump may SAY values above list, but his tax plan says otherwise. The people he hires say otherwise. Trump is the dangerous radical, while Obama is the traditional conservative.
10
James Brooks refers to Conservatism as "it". It isn't an "it". Conservatism is just a set of universal human values. After 75 years of pleasantly empty Post-Modern decadence, grim demographic realities will soon force Europeans and Americans to choose a path forward. When that existential moment comes, like it has in Poland, they will rally around blood and soil.
3
I'd like to remind Mr. Brooks that "ethnic nationalism" has been fundamental to the Republican party since the "Southern Strategy" politics of Goldwater and Nixon.
15
@a href Superbly, and succinctly right!
7
@a href: Southern Strategy, "ethnic nationalism"
In 1972 George Wallace won the Democratic Presidential Primary in Michigan. He campaigned against the forced busing that was being imposed on the Detroit Metro Area by Judge Roth. Here's part of what he wrote:
“Transportation of kindergarten children for upwards of 45 minutes, one way, does not appear unreasonable, harmful, or unsafe in any way. ...kindergarten children should be included in the final plan of desegregation.”
This guy Roth was from the Federal Government and he was there to help...
Fortunately it was throttled back to involve Detroit only.
"Southern Strategy" nothing, the ethnic nationalism on the part of liberals and progressives directed against the folks in the Detroit Public School system was just plain evil and would eventually essentially destroy that school system. And this was long before Betsy Devos.
How would your family, friends and neighbors react to a busing plan for school desegregation? You really don't have to answer that.
And there's not a dog whistle or southern strategy to it.
Mankind, ever impressed with its own self-importance, continues to denigrate the "other" as if there were some great chasm between them. We are not at all very different and we also essentially want the same things. We do not, however, agree on how to go about getting them.
The problem is the crux of all economics...scarcity. Without scarcity there can be no economy. The problem is also greed. We all want everything and we want it now. That would be nice.
So we either bargain or fight. Mankind is going to fight. Regardless of how futile it is.
If there is an answer, it is probably not government control of all things via the internet. But that does appear the direction we are going....
2
Mr. Brooks writes that for conservatism to recover, "it has to restore standards of professional competence and reassert the importance of experience, integrity and political craftsmanship." Indeed, in order for the country to recover, these qualities must be reinstated in the Executive Branch. I am a life-long Democratic but continue to increasingly believe that the person who could accomplish this most persuasively is Gov. John Kasich. I want to believe that the Republican party is made up of good people but this belief will be surely tested again if they don't nominate a good man in 2020. John Kasich is that man.
3
A lot of conservatives, or resentniks in your case, Mr Brooks, live in the world that never was, just a some extremist progressives, want the world that can never be.
Perhaps that is human nature; however, once they obtain power, instead of trying to make the best of both world, it is pay back time. This is not theorization. When the Communist Chinese took over, instead of building their ideal world, they sought to purge the better lot, no matter how they used to be friends. This is not an exception but a norm. Some Israelis and Palestinians were neighbor until the power dynamic changed. Same with Central Europe. And most recently, Middle East.
Even if we subdue our human urge to subjugate others, it requires constant vigilance. Ideology is not enough; faith is not enough. (Pseudo) Christian v. Muslim and (Pseudo) Buddhist (in Myanmar) v. Rohingya and Political Islamist v. all. American founders did one good thing, separation of Church and State and rule of laws. But those are fading. Forget about a more perfect union, people need to work hard just to keep a civil union these days
3
@Bos: There is no more concise and clearly written law in this land than "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", but it still flies over the heads of oath-breaking Republicans in Congress to whom it directly applies.
8
The reason why "Compassionate Conservatism" didn't work out was that it was only ever a wrapper. There was never any conviction behind the label. Same thing with "a thousand points of light."
The legacy of conservatives in Federal governance over the last 40 years are a commitment to more layers of gild for the wealthiest, funded primarily through racking up the credit card debt by raiding Social Security to hide the bills. Oh...and a perpetual state of war in the Middle East, driven by a commitment to help Big Oil maintain its stranglehold on energy. And they never paid the fiscal costs, let alone the moral costs. "Just put it on our tab."
Quick...other than Medicare D, name one single policy move by Republican conservatives in the last 30 years whose primary goal was to make the lives of the typical American under $75k HHI better? Or, despite their rhetoric, freer?
To accomplish their goals these conservatives have chosen to make their common cause a reality by partnering with open violent racists, and with those who think it is their right to dictate what a woman can and cannot do with her own body.
Republican Conservatism needs better contents, not a better wrapper.
19
@Brian "Compassionate conservatism" seeks to motivate churches to take on poverty alleviation.
2
@Brian
Right on!
@Steve Bolger
I confess, I don't understand the point you are trying to make...the program was really 'we don't want to pay, so we think you should volunteer to pick up the check."
Interesting read. Note, however, there were 8 years of Eisenhower and 8 years of Nixon/Ford during the Cold War. World history didn't begin with the election of Reagan, even if American economic decline did begin to accelerate with the insane GOP tax cuts of Reagan, "W", and Herr Trump.
9
If by "moral purpose", Brooks means "rank hypocrisy" or "self-righteous propoganda" to describe conservative principles, I concur.
6
It's more than "Us & Them" - we devolved into tribes that no longer vote for someone they believe in, but vote against the person/ideals that scare them the most. Taking the high road in 2016 I did not vote for either King Trump or Snotty Hillary in the belief that when one exercises their right you hand your proxy power to them. I think many of the new congressional members gave a bit of "someone to believe in" feeling - wouldn't be great if either party produced a candidate with those qualities in 2020?
3
The term "compassionate conservative" has always bothered me, to the point now where I don't think it was ever anything more than a restating of the term "beneficent dictator." A conservative KNOWS that market economics creates social divides which foster immoral living conditions and unequal opportunity, but does not believe that treating the root cause of the disease - regulating market activity and narrowing income gaps - is better than treating the symptoms - relying on the charitable impulse which has always, ALWAYS proved insufficient/ineffective/resentment-breeding, becoming more so with each winnowing of the disadvantaged chaff. The super-rich are not proportionally more charititable than the merely well-off - i.e., more money in fewer hands means less overall charity, even if the wealth imbalance resulted from true meritocracy (never more than wishful thinking).
13
So true, that the “D” team now jumps in to take the jobs left by the terminated or fleeing “A” and “B” and “C” team. If only “D” meant, as it does in sports, “Development.” Alas, in this case, it is only millimeters from the “F Troop.”
3
I would like to remind Mr. Brooks that it was President Truman, a Democrat who thew down the gauntlet for the United States in its opposition to Communism. So once again we have a conservative claiming the "moral high-ground" with misinformation and a rewriting of the historical record (so aggrieved, that they are blinded to the facts). Perhaps if he wasn't so dismissive of the liberal elitists at our universities he would have learned some of the critical facts of the cold war.
16
@L.Levy Excellent point. Thank you for your comments. I was wondering why Mr. Brooks' opinion piece didn't sit entirely well. In such a divisive atmosphere, and as a progressive liberal, I try my best to listen beyond the polarized din to rational conservative voices in hopes of finding some common ground. Occasionally Brooks offers something worthy of reflection. But your point that his premise here is faulty is well stated and substantiated.
3
David Brooks,
You would do well to read the comments section of your editorial page! They parse the truth and nuance of complicated issues, and clarify your morally fuzzy stances on conservatism! Bravo to your readers for their thoughtfulness, and even though I disagree vehemently with your posturing, I appreciate your sparking the conversation!
Adam
7
"During the Cold War, being a conservative was a moral cause. You were fighting Communist tyranny"
If you were fighting tyrants who called themselves Communist while supporting or ignoring tyrants who did not (and especially if you were fighting non-tyrants for favoring economic systems to the left of Laffer), then you were not engaged in a moral cause but rather an immoral one.
The same, of course, goes for those who ignored or excused Communist tyranny because they favored leftist economic ideas and kidded themselves that the likes of Mao and Stalin would advance them.
But if you're saying one flavor of useful idiot is morally superior to the other, you've got some 'splainin' to do.
How's about we just get down to the business of denouncing all violence, addressing all social ills from a pragmatic harm-reduction perspective, and applying evidence-based analysis to find what economic policies deliver the most real-world benefits to the greatest number of humans in the long run?
11
@Dan Coleman Great point. Looking beyond the trees to the forest. So easy to adorn basic, base ideas with terminology. Your point cuts right through that. So easy to dismiss because it is not glamorous. Harm reduction should be taught as a separate course in our colleges nationwide. Thanks!
2
@Dan Coleman
Not to mention stealing Irans oil back from them and putting the Shah on the throne.
Dan, 1) that’s a great idea and 2) fat chance! “Evidence-based” anything is the current Republican Party’s lumpy oatmeal.
"It's Whitakers all the way down."
Best line of 2018.
9
I truly think Brooks has some points here that are true. But that is far overshadowed by his equivocation and obfuscation. I'll just bring up one anecdote about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to illustrate. After all, Mr. Brooks brought him up.
After Solzhenitsyn was deported from Russia/Soviet Union, he landed in Vermont in about 1976. Either upon moving there, or shortly before, he gave a speech in Vermont that left even his staunchly anti-communist supporters a bit stunned at the extreme right-wing views of Solzhenitsyn. I don't recall the quotes of the article I read at the time (in a Boston alternative paper), but the term "fascist" was used by the article's author, which he claimed to have heard from a number of audience members.
My point, and admittedly it's a stretch for younger readers, is that Mr. Brooks is trying to obscure the fascist element in the Republican Party, of which the sainted Ronald Reagan was certainly a part of. That Reagan and his ilk were not as crude as Trump and his cronies is artifice, not substance. Reagan's support for the "Contras," who were terrorists by any definition of the term, is one example of what Reagan & company were at their core.
20
You could apply Brooks' major arguments equally to liberals. War on excellence? That's how I would frame liberals who engineer processes to ensure equality of outcome regardless of merit, using affirmative action, "inclusion" and "diversity" quotas. Resentment of success? It's a shame that PhDs in literature don't make as much as MBAs in finance, but resentment sounds to me like grudging leftist professors fomenting anti-capitalist hysteria on their college campuses. As the right resorts to patriotism the left resorts to communism. Both are populist, both offer simple answers, both appeal to people down on their luck, and both are extremely dangerous.
6
@HC45701: Neither seems able to live with a mixed economy. It is all or nothing with these folks.
2
American “conservatives” (i.e. the GOP) have steadily undermined expertise and meritocracy for at least four decades now. Chiefly because rational, real, scientific expertise... results in answers that do not service their unbridled GREED and ability to accrue wealth and power without demonstrating any underlying merit.
Is it any wonder that a party that has embraced willfully ignorant, fantastical thinking for a couple of generations now finds itself unable to construct/convey a coherent ethos, and is therefore merely a vessel for the reactionary movement du jour? Newt Gingrich, The Tea Party, and now the “populists”... trickle-down economics, school vouchers, climate science denial, healthcare, taxation... ?
The GOP KNOWINGLY started, and has vigorously prosecuted this “war on excellence” (merit, expertise, science, rationality) ... and now they protest that their constituency seems to have been seduced by... ‘the wrong’ package of lies?
Conservative Republicans gleefully stitched together this monster. And now they wring their hands and wail ‘how could this possibly have happened?!’
I look forward to the day when there is an actual conservative party (and candidates) I can vote for, but the GOP has, by its own design, become a death cult.
14
@Larry Romberg: It sure has been a conquest by skunks. Who can stand Newt Gingrich?
2
Brooks's talents do not typically include creating catch phrases. But—
"... from here on out, it’s Whitakers all the way down."
—is a winner!
10
John Green wrote a novel titled "Turtles All the Way Down" The title represents the thought spirals and anxieties that people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder face each day. "Whitakers all the way down" is a fitting addition to this vivid imagery.
4
Conservatism used to put humility at the forefront of its values. The Conservative position, by definition, said: "Let's not rush into this (war, social policy, economic program) because, hey, we could be wrong!"
Now, so-called "Conservatives" are convinced only they are right. They ignore science, avoid compromise, and protect liars.
William F. Buckley once said Conservatives stand athwart history shouting "stop!"
Now they just shout "Stop the vote count!"
12
@JJFrieds: To inoculate the US against "Godless communism", the Republican Congress of 1953 enacted a law that decrees the US "under God". This means that idolatry and prayer can move mountains.
4
The last chapter in the history of the conservative movement in American politics is now being written. As David Frum has observed, the GOP would rather destroy democracy than give up power. This simply leaves two options: War or surrender to fascism. Welcome to Berlin, 1933.
12
@The Wizard: We don't even have the individual right to an equal vote for the only elected officer who purportedly represents and answers to us all. Any the judges being appointed to the judiciary now believe that individual rights not enumerated in the Constitution don't exist.
1
Brooks says nothing about how conservatism’s injection of religion into politics to a toxic degree, arguing it's the magic sauce for a moral universe. He’s often stated that the lack of religious belief destroys communities and feeds moral decay. He has frequently correlated the demise of church attendance to every social evil from mass shootings to The Clintons! But the real evil in that argument is the assumption that a lack of religion makes a moral compass impossible. As many studies have shown, quite the opposite seems to be the case.
Belief in religious dogma makes people more susceptible to magical thinking, not less. It's a psychological reality and a mental health issue that should concern every advanced society. Worse, religions do NOT make people more ethical as the history of every religious movement has shown.
Sure, Nazism and Stalinism were grounded in non-religious principles, but those principles were grounded in evil dogmas that found fertile ground in the magical thinking their followers were raised on.
And now, in America, it's happening here, precisely because the conservative movement, fueled by its magical thinking about everything from Randian economics to privatized education has created fertile ground for a vile, narcissistic president, a Congress more interested in power than the nation's welfare, and a SCOTUS with judges like Neil Gorsuch whose Christianity hardly comports with the void of compassion that defines his Federalist Society cultism.
7
@John Crutcher: God is a pretense dishonest people use to make things non-negotiable. That is why God and guns go hand in hand in the US.
4
@The Wizard
Altruism is rooted in our animal nature and hence needs no defense.
Great article by Mr. Brooks. To sum up, the "losers" in the Conservative meritocracy, have taken over the Republican Party via Trump.
3
It seems strange to credit American conservatism with moral purpose since its post WWII resurgence. That re-birth meant implementing the Republican's Southern Strategy to harvest racist voters opposed to the same civil rights bills that presidential candidate Goldwater voted against. William Buckley may have read the John Birch leaders out of the Party, but not the rank and file Birchers whose votes were needed.
All the good done by environmentally "woke" Republicans doesn't compensate for their long, vicious campaign against a woman's right to control her own body. Check out the morality of Republican Evangelicals full of hate for LBGT people.
Dinner party conservatives like Brooks have always been so careful NOT to look at what their Republican Party actually is, at the lies told to workers to get them to vote on wedge issues while being screwed on economic ones, at the constant assurances that the GOP was for "tradition" otherwise known as a retrograde status quo.
There is so little distance between the Republican Party of the last thirty years and the Trump Party. Quit pretending otherwise.
19
What is an outsider personality?
3
It seems the rule of law has been replaced with the rule of loyalty. Experience, competence, training and education are all bottom shelf considerations: it's loyalty above all else. Hence a frightening world.
7
One of the problems with finding a moral compass for Conservatism is that the soul of conservatism is an economic principle that foregrounds the maintenance of the social and economic status quo to the benefit of, generally, a very small minority of a population. It is supported by those it can buy, or who or by fawning acolytes.
Liberalism, on the other hand, has a soul that embraces change that while at times can produce discomfort, attracts those young and young at heart who imagine a better society.
Conservatism can only compete with liberalism with narrowness and repression, hence the alt-right flavor of conservatism today.
Good luck on finding a conservative morality.
14
@Michael McGuinness
Capitalism and free markets create wealth that is shared, although some people get bigger slices of the pie.
Socialism results in a smaller pie, and everyone is worse off, although the ruling elite do much better than the workers.
Read Matthew 20:1-16, and understand that the landowner was a capitalist, not a socialist.
Democrats are not liberals, they are socialists or progressives. A classical liberal is someone who believes in individual rights, the rule of law, logical reasoning. Democrats are dogmatic authoritarians who follow an orthodoxy.
@Michael McGuinness: Ractionaries undercut liberalism by redefining the word to mean "tyranny".
Theodore Roosevelt once said that comparison is the bane of joy. Meritocracy is fuel for comparison. Everyone agrees that people should be rewarded and comparably compensated for their hard work and contributions, except we don't.
A doctor who has become a world class surgeon after over a decade or more of education and practice , taking on enormous debt and financial risk, brutal dedication, sacrifice and insufferable hours and toil now makes enough money to place her family income well inside the top 1% and all the trappings that go with it, today, results in resentment and division. I work hard too, how come I do not make as much money as a doctor?
Or, I am a school teacher and think I contribute as much or more to society as LeBron James, so how come I make $60,000 annually, and LeBron makes $60,000,000? After all, we both get summers off. Plus, I teach children. LeBron just dribbles. Where is the fairness in that.
Teddy Roosevelt was right - comparison is the bane of joy.
5
One is amazed what attracting eyeballs to advertising is worth in the US.
2
Does Brooks mean that during the cold war, liberals disdained the likes of Walesa, Solzhenitsyn, et al?
We had, and have, profound differences on domestic issues and the role of government in American life, but I recall a united America when it came to foreign affairs.
But that ended with the Gingrich "devolution". After that, politics no longer ended at the shoreline.
4
@mikekev56: Hypocrisy became Godliness under the guidance of Newt Gingrich. The Republicans have been projecting the worst in themselves onto others ever since.
3
During the Cold war, being against Leninism and Maoism was a moral issue. Democratic socialists and Marxists were against this sort of communism, but they also had issues with the moral and economic defects of capitalism. They were building societies that avoided the defects of both, and in various ways and to various degrees they succeeded. New Deal America was doing this.
Conservatives ignored or overlooked or played down or accepted as inevitable the defects of capitalism, or thought that its problems could be solved by tweaks and charity. They also condemned any mixture of capitalism and socialism (called social democracy) as an unstable and precarious halfway point that would have to inevitably slide towards one or the other; this was vital to their worldview, because it allowed them to dismiss the social democrats and New Dealers as dupes or fifth columnists and thereby evade their moral appeal.
Conservatives did not despiritualize; Reagan and Thatcher had found or invented a new faith. They were the saved who had embraced the gospel of Friedman, and they were as intolerant and closed-minded as a bunch of Southern Baptists. Small government meant the rule of money and big business rather than the people, but their faith kept them from seeing or dealing with this. Entitlement reform was a euphemism for reducing the living standards and lifespans of the poor or disabled, the losers, the takers.
The dishonesties in their worldview led it to morph . . .
6
@sdavidc9
. . . into the incoherencies of Trumpism.
In this country, conservatives had a natural alliance with the cultural remains of the Confederacy, and found various specious reasons to support segregation and racial injustice. Justice and the government necessary to enforce it were seen as the camel of Communism getting its nose under the tent. Since Confederate ideas and ideals were always fairly popular in all parts of the country, this alliance gave them some power in all parts of the country.
The inner contradictions of conservatism (its blindness towards the power of business and its necessary dissimulation of its goal of reducing the living standards of the non-rich as the inevitable but undesired result of shrinking government and repaying [conservative-birthed] debt) led it to turn into what seemed to be its opposite. Business would take power and its power would be maintained by propagandas and constant distractions so that effective opposition would be impossible to organize.
Infected by the virus of libertarianism and its own contradictions, conservatism was defenseless against Trumpian fascism and morphed into it, a seeming opposite. This shows the power of the sort of historical dialectic that Marx explored and that leaves us, a nation with an undialectical understanding of things, confused and horrified.
3
@sdavidc9: The public sector of a well managed mixed economy is a flywheel that keeps money moving through thick and thin at a steady pace.
3
@sdavidc9
When Obama issued his DACA rule or environmental regulations, it had nothing to do with democracy or social democracy, it had to do with autocracy. The war on coal was based on his desire to control private enterprise.
Obamacare was designed for the federal government to take control of one sixth of the economy, favoring some businesses over others and increasing profits for those favored. If the intent was to ensure that those with pre-existing conditions had access to care, there were many ways that objective could have been accomplished without destroying the market for individual health insurance and without increasing the profits of Kaiser Permanente and drug distributors.
Options that would not have resulted in the closure of rural hospitals or of defunding programs that provided for supplemental care for handicapped children that had been helping families from being impoverished by a sick or injured child.
Democrats wrote a law, think of it, that resulted in premiums so high that a family earning four times the poverty level couldn't afford them without taxpayer subsidies. They designed a program where young, poor working people were charged premiums three to five times the actuarial value of their care so that wealthy early retirees could get a 40% discount on their premiums. Why didn't they just price all of the policies fairly, and give money to people who couldn't afford them?
1
Looking for moral values to ground your ideas? How about Enlightenment values?
Truth. Science. Inquiry. Acting on the basis of observable evidence.
10
@Don
Enlightenment moral values do not include a central authoritarian government redistributing wealth away for the people to crony socialist businesses favored by the ruling elite.
Socialism is not an element of Enlightenment. Democrat environmental policy of enriching the economic power of Russia and China at the expense of America is not enlightened.
1
The concept that Conservatism has become a vehicle to excuse/explain/celebrate an individuals/tribes failures is spot on.
1
Has anyone seen Mr. Brooks's command of the language? It seems to have gone AWOL.
First he confuses nationalism with patriotism. Now he must resort to coining the word "refusenik" because he either doesn't know or forgot the perfectly good word "revanchist."
Are you sure you're still cut out for column work, Mr. Brooks?
2
"Refusenik" is a Russia-fication of "refusers", and plays on the Putinesque quality that Trump is going for, not to mention the seeming indifference by the Trump administration to Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.
To your point though, "Revanchist" leaves all of this innuendo out, and may appear needlessly erudite to the audience.
1
@No big deal
'needlessly erudite" is a terrifying term.
Does my reaction make me elitist? Or, just another Viking manning the lists for Ragnarok, knowing full well that the war was lost from the start, but that the battle, itself, will always be the standard of our virtue?
2
@Lorem Ipsum: Trump has honed himself down to a 500 word vocabulary because he knows that using words people don't know can make them feel stupid.
"While there is a sprinkling of good professionals in the Trump administration, they are there by accident, not by intent. Many of those staffing the White House could not get a job in any normal Republican administration, which selected people according to any traditional criteria of excellence."
Even worse is how this rot of incompetence (and corruption) spreads throughout the key departments of government -from Devoss to Zinke to Carson to Pruitt to Bolten AND throughout.
It is a tribute to our courts and military and the "real" press and millions of activist citizens that our constitution has held fast under this onslaught of the worst of us holding such power.
Up till now
7
Brooks and his revisionist history strike again.
"We're not all bad, we have principals. Tip and Ronnie used to have beers together, for crying out loud!"
21st century American conservatism has always been about exclusion, not inclusion, based on social class and race. Whine all you like but the result was Donald Trump. And you are just as responsible as the Koch brothers. Any other strained explanation is too little, too late.
16
@Lou Good: Tip and Ronnie concocted the Social Security Trust Fund to have workers pay more social security tax than the system needed on the "pay as you go" basis to pay for tax cuts for folks who made more the than the maximum wages subject to social security tax.
Americans sure are sheep to be fleeced.
2
There has been a lot written and said about how we got to where we are. As someone who grew up in rural Nebraska and heard Obama referred to by the "N" word whenever he popped up on the TV at the local bar, casting all of Trump's Red state minions as stupid is far too easy. Most people are grossly uninformed/misinformed when it comes to politics and government. It's confusing and hard to understand, and rather than feel stupid most people choose willful ignorance and simply ignore Washington. What saddens me the most though is these are the same people who are his staunchest defenders...
14
The conservatives should give full throated support to combat climate change, as that is a moral situation, and would do more to conserve Americanism ( or whatever you want to call it ) than anything else.
6
I stopped reading this at "liberals controlled the universities." I've also heard that a certain group controls all the banks and Hollywood, and I recognize this garbage for what it is.
16
Brooks' history is notably one-sided.
"You were fighting Communist tyranny — aligned with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Lech Walesa."
Not to mention such notables as Pinochet, Somoza, D'Aubuisson, etc.
"conservatives built their own counter-establishment — think tanks, publications, broadcasting outlets."
I think Brooks should understand that these institutions were dishonest and intellectually hollow. AEI and Heritage serve mostly as sources of dubious right-wing talking points. Fox is Fox.
No, David. Your movement has been corrupt for a long time.
7
Occasionally, David Brooks nails it...
@Macy Wolfe
Unfortunately this wasn't one of those occasions.
2
these elements of xenophobia and bigotry have been in the dna of the modern republican party since it's forming after the civil rights movement. it's just gotten much worse.
6
"Compassionate conservatism and the dream of spreading global democracy were efforts to anchor conservatism around a moral ideal, but they did not work out."
Mr. Brooks, you are a master of understatement.
2
@SNF
Spreading global democracy and compassionate conservatism was just cover for the conservative dream of monetizing and privatizing our world...it gave them a chance to sell more and reap more profit. At its core conservatism is morally corrupt, no matter how dreamy a spin David tries to put on it. Brooks is desperate to convince himself and others that he is not a contributor to where we are today. leave the dark side once and for all, and come into the light David.
1
Brooks is bothered by the problem of incompetence in the White House. We should glad for it. Imagine the harm Trump could do, including with his appointments, if he were smart. He'd know better, for example, than to appoint a nut-job like Whitaker. The heart of the problem is not incompetence but moral rot. I'm still waiting for Brooks to announce what George Will determined is a moral necessity in these times: responsible conservatives must vote only for Democrats.
161
He already has. He wrote a piece saying something along the lines of: you can be a conservative, or a republican, not both. I can’t blame you for not knowing, but I’m disheartened by the constant criticism that conservatives who are trying to embrace the Democratic Party are facing. It certainly doesn’t help our cause.
5
@Matt
Maybe Brooks needed to come right out and say it like George Will did, but instead he keeps mealy-mouthing around it. It was quite a shock to me when Bret Stephens claimed the other night on Bill Maher's show that he hadn't been a Republican for three (!) years, because in the meantime he has been writing many columns in the NY Times white washing and even praising some of Trumps actions.
9
"Compassionate conservatism and the dream of spreading global democracy were efforts to anchor conservatism around a moral ideal, but they did not work out."
Of course they didn't work out. "Compassionate conservatism" is the funniest oxymoron ever invented. Because the basic emotion conservatives lack is empathy. Without empathy, there is no compassion.
The only way this nation--and the rest of the planet--will go forward is by sharing the resources of the planet.
Nothing else will work.
6
Is conservatism actually a political movement or just a recognition of the fundamentally individualistic, economic, politically minimal basis of American democracy? What do conservatives seek to conserve? The individual's freedom to jump into the stream of economic life to swim, or sink--he's free to do either, it's up to him. If he decides to sit on the river bank and watch the economic stream and the swimmers go by he shouldn't expect the pleasures (rewards) of successful swimming (competition). Liberals have the (false) idea that even unmotivated, incapable bank-sitters deserve rewards at everyone else's expense, an unfair, unjust idea that conservatives reject.
4
@Ronald B. Duke Most liberals I know dislike freeloaders as much as the next guy. The problem is that most people on entitlements are truly disabled or children or elderly. Some of us are willing to tolerate the cheaters to some extent to help those who are unable to take care of themselves.
6
In the late 1980's and early 1990's, I knew conservatives whose reason for being was anti-communism and anti-totalitarianism. I was a liberal studying Russian at the end of the Cold War and I saw common cause with these people (many were current or former military) who wanted to bring the democracy to Eastern Europe. I stopped studying Russian language in 1991 and I have long wondered what replaced the core of those people's ideology when Big C Communism went away. One or two that I have kept track of have become very progressive but I wonder about the ones that I haven't kept tabs on. I can see that some of them would have easily drifted to nativism, especially the ones whose feelings toward communism were motivated by fear, rather than hope for better.
1
Whether I agreed with them or not, I do remember a time when conservatives seemed to believe in a whole litany of values which they were quite sincere about. But the arguments I hear from today's GOP so obviously beggar belief, it's almost impossible not to laugh at them. One recent example was Trump's assertion that illegal aliens change clothes in order to vote fraudulently multiple times. Who besides the mentally infirm believes stuff like that? Can I see a show of hands? It's almost impossible to believe anything they say now unless you have been religiously mainlining the Kool-Aid. Despite the obvious absurdity of such claims, the entire party is lining up behind divisive, nonsensical claptrap like that and hence they all look utterly ridiculous.
You are 100% correct when you point out what should be obvious to any thinking person: power, wealth and victory are the only values the GOP espouse anymore. For the GOP, politics have become nothing more than a sporting event which they feel they must win by any means necessary, including changing the rules of the game whenever it benefits their team. Forget being great statesmen, morally responsible leaders or even sincere patriots, the GOP long ago abandoned even the basic principles of sportsmanship. Just ask GOP referee and MVP Mitch McConnel, who daily changes the rules on confirming Supreme Court Justices, depending on which team he believes the change will benefit.
17
A notion of meritocracy among "conservatives" -- with David Brooks being the self-declared winner -- is easy only when the content of the program is ignored.
How's the invasion of Iraq, the deregulation of Wall Street and income inequality as social policy workin' out for ya, David?
Of course, cutting "entitlements" will fix everything. It's what's the meritocracy of both parties want, and just look at their policy successes of the last 20 years....
7
If you take the article as an accurate description of conservatism (from reading previous comments, it would appear that there are many who don't), I have always found it so odd that conservatives cannot come around to a moralistic perch based on the teachings of Jesus (as opposed to Christianity) and loving your neighbour and treating the outsider compassionately and with love. In the west, we often find that conservatives are usually more likely to identify as Christian, but given the fact that they are so preoccupied with anger and not with love I have to additionally dismiss them as hypocrites in addition to everything else that is described in the opinion piece.
While I don't pretend to follow the history of right wing conservative thought, I find that the US has a difficult time trying to figure out how Christianity works in a winner take all system. Curious.
10
Will you ever acknowledge that Trump found a receptive audience among conservatives and not among liberals? There are reasons for that that don't track your defense of conservatism here.
Plenty of liberals don't get the career they think they deserve. They don't conclude the system has to be burned down. Liberalism has a spiritual dimension that has been marginalized. Liberalism don't embrace tribalism as a result. Liberals find themselves on the wrong side of the experts (sometimes rightfully, thankfully, so). They don't substitute nationalism for expertise. Liberals have to cope with changing demographics due to immigration policy and illegal immigration. They don't exclude; they welcome.
Please stop pretending that conservatism has been infected with some kind of virus. Authoritarianism, xenophobia, racism, and tribalism are features, not bugs, in conservatism.
29
David-Conservatives have always been fearful of change, me first, and are the first in line to support dictators. This myth you have about the great conservative intellectuals is just that ,a myth in your own minds. It was the conservative German rich guys who supported Hitler, the communists and liberals who fought against him. Jefferson, our hero. was the first really conservative, and was a racists and pro landowner having all the power. He was a states right guy and anti Fed government. His later writings were very anti liberal and very much the white supremest arguments we see in the conservatives today.
4
The half life of a conservative is 2 years . By that time whatever thought was originally interesting was later proved insane.
Chuck David Brooke . Get some more progressives like Krugman.
Of course Wall Street will take umbrage and the paper might fail but that may also cause the dystopian Trump era to end .
2
The idea that administrations in general and Whites Houses in particular are populated by people of high character and ability is preposterous. Left or right, if you believe this you are shockingly naive.
4
LOL Dave has spent his entire life trying to justify his neocon views and now when the naked values of conservative ideology are on the table he's having a real tough time looking in the mirror.
5
One almost can feel sorry for Mr. Brooks. He cannot accept that the proper spelling is CONservative.
3
What follow Resentniks: Harrison Bergeron's society
@Articulatus Streichem
that would be follows
Please cease all of this quaint populist euphemism. This is white ethnic sectarian supremacist colonial apartheid imperial totalitarian autocratic fascist nationalism. Neither socioeconomics nor politics nor education nor law nor morality nor philosophy nor history nor governing matter to these barbarian beast inhumane monsters.
Humans are primate African apes who evolved as evolutionary fit DNA genetic one human race species 300,000 years ago. We are driven by our nature and nurture to crave fat, salt, sugar, habiitat, water, sex and kin by any means necessary. Including conflict and cooperation.
. You are either predator or prey. You are either a diner or you are on the menu. Poland has always been prey and on the menu. Hitler and Stalin made a pact to dismember and make genocide in Poland. And they had to have Polish support.
2
David, you're sure writing your apologia for being a right-wing mouthpiece!
Brooks, per his role in life, is fiddling while Earth burns.
Try reconciling his tunnel-vision concerns with the half-dozen global issues covered daily in the Times, and one swiftly concludes that arbitrary distinctions such as “liberal”, “conservative”, and “nationalist” will sooner than later be swept away in a flood of radical decivilization, as ecosystems and societies collapse from accelerated climate change.
Life on earth will become nasty brutish and short, and then it will cease. This is what matters right now.
6
@Observer: There are some who think that our species is a stain on this earth and so this result is not so bad.
1
The instinctive "you have a blind spot" criticism of Brooks' writing, even when he finally pens a variant of the "conservatism is failing" column liberal readers normally chide him for avoiding with his more typical "both sides" screeds, demonstrates just how much Brooks has lost the trust of his readership. It's a shame, because the result is a comment section that kills the messenger for being wrong before even if he's not wrong here.
I mean, I don't care about Polish ex-pat New Year's Eve parties in the '80s, either, and Brooks knack for framing everything in haughty, psuedo-academic gibberish does him no favors: What does "despiritualized" conservatism even mean, and why does it care more whether a "glittering career" is denied than whether its supposed "technocratic, economics-focused" values are actually implemented?
Yet... OF COURSE excellence/competence is not elitist and we should value it more than we currently are, for the good of the country. Just because Brooks hasn't figured out that great privilege goes into who can develop "competence" and who is deemed "competent" does not make the broader need for qualified leadership go away.
There are many reasons the current administration is tragic, and some (sexism, racism, classism) are far more sinister than anti-intellectualism. But make no mistake, the latter pulls a lot of the weight in breeding the former.
7
Conservatives should buck up, the cold war is still on.
From here on, Brooks should end his scribblings with “Forgive me for what I have wrought.”
2
Please, please, please run for President in 2020. And I am a liberal !!!!!
1
I'd like to see this compared to resistance to the totalitarianism of Putin.
Are not excellence and integrity the result of treating others as you would be treated?
1
By far the worst article you have written in some time. Though I must hand it to you David, your children's fable you just crafted is solid proof of your impressive imagination.
So, the true conservatives were built around morals? That thought made me laugh out loud. Conservatism was built upon competence? Really? Who? Which conservative president was competent? Not Nixon, he wasn't conservative and besides he was a crook.
Reagan? Uh, there are no two words that should never be linked more than Reagan and competence.
Bush Jr? Uh, wrong again. Jr I think it's been well established has been probably the least smart of all modern presidents. Of course except for the current occupant of the White house.
David, the real truth about conservatives is their ideas have been primarily fueled by racism stoked by unwarranted fear maintained by a white male dominated hiearchy whom feels 17th Century aristocratic order should be forever maintained.
Your party has become an anti intellectual den of ironic vipers who can barely hide their intrinsic hatred of decency toward others who are different, less fortunate, or fair minded.
Please, enough of your revision of history. The current conservative movement will be viewed by history as a blight on the world led by a committed group of irrational primarily morality signaling white males.
8
So, David, did you ever think of becoming a Democrat?
3
Just admit that conservatism is filled with truck loads of bad ideas and that is always its downfall.
5
> “The principles of competition, even when they encourage talent and create upward mobility, don’t necessarily answer deeper questions about national identity, or satisfy the human desire to belong to a moral community,” Applebaum continues.
Perhaps "talent" should by definition include a talented government able to provide a framework for an inclusive and productive beneficial moral community and hence a community identity.
Because when that talent is lacking the void is filled by you know what.
It's a very hard task but I believe, for the US, it requires shifting the economic balance away from decade-long boom bust speculation cycles to more even long term investment in industry and manufacturing for export, including a willingness to tolerate a weaker dollar and get by without selling US treasuries. That will lead to economic conditions allowing the trade and apprenticeship educated to maximize their potential with productive and challenging jobs.
Sadly, there are just too many of the 1% who are thrilled with the path we are on. Mr Brooks, you should have thought about this more back when it was evident that Rageanomics was just a reverse Robin Hood hustle.
200
@Kate
...which we Californians knew by 50 years ago...
18
This article really seems incredibly self-serving and snobbish--indeed, it is emblematic of the sort of class snobbery dominating significant parts of both the Democratic Party and the "Never Trump" resistance. In Brooks's telling, conservatives came to power because of the profound moral truth of their ideas, of course. They then set up a whole series of institutional structures through which (meritocratically, of course) only the most poised tax-cutters and benefits slashers rose through the ranks. Some people just couldn't hack it, and they became resentful. That resentment supposedly accounts for the Trump phenomenon.
Seriously? Look at the biographies of Bill Kristol, John Podhoretz, or dozens of other "Never Trump" Republicans. You really think their success and prominence in institutional conservatism is a manifestation of "meritocracy"? Or you think they might have just gotten a bit of a push along the way?
And what benefits came from this supposed practice promoting only the most meritocratically qualified? Did this commitment to meritocracy help the supremely well-qualified, principled conservatives of the George W. Bush presidency avoid causing a massive financial collapse? Did these meritocratic geniuses help avoid getting the U.S. into a pointless war? What about disaster relief--surely these brilliant products of meritocracy could smoothly respond to a natural disaster like a hurricane?
4
The blight of tribalism of us-vs.-them thought, was baked in to the conservative movement long before the decay of communist regimes.
It manifested in the McCarthy demonization of anyone who was not part of the anti-communist elite as communists themselves. There is a direct line from Roy Cohn to Donald Trump.
So no, there was not an era of conservatism that was in some ideal state of grace. The worm has been eating the apple for decades.
5
Spreading global democracy “did not work out” ... !!! That’s quite an understatement. How many years have we been in Afghanistan now? Seventeen? Perpetual war ruins everything.
4
"Moral conservatism" went from being a reluctant handmaiden to civil rights for African-Americans (Eisenhower sending troops to Little Rock during the school desegregation crisis) to out-and-out racism during the height of the civil rights movement.
The conservative politician Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" aimed to pick up the many racist white voters, formerly at home with the Democratic Party's racist southern leaders, after the Democratic president knowingly pushed the country's leadership away from complicity with such deeply immoral positions.
It's hard to see conservative or indeed any morality in the so-called state's rights position taken by such leading conservatives as William F. Buckley Jr, when it was nothing but a shield for racial oppression and disenfranchisement.
This racist populism has been at the heart of conservatism since then; continued, for instance, when Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, notoriously the location of the murder of three voting rights activists: an African-American from Meridian, Mississippi and two Jews from New York City.
Covert and overt racism has been a persistent theme of conservative politics. Indeed, far enough back, it has been a persistent theme of American politics, but conservatives have been moving into sole proprietorship since the 1960's and now have a lock on it. This is just one reason why the preponderance of academics and journalists has tilted liberal.
6
If he is talking strictly about the Trump administration and Republicans in the past forty years, he is missing the point. The sole mission of Republicans aka "conservatives" has been to make government fail at the tasks ordinary middle- and working-class people need and expect it to perform well and to convince us that all "merit" and "excellence" is in the private sector. The election of Donald Trump proves they have succeeded. A man with no government experience, vast ignorance of anything but his narrow business interests, and no morals and ethics at all is installed. He will do anything they want as long as he can claim a "win" for himself. What do they want? More money for themselves and less government to restrict all the ways and means of making it. They want protection from the peasants working their fields lest they take up their pitchforks and march on the castle demanding more than crumbs from their banquet. Donald Trump will keep the peasants entertained and drugged with lies, fear, cheap patriotism and bigotry while the lords make off with the public treasury. The midterm elections show that some of the peasants are onto their game.
10
"Most of the guests were conservatives — which in those days meant being anti-Communist and pro-market..."
Gee, David, what with all the manipulation of language by your conservative colleagues, (the professional brain twisters), I can see how you might be confused, but may I remind you that during the period leading up to the demise of the Soviet Union it was those who wished to hang onto communism who were labeled conservatives here in the Western press. So the reality is the opposite of what you assert about which labels applied in the "old days." Your colleagues still enjoy this kind of thing in spite of the fact that it fools no one.
I see the “history” differently than David:
During the Cold War, while David and his friends were “fighting evil” - we liberals were focused on “doing good.”
Those fighting the “war against evil” - like revolutionaries before them - learned to fight evil “with evil.” They learned from their “enemies.” And they became what they fought. Not in ideology. But in strategy. In tactics. Their means began to subvert their ends.
Now conservatives are reaping what they’ve sowed!
1
I have always had trouble understanding how Republicans aligned themselves with Mr. Walesa while also busting unions here in the United States. Perhaps your party is in shards because you weren't really the party of Lincoln for a very very .... very ... and I mean very ... long time.
171
Well done piece. I would suggest that this is a world wide problem. As of this writing, I don't think there is any government with leadership who is inspiring the thought of meritocracy. That is what this administration has lost. The lack of world leadership due to merit. The bright aspect is that only America has the size and diversity to again aspire to world leadership through merit.
Before he even decided to act out a role in politics, “Saintly” Ronald Reagan ratted out actors and screenwriters during the McCarthy era. When he was president, his attacks on rent control resulted in elderly people dying from hypothermia because they were thrown out of their homes and ended up homeless – during his reign cardboard boxes sprang up in urban areas like mushrooms after a hard rain. And although there was this “sympathy” being poured out to Walesa, unions here in America were despised. The moral bankruptcy of the Republican party did not begin with Trump, but perhaps it with him and your party can finally strive toward becoming the Party of Lincoln. Because I doubt that ever since the McCarthy era, Republicans haven’t been the Party of Lincoln since, well, Lincoln.
6
Always an interesting column from you, Mr. Brooks, but there is a faux pas at the end. In last paragraph you are suggesting that the disappointed Polish conservatives are rising against a meritocracy. If they did so, they should not receive much sympathy because meritocracy is a governing system where power is vested in people based on their talents and achievements. Do you hear now millions of Polish laughing at your idea ? Poland and other Easter European countries (e.g. Romania and Bulgaria) are not meritocracies, they are corrupted democracies, where not-so-smart people elect not-so-smart leaders (sounds familiar ?) and then those leaders appoint other people based on their preferences, not on merit/talent/achievement (sounds familiar ?). Under those circumstances, there should be sympathy for the Polish resentniks because they have been left out of governance or are without representation after all that corruption has compromised their democracy, that nice dream that they had 30 years ago, when they got rid of 50 years of abject communism.
2
@mynameisnotsusan Actually that is not what I hear from friends of mine. They are frustrated. Now they are looking to their children for the next wave. The Polish national football team did poorly at the world cup. This has caused a pause in the nationalist thinking. And yes, has started to rethink the need for merit.
I just wanted to fit in. Grew up in a Blue State and developed Blue State values to my core. Joined the US Navy instead of getting drafted to miss Nam and but ened up on the gun line. GI Billed a college degree which landed me a solid corporate job. While climbing the corporate ladder the higher ups were Red Staters. So, I switched to Red and became a VP.. Decdae later when my layoff came I went back to college for another degree and they offered me a adjunct professor jobs. A nice paying one. Swtiched back to Blue and was offered a gurenteed professorship. Took it.
To be honest I am a centrist whose vote can be bought.
8
@concord63: You might just be a realist who realizes that the chatter doesn't matter.
@concord63 Nice. I think you nailed it!!!
Countering the Soviets was an American cause, not a conservative one. Have you forgotten JFK and Cuba, and LBJ and Vietnam? Containment was a tragic policy for presidents of both parties, right through Nixon. But at least during that time, liberals also wanted to end poverty. Reagan, in contrast, scapegoated the poor, and his prime motivation was to elevate the rich. That's what defines conservatism today. We didn't vanquish the Soviets; they collapsed under the weight of their own failed ideology. Now it appears to be our turn. Maybe we can avoid that fate by changing our "government is the problem" ideology and rethinking the idea of a Great Society, and do it right this time.
20
@Bruce It was more than the failed ideology that vanquished the Communists. It was Reagan's firm foreign policy and strategic defense initiative that caused the Russians to enter an arms race that bled the rest of the economy dry. This conclusion came from the Russians themselves, and I agree with it. But for Reagan, the Soviets would have lasted decades longer.
@Edmund. That is the conventional wisdom, but I think it’s highly debatable. If it was really the arms race that brought them down, why did it take so long? What was the entire Cold War if not a massive arms race? That race began decades before Reagan. I think credit for the fall of the USSR belongs with Gorbachev and his policy of glastnost. Without him, the Soviets would have lasted decades longer. And now, thanks to so-called conservatives in the US more interested in power than patriotism, Russia may well come out on top in the long run.
1
"Whittaker's all the way down" seems true, and, if so, quite sad.
But what I am struck by is an unwritten soft disavowal of complicity here in the form of a kind of amnesia. An awful lot happened between the fight against Totalitarianism and a return to "blood and soil" American-style. Hoover was not by any definition 'excellent'...let us not forgot that David Brooks' predecessor - William Saffire - worked long hours to give us elaborately worded essays in defense of Richard Nixon....W41 looked the other way while Lee Atwater helped facilitate our descent. The GOP of Mayor Lindsey - which is the GOP David Brooks wishes we could return to - wasn't anything different than the GOP today; it was always also the party of Jesse Helms and Wayne LaPierre and Newt Gingrich and ultimate home to Strom Thurmond ....all both heirs in material ways to Joe McCarthy on one hand, and the parents of our Matthew Whittakers on the other.
Trump is EXACTLY the president the GOP has wanted for decades, and the President we probably, sadly, deserve. There is no dissonance here except in Mr. Brooks' blind spot.
14
Were "excellence" and "moral standards" ever a part of the conservative playbook for those in power or who aspired to same? With a brain trust that included/includes Karl Rove (architect of the "permanent Republican majority") and Lee Atwater (creator of the race-baiting "Willie Horton" ad during the 1988 Bush campaign), the pursuit of power for the GOP, and for conservatives more broadly, meant building strategic alliances to sustain political control as its own end-in-view.
The conservative vision for "serving" the electorate (to the extent it was recognized) became those who funded the election cycles. It was a stroke of genius for the GOP to politicize religion the way it did, and by extension, to turn the military into its own religious sect. The only place morals fit into the conservative/GOP worldview is moral grandstanding in order to win votes, and the only place excellence fits is the capacity for conservatives to meet the ficscal targets set by patrons of the party and its ideologues. Do not mistake either for principled positions.
12
This an extremely generous interpretation of conservatism's descent into anti-enlightenment madness and bigotry, but it is not all that accurate.
In reality, it was about power.
A few wealth and extremely right-wing families, supported by many corporations, ran what amounted to a silent coup. The blueprint for the coup came from Lewis Powell, who laid out a plan to set up a network of endowed academic chairs, foundations, think tanks, media outlets, all while using deregulation to lay the groundwork for monetizing elections, buying candidates and purchasing and influencing media.
Thatcher internationalized it.
The xenophobia, bigotry, hate an fear that is characteristic of what passes for modern conservatism were merely tools used to distract the masses from the wholesale purchase of democracy and the appropriation of wealth and power the coup enabled.
No doubt blood and soil movements are caused in part by demographic changes, but at the end of the day, these were amplified and used by the oligarch's coup to accomplish its ends.
The few real conservatives remaining are unmoored and drifting left, as they should.
27
@john atcheson, what a well written post. Thank you.
1
@john atcheson
Yes! Well put. Thank you.
1
Favorite: "...from here on out, it's Whittaker's all the way down."
14
Perhaps we can be ruled by a tribe of PhDs from Trump University. After all, when facts don’t matter why should experience and credentials have currency?
14
Not that it matters much, but Trump University was not accredited and could not offer any degree.
2
These are your people, Mister Brooks. Rationalizing what they did to us is too late.
24
@George Kamburoff Studies show definite differences between conservatives and liberals, Conservatives fear change, they respect authority, they are pro tradition. It seems they will give up all to be assured those terrible "others" will not rape and kill them and a "strong man" will protect them. For many years Brooks and others rationalized their behavior and now the monster is released and they see that the real danger is the one they helped create.
2
The only thing Mr. Brooks seems to believe in any more is the moral right of “talented technocrats” to govern the unwashed masses with their “glittering careers.” Is it any wonder that absolutely everyone is disgusted with these privileged elites. Time to fade into obscurity and disappear, Mr. Brooks. You are no longer relevant to anyone.
10
The suggestion that liberals control AOLTimeWarnerCBSNews Corp, i.e., the for-profit media, is slipshod semantics. The liberal media routinely stood on its feet to cheer and clap for Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. The liberal media ran ten times more stories on the negatives of Clinton rather than Trump. And CNN *is* fake news, routinely turning politics into a horse race of staged shouting matches, a business model adapted from Jeff Zucker's ESPN. Trump lackies are paid to appear, in order to generate ratings.
It is as infurating as ever to listen to this canard from the Times.
7
@Mark F. Buckley one point: this is an opinion piece, and clearly labeled as such. Therefore I would take exception to the claim it is “from the (New York) Times”.
2
Stop it, David. Stop calling Social Security an entitlement. On every paycheck check stub I print it lists deductions for my employees. And then on a quarterly basis, I submit to the IRS and the State of Vermont the company's contribution. So that being said, my EMPLOYEES and my COMPANY fund Social Security.
22
@Steve Beck
True but you will never get a republican to admit it.
2
@Steve Beck
That is what entitlement means. Check the dictionary.
@mynameisnotsusan
Entitlement when used by someone usually a republican referencing government payouts refers to unearned benefits given to people with the heavy implication that they are not deserved.
SS is not an entitlement it is a fully funded by the recipient retirement program.
Bravo! Brooks has finally moved past the denial phase. The GOP is completely owned by Trump, his methods and his lack of ideas. But, Brooks belief that it just takes a little tinkering of ideas to get the faithful conservatives back in line, is still a dream. Two more years of Trump's destruction, which is only going to intensify as he is challenged by Mueller and the House, will leave the GOP in tatters. Instead of having young leaders with ideas and enthusiasm, they will be the party of white male octogenarians. They simply are losing every demographic of voter except the uneducated white male.
14
@CA Dreamer
In an ideal & beautiful world, the GOP would go down as you describe, but in reality it has refused to do so for decades because they have not only the substantial support of uneducated white males, but also of many women and older people. The scary realization after the 2016 election was that the GOP has had the support of some educated white men. Keep dreaming !
2
Conservatism has always been a fig leaf for just keeping rich people rich. Bill Buckley’s philosophy.......I got a big boat.....you don’t....tuff.
8
Mr. Brooks.
So what are you going to do now? Now that the GOP is the Trumpublican Party—the Party of the Resentniks?
I suggest the you follow the road to integrity—the road already taken by George Will, Peter Wehner, Steve Schmidt, Nicole Wallace, Joe Scarborough and ever so many others.
Isn’t it time for you to do what so many thoughtful conservatives have already done? Why not publicly resign from the
Republican = Trumpublican = Resentnik Party?
11
Classic American conservatism has long been exiled to Siberia by the rabid, fundamentalist, now-Trumpian nationalist right.
Mr. Brooks and other GOP refugees should man up and stop calling this reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-intellectual populism "conservatism" and label it what it genuinely is: American fascism.
309
@Lewis Ford: I can't believe that this article is a NYT pick. It shows an abysmal ignorance of American political history since the election of Harding. But, then again, as it bashes T-Rump by implication, what more matters to the denizens of the U of M echo chamber?
3
@Lewis Ford What you are calling American fascism is perhaps better described in terms of our Constitution's original sin - support for Slavery. It went away in most of the world by 1860, but not in the South. They were furious that the new states in the West were not brought in as Slave States, and they started a war over it.
Conservative Slave State Neo-Confederates have been with us from the end of the Civil War. Although the North declared victory and went on with their lives, the boundless hatred and shame of losing the war for the South's Conservative white establishment made them form the KKK, promoted lynchings and denied the vote to the newly freed African americans with Jim Crow Laws.
My years of work across the South have shown undeniably that the Evangelical Church believes in the Lost Cause of the Civil War, the myth of the cause of the war as tariffs and not slavery, and the promotion of racial hatred and the belief that they are fighting the 'Deep State' just as they fought against the Union forces of the Yankees.
Southern Conservatives are filled with a level of racist hatred that is simply astounding to anyone who has not had to experience this deeply dysfunctional part of our country.
Don't look overseas for the model. Just look South to the Slave States - the disease still festers there.
33
@Lewis Ford
I am constantly disappointed (but unfortunately no longer surprised) when people reply to NYT columnists, particularly, Mr. Brooks, seemingly without having actually read the column. He could say the sky is blue and within minutes hundreds of NYT readers would angrily deluge hm with replies that he is wrong, the grass is green.
The entire point of his article was to distinguish between traditional "pro-market" "meritocracy-based" conservatism and the growing "populist nativism" (eg Trump), and to lament the rise of the latter at the expense of the former. Did you not read the article? Seemingly not, since your reply was "Mr. Brooks and other GOP refugees should man up and stop calling this reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-intellectual populism "conservatism" and label it what it genuinely is: American fascism." How could you possibly have missed that he was in fact condemning those very things?
7
I can remember when the term "elitist" was hurled at conservatives by liberals back in the 60s. Now, it seems the opposite is true. Being highly educated was considered a necessity by the conservatives in my family. Elitism used as an insult has an interesting history but it seems as society has become more competitive it has increased. Who wants to put in the 10 thousand hours it takes to become competent at a profession. It's so much easier to claim that you are being held back by a cadre of elitists.
4
Conservatism needs to find a moral purpose bigger than blood-and-soil nationalism?
How about tax cuts for billionaires?
Or gutting the welfare state?
Or destroying the environment?
Or denying the existence of climate change?
Or denying the existence of structural racism?
Or pretending that white straight males are the real victims of discrimination?
Or pretending liberalism is the same as communism?
Or pretending conservatives are the only "real" Americans?
Oh, wait. Conservatives already have made all of those things their purpose. So much so that I have a hard time thinking of them as caring about anything else. So much so that they would embrace blood-and-soil nationalism in order to get their way. So much so that Trump really does seem like the logical extension of the path the GOP has been on for decades.
33
@Nate Lunceford You forgot the religious freedom to discriminate against the others.
1
It is easy to be hateful and resentful. It's not so easy to be loving. If you hate it is because you are taught that hate is OK. Some religions teach love and some do not. Some people think about others and some don't.
Most people who are selfish do not think they are being selfish. They don't sit down and decide "I want to act selfishly." But Mr. Brooks knows that when basic needs are hard to meet, people feel helpless and helplessness creates fear. Resentment comes easily after that.
FOX and Sinclair, narrowly focused christians, white supremacists, unemployed blue color workers, under educated citizens, all easily manipulated into resentment. Do they think they are being manipulated? Do they realize they are being selfish? ??? They don't really know enough to know. Mostly they don't care.
Are they always honest, always compassionate, always generous? Are they always thinking of the welfare of others? Are they willing learn, grow and change? Naw. It's easily to complain, ignore what you don't want to see, and MAGA.
Seems like the whole world is going "populist" and that can only be bad in the long run. If we don't really care for all of us and for the planet, the populists will inherit a dead planet. Then they can say, "oops." For now, resist!
4
Athens tried an experiment with democracy in the Age of Pericles, you know, the period during which the Parthenon was built. But democracy started to fail during the subsequent Peloponnesian War and the democracy executed Socrates for politically incorrect speech. Plata regarded democracy as the fourth of five regimes: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny.
The problem with democracy is that it needs a well-informed electorate to function properly. And although there is an educated slice of Americans who live in Washington, Middle America is filled with Americans who only finished high school or just got by in junior college.
The uneducated masses have elected one of their own in Donald Trump.
Why did they do that? Perhaps they realized that both of the educated elites, the Republicans of Brooks and the Democrats of Obama, were lying.
The Republican lies are apparent. Tax cuts on corporations will help the common man, for example.
The Democratic lies are more subtle. They argue that every problem is due to racism of the uneducated masses.
Can't make a living on the wages of your job? Can't get health care because you fall between the cracks of Obamacare? Just tear down a monument to Robert E Lee, they say.
That brings the white supremacists out of the woodwork and allows both parties in Congress to talk racism instead of solving real problems.
David Brooks tells us a story about elite in Poland. He has no comprehensions of America's own poor.
5
@Jake Wagner Your narrative is only slightly more compelling that Mr. Brooks.
1
@Jake Wagner I question your sweeping declarative statements about both parties, but notice the glaring false equivalency between the alleged “lies” of the Democrats and the litany of actual, verifiable lies of the Republicans. Such comparisons and assumptions are the CAUSE of Trump’s rise to power, and must be called out at each and every opportunity.
3
@Jake Wagner
you raise a good point, there has been a lot of spin that turned into shades of truth, then truthiness, half lies and now full lies. Lets not take shots at an "uneducated public" lets put the fault where it belongs to the politicians who would prefer to put misleading information, slandor and smears out there to get their way all while claiming that the turth would just be too hard to explain. I have met plenty of people who are able to take complex information and distill it down to laymans level, it takes skill and competance. with the jurymandering, and electoral college there is absolutly no accountability to make them change. I would like to see the press take a more active role in teaching civics and presenting issues fairly as well as both sides solutions in a pro and con manner so that people can again learn civility, discourse and compromise!
1
The twin insanities of this article are that America's leaders were chosen through the functioning of a meritocracy and that America's conservative leaders were morally and intellectually excellent. Either of those ideas is blatantly and thoroughly ludicrous. Let's take some quick, recent examples:
John H Sununu - He changed climate change from a consensus scientific issue into a partisan, truth obfuscation issue
Paul Bremer - Appointed (yes, just chosen!) to "run Iraq". Spoke not a word of Arabic.
Alan Greenspan - Touted as the brilliant head of the Fed, until the 2008 recession revealed that he had no understanding of his job. (The insights of clever economists like Stiglitz or Krugman have been unwelcome by both parties' White Houses).
Bush 43 - David Brooks's mentioning "compassionate conservatism" will remind readers of "Dubya's" continual use of that phrase on the campaign trail, and later of the use of torture, and defense of its use, by his White House.
All US ambassadors are political appointees -- they typically don't speak the language of the country to which they're sent, nor know much about it.
Donald Trump tells innumerable lies. Yet when he asserted that the US was run by incompetents, there was a lot of truth in that. The Trump administration has sunk to new depths of incompetence and graft, but it has not departed from precedence in these areas. The US has known brilliant and morally upright leadership, but it has been far from the norm.
14
@Aaron Sullivan
Thanks for the remark about Sununu.
The recent NY Times article providing a chronological run down on the departure from a "climate consensus" about global warming as a problem "we" brought upon ourselves, glossed over the fact that the emergence of Sununu represented the rupture of that "consensus," which was an attack on the "we" by the power elite.
"we" have not caused climate change; a capitalist imperative to "grow or die" that is so darn profitable, has been the driving force ejecting so much greenhouse gas into the environment.
"we" would all be driving electric vehicles if the law required it. But laws are not determined rationally, they are determined by other imperatives, like making money, goring someone else's ox to avoid your own getting poked.
> If conservatism is ever to recover it has to ... restore standards of professional competence and reassert the importance of experience, integrity and political craftsmanship
This could be said of politics in general and especially applies progressives. It's to argue that government is the answer with examples like the California DMV, the Obamacare rollout, and vote tabulation in Broward County, Florida. The first step to fixing government is to demand accountability and show you can address broken but essential services.
5
From David's column today, November 16:
"If conservatism is ever to recover it has to achieve two large tasks. First, it has to find a moral purpose large enough to displace the lure of blood-and-soil nationalism."
From David's column on October 25th:
"American nationalism has been one of the great joys, comforts and motivators of my life. I don’t know how anybody can live without it."
Here's the column:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/america-nationalism-diversity-trump.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists&action=click&contentCollection=columnists®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=search&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
Well David, what's it gonna be then eh?
9
@James Warden
Thanks for pointing this out! I've found that Brooks often contradicts himself.
Sometimes it's because of blatant hypocrisy, i.e. driven by his need to prove his beloved Conservatism "right" even after he's laid out evidence that proves otherwise.
But over the past two years, Brooks has been going through a protracted midlife crisis, because he's subconsciously understanding (but unwilling to admit) that his beloved Conservatism led to Trumpism. He's "discovered" the ideals of community and identity, but can't bring himself to accept that we dreaded Liberals have been extolling these all along.
So now he's lost in his own fog, during the transition into a set of ideals which he won't allow himself to acknowledge.
Thus, we can expect him to keep stumbling himself into contradictions, until he reconciles all the knots of confusion and cognitive dissonance on his journey to enlightenment and wokeness.
But that doesn't mean that we should cut him slack and give him any passes for his contradictions. Keep his feet to the fire; that'll help make his transitiuon faster!
"During the Cold War, being a conservative was a moral cause. You were fighting Communist tyranny — aligned with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Lech Walesa. But you were somewhat marginalized in your own society. Liberals controlled the universities, the news media, the cultural high ground, so the right attracted many people with outsider personalities."
This is the fiction "conservatism" which is all lies all the time, is based upon.
'Truth has a liberal bias' is not just an adage, it is a fact. Conservatism and the lies involved in that fake set of ideals is at its heart a way to manipulate minds away from truth while maintaining the emotional feeling of moral certainty which the truth begets.
I saw something in some other paper that is apt in this age of GOP advocay of never holding anyone on their side to account. Asking anyone to get along with a conservative, any conservative of any kind, is tantamount to asking a person to associate with someone who molested them as a child and agree to them never being held to acount as well as having to associate with that person as if they never did it.
The reckoning must come, if we are ever to move forward and rebuild what "conservatism" has destroyed.
7
A quotation from the Anne Applebaum article referenced here:
"Like the Polish government, the Hungarian state promotes a Medium-Size Lie: It pumps out propaganda blaming Hungary’s problems on nonexistent Muslim migrants".
The Muslim migrants referred to here, are, in fact, very real. Germany accepted a million of them and many Germans are very unhappy with the result - so much so that it has cost Angela Merkel her political future. Had it not been for the present governments of Poland and Hungary, these latter countries would also have been forced to accept their quota of migrants, which would then have become a nidus of home-grown Islamic terrorism such as currently exists in other European countries with sizable Muslim populations e.g. Britain, France.
2
Mr. Brooks, excuse me:
Exactly in what subject was the younger Mr. Bush an expert in again?
6
@KS Dont you remember? GWB was “The Decider”, it was his job to “decide” to invade Iraq (a country that never attacked, or posed a threat to America) and “decided” to lie about the reasons for doing so.
And never forget that the Bush and Saud families were/are extremely close, obstentially because of their mutual dependence on petroleum.
Oh, and don’t forget that George Sr. was complicit in Iran/Contra, yet another example of Republican/Conservative Party treason.
2
The idea f a "loyal opposition" is incomprehensible to Trump and his sycophants, and hey have convinced "the base" of this.
This is how democracy dies.
4
NPR’s show Frsh Air with Terry Gross interviewed Ms. Appleblaum as I listened to her it was clear that what has happened in Poland and Hungary, could easily happen here. The misinformation campaign by those who want to destroy democracy and indeed, the United States is ongoing. Just this morning there’s a headline from the Washington Post about Lou Dobbs of Fox telling his LIES that “many illegals voted in the midterms”!!!
Our newspapers especially, the NYT and WaPo MUST all these lies out! Russia continues its insidious attack on our democracy. We need our media to be our Truth tellers, our investigative journalists, now more than ever.
David Brooks, open your eyes!
6
I don't know about Poland, but U.S. conservatives sold out to the religious fanatics, the NRA, and the fear of "socialism" that makes them vote against their own interests in matters of health care and social services.
6
In other words, Trump hires losers. What this article doesn't address is the apparent ease by which so many of the "good" conservatives Brooks longs to reassemble have gone tribal and openly racist, to please the boss and his small base of gnomes.
I think that was a main point Applebaum was trying to make (I read her editorial, not her book). The authoritarian mode of moral flexibility we're seeing now covers a whole lot more than the B, C and D teams. Listen to Lindsey Graham these days--he's chosen to become as much a yahoo as the rest of this muddled crowd.
The problem is much bigger than what Brooks is describing. It's that the conservative mainstream--his ilk, though I salute him for not succumbing himself—who have always been a lil' bit racist and way too interested in snatching support and rights from people they perceive as the Other, have been liberated to shout their mean-spirited notions from the rooftops. How you put that twisted genie back in the bottle is a challenge that'll take a lot more brainpower than this article reflects.
4
Mr. Brooks played his part too. Over the years he helped prepard the way for the Trump presidency through his conservative think-tank propaganda based on florid Buckleyesque rhetoric. It's always comforting to be 'to the manner born.' All that is required is to stay in your safe-house and blame the victims of greed for not having more capital and better manners.
5
@Oisin OOOh! So well put!
1
Calmly mentioning that liberals control the universities, media, and entertainment industry, thus shaping culture for the nation, he then shakes his head that conservatives are resentful.
2
Conservatism's origins are rooted in inequality, sexism, and racism. Competence and competition for ideas among conservatives have always been narrowly limited to economic elites, which is why conservatives have always defended the status quo. It is only liberalism's embrace of diversity that has forced conservatives to embrace blood and soil xenophobia, as conservative ideals have never embraced diversity, equality of opportunity, or true liberty and justice for all.
6
This is how federal agencies have been managed for decades. I know. I worked for the FDIC. Now that it has entered the WH in an in-your-face way the public is alarmed. The reality is the country has been operating this way for a very long time.
David, yet again you're failing to distinguish between conservatism, which relies on tradition and community roots, and classical liberalism, which relies on being able to do what you want in the marketplace. The meritocracy you speak of is the meritocracy of the marketplace. The political alliance between conservatism and classical liberalism works best when facing a common enemy (e.g., communism) but is under great strain when the alliance has vanquished its opponent. The plain fact is that classical liberalism's individualism is corrosive to traditional community, and priority of tradition is stifling to classical liberalism.
3
@Paul Turpin Q: When you typed “community” did you mean to type “conservatism”?. If not, your last sentence does not make sense.
1
I believe conservatism needs more than just a moral purpose and professional competence. Some serious introspection is required. Do conservatives take the Pledge of Allegiance seriously and honestly. What does it mean to say "liberty and justice for all." Which of the three men traveling from Samaria to Jerusalem do they see themselves to be, the lawyer or the priest who walk away from the fallen traveler, or the alien Samaritan who gives aid to the fallen traveler. Modern American conservatives scream "Voter Fraud!" and yet refuse to purchase modern voting machines, and scheme to legalize nefarious ways to suppress the vote by changing the rules and moving voting stations. This essay fails to note the violence modern conservatism turns a blind eye. Under the banner of "Law and Order" police are free to shoot African-American children playing with a toy gun or entering the backdoor of his grandmother's house carrying only his cell phone. This practice has history in the 19th and 20th century lynching (no arrests, no indictments, no penalty). The open racism extends to the weary travelers fleeing certain death traveling in the caravan. Instead of offering food, shelter, and the Sacrament of foot washing, conservatives offer barbed wire, handcuffs, and the kidnapping of children. Perhaps, Proverbs 19.2 offers conservatives some sage advice. "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be in too great a hurry and so miss the way."
11
Conservatism has always had a paranoid and fascist dimension. Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, believed that communism was out to take over the world using strategies such as mind-control through water fluoridation. A more serious concern, Welch believed that Eisenhower was a traitor who was complicit in the spread of communism.
The John Birch Society wasn't a fringe group and its members weren't living in the shadows. Ezra Taft Benson, who was Secretary of Agriculture for 8 years during the Eisenhower administration and was president of the Mormon Church from 1985-1994, was a member of the JBS. Benson was fully in agreement with Welch's paranoid conspiracy theories and repeatedly urged the FBI to investigate Eisenhower.
As Welch, Benson, and other JBS followers gladly carried on the paranoid tradition of another ardent conservative, Joseph McCarthy, the Tea Party later carried on the ideas of the JBS. In a 2016 essay, The New Yorker magazine described Benson as one of the ideological founding fathers of the Tea Party movement. In examing legacies, we shouldn't forget that Donald Trump's moral guide was Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's legal counsel.
John B. Judis wrote that in the mid-1960s "[Willam F.] Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn rather than leading toward the kind of conservatism National Review had promoted."
5
Spoken like a true self-grandizing elitist; refusing to accept how much the luck of the draw has to do with their success and completely out of touch in body & spirit with mankinds needs.
3
Oh David, you continue to try to morally justify your belief in the failed catechism of conservatism! All this pretzel-twisting, re-writing a history that recalls a once-Golden Age of altruistic conservative ideals, rooted mainly in the "holy war" against Communism. But even if that were a noble effort, it still couldn't erase the fact that at its core, conservatism is primarily interested in conserving wealth and privilege, and its TRUE ideals are rooted in the Gilded Age, an age which modern conservatives have been nearly able to replicate with their imposition of "trickle down", and employing a tribalistic "divide & conquer" strategy to get a large minority of Americans to work and vote against their best interests.
Your "holy" meritocracy will never really work because it omits one of the central underpinnings of any healthy society: that the well-being of ALL members of the society are critical to the health of that society. Meritocracy at its base is nothing more than the Law of the Jungle. If homo sapiens followed that law, we would likely have become as extinct as the Neanderthal.
Give up David. Either embrace your privileged status as "hard earned and well deserved", or become honest and realize that conservatism promotes "dog eat", and there is nothing noble about that.
6
David says: "When you take away excellence and integrity, loyalty to the great leader is the only currency that remains."
You got a problem with that?
Kathy Griffin should sue Trump - he's made himself the new "Queen of the D-list!"
But seriously, how can we be expected to believe this is a Brooks' column without a single "both sides do it" in there?
1
There is no there in conservatism.
Conservatism has always been an ideology that appeals to the wealthy, racists, misogynists, kakistocracts and ne'er do wells in the dark corners of every country and state. It's arguments are not based in reality and run contrary to facts.
It's the romanticized ideology of the inaneniks.
39
@wanderer
I agree - the real question is why Mr. Brooks and others like him don't recognize the death of conservatism. Case in point, this Republican Congress. Ample experience can't show these people that markets need regulation and populations and communities need effective government. Some continue with the inanity of it, and others move toward nihilism.
1
We like to pay lip service to "we all want the same things, but we just have different ideas of how to get there."
But liberals and conservatives do not want the same things, and I wish liberals would stop wasting time, money and energy trying to "convince" conservatives of their cause.
Along with differing goals, todays Republicans have shown that they are perfectly willing to be sneaky and underhanded (even with their own committee colleagues!), to get what they want, because they know their ideas are unpopular to the majority of Americans. (Think McConnell/Gorsuch/Kavanaugh, Nunez, zero check on Trump's corruption.....).
Maybe we can compromise on peripheral issues, but I highly doubt we will ever be on the same page re: socio-economic issues---the ones that mean the most to everyday Americans.
9
How about loyalty to scientific reasoning, intellect, common sense, and humanitarian values? The ten commandments would be a start. I have seen none of this in what Brooks describes as conservative movements, which are really just a euphemism for right wing politics and illiberalism. The first task of humanity in this moment is to recognize the need to mobilize as in a war to eliminate the use of fossil fuel over the next two generations. We can't even get the Democrats to agree on that.
9
@alan Three of the Ten Commandments forbid man from worshiping other deities, but none forbid child abuse. I think we need to aim higher.
1
@Thad ^^^^ THIS. A thousand times this. Enough with the slavish addiction to a collection of books written centuries ago, by unknown authors, that tell implausible tales of miracles and retribution.
1
Very good column.
Brooks has probably read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." A point that Shirer makes repeatedly is that in the '30s, the Nazi government ministers were poorly qualified and not very intelligent.
I think about this all the time watching this administration.
10
Resentniks vote in primaries while others do not so they control the path to political office.
6
For competence and integrity to return, the dear leader has to fail big time. The mid-terms were a start. But a lot more
has to happen before 2020. His base has to realize that
he is just a symbol of "hate thy neighbor" and a blustering
danger to them and their country.
10
Mr Brooks laments the rise of blood and soul patriotism, replacing the ideal of “excellence.” He fails to recognize (or ignores) the common denominator between the two varieties of conservatism in his schema. Both find their prime motivations in selfishness and resentment. The golden age of Reagan, which he and his ideological bedfellows so lovingly recall, was defined by “trickledown” and the resentment of the “Reagan Democrats.” The conservative anti-Communist moral zeal whose passing he laments was shared by most liberals at the time, who, however, lacked the provincial no-nothingism and ignorant bellicosity of many of their Republican counterparts.
As usual, we can debate whether Mr Brooks is a cynical shill, a disappointed idealist, or both. In any case, as he himself appears to concede, he speaks for an ideology and a movement that lack defensible core beliefs.
Guess what? The conservative movement was always a patchwork alliance between elites anxious to defend their privilege, Southern racists, bamboozled blue-collar Archie Bunkers, and evangelical ignoramuses. There’s a direct line from Reagan to Trump, and their political bases are virtually identical, mutatis mutandis.
Mr Brooks’s pontifical call for the moral repurposing of his beloved conservatism can only lead to more of the same. It’s clear he himself hasn’t a clue. Can we please move on now?
21
D Team? Did you see the wack jobs that Bush Jr had? The ones that
-slept through 9/11,
-couldn't find bin Laden in Afghanistan,
-misread the WMD reports,
-couldn't get a supply truck into New Orleans
-And waltzed into the Great Recession.
Trump is wacky and unready- but those guys were evil with a body count.
9
@Tom
El Trumpo's body count is innocent children torn from loving families, or killed and starved in their homes and the deaths in the self same wars you reference taht are still going on because it makes money for the GOP's masters.
1
Liberals controlled the universities, the news media, the cultural high ground because these are inherently liberal institutions. You cannot boldly explore new areas of knowledge and science while dogmatically adhering to doctrine. How in the world could the academic community function as a conservative organization? The closest analogy I can relate is the Catholic dominations or perhaps certain sects of Judaism. Despite all their failings, these are the more academic among Western religious traditions.
Furthermore, the problem with conservatism in the 21st century is not a lament for excellence. The problem with US conservatives is they've spent half a century now picking losers. It's not that the losers are bitter. They are. However, conservatism actively promotes a totalitarian conquest of economic prosperity while telling everyone the pie is getting bigger. The effort is blatantly dishonest and therefore discredited. Conservative economic policy was foolish at first but absolutely nonsensical after experimentation.
Nationalism is not the natural outcome of this debauchery. Nations were led down this path by conservatism. The populists of the world would not have swerved right in the face of conservative abuse without the engendered fear of all things socialistic. This is the true failing of David Brooks' generation. They taught the world to fear without inventing any means to bring them back.
Shame on you.
16
@Andy Exactly! Excellent comment!
2
My experience with a friend of 45 years is echoed in this “can’t talk . . .won’t talk.” Identifying himself as Republican economically and Libertarian socially (except for abortion!) it has become clear to me that he doesn’t even really read the stats in some of the literature he sends for me to read. To wit: he wonders why there are more people on welfare when the article he sends clearly shows there are fewer! This is only one reason why my email responses to him have become fewer and fewer in recent weeks and months. The “piece de resistence” is the accusation of my bias within the email wherein he complains of “progressives” instead of specific policy, which is more and more the content of the emails.
Resentment has been the essence of Republican politics and policy since before Reagan. It can mostly be seen as the sense of entitlement of those who have much against those who want more sharing of the social burden. Sadly, Mr. Brooks is often unaware of the mote in his own eye — for years.
11
@B. Rothman
"Resentment has been the essence of Republican politics and policy since before Reagan."
That's now called "economic whitexiety!"
This is an astonishingly good piece--the best analysis I've read so far on the emergence of Trumpism, and I view it from both the perspective of politics (BA in poli sci) and psychology (Ph.D. in cognitive).
2
Brooks writes: "The losers in the meritocratic competition, the permanent outsiders, seize on ethnic nationalism to give themselves a sense of belonging...". HOWEVER , the median income of trump voters was $72,000 vs $58,000 for Clinton voters. So, who's losing the "meritocratic competition"? This is another mischaracterization of the populist movement, again implying valid white grievances from discrimination. What are these actions of discrimination against whites? Writers like Brooks tout these anti-white actions, but never document a specific instance. Please, Mr. Brooks, educate us in the social, educational, and economic disadvantage to being white.
3
@GariRae You did not understand the article at all.What Applebaum wrote has zero to do with what you wrote.
6
@GariRae Those median income numbers are just extrapolation from the median incomes of voting districts, which is the smallest unit of measure we have for voter information. Furthermore, “income” is not synonymous with “wealth”. And neither income NOR wealth is a legitimate metric for success or merit. Just look at the Klown Kar Kollege in the Oval Office. The sole reasons for his financial success is being born rich, the ability to claim the accomplishments of others as his own, and the Confederacy Of Dunces who don’t know those two truths.
1
David. Give up and become a Democrat before it's too late. We'll forgive you.
6
It’s like Mr. Brooks *almost* gets it. One wonders if there is a mirror he talks to in the mornings while shaving (and one wonders if, and more importantly, what, it answers back). Any meritocracy is designed around a system of arbitrary rules, beginning with a definition of what is deemed to be meritorious. Any reward based on such a system is guaranteed to result in some sort of disenfranchisement, for somebody. And we as a society have already experimented with trophies for participation, so that idealistically-motivated, but wrongheaded, avenue seems a non-starter. Mr. Brooks has identified the B, C and D teams, and seems to predict we are already more than halfway to blood-and-soil nationalism (“Kinder Kuche Kirche,” sound like a familiar moral purpose to anyone?), but like most reactionary conservatives, ends with a wistful nostalgia for the old days, when “integrity” and “political craftsmanship” were supposedly highly valued. His ignorance of American political history is breathtaking.
2
Ideology and reasons are what you use to justify your actions. Good ideology has some intellectual coherence, and good reasons more or less explain actions without making the speaker sound psychopathic. If you make an effort to track the various uses of "conservative" in our current political discussions, you will not find coherence. How is creating a trillion dollar a year structural deficit--that's what we're running with a good economy--"conservative"? What make racism "conservative"? What's "conservative" about ignoring the constitution or undermining the rule of law? (I can keep this up.) In America, the only consistent meaning of "conservative" is looking out for the interests of the economic elite. That's the real reason behind three large tax cuts for the wealthy since 1980, the deregulation of business, and efforts of cut SS and Medicare, aka the Republican agenda. Out of respect for the intelligence of its readers and common decency, the NYTs should ban the use of the word "conservative". Also "liberal".
6
A good place to start would be to work to restore faith in fact based journalism. Oh, and science. Let's not forget science.
9
Another piece by a Republican hack attempting to resurrect a racist, misogynist, party of liars and obstructionists. Sorry, Mr. Brooks, you are years late in your feeble attempt to save the party of the wealthy and ignorant. When the popular vote loses out we no longer can claim to be a Democracy. So please stop writing columns about the supposed 'good old days' of the party and feel good pieces of tiny groups of citizens living in harmony with each other when our country has been taken over by incompetents, white nationalists, and a morally corrupt, mentally ill, president.
5
@E-Llo But when you mention that we are no longer a democracy, the counter is always that we are a republic, not a democracy, and it has worked for 200 years. Of course, ignoring actual changes or evidence of a need for change, as well as such events as the Civil War, simply because it gets their candidates in office right now. All hiding behind American Exceptionalism.
Well, liberals surely didn't control the universities in 1950s America. Professors could be--and were--blacklisted, right alongside the creative types in Hollywood. Academics did--and still do--have to sign loyalty oaths in order to keep their jobs.
6
Brooks' Republican party has become a white nationalist, blood-and-soil party. Actual conservatives who care about actual conservative public policy must join the Democratic party or start a new party. Conservative educated white women have already left the Republican party, likely prompted by one of Trump's many outrages... the bragging about sexual assault, the treatment of traumatized rape victims, the xenophobic hate of bedraggled refugees...
The only question is whether educated white men and less-educated rural white voters are truly white nationalists, or just slow to realize that is what the Republican party now is.
6
The "moral purpose" of the Republican, pro-plutocrat/business Party in 1940, the summer after the fall of France:
GOP Platform, 1940:
“We favor the extension of aid to all people fighting for liberty or whose liberty is threatened,” the final compromise read, “as long as such aid is not in violation of international law or inconsistent with the requirements of our national defense.”
"The acerbic Baltimore journalist H. L. Mencken observed that it was “so written that it will fit both the triumph of democracy and the collapse of democracy, and approve both the sending of arms to England and sending only flowers.” It would be revealed years later that the language had been lifted almost verbatim from an ad that had appeared in the New York Times and other papers over the names of isolationist congressmen, written and paid for by Nazi agents."
from Roosevelt's Second Act, by Richard Moe
4
This just proves how dramatically wrong, the right has been all along. The current cespool on the right (Trump et al) evolved naturally from those lovingly remembered old conservatives.
1
This is naked denial , a desperate effort to defect attention away from the real reason conservatism is rotting from the inside out.
Conservatism is suffocating under the weight an anachronistic world view: Edmund Burke’s (and later Russel Kirk’s and William Buckley’s) Christian moral natural law. This is an inflexible tradition that is resistant to updates. The conservative mind thinks the world hasn’t changed since – when? – the founding of the country, the birth of Jesus, the Garden of Eden? The conservative mind processes information through this static lens.
This “Christian moral natural law” believes that democracy gives people the liberty to seek their self- interest and their own well-being without worrying or being responsible for the well-being or interest of anybody else. To be honest, this paradigm is very Hobbesian, although conservatives paint over this ugly solipsism with a thick coat of providentialism. In other words, yes, humans are selfish, but rightly so, because God created them that way. So – no worries.
But there are worries because the apotheosis of self-interest opens a Pandora’s Box of obstacles to an effectively functioning society. The supremacy of the individual is at the expense of the collective. It encourages competition rather than cooperation, and gives individuals or groups the right to exploit others. It’s Darwin’s jungle; it’s Manifest Destiny; it’s greed unleashed.
Mr. Brooks, you’re fooling no one here except yourself.
6
One of Brooks better columns in its recognition of Trumps D team. We only have down to F to go.
Fortunately for American conservatives, there are plenty of voters out there who seem to like incompetence, hateful racist rhetoric, and a complete lack of morality. If there weren't guys like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Rick Scott would be two-bit real-estate salesmen, not occupants of high political office.
1
Reading these comments I am simply horrified by the ignorance of history and ideological blindness that are apparently rife among the self-declared American “liberals”. Whatever you think of American conservatism, Mr. Brooks point was to situate it in its historical context of the opposition to communism. Well, apparently this is enough for many to defend the USSR or at least to smear the people who paid with their lives to bring down this murderous regime. Communism killed more people than Nazism. This is a fact. Some of the comments I read here are no better than trying to justify Hitler because Germany suffered under the Versailles treaty. Forgiving the crimes of communism is as bad as Holocaust denial. Spitting on the graves of the Gulag victims in order to score a point against Trump is despicable.
1
@Mor Again, someone completely misses the point of what was said in this article, getting stuck on one point, while ignoring all the ramifications. Communism killed more people than Nazism in great part because it existed for a much longer time in many different countries, while Nazism was the product of a single country that was in power for a dozen years. I am horrified by the false equivalence you make here, as well as the false association of Communism with the left, and Nazism with the right.
@Jwinder False equivalence between what and what? Communism is the totalitarianism of the left. Nazism is the totalitarianism of the right. This is not an opinion but a fact. Find me a historian who disagrees. And sure, communism existed longer than Nazism and so what? Does it make it any better? If anything, it makes it worse because it spread its poison to so many countries and destroyed so many societies. I just came back from Cambodia where the communist Khmer Rouge killed one-third of their countrymen. I saw mass graves of children who were executed in order to build a utopia of equality. If you justify this, or Mao’s famine, or Stalin’s trials, there is nothing I want to say to you. This is not about Trump or conservatism. It is about truth and decency.
"Conservative" How has that come to be presumed to align with the 1% and not the 99%? We talk about "originalists" as arch conservatives but forget that those who founded the country were radicals in the eyes of the established government in the British colonies.
What needs to be conserved are the ideals - to life (healthcare), liberty (free speech by a free press) and the pursuit of happiness (a decent job to provide a decent living, earned by having a decent education). That's conservative, or should be.
4
American conservatives have never been about patriotism or competence. It has always been about power and service to an ideology.
‘Small government’ is really code for leaving the working and middle classes without the help or resources of the government to level the economic playing field.
The ‘ideology’ has been nothing more than an inconsistent hodgepodge of non sense ideas to justify the transfer of wealth and power to the ruling elite.
American conservatism has always been bad faith and lies, nothing more.
12
I think you left out a key piece. Science denialism and denial of environmental stewardship is now part of the reactionary mix. This did not happen overnight. There are fossil fuel funded "intellectuals" who have been ginning up a new cold war equating Marxism with ecology and progressive causes. You, Mr. Brooks, have contributed to this insofar as you have not unequivocally called out the science deniers.
7
@arendtiana Speaking of renouncing science, progressives are quick to inform us that there is no scientific basis for gender, which is a fluid social construct. Race doesn't exist either, and anyone who disputes a certain brand of climate thought is a moron even though that same school of thought predicted apocalypse by 2000.
@Grunt I think your reply expresses despair and distrust. Skepticism is an important virtue, essential to our modern life, common sense and the scientific method. I sense that you feel that the present disorder requires foundation and principles. I wholeheartedly agree with you, though not on the specifics. An educated person knows that absolute certainty is dangerous, but also is able to judiciously respect authorities when appropriate.
Mr. Brooks you say, "Many of those staffing the White House could not get a job in any normal Republican administration, which selected people according to any traditional criteria of excellence."
No, they could only get jobs on fox so-called news and as sales scammers. That applies to every person The Con Don put into OUR cabinets and regulatory agencies.
Their intent is to DESTROY OUR GOVERNMENTS and the only thing that can/will stop them is WE THE PEOPLE.
NOW is the time and it's heartwarming to see "conservative" judges joining progressive judges in upholding OUR U.S. Constitution instead of the Robber Baron agenda.
Are you going to retire, Mr. Brooks, or continue to find excuses for the inexcusable, corrupt organization the republican party has become?
15
I had one dominant reaction in reading the Brooks column today: there's a lot of overlap between his ideas and those expressed in "The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge, and Why It Matters," by Tom Nichols. Nichols, however, sees that significant causes of these new attitudes come from broader cultural changes, changes that go beyond the political/historical changes Brooks writes about. These broader changes result from many things - the internet (particularly that Google can make everyone feel like an instant expert), changes in higher education (to appeal to students as customers who need to be woed), growth of the idea that criticism is a personal putdown, and many more changes that have arisen in the last few decades.
After reading comments on the Brooks column, I was somewhat disheartened. So many of the commenters seemed less interested in taking in the ideas, and more interested in finding points to criticize - from both the political Right and Left. It just seems like an affirmation of the polarization that has gripped us. Can't we listen without jumping up to fight back?
8
"During the Cold War, being a conservative was a moral cause....Liberals controlled the universities, the news media, the cultural high ground, so the right attracted many people with outsider personalities."
So conservatives were moral and liberals were not.
Right. Liberals have always fought for the underdog. Then and now. That's moral.
17
I am so tired of faux intellectuals like David Brooks lamenting that the "liberals" have taken over the universities. How can the NYTs allow such gross and false characterizations in one of their editorial writers? As an academic biologist, let me explain why I am not a republican even though I consider many of my ideas to be "conservative", albeit not by the current definition. In the first debate for the 2012 republican primary for President, all candidates were asked if they believed in evolution, and only one, John Huntsman, raised his hand; he was the first man out! The lame moderator didn't bother to ask the evolution denier candidates how scientists were supposed to develop new medicines against constantly evolving bacteria and viruses in the absence of any understanding of evolution. Prayer? Dart throwing? The exact same argument can be made of climate science deniers, for which the republican party is the home hive.
Scientists, as a rule, are "conservative" in the sense that they require coherent theories backed by replicable data and experiments before they believe things, and these traits are utterly absent from our "conservative" republican party. Their current leader is a lying fabulist! The scientists in our universities are not "liberal", they are realists. Scientists are human, of course, and they sometimes get things wrong, they sometimes lie. But science is self-correcting and transparent. Oh, and they exude what David professes to admire, excellence.
26
@PWV
Thank you for this excellent comment.
My wife and I are both highly educated - her in the biological sciences, me in engineering and management science - and she works in the academy. At heart we are both naturally conservative, but how can we support a political party that denies science, denigrates intellect, and vilifies expertise? The answer is that we cannot. As such, we've voted straight D since 2000.
10
In 1450 the printing press was invented, by 1475 it was really up and running. In the next century it produced over 100 million books, about two for every adult in Europe. And so people learned to read. The result was not enlightenment, but violent argument as they all read the bible and found they disagreed about what it meant. Suddenly the forum of public debate, till then mostly left to the priestly caste, became flooded with all sorts of half-educated people and their half-baked ideas, eager to prove the old maxim that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. There followed more than 100 years of bloody religious warfare.
In 1990 the internet was invented, by 2000 it was really up and running. In 2007 came the first smartphone and soon everyone was connected all the time. Suddenly the forum of public debate, till then mostly left to the readers of broadsheet newspapers, was flooded with Archie Bunkers, half-educated conspiracy theorists, xenophobic grandmas and middle-aged misanthropes living in vans. Suddenly people were brought face to face with the violence of their disagreement, even as they also found silos where everyone saw things their way. The result was not enlightenment.
Its Rene Girard's mimetic theory in motion: Its tribalism, Othering and schismogenesis leading to alterity (reactionary movements); its an explosion of demagogic populism, ethnic and religious violence; its the advance of autocracy, worldwide...
... It’s the dying of the West!
4
@Justin Sigman: Wow! The invention of the printing press brought the Protestant Reformation. And the Internet caused political polarization. Radical technological determinism explains historical change!
Ideas do motivate people, and increases in literacy and cyber literacy can shake things up by making it possible for non-traditional political agents to shape movements. But consider the alternative--medieval imfantalism of the majority of the population, authoritarian and paternalistic government, and the religion of the king being the religion of the people.
The rise (and decline) of literacy skills plays an important role, but history is a bit more complicated than this one phenomenon. Beware of 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' reasoning.
2
A flurry of obscurantism meant to justify conservatism and disguise the fact that it's the refuge of the wicked.
4
would that be the same "standards of professional competence" that brought us Supply Side Economics and the reconstruction of Iraq?
12
Our social contract--democracy--is grounded on trust. Without integrity you don't have trust.
5
"When you take away excellence and integrity, loyalty to the great leader is the only currency that remains."
Which explains why Nancy Pelosi is probably going to be the next Speaker of the House.
@mikecody
Mike,
What is Nancy Pelosi’s record?
She played a key role in turning back George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security. She was the key figure in passing the Affordable Care Act. She helped enact financial reform after the 2008 financial meltdown. She also helped pass the Obama stimulus plan, which fact-based economists overwhelmingly agree mitigated job losses from the financial crisis.
Protecting Social Security. Extending access to health care. Preserving jobs in a depression. Compare this to the accomplishments of Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, and Paul Ryan.
And in an era when accusations are made with no evidence, Pelosi has been untouched by allegations of personal scandal.
5
Incompetence works! The president, Republicans, whatever, make promises about how they are going to change things. If things actually did change, they would have to come up with some new promises. It is so much easier to keep promising the same things, and not delivering. As long as your base is willing to believe, and we all have hope, that THIS time, things will be different, then it is to your advantage to not succeed.
56
@froggy
I seem to remember that the Republicans are absolutely opposed to abortion. Promise to rid the country of this scourge. Pictures of dead babies in trash cans,... It goes on, and on, and on. Happens every 2 years for Representatives, every 7 years for Senators, and every 4 years for President.
If only we could control the House, Senate, Presidency, and Supreme Court.
Kind of like the last 2 years. Any action n abortion?
Why act when you have created a wedge issue.
They continue their lies as we speak.
8
Putting all the academic ideological labels and hypotheses aside for a moment, conservatives need to acknowledge a couple of basic contradictions among the 99% of Americans. One, they couldn't care less about all the ideological yammering. Two, when asked if they would support a tax cut or a reduction in the size or cost of government, they always agree.
On the other hand, it doesn't take a lot of probing to find that they really want a government that provides for their needs. Fix the roads and bridges. Educate their children in good public schools. Affordable healthcare and insurance regardless of means. Protect the environment and stop polluters. A strong military and national security. Regulate food, air, water, and housing standards. And have to resources to help when they need help, as the recent hurricanes have demonstrated.
These are important to everyone, not just the ideological debaters, and they cost a lot of money. The private sector will not address these issues. Conservatives need to leave the labels aside and accept that government is responsible for protecting and improving our quality of life.
11
@Randomonium: Many if not most ‘base’ don’t want, in fact have been working against for generations, Good Schools. They want their kids to get A’s no matter what. They want their kids to never have to study, always pass, & graduate with a real diploma at somewhere between 16-25, in school, paid for by the rest of us, without work. Some school districts are actually thinking of paying wages to kids between the ages of 16-20, to stay in school, no matter what grades they are in. Why study, you might end up losing your ‘wages’ & have to go to WORK. I admit, that in many areas high schools need to have 2 more grades. More things have been invented, discovered, found to be learned, that can be covered in 12 years. Everyone needs at least a year of tech, it’s not going away. And a year of non religious morality. As morality is NOT only found in religion (or even most).
"Experience, integrity and political craftmanship"? I have worked and spent a lot of time with politicians and government officials, some good and some not so much. One of the most long-term damaging aspects of Trump and his D team is the view that anyone can do these jobs with the right ideological credentials. Over time, good leaders learn the limits of what they can do and the strategies by which good policy can be implemented ("political craftsmanship"). Thank you for reasserting that these are important real world skills, and the concept that someone who has never been elected to a city council or dogcatcher could be president will forever demean political life in this county.
8
Mr. Brooks,
Moral conservatism?
Blood-and-soil nationalism is the inevitable outcome of conservative politics. Free market principles are what led to this moment; precarious not only for the exploding lower class, but the wealthy too, who must now look to, and fan the flames of, a right wing populist movement in order to protect it's power from the peaceful, *moral* alternative of redistributed wealth and social policies.
Sadly, the prolongated demonization of leftist ideology has rendered America more vulnerable than even 1930s Europe which had stronger socialist and communist parties than we do today.
13
"excellence and integrity"; competence and morality; fact and ideology.
Funny thing is, when viewed from 30,000 feet, conservatives and liberals agree on what these terms mean, and how they should be implemented The simple solution to David's conundrum is for our leaders to join together at 30k and work back to earth.
1
David - I read the same article, my book report differs from yours. I read it weeks ago so forgive me if I forgot a few things - but if I recall correctly, the chilling part of Appelbaum's brilliant article was how easily, idealistic men and women she knew and embraced democracy and free ideas under the communists and so helped end it, embraced with wide open arms Orban and his authoritarian rule. I seem to recall being chilled by how similar it sounded to what could happen in America - with Republicans - your fellow 'conservatives' opening their hearts and minds to Donald Trump. The point she made was that that sentiment was always there , just not so obvious till Orban rose to power ( he was once one of them!) Your Reagan Party was always this trumpian party - every ugly aspect of his presidency was always there dormant waiting to rise. Just look how McConnell has enabled him. Look how relatively silent the Bush family has been and look how Romney and Rubio ( the 'grownups' of the Party) , after being publicly humiliated publicly by trump, kept their silence so they could run again. Indeed look at your own columns for the past two years as you embraced in nearly every article, some sort of bromide to our times that was couched in religion rather than introspection of what the Republican is.....and always was!
To the both siders here - no liberals are not some great moral beings, but they are more inclusive and open than the other side, which embraces the likes of trump.
22
@Philo
I just finished the Applebaum essay: Brooks grabbed her opening scenario to make his own points, but ignored most of what she has observed about political change.
The exploitation of racism and anti-intellectualism by the right in order to secure power has been here, too, for all of my adult lifetime. “The ignorant peasants will buy it:” the phrase that she quotes from Jacek Kurski, fits here as well as in Poland.
1
David, It seems that one thing you have not talked about is the high jacking of Conservatism by "entertainment talk show hosts" along with outlets like Fox news who now dispatch Hannity to stump with Trump have changed the definition of what it means to be Conservative. Christianity has been a bedrock belief in Conservatism but the dialog of these hosts and their guests is so far removed from the teachings of Jesus. If you are a true Christian and follow the teachings of Jesus you can't get to a vote for Trump from there. Or agree with a Laura Ingrahm, Rush Limbaugh etc who have played a huge part in changing what it means to be Conservative.
What baffles me the most is why the people at the highest levels of the Conservative party haven't called out this Unchristian dialog which has resulted in very Unchristian like actions which now have come to define their party. Actually it doesn't as their main purpose is election and reelection of right leaning Conservative Republicans. Enter Donald Trump.....
11
Political beliefs anchored to an erratic, careless and bombastic individual have little chance of bearing positive fruit. Thinking (hoping) that there can be a return to some glorious time of the past is a wasteful exercise. The damage done is irreversible.
7
David Brooks writes as if the terms "liberal" and "conservative" actually mean something real. Among most Republicans I know, all that is necessary to show complete contempt for someone is to call them a "liberal". An article in the New York Times, no matter how well researched and factually sound, is immediately dismissed as obviously biased because it is from the mainstream media-as if opinion and advocacy from far right sources are necessarily more accurate. Although I have been generally liberal my entire life, I cannot abide much of the emphasis on political correctness and identity politics of the current left. I know a few genuine conservatives, although most are thinly disguised racists, patriarchal defenders and white nationalists. At least these themes have become crystal clear in the Trump era. I now consider myself to be someone in favor of science and empirical fact-based objective reality. I just need a catchy name for this approach....
10
@Michael in Upstate It's called "Ethical Humanism"
2
Some how the discourse has become skewed - what are the entitlements that the " conservatives" bristle at ? Medicare ? I have paid into that throughout my working life -- ditto Social Security. These are insurance programs that only work because a HUGE population ( everyone) must participate. That they might be in economic trouble has to o with an aging population and the fact that there are caps in contributions for high and unearned income . Conservatism has become the anti party : anti democracy, anti compassion , anti merit. anti fairness , anti individual , anti community , anti semitic, anti the "other" wherever we lurk in fetid fantasy of their derangement .
15
The elephant in the room is that Trump's constituency is mostly voters who were lurking in the countryside, not some mass of GOP who suddenly gave up on morales. There's two supporters of the Trump party, rural whites who felt betrayed by neoliberal globalization (fueled by both parties) and GOP concessionists who can embrace tribalism in order to accomplish long term goals of reducing women's rights (kavanaugh) and increasing corporate profits for the 1% (Trump's tax law).
If the GOP pivots back to the "morale high ground" they'll lose the middle America radicals who secured their current power. Perhaps more worrying is that if they don't pivot, we've seen no indication that the remaining true GOP politicians will stand up to the radicals. With Flake out, McCain gone, and all the little GOP soldiers falling in line, I have no hope that the GOP will drift away from the authoritarian line they tow with Trump.
All that said, they'll probably keep winning elections until those voters burned by globalization turn to democrats or just give up when they realize they're not getting wage increases or help from the GOP, just xenophobic scraps to keep them distracted.
7
As is often the case in his commentaries on the conservative movement, Mr. Brooks glosses over a few key points here, like how American conservatives spent decades fostering racism, and then relied on it to animate white voters. It started as the Southern Strategy, but by now it has infected the entire country. And let's also not forget that the anti-intellectualism that conservatives depend on to support their anti-fact and anti-science stances has been a central part of American life for (at least) the past fifty years (see, e.g., Hofsteder 1963). Mr. Brooks likes to appeal to lofty ideals about morality, meritocracy, etc., but they provide only a small part of the explanation of what went wrong with conservatism. He doesn't want to confront the possibility that maybe conservatism failed because too many conservatives were racists or (as Trump loves to say) "poorly educated". It's pretty clear why Trump says he loves the poorly educated--he certainly has their vote.
8
Small steps, Mr. Brooks. You don't do yourself any favors in once again accusing academia of liberal bias, but it does seem you might be slowly coming to terms with the fact that conservatism played a vital role in nourishing the disease that is Trump. Your unwillingness to take any responsibility, yourself, is to be expected, of course.
5
Mr. Brooks may not understand, or have forgotten, that old time conservatism, that opposed to communist tyranny, from early Marx onward, were opposed not because the evil ones were socialists but because they were anti-clerical, i.e., "godless." And so it goes.
2
If you want to talk about anti-Semitism start with the left -wing Democrats. Also, would the war in Iraq be an example of excellence? The Bush Republicans and Clinton Democrats both did great harm to the middle class. Trump and Sanders both offered a different vision of how things should be. I totally support Trump on trade issues.
2
@mptpab. Anti-semitism, racism, religious persecution are the equally evil whether coming from leftists or rightists. It is about fear and hatred. Pointing fingers to leftists will not spare rightists from their sins.
1
@mptpab
How are leftists anti-semitic?
Unqualified individuals in government didn't start with the Trump organization. I'll give one example, of many, Harriet Miers. Republicans have been trending down for a while now.
2
Right on.
1
I’m not sure if doubling down on liberal elitism is the cure for the far-right.
All correct.
So, this begs the obvious question: why do 'moderating voices' such as Lindsay Graham and Susan Collins continue to kowtow to the president.
Rhetorical question, as the answer is obvious: sheer, utter, depraved cowardice.
6
@dmckj
Graham's grandstanding bloviation about Kavanaugh indicates he's gearing up for another presidential run. Ugh.
I'm a big Brooks fan. But the conservative movement was never what he thought it was. He and the handful of decent intellectuals who joined it deluded themselves. Rapacious plutocrats and fulminating populists were always what the movement was about. He woke up long ago -- about ten years, actually. He called the Republican party unfit to lead then. But he's still holding on to the old dream, the old delusion that it was really about something noble. That's understandable, and sad.
4
This opinion article displays the provincialism in NY.
Use an anecdote as a point reference and conclude that those who don't share the same points of view have devolved to display symptoms of xenophobia, anti-Antisemitism, authoritarianism.
And no, compassionate conservationism was not about spreading global democracy. One does not export democracy in the same manner a shipment of bananas is exported. Compassionate conservatism is rooted spreading morality based on, wait for it, religion principles. Without religion it would be difficult to establish moral principles. But that topic is for another day.
I do agree "[r]esentment, envy, and above all the belief that the ‘system’ is unfair" has plagued one half of the U.S. population. One only has to look at the Trump-Russia collusion story. A two-year effort - and counting - to undo a duly elected U.S. President.
Please don't get me started with the "Loyalty to the tribe is more important than professional competence." This has to be a joke. The democrat party has become a religious cult with dogmatic practices and codified rituals.
Is this guy serious?
@F1Driver
"Without religion it would be difficult to establish moral principles."
Is this guy serious?
1
@nom de guerre Elaborate when this has not been the case, I dare you.
@F1Driver
1) There are individuals as well as organizations of people (ethical societies, humanists, etc.) who don't need religion to act in an ethical manner.
2) Throughout history, religions have perpetrated great damage upon various populations. Ever heard of the Crusades? I could go on, but doubt further effort will convince you.
1
Frankly, we could perhaps abide (endure) Trump as President somewhat better if not for this exact issue.
OK - - so he's elected, but as a consequence we also have to endure an unrelenting assault on professionalism, competence and acquired knowledge. So we not only have dunderheads, we also get dunderheards with bad faith across the board, evidenced by appointments like DeVos, Ben Carson and the clown show that is the reckless unmaking of the EPA, marked almost completely by spitefully ignorant action (halting of science gathering, purging of public information, casting off top minds, the list goes on).
It goes further and across the cabinet, with the President also indulging bomb throwers like Bannon (the purposeful chaos of the Muslim ban) and our very own Grima Wyrmtongue in Stephen Miller, author of a list of machinations few Americans would have ever imagined our country should ever be capable of.
A murderer's row of incompetents and bad faith dealers from the bottom to the top, from the campaign to the Presidency. It's actually kind of breathtaking, which is why it continues.
6
There's a real pearl in the observation that, in modern conservatism, loyalty and reliability trumps excellence. In fact that dynamic is at work in a much broader part of society than politics. In so many businesses, organizations, and even universities, the focus on group work and on team-building produces situations where facility in inter-personal relationships is a much more valuable skill than excellence in a particular technical, business, or scientific field. That's not new - Dale Carnegie famously told MIT graduates that their careers depended more on interpersonal relationships than science. But the progress of government, science and engineering requires people who are highly skilled, and who can see the next big thing, as opposed to the next turn of the screw. Those people are very often excluded or eclipsed by facile managers, who build personal loyalty and who produce mediocrity.
So the resentniks are a problem, yes, but the door to power for them has been the focus on personal networking.
3
But does all this explain Lindsey Graham?
1
@tr connelly
Hypocrisy and opportunism fully explain Lindsey Graham to me.
2
I just finished reading Ms. Applebaum's piece in The Atlantic. Profoundly disquieting. Thank you.
It was received wisdom--for thousands of years--that democracies are unstable. Remember--as Ms. Applebaum reminds us--the old pattern laid down by Plato:
(1) Monarchy--the "philosopher king" who would so much rather be doing philosophy than ruling a country.
(2) Oligarchy--the few, the fat, the greedy--lording it over everyone else.
(3) Democracy--"The people, sir," exclaimed Alexander Hamilton--"The people is a many-headed monster." Right! Look what they did to Socrates!
(4) Dictatorship. The man on horseback. A Julius Caesar. A Cromwell. A Napoleon.
Some dreadful thoughts:
Life is so COMPLICATED. That bothers people, Things--and people--and platforms--and programs that are not all either black or white. Things that are ambiguous. Tricky. Disquieting.
Oh for an explanation. A SIMPLE explanation. One that I can follow. Relate to. Accept:
"The verse he invented was easy to understand," says W. H. Auden ("Epitaph on a Tyrant." ) Precisely!
Which is where "the man on horseback' comes in. As in that novel by Heinrich Mann--"Follow him!" cry the workers. "Follow the Kaiser!"
"We think with our blood," cried young German students during the Third Reich.
"I know more than the so-called EXPERTS," declared an angry Fuehrer.
"I know more than the GENERALS," declared--
--someone else--
--not long ago.
Oh dear.
Thanks, Mr. Brooks.
4
A fine column, Mr. Brooks. I would only add that the ground was prepared for this turn in the U.S. by traditional American anti-elitism. I guess those “eggheads” knew and contributed things that were important to democratic self-governance. I propose a good dose of anti-anti-elitism. As the sweatshirt slogan says “sorry but your Google search is not equivalent to my doctoral degree.”
1
Just wrong, friend Brooks. Max Boot provides a much more thorough, and more critical, review of the conservative past.
Let's be honest here: Republicans have, in general, based their policies on lies and racist tropes for a good long while. And through in a fair amount of nativism as well.
As most conservatives these days, you seem to have a bad case of cognitive dissonance surrounding your fundamental belief system.
5
Previous Republican Administrations ...... Oh, give me a break. The Bushies hired straight out of Liberty University, Michael Brown knew something about Arabian horses, how to deal with emergencies, not so much. Our Iraqi transition czar, Paul Bremer, was exceptionally clueless. Disbanding the military and the Baathist Party were both catastrophic decisions whose consequences continue to reverberate through the region. Alberto Gonzalez? Oh, please. Harriet Miers. Choke. What do all of these have in common? Simple loyalty is all that mattered. Expertise, competence and excellence were beside the point. Mired in the extreme chaos and disfunction of the present, Brooks fails to recall the constant scandal and bumbling of the previous Republican regime. His cheerleading has been an architect of both.
5
The foreign-born population in the US was less than 10 million in 1976; today it's close to 45 million.
The number of undocumented aliens in the US was 3.5 million in 1990; today it's over 11 million.
Now, I realize that the chattering class welcomes this, both for low-cost household labor and a larger variety of ethnic restaurants to choose from. But that legal- and illegal-immigration explosion decimated much of middle America by driving down wages for blue collar jobs.
Hence, President Trump. And realize that if illegal immigration isn't brought under control, well, there are people way worse than President Trump.
David Frum:
"If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, voters will hire fascists to do the job."
2
@CapitalistRoader
You ignore that the Bush jr. administration let in more illegals than Obama. And immigration could have been reformed in during Bush jrs administration but they kicked the can down the road.
Both parties need to agree on reform and pass legislation soon.
@nom de guerre
You're certainly right about Bush. And the GOP failed to get the executive branch in 2008 and again in 2012 largely because they were light on illegal immigration.
Thank goodness President Trump took over the Party and saved it from oblivion by talking and acting tough on immigration, which poll after poll shows to be a popular stance.
This issue alone probably means a second term for President Trump.
@CapitalistRoader
He wastes resources by attempting to legislate through executive orders and questionable departmental policies, which end up in court.
Regardless of the party balance, Congress can't seem to come to a reasonable resolution. It's a thorny issue, but most citizens want reform and clear policies. One example is asylum applicants; since catch and release isn't effective, appropriate housing must be established while they await decision.
I think there is much common ground to be found among right/left in regard to immigration, but the extremists on either side seem to get outsized press.
1
If Conservatism has no moral purpose large enough to counter blood-and-soil nationalism, isn't it time for Conservatism to go away?
2
Jordan Peterson is addressing your first concern. The moral purpose of conservatism is taking responsibility for yourself so you can support the rights of yourself and you community. Through cross cutting cleavages we can develop a community that supports each other and does not need government to take away liberty and instill cross-generational dependence. 2)
1
I am not a christian but if conservatives need a moral cause might I suggest what Jesus Christ said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I'm not holding my breath.
5
"Resentment, envy, and belief the system is unfair" ???
The poor conservatives. Lack of a moral cause? Perhaps tax cuts and trashing of regulations on business can cheer you up, that's if you are a rich conservative. But if you struggle with healthcare or how to educate your kids, or if your job suddenly goes to a cheaper-wage country, you may begin to wonder why you are a conservative.
That's when immigration, racism, "blood & soil" kicks in to remind you your way of life is under attack by darker skinned caravans from the south or darker skinned people from around the world.
Of course the rich conservatives don't mind darker skinned people in their place as low-wage servants of their global corporations, but they egg on the racism because it equates to votes for their side. Morality doesn't enter the picture.
2
Pretty fair analysis I think overall of how nationalism is a natural failure of conservatism, but Brooks continues to be a conservative apologist.
"Many of those staffing the White House could not get a job in any normal Republican administration, which selected people according to any traditional criteria of excellence."
"any normal Republican administration"... so, basically the Bush administration? Because that's been the only normal Republican administration in the last 25 years. Or do we need to look back to Bush I and Reagan, and stretch back 30+ years to find "real" conservatives?
And that means you're holding the Bush administration up as a paradigm of excellence??!? The guys who lied our way into Iraq, bumbled the economy into the Great Recession, passed out tax cuts while engaged in two wars, and racked up a truly impressive number of scandals? You're saying that people like Rumsfeld, Chaney, and Bolton are exemplary? Or are they not included in your No True Scotsman argument?
Conservatives have gotten to be a pretty sad lot, even the never Trumpers. I would say "stop looking towards the past", but then they would stop being conservative almost by definition... so when your past is this crummy, the only hope is to glitter it up.
2
Guess what, mr brooks, the great democratic socialist, George Orwell, was opposing tyrannical regimes like stalin’s before you were born. And most thinking left wing people recognised Stalin, Mao, and their successors as the fascists they really were long before you watched those countries morph into capitalist tyrannies.
And people like Milton Friedman, friedrich Hayek amd their acolytes we’re spreading the kind of nonsense you believed in long before you realised there was a malign heart at the essence of the conservative movement.
Mr brooks, you’ve been wrong you’re entire life. Until you realise that you will continue to be wrong.
1
"The losers in the meritocratic competition, the permanent outsiders, seize on ethnic nationalism to give themselves a sense of belonging, to explain their failures, to rally the masses and to upend the meritocracy."
An unintended, but brilliant, description of current progressive identity politics.
1
A lot of top-notch NYT writing based on Atlantic pieces this week, nice job!
3
David Brooks sees a dichotomy between the old and new Republicans; I see a range, with a slow but constant drift to populism, both among Republicans and Democrats.
The single cultural principle of self-interest is gradually removing other values, which used to prevail also among the old Republicans. A society that consecrates selfishness will eventually disintegrate, losing any belief in nationalism, shared values, perhaps even in justice.
The balance between the individual and society, which should exist in every society, seems to fade away in modern capitalism.
onourselvesandothers.com
1
The "Better Red than Dead" spirituality of 1950's conservatives seemed woefully anti-intellectual and anti-reason by the time I hit 6th grade. It embraced anti-democratic means to maintain control, both at home and abroad. The good old days of John Birch!
Spreading democracy was not a hope owned by conservatives! And encouraging political participation even at home is a liberal legacy.
In Poland, as in other countries stripped of national identity and subjugated to the control of others, unity over a single goal was simple - Independence! The struggle is noble, and inspiring.
But the struggle to govern, to work out the mechanisms that allow diverse voices a role in shaping life post independence, is challenging and never stops being challenging.
To my mind, conservatives - the real ones, not the Trumpsters, missed the boat in continually fighting attempts to level the playing field for all Americans, especially if it meant more income taxes. There was always a background hum of belief (Calvinist? or just human nature?) that those who had power and wealth DESERVED their lives, whereas those who were struggling, were, by definition, less worthy. UNworthy. That smugness justified opposition to legislation to provide better access to education, and healthcare to the 'great unwashed' (Recall the 47% that Mitt Romney derided as parasites on those like himself).
The system IS unfair: it can be made more fair. It's not excellence that is resented, it's privilege.
2
Every democracy on earth is falling into alterity (reactionary movements) because of our new communications paradigm. When mass-communication required media outlets and politicians to serve as information gatekeepers, they could moderate the tone and nature of civic debate. Today, politicians are just another celebrity Twitter-pundit, and there is no media outlet that captures a fraction of market-share for Information. That comes from multiple sources, curated by confirmation-biasing algorithms on Smartphone and Facebook...
When the news distribution formula was Gatekeeper - Public, standards, codes of ethics and libel laws served to ensure quality of information and an appropriate tenor for public debate. Now that news dissemination is peer-to-peer, its the mob teaching the mob: stoking fears and prejudices by spreading memes, fake news, Youtube clips and conspiracy theories. With mass--misinformation aided by the technologies of the Disinformation Age, the clamor of the mob turns republics into their antithesis: mobocracy.
Polybius gave us the deterministic formula two millennia ago: mobs empower demagogues. Demagogues are the death of democracy.
8
So the less well off people of Poland as well as in Britain, Italy, Germany and the U.S. have succumbed to resentment, envy, and above all the belief that the ‘system’ is unfair. The ostensibly much resented Mr. Brooks laments that in any meritocracy, there are going to be a lot of people who lose out and do not get the glittering career they think they are due. Certainly not the glittering careers of the eternally resented Brooks’s and Applebaums of the world. But, to an ever greater extent, not even the more modest goals of a secure and dignified existence. This is what was bequeathed with the election of Reagan and Thatcher and in the years afterward, including the decidedly unmeritocratic George W. Bush.
4
.
“After the Soviet Union collapsed, conservatism no longer had a great moral cause to rally around. It became a technocratic, economics-focused movement concerned with small government and entitlement reform.”
Wrong.
My personal and my country’s national identity is not built on opposition to a failed enemy (the other). It is constructed in a positive, sustainable, adaptable and values-driven way.
Think/intuit: individual freedom and national sovereignty, self-reliance and social cohesion, freedom to succeed and value in failing, joy of life and love of learning, creativity and self-expression, pursuit of the good (God) and virtue in all.
We –America - got and continue to get much of this right (read Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now”). There will always need to be incremental improvements. Don’t listen to those who speak of revolution or utopia -- there is always work to be done and without proper effort, progress is not inevitable and regression is certain.
3
Brooks writes: "Many conservatives simply could not succeed in the new conservative counterestablishment. In any meritocracy, there are going to be a lot of people who lose out and do not get the glittering career they think they are due. Sooner or later those people are going to rise up to challenge the competition itself and to question its idea of excellence."
This is an incredibly bizarre statement, and I don't find it, or indeed the whole piece, very explanatory of anything. Perhaps he tried to put too much in too small a space. I don't understand what he is trying to tell us.
5
@Tor Krogius. I think I do understand Brooks' thesis here. He uses an analogous political culture in Poland to parallel and underscore our own. I miss smart, dedicated conservatives who were highly professional and generally honest such as Bob Dole, Don Rumsfeld (I didn't agree with him but he was not a conspiracy theory nut), Richard Lugar, Bill Buckley, John McCain, George H.W. Bush, and Howard Baker, to name just a few. These were/are people with morals, ideals and brains capable of negotiating across the aisle. I say this as a life-long democrat who often did not agree politically with these people. I miss intelligent, articulate discourse in Congress and the White House. We now have an administration peopled with fringe characters, many of whom have minimal contact with honesty, science or facts. They are cynical, often bizarre, and baldly partisan despite little or no evidence to support their claims. That includes Donald Trump, the Neo-fascist in Chief and ringleader of a media circus to distract us from his power grab.
1
@Tor Krogius There is a curious social Darwinian circularity to Brooks' "argument". Moderate scarcity in the conservative movement produces losers and those losers produce (populist) monsters. How do we know they're losers? The same way we know Brooks is so excellent: they don't have a writing gig with the New York Times. QED.
Someone not so smug might try taking politics seriously and consider, for example, how Brooks and his friends have colluded over the years to restrict the "political offer" and thereby frustrate legitimate democratic aspirations in areas relating to trade, immigration and foreign policy.
During a business visit to Warsaw in early 2000s, I met with many young bright professionals in both the private and public sector (Central bank included). Here was a generation of monetarists that placed all hope on Central Bank independence and EU enlargement for a bright future. Meanwhile, Italian and German developers where covering the country with shopping malls and gated communities. The iron will in the economic predictions was comparable to the rigidity and enthusiasm of Soviets embracing Lenin's New Economic Policy in 1922. There was no space for caution relative the perils of fixed exchange rates to accommodate fluctuations in economic activity, no doubt that the immense Polish labor force would be absorbed by dignified employment in both, the coming Polish economic boom or through alliances in West Europe. In fact, the EU commission kept setting impossible miles stones on Poland before allowing full EU integration, weary of that their numbers would threatened local employment. EU enlargement was mostly view as an opportunity to increase West European markets and investment opportunities and less as a true welcome. The stage was set for the outbreak of Polish Nationalism.
3
I've always thought that the intellectual basis for the conservative-liberal division was most related to the role of government vs. individual effort and private enterprise solving social problems, such as healthcare and poverty. What always bothered me was that proponents on both sides relied on theory, cultural myth, and anecdotal evidence when there are enough data floating around regarding social experiments across the world to suggest when and how different approaches work. Now, it seems to me that the issue of globalism vs nationalism in the sense of whether one's primary allegiance is to humanity or to one's country is part of the liberal -conservative split, although the issue is muddied by the globalism of business interests that are conservative, i.e. highly capitalistic and wealth creating for a few. I agree with David Brooks that conservatives have lost their focus and splintered as a movement, but liberals and progressives have also failed to articulate a philosophy that unites them in a coherent agenda, either nationally or globally. Europeans began to have such an agenda as they moved toward democratic socialism, but the wave of refugees coming from Africa and the Middle East challenged their systems sufficiently to bring back ultra-nationalism. We need some intelligent thinkers and political leaders to articulate some clearer ideas and raise the level of discussion. The quality and style of our social discussions precludes serious thought.
6
@Casey Dorman
Democratic/socialist European countries have a lot to teach us, and they've recently been put under extreme pressure due to two factors--refugee influx, and admittance to the EU of Eastern European countries that are less affluent. Those workers migrated to places like England, where they have suppressed wages, creating resentment resulting in Brexit. Refugees present a cost until they assimilate. Those two incidents, compounded by a global financial recession in 2008, are resulting in some European problems now.
The Europeans are up against quite a lot, while people here resent a comparatively few illegal immigrants or undocumented workers or whatever you want to call them. It's hard to get any sort of rational conversation started when people are fixated on what we engineers call bug dust.
Liberals/progressives such as myself do have a vision that aligns with the goals of some of the Democratic/socialist nations of Europe. We do not rely on myth--those countries are successful at providing services to their citizens while being capitalistic in their economic engines. For instance, their schools may be all run privately, but everyone can afford them. Same with health care--privately run but affordable and accessible to all.
We progressives can't seem to get our message across without being labelled commies and being accused of hating conservatives and religious people. How idiotic is that?
Conservatism in the US meant smaller government, states rights, family values, environmental conservation, and the rule of law in servitude to capitalism. These values remain, but there are few republicans who follow them except with lip service. Conservatives get confused when they spend their time trying to roll back the liberal policies that FDR and other liberal leaders initiated. Instead of offering something better, anti liberals tear the place down, leaving chaos and uncertainty in its place. Then the unscrupulous step in and take advantage of the chaos to enrich themselves.
I think that Mr. Brooks resentniks are those who used to look to conservatives as keepers of order. Once conservatives abandoned conservatism, resentment and anger became the operative forces.
8
Try reaching far back into the collective memory, when we were taught that the nation was built on the moral purpose outlined in the Declaration of Independence: that all men (sic) are created equal, that they are endowed… with certain inalienable rights… among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What Brooks laments is the loss of that basic tenet, a reverse sublimation, if you will, of this concept to the “some are more equal than others” notion that has overtaken our society in the form of racial hatred, tax breaks weighted in favor of the wealthy – not to mention better income, higher education, the right to health care and other “privileges” that are now apparently reserved for the one per cent. Whether these are the norms - or the outgrowths of some transmogrification of the Republican/conservative agenda may be arguable, but they pervade the politics of those currently in power who encourage a groundswell of willingness to blame the “other” for what sad state the nation is in. This “nationalism” is fake patriotism, intended to distract the masses, and effectively squelches the excellence and integrity for which Brooks longs; it has the potential to destroy the country and everything it supposedly stands for. Do conservatives want to clean up this mess, to un-make the bed they’re now lying in? Then have them bring forth leaders who embrace democracy, liberty and justice for all, and begin to contribute to the rebuilding of this badly damaged nation.
12
Mr. Brooks,
Our employers are shifting to the right, but complaining to our masters is unthinkable. Those who don't go with the program are relieved of their duties and this becomes a permanent blot on one's record.
Once dismissed, earning a living can be daunting. Medicare when available, now covers only 80% of costs.
We're left kissing the hands that support us and even that does not guarantee a continued livelihood. And do the conservatives have it all wrong? Certainly some of their ideas are good.
It's the shift you are talking about that seems universal. An endless circle of cause and effect pushing us all toward the right.
Years ago people just waited for the pendulum to swing back, and maybe it will. Meanwhile, European resistance to nationalism looks like it is beginning to crumble and here at home, privacy is a thing of the past.
4
There is a commonality to the pragmatism of Trump and its appeal to the Republican big tent and the socialist populism of Sanders and its appeal to Democrats.
Both of the establishment parties have become technocrats who believe that the experts should decide what is best for the masses and do not even have to persuade the masses anymore of the wisdom of their superiors.
The movement away from capitalism to socialism, with the government's increasing tendency to pick winners and losers without even having a public debate is offensive and feels wrong to the people. The career beltway politicians, along with the lobbyists and the executive branch agencies have taken over and do not take into consideration the will of the people. Minority interest groups use the court system to impose their will on the people absent any public legislative debate.
People on both sides are capable of accepting a compromise after a debate, but too many decisions were made in backrooms to the benefit of crony socialists who politicians on both sides of the aisle favor over the electorate.
There are very few citizens who have sufficiently broad comprehension of every single issue of importance or policy decision. But is feels wrong for the electorate to have no say.
We need to return to the rule of law, and are heading that way under Trump as we would have if Sanders had won the presidency. Had JEB or Hillary won, the status quo would continue.
When "conservatism" becomes a code word for protecting the privilege of wealth, or the privilege of a race, or the privilege of a religion, then the intellectual and moral underpinnings of "conservatism" are destroyed. The "conservatism" of the past had a grounding in principles that were not dedicated to protecting privilege for the few, by dividing and demonizing 'the other'. The "conservatism" of the past was more about the speed of change, and the mechanism of insuring that change and the rule of law both protected everyone and ignored no one. Now the new Trumpian "conservatives" are like the self-described evangelical "Christians" - intent not on their principles so much as imposing their will on 'the others' through the perversion of the rule of law, and through the force of the state. Conservatives of the past are rolling in their graves at this corruption.
18
Mr. Brooks column makes a hidden assumption that destroys his whole analysis. He assumes the social/political actions and definitions that have been in place during his adult lifetime is the way it has always been. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the turn of the 20th century neither party defined it self as conservative or liberal. The parties base was defined by the Civil War - the Republicans were strong in the Northeast and the Midwest while the Democrats were almost exclusively centered in the South. The major social issue was women's suffrage and the major economic issue was monopolies/trusts and the concentration of economic power.
So my question: how does the social concept of outsiders and resentniks fit into what was happening at the turn of the 20th century? It doesn't. Could human motivations have changed that much in a 125 years? Nope. I think that most people would agree what motivates human beings hasn't changed in thousands of years.
My 2 cents.
2
Paragraphs 8 and 9 really stood out for me. Liberals never really controlled the universities, or the news media, unless you believe that accurate unbiased news media, makes it liberal. As far as the universities being controlled by liberals, that is also not actually true, but more of a GOP talking point to attack against higher education. Unless you believe promoting critical thinking as liberal, then no, universities did not favor liberals. I attended a private university in the 70s. Our Chancellor was a moderate Republican. I am sure we were not the only university with that configuration.
In paragraph 9, two or three points: Compassionate conservatism was never compassionate, and never moral. The smaller government promoted by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist was "make it small enough so it can be strangled and drowned in the tub", not exactly a rousing endorsement for democracy, but more for the oligarchy and unfettered capitalism. Reagan was never the great president republicans try to paint him as. He was a charismatic actor and a generalist. The people manipulating him (and he was willingly manipulated) were and are still corrupt and have never had the best interests of our country at their core.
53
@Jiminy, yes, exactly this.
4
@Jiminy
I agree. Thank you for writing this.
4
As we overpopulate this planet and alter its climate and deplete its resources and pollute every aspect of the natural world it seems to me that we need a drastically different approach to living here together if we hope to survive.
We are all in this lifeboat together and the old politics of nationalism and the old economics of high octane capitalism seem to me unsuited to deal with our present -- let alone our future which is racing toward us with unprecedented speed.
Conservatism, with its fixation on the rear view mirror, seems to me to be particularly unsuited to aiding our advance into our future.
Collectivism, globalism, and considerably more focus on critical thinking instead of religious stories seems a better direction for us as a species rather than doubling down on all the old tropes which have left us washed up and desperate on this beach we call life.
13
Interesting thoughts. In traditionally more left leaning countries like France and Belgium, in which I lived for a considerable time, there has always been some suspicion of rich people. Perhaps this dates back to the times old family fortunes were built, many of them in shady colonial days. The heirs of old generational wealth tend to live very discreetly there, they hardly ever grant interviews or make public appearances.
America on the other hand has always embraced its millionaires and billionaires. They were role models, templates of success for everyone to aspire to, much more so than successful people in the humanities.
And this, despite the fact that our Darwinian capitalism by design favors people with traits like ruthlessness, psychopathy and amorality as we have seen on display with Travis Kalanick (Uber), Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg et al.
I sense that the extreme selfish behavior of the rich billionaires who fund and control Republicans is rapidly changing the image of extreme rich people in the US, and rightfully so.
The Mercers, Koch Brothers, Adelson et al practice reverse Noblesse oblige: instead of offering a reason to keep their privilege and power, they offer us reasons to reinstate the Eisenhower 90% tax bracket.
21
Mr. Brooks conveniently omits one crucial causal element in the rise of the discontented -- the realization on the part of the disaffected that the meritocracy system is substantially rigged in favor of the rich and powerful. Examples -- legal wrangling over affirmative action in college admissions when legacy admissions are unchallenged, denial of consumer "bailout" in the financial crisis of 2008 for "moral hazard" rationale when no such obstacle existed for the bailout of financial institutions, convenient outcry over budget deficits when in the government minority when no such concern exists when in the majority, etc.
24
I would say that there have always been a large number of people who go by the motto "it's not what you know, it's who you know." Most elitist fraternities that I observed in the 70s were certainly like that. This is what Brooks is talking about with the downplaying of excellence seen in the Trump White House. Another similar idea is "dress for success" which I view largely as coded talk for elitism. Under these ideas, loyalty is greatly favored over other forms of interaction and relationship building. It is not new. When loyalty is the main factor in who succeeds all kinds of bad outcomes arise, to the point that it really sets forth Machiavelli's playbook chapter and verse.
6
Some time ago, I read that Mr. Brooks does not deign to read reader comments to his pieces. That's a shame, particularly because his employer, the New York Times, is one of the few large media companies that carefully curates comments to weed out the sort of tiresome rageaholism and name-calling nastiness that frequently characterizes online comment sections.
But I really do wish Brooks would write a column explaining, in as much detail as necessary, what he *means* by his ubiquitous use of the words "spiritual" and "moral."
18
Raygunomics! S&L Crisis, Ronnie’s attack on unions, Iran-Contra, “Black, Manafort, and Stone”, tax cuts (welfare) for the wealthy - yes Mr. Brooks your man Reagan was just great. Reagan, W&Cheney, Trump. Do you see a pattern followed by your Republicans Mr. Brooks.
6
After 131 comments responding to David Brooks' column it's clear that he is not well supported by readers here. So where is Mr. Brooks' response and what does he think after considering the comments?
7
@M Miller
I just read another commenter who asserts that Mr. Brooks does not deign to read comments. It all makes sense to me now, because he never budges an inch.
Mr. Brooks believes he is a true conservative, whatever that is, and liberals are commies. We all keep pointing out to him that he's basically a Democrat now because his Republican party has gone off the far right deep end, but he just won't accept it.
Liberals are still bad, his conservative pals are mostly bad now, how is Mr. Brooks to continue? It's like a political soap opera, never to be resolved until the show is cancelled.
1
"Conservatism" is just another religion now, a mislabeled fraud.
14
Mr. Brooks, do you still identify yourself as a Conservative?
2
Reading this piece carefully, one can almost smell the poisonous gas of anti-semitism seeping out of today's GOP... an anti-semitism that Brooks has been willing himself to believe was not really a serious threat to him (and ultra-zionist, pro-Netanyahu Jewish billionaires like Adelson) as it was too improper and impolite for the toffs running the GOP to allow to show itself publicly.
Now that the elite toffs have run for cover and abandoned the GOP to the wolves - the angry, ignorant, stupid, and evil folks who quiver in the shadow of the angriest, most ignorant, stupidest, and possibly most evil of all (whose name we all know), and the rhythm of the jack boots can be heard getting louder and louder, Mr. Brooks has doubts about the moral mission of the GOP. He's not quite ready to jump ship - the elitist toffs might make a comeback, after all and they'll keep him safe.
There are parallel movements in Poland, Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, Russia, and others - each with the long-surpressed gas of anti-semitism wafting up from their sewers. I'm doubt that Mr. Brooks hanging on to his illusions about these movements and trying to gently steer them in a more constructive, positive moral direction will do him or anybody else more good than apologists for previous movements based on hatred, racism, and ultra-nationalist gibberish have in the past.
7
@d ascher
Your comment calls to mind the movie "Sophie's Choice" wherein she is sure the Nazis will spare her and her children because she is not Jewish. She was so wrong. As MLK, Jr. said injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere (I paraphrase). We live in perilous times. All of us.
1
Typical Brooks, column starts out heady and insightful then devolves into a petty complaint about those he perceives to be unheady and derelect to his insight.
4
Two thoughts. First, perhaps the Cold War was the fig leaf that covered the deeper held beliefs that are now at the front of the GOP: enrich the rich; screw the brown. Second, a NY Times article on Amazon's H2 selection reflects resentment. Why didn't Amazon relocate to the heartland? It needs creative people, world class universities, excellent education, etc. The Midwestern states have been laser-focused on shrinking public services, enforcing a narrow view of "Christianity" and supporting police (and others) who terrorize non-whites. How could Bezos ask people to move there until these states? Their chosen culture is not a good fit for his business. End of. The market has spoken.
6
What is an "outsider personality"?
3
Spiteful losers. No better example than the Fla. yoga studio shooter. Women wouldn’t date him. Comb my hair, lose a few pounds or just blame women.
2
Paul Ryan's beloved intellectual mentor, Ayn Rand, made it clear that it's a dog-eat-dog world and only the most selfish win. That is the epitome of what so-called conservatism has become. Conservatism today appears to be about conserving what the privelged already have and the wanna-be priveleged, aping King Trump and his golden curtains, aspire to. While California burns and islands drown, those at the pinnacles of power rub their hands gleefully, taking advantage of every opportunity to gain more power and money, and damn the torpedoes. Anyone who is a Republican today not only understands this cynical philosophy, but is also wed to it.
10
Brooks, had he been alive at the time, could have written the same tripe about Andrew Jackson. Truth is, Brook's pals and insider sources, did not get jobs in the Trump administration and like every permanent DC bubble denizen, he feels left out and cannot get his calls returned. Boo-hoo David.
3
What have you done with the real David Brooks? This is not some gassy tone poem, this article actually has something relatively interesting and relevant to say.
4
@Captain Obvious Agreed! Might be his first column in years that doesn't suggest all would be resolved if we just ate dinner at 6
1
The words Mr. Brooks are looking for are spiteful losers.
1
The real story here is what we've learned about the conservative "freedom fighters" of Cold War Lore.
Poland and Hungary have revealed their ingrained fascist tendencies, ultranationalism and anti-Semitism. Hungary and anti-immigrant Slovakia were allies of the Third Reich.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, hero of the west -- turned out to be a cranky anti-Semite who wrote a book about the role of Jews in the "Bolshevik Terror"that got a nice review from David Duke.
The fact is that like the former members of Nazi intelligence services recruited by the CIA, these nations and their conservatives have not been the freedom-loving democrats so falsely presented to us for decades.
Don't believe me?
Check out the annual Latvian parade honoring SS veterans.
3
David, the milquetoast gentleman act is really wearing thin. While you revel in your role as the contrarian, you clearly share the Times's a priori patronizing contempt for anyone who hasn't been as lucky as you. (By lucky, I mean that you are one of the few treated who gets to enjoy being treated like a valued family member by the otherwise brutal and self-righteous American system that grinds up and spits out the mere mortals who are not its chosen wunderkinds). This is the thread that unites your publication, much more so than any mere political bias: it likes to sneer at those who don't have the luxury of worrying about what's fashionable, and offer morality lectures from a position of cluelessness. Get a grip; or get off the stage, and make room for someone with something meaningful to say. Nobody is reading your articles because of their profundity. We are reading them because you've spent your life knowing the right people.
1
The Republican party has two large overarching problems and they are fairness and compassion. The party stands for greed at the expense of most Americans. As long as those at the top of the economic ladder get richer who cares what happens to everyone else? I got mine...don't worry about him. Deregulate industry so we can line our pockets. I got mine...don't worry about him/them. Give tax breaks to the wealthy so they can get richer. I got mine...don't worry about them. Take away health care and preexisting conditions so the insurance industry can screw the average American. I got mine...don't worry about them. On and on it goes with Republicans. Fairness and compassion? The Democrats will come along after Republicans have raped and pillaged the system as much as they can and they will vote them out of office. Then Republicans will sharpen their knives for the next shot at screwing the average American in two to four years. This cycle goes on and on and what do we have to show for it? Nothing but wage stagnation while the cost of everything continues to rise around us. This country is drowning us one greedy, unfair, Republican senator, congressperson, and supreme court justice at a time. When if ever will the average American figure it out?
11
Republicans have always been fascist in my view. A thin veneer of 'principle' when all they ever do is lie cheat and steal.
5
As of 8am CDT the majority of these comments make for a better read than anything David Brooks has ever written.
6
Most NTY opinion pieces are rubbish, but this one has some personal experience, clarity and insight in it that isn't the usual East Coast Democrat "admiring myself in the mirror as I talk". More of this please.
34
@Kaushik Ghose while I agree that most NYT opinion pieces are mostly personal whims with little substance, I was about to write exactly the opposite of your comment about this piece. IT is a superficial description of the development in Poland (attending a party does not provide enough datapoints for a country profile), which is justified by a myriad of observations (like the absence of meritocracy in the current WH administration) without an actual link. Are conservatives around the world so homogenous that they can be colored by one broad indiscriminating brush stroke?
11
It's easy for the right-wing to come together to fight left-wing authoritarianism (communism). Much harder for right-wingers to fight right-wing authoritarianism (fascism - though apparently we're now calling it populist nationalism). That's because it aligns more closely with right-wing beliefs. Supporters get a lot of what they want, though they do have to give up freedom (though not if they are part of the ruling party), and they also have to give up democracy and morals and adopt an ends-justifies-the-means mentality.
You could argue that a similar thing took place on the left during the Cold War, when conservatives accused liberals of not taking the threat of communism seriously enough and even sympathizing (some conservatives are still making this argument). Some of it may have been justified, a lot of it was fear mongering to score political points (I don't think the liberals in the US ever drifted as far towards communism as Trump and the GOP have drifted towards "populist nationalism", though I could be mistaken - it was before my time).
Unfortunately, I don't know the solution, except for a strong left wing and possibly some right wing defectors to push back against it. Honestly, looking at the Democrats doesn't give me much hope. Mr. Brooks is making a go of it, and for that I thank him.
2
People should stop using labels such as conservative, liberal, etc to define who they are and what they stand for. Labels are a tool of marketing to wrap a complexity into a simplicity that externally many agree on but internally means some different to each individual. This marketing is used to sell products, faith, ideology to people based on emotion. This is a way to lead a herd of sheep which is ok if you trust the shepherd.
Labeling is also used for personal attacks and cursing when there is poor vocabulary reserve to express oneself.
Don't label. State the issues and propose solutions.
5
The resentment that Mr. Brooks describes is a feature, not a bug. It has long been an essential tool in the conservative playbook. At least here in America, and most probably elsewhere as well, the conservative bloc consists of the rich and powerful at the top, those who wish to diminish the power of centralized government, and mostly not for philosophical reasons but for the money, i.e. less government means fewer social programs and less taxation and interference with Robber Baron-type business. They dream of shrinking government to the point where it can be drowned in a bathtub, as one of conservatism's famous exponents has said.
But in order to be elected, rich and powerful conservatives, a minority as far as population goes, need more votes, so they have turned to those of lesser financial means, working-class people who have been encouraged ceaselessly to resent the gummint and those darned libruls as the cause of their various frustrations, both real and delusionally regressive.
Conservatives rode into power on the backs of these resentful voters and were quite happy with them until they slipped their bonds. Now the resentful and incompetent are in charge, and those we might refer to as principled conservatives are horrified, as if they had no idea what they were creating in their Frankenstein's lab in conning their way into power.
It would be funny, if these people weren't hard at work destroying the country and ideals I grew up believing in.
15
@Rick
Exactly, educated and moderate republicans act shocked that Trump is in charge, but this didn't come out of nowhere. They've been actively generating this movement for decades. When you bash science and facts that are inconvenient to your plan to make money long enough people start to believe it.
4
@Rick - Perfectly stated. That Trump has connected with those resentful working-class Americans can be traced directly to his own traits of perpetual aggrievement. Whenever he is criticized or exposed for the toxic, immoral wannabe tyrant he is, he always plays the victim of someone other than himself.
2
I sure this will be torched, but this is an excellent column with an excellent collection of thoughts today.
6
Well, well. Once again, the generations-old myth that "liberals" control the media, universities, etc., written as though it need not be shown, but only asserted. Sorry, Mr. Brooks - you don't get a free pass.
Solzhenitzyn was the darling of the right wing, and seen as the voice of freedom, until he came to the US and was repelled and horrified by our freedoms. He ended up calling for Russia to return to rule by monarchy and the Russian Orthodox patriarch. King and Pope, in effect, wiping out centuries of western progress toward freedom and democracy. Now we have just that in Russia. I guess the conservatives' love for Putin is easy to understand.
Someone should tell Mr. Brooks that, if you stand with your right shoulder pressed into a corner, everyone else looks like a left-winger.
6
"above all the belief that the ‘system’ is unfair"
Mr. Brooks still thinks the system is fair? Why is it that when ever you are having a conversation with a Republican and you bring up the issue of income inequality they immediately go into a rage and call you a communist.
Isn't part of the problem that they still see the system as fair?
2
Conservatives still promote "small government and entitlement reform." I feel they are "dog whistles."
Never say exactly what "entitlements" need reforming, which parts of government needs to be smaller.
"The losers in the meritocratic competition, the permanent outsiders, seize on ethnic nationalism to give themselves a sense of belonging, to explain their failures, to rally the masses and to upend the meritocracy."
Meritocracy? Gimme a break! Samuel Johnson said "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels". In this case the scoundrels (Brooks' meritocrats) grabbed as much as they possibly could, paid out as little as they could get away with, made the markets even more like casinos where you gamble with other people's money, and ran scams with mortgages and insurance, leading to the 2008 crash.
They did not fail in a system of meritocracy, but in one of kleptocracy.
3
"When you take away excellence and integrity loyalty to the great leader is the only currency that remains."
What "Great" leader is that Mr. Brooks?
This is an interesting column, but it includes an odd assumption that papers over a big issue which may be new to Conservatives, but is old news to the left. It conflates Conservatives - a large-ish group of pundits and think tank intellectuals, maybe 1000 of them, with Republicans, a political party made up on the ground level mostly of aging white folks who were drawn in as far back as the Reagan era by lies and racist dog-whistling (remember welfare queens and "big bucks" who wouldn't work?) I'm not saying the Conservative movement is bereft of ideas. I'm saying those ideas were never understood let alone adopted by more than a few country club Republicans, and still aren't, witness the referendums on minimum wage that passed in red states, and the clamor when the Republicans tried to foist a half-baked notion of market-based health care on us shortly after Trump was elected. The resentniks are a sub-group of a movement, Conservatism, that never did have mass appeal.
4
To obtain a position in the Trump White House, all that is necessary is to be perceived by Trump to be completely loyal to Trump. The present administration doesn't deserve the sophisticated analysis Mr. Brooks has afforded it. Unfortunately, to end the blind obedience to this demagogue, it will take a paradigm shift in human thought, which might take awhile.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds would see the survival of a particular group of people or a belief as more important than the survival of all. When we understand all this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
.
1
The troubles that arose from focusing on anti-Communism became a quagmire, a swamp if you will. Fears of Communism motivated the West invading Soviet Union with 19 armies in 1917 fomenting a horrible civil war.
Continual fear of communism and socialism through the 20's and 30's gave rise to fascism and Nazism.
The 45-year Cold War resulted in a stewing pot of right wing unscrupulous capitalist forces: John Birchers, Senator Joseph McCarthy, TV evangelists, Israel lobbyists, and most especially an increasingly out-of-control military-industrial complex that FDR wanted to curtail and Eisenhower warned about. That war industry replaced WW II with the Cold War before the actual surrender of Germany and Japan. When the Cold War was over, it began a war against radical Islam that's been going for almost 30 years. That's 75 years of constant war.
Just a few thoughts about the destructiveness of conservativism But liberalism has been little better,
2
I’m confused. This column criticizes conservatism, but it does not presuppose a false equivilant moral failure on the Left. Is a guest columnist filling in for David today?
3
@Chip Leon
Nah, he got us with conservatives aligning with Walesa and Solzhenitsyn as if Democrats and liberals always root for the commies. He also restates his usual stupid assertion that liberals are in control of universities. I guess he could be slightly right about that--as a scientist, I don't subscribe to "creationism" because, unlike evolution, there's no evidence to support it. Every science course I took relied on evidence....is that not right? Should we study made up stuff and fantasy?
1
@CF
Exactly. Universities are more liberal not because of some conspiracy (this is how conservatives think evidently), but because educated people who support science and intellectual rigor come to the conclusion based on research and evidence that progressive policies make for a better world.
David,
I admire your desire to keep hold of some sort of "good & moral" conservatism, but I don't think it ever existed. You are just a misplaced democrat. I'm 60, grew up in a small town with lots of the same people you are talking about. I think themoral aspirations have always been problematic. It is making judgements about other people's work ethic or belief systems or their values. Or it has been an amoral power grab. Usually it is some weird combo or both. Goldwater? The Kochs? Come on. Are you Charles Percy? He would be a democrat today.
2
Today, is tribal and society is rootless. Those friendships in 1999 were torn asunder by the Republicans in general but by trump specifically.
Republicans do believe that the Democrats are traitors and can't be trusted for anything. Just yesterday, I was told, that Democrats were driving around of election day and voting over and over again. These are intelligent people, how did they come to believe this nonsense? They sit at dinner with us, the Liberals, are they unable to discern the truth?
The Republicans for decades have been separating themselves and will hear nothing but their own dogma. Certainly, the election of the first black President, Mr. Obama, throw them over the edge. This culminated in the election of trump, master of evil, lying, bullying, hatred and incompetence.
It's not 1999 anymore and the enemy is us.
1
So if conservative is failing, maybe stop being a conservative?
6
David, I would suggest to you that conservativism has not “become spiritually flat”.
It has always been so.
1
You're usually quite good, but the dark side of your excellence seems to be that you're rather smug. Some of your words:
Good Guys---
meritocracy
Bad Guys---
(no) glittering career
losers
permanent outsiders
failures
(lack of) professional competence
lack of creativity and talent
And You quote Applebaum:
“Resentment, envy, and above all the belief that the ‘system’ is unfair." [Polish Right Intellectuals]
[An aside] I was in Poland several times during the uprising of the 1980s. The once idealistic movement was seduced by the goodies and culture of the West. But, in time, they learned there's a morning after to such a binge, and thus the anti-Western new uprising.
We are left with your judgment, and Applebaum's, that, (1) the system is indeed fair, (2) those who don't make it in the system are losers, (3) the losers are incompetent, lacking creativity and talent, resentful, envious...
Take the opposite of the items in (3) and you get your version of the elite: competent, creative, talented, magnanimous, sympathetic...
Let me give you my take on the elite, around whom I spent some years:
(1) above all, sycophantic: that's how you get to the top
(2) confusing their best schools with their intelligence and culture
(3) smug
(4) backbiting: that's also how you get to the top
Well, there's a lot more, but you get the idea.
Incidentally, my pride and achievement:
"While there is a lower class, I am in it."---Debs
Beats meritocracy any day.
3
Conservative of what exactly? A history of racism and white privilege, larded with institutional incompetence and a shameful record of deceit and death dealing war mongering?
2
One of the building blocks of a "moral community" is honesty. Not pearl clutching.
Be a mensch, Mr. Brooks, and come clean. Just admit that you held your nose and voted for him.
3
Actually, Mr. Brooks, conservatism is inappropriate in a free society!
Conservatism is submission to the authority of the status quo. It is dedication to conformity in thought and behavior. It is resentment of the adventurous, the risk-taker, and the outstanding achiever.
Conservatism may be expedient for a person living under an oppressive regime like Communist Poland and Nazi Germany. But, a conservative person living in a free society is a shameless squander-er of the blessings of liberty he has been granted.
So, Mr. Brooks, you cannot reconcile conservatism with freedom, adventure, and opportunity! You cannot differentiate sincere conservatism from suppressive conservatism.
Give it up, all you conservatives! Relax the sour demeanor, open the judgmental mind, loosen the tie and collar, and take a giant leap over to the bright side!
3
So, Brooks thinks the self-admiring in-group to which he belongs should get its power back and the outsiders should go back to being outsiders. What a nose-in-the-air, arrogant take on the present situation.
Mr. Brooks should know that it takes one to know one. He seems to resent not having been, or being, asked to serve in any government, to which he would graciously lend his self-professed superior intellectual skills and pedigree.
Mr. Brooks seems to prefer in government the likes of the intellectual and ineffectual well-known racist Woodrow Wilson, or alternatively the pseudo-conservative pseudo-intellectual statist TDR, or their fresher ilk.
Mr. Brooks still does not seem to realize, after two years, that it's superior attitudes like his, exemplified by this article, that bounced the George Wills of the party out to the curb, and elected Trump.
And the longer he keeps his resentment going, the longer Trump stays in.
--- 9:55 am Fri
1
This read like a eulogy.
This piece oozes self-pity and victimhood - the very things the author seems, with little self-awareness, to be railing against.
Better to say that this is who conservatives have always been, from the Know-Nothings through John Birch; from the Dixiecrats through St. Ronald. And there is a clear arc from the pseudo-intellectual William F. Buckley through the non-intellectual Donald J. Trump.
It's just who they are, all lipstick applications destined to fail in virtually no time.
1
It is surprising that David Brooks doesn't understand nationalism. I shall try to enlighten him. Imagine something called "homism." It means: I have a right to determine who enters my home. Then there are the globalists who say: "No, you must admit at least three Muslims from Syria and three Mexicans or Central Americans into your home and let them live with you." I wonder if Brooks and other noble anti-nationalists would be happy to comply with such an ordinance? Well, then perhaps they might understand "homism." Why then cannot they understand nationalism?
1
This is a puff piece with no mention of the move of the Neo-Confederate Slave State Democrats to the Republican party after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed.
The Republican party was captured by the zealots of the Evangelical movement, itself an effort of the Conservative Slave State citizens to preserve their culture (the Culture War) in the face of an increasingly egalitarian society.
The deep red states of the south are taken for granted; we need to look carefully at the culture of racial hatred they espouse in their 'churches' and politics.
The losers at the end of the 1865 didn't end the Civil War on their side. They instead formed the KKK, began lynching newly freed African Americans and instituted Jim Crow laws.
Southern society is about racist resentment, violence and hate, and they now are permitted to display this on the national stage.
4
Finally! If only you and others would have recognized this when "King" Trump was campaigning.
1
Ideology and brand labels have to be ignored if we are to deal with the two most pressing truths of the times. First, the major scientific bodies of this world say that survival of our species on this planet demands that greenhouse gas be curbed. Second, while 70 years ago, it made sense for the US to assume the obligation to police Asia and Europe that no longer is so or practical. Those things are true, ideology or no ideology. The terms or concepts of conservative vs. liberal are outmoded and of no help in dealing with current reality.
There's a lot of bogus history in this column.
Modern conservatism was founded by right-wing businessmen opposed to New Deal regulations and unionization. They were anti-communist in that as far as they were concerned, the New Deal was Communism anyway.
Those rich businessmen built a counter-establishment way before Reagan, starting in the 1940s. They funded Buckley. They funded pastors to rail against liberal economic policies. Jack Welch and Fred Koch founded and funded the John Birch Society.
Anti-communism was never a "great moral cause" for most of those businessmen; they just wanted more money. The obvious analogy would be... the same Republican Party, seventy years later, whose MVP supporters like Robert Mercer and Charles Koch care nothing about abortion policy, but are happy to use it as a wedge issue to get Republicans elected.
Since the New Deal, the Republican Party has always consisted of a business wing that demands unpopular policies coupled with a "popular" wing constructed to get enough votes to give the moneymen what they want at least some of the time. In the 50s the popular issue was anti-communism; from the 60s to 2000s it was opposition to the Civil Rights movement, feminism, and "godlessness"; now in the 2010s it is overt white supremacism and vague claims of economic autarky.
The only core moral principle of the modern GOP is to enrich the rich. Everything else is negotiable. Until they abandon that core, they will remain morally bankrupt.
11
It seems ironic to me that so may never-Trumpers like Mr. Brooks look back on the Reagan years as some sort of golden age of American Conservatism. Reagan, though a less loathsome human than Trump, paved the way for Trump and the current state of the Republican party. Reagan was no more qualified to be President than Trump, but Republicans ignored and continue to ignore that fact. If the President need not be qualified, why should anyone else?
3
Whilst recognizing the validity in virtually this entire essay, it still hurts when someone opines that liberals "controlled" universities and news media ... as if it was itself a political victory rather than simply the logical outcome of education and competency.
Likewise the phrasing that conservatives built broadcasting outlets. The words have been chosen carefully, but it still has a whiff of a professional endeavor rather than an obscene propaganda machine, built explicitly to dupe the gullible.
4
Today Mr. Brooks has it exactly backwards. Successful ideologies don't need to search for compelling moral justifications; compelling moral justifications search out suitable ideologies. His acknowledgement that post-Cold War conservatism has lost its larger moral purpose and sunk into the disarray of Trump is a clear signal that conservatism as we know it (Buckley-Reagan-Thatcher-Neocons) is done.
I take some solace with the fact that most comments today revolve around simple conservative greed, as opposed to conservatives seeking some moral high ground for it's justification. That this is now a more commonly held belief gives me cause for hope. But greed is a harsh term, difficult for many to swallow, however true it may be. Might it not be better at times to couch the differences between conservatives and liberals in more palatable terms, conservative Republicans being the party of self-interest, and liberal Democrats being the party of common-interests? Self-interest vs. common-interest, rather than rich and greedy vs. poor and vulnerable? This might be a much more palatable option, without hiding the greed. Add predatory to self-interest (e.g. predatory self-interest) and you have a truly sinister term.
1
The central problem described by Mr. Brooks is not a new one. Many decades ago, Russell Kirk wrote that "Populism is a revolt against the Smart Guys. I am very ready to confess that the present Smart Guys, as represented by the dominant mentality of the Academy and of . . . the Knowledge Class today, are insufficiently endowed with right reason and moral imagination. But it would not be an improvement to supplant them by persons of thoroughgoing ignorance and incompetence." The United States is currently in the midst of an experiment of governance by "persons of thoroughgoing ignorance and incompetence." While the outcome of that trial is not yet known, the early evidence is not encouraging.
3
Brooks has such romantic notions! Excellence and meritocracy are his metier, despite the fact that "excellence" is trite nonsense and meritocracy is a conservative ideological rationalization for maintaining privilege.
I laugh out loud at organizations that declare a mission statement dedicated to "excellence." It is empty of meaning, as no organization would declare a mission dedicated to mediocrity or slightly above average performance. Anyone making such a declaration is an empty suit, and America has abundant "suits" looking for a spine to fill them.
And we don't live in a meritocracy. This myth is used to preserve unearned advantage. Access to higher education and professional employment is allegedly based on merit, so any affirmative efforts to diversify are suspect and anti-meritocratic. The truth is that access to higher education and lucrative professional employment are based on the privilege of whiteness, the advantage of relationship, a certain kind of social pedigree and fluid competence in the language and culture of privilege.
There are, of course, exceptions, but these are the rules.
@Barking Doggerel
Then why do the children of poor asian immigrants end up at the best universities and the highest paying jobs? Asian family median incomes are 40% higher than the national average. You're right that there are certain professions like finance where "old money" rich white families prefer to hire the children of their country club friends, but this doesn't apply to the vast majority of white people in this country. I'm not saying there are no race based disadvantages, certainly our history of confining african americans to certain neighborhoods with low quality schools is disgraceful and we need to do a lot more to address that, hopefully at the root cause and not decades too late through affirmative college admissions.
1
@E B
Many children of poor Asian immigrants are mired in poverty, although you offer a valid point. But your analysis stipulates to the notion that their are "best" universities and that the gatekeeping mechanisms are genuine measures of merit. As an educator, I disagree. The Asian-American young folks to which you refer have had some success by playing the game designed by the ensconced arbiters of merit. And they often pay a devastating price. I know many, many, Asian-American "success" stories who have been sharply wounded by the relentless pressure and narrow achievement they chased.
The other part of the conservative "brand" that you left out was a fundamentalist religiosity, which concerns itself with abortion, individual sexual behavior (eg homosexuality), and of late, even sinful contraception (once the belief only of Catholics, and in the US, a subset of those) - and which seeks to impose that particular brand of morality on society. That aspect of "conservatism" never sat well with me as a former conservative, who believes in keeping government out of personal decisions, including those in the bedroom or doctor's office. So that was the beginning of my drift away from Republicanism, solidified by our misadventures in Iraq after 9/11, Abu Grhaib, etc.
Now, with Trumpism having become the new Republican philosophy, the personal sexual behavior emphasis has seemingly receded into irrelevance, but the war on abortion rights and birth control can continue apace, as we don't (yet) have evidence that Trump has encouraged or paid for his mistresses' abortions (though I imagine he has). If that comes to light, would that be another "mulligan" and force our fundamentalist friends to de-emphasize abortion, too?
3
Again, David Brooks demonstrates that he’s in a state of denial. Granted, his two concluding points are undeniable: If conservatism is ever to recover it has to find a new moral purpose, and it must restore standards of competence and integrity. But because Mister Brooks is in denial, he passes over the third and perhaps most important point. Honest conservatives must openly and decisively abandon the ruined Republican party, even if such abandonment entails risk to their political careers. The reality is that the Republican party is now the Trump party, led by a sinister buffoon and dominated in both the legislative and executive branches of government by the very incompetents, opportunists and lickspittles whose qualities are those that David Brooks denigrates. The old Republican party is dead and shows no sign of returning to life. It must be renounced by conservatives who have even an ounce of integrity in their beings.
1
The trumpist base confuses "excellency and integrity" with intellectualism and academia which they despise. So we are stuck with a D team presidency.
Want to know why liberals of all stripes don't trust conservatives of any stripe?
Because...
"...technocratic, economics-focused movement concerned with small government and entitlement reform."
...is conserva-speak for making certain that the already wealthy retain primacy over the distribution of the nation's wealth.
God forbid that we have a government whose size is dictated by necessity; and that "entitlements" aren't "reformed" in a downward direction.
As a philosophy, conservatism, along with post-Marx Communism, is an intellectual and practical failure, and rightfully belongs in the dustbin of history.
3
I think the endless messaging that you can have lots of stuff and not pay for it (ie, pay taxes) also contributes to the resentniks rise. The notion that somehow someone else is getting more has been a tactic of the right to divide the nation. Working class whites were told working class blacks were getting more benefits, immigrants were gaming the system and getting loads of stuff. Intellectuals were snotty, upper class toads telling us all what's good for us. Why is anyone surprised Trump came along and pushed that messaging to hilt?
3
Modern Republican "conservatives" have created the biggest budget deficits in our history, encouraged monopolistic interests, maximized voter suppression, and largely sold their remaining souls to billionaire zealots. Their carnage is showing.
2
I think Brooks’ nostalgia for a better conservatism is a little wacky. As far as I can remember, it has always been about getting in others’ business (I.e. more government rather than purported less), judging others, encouraging financial selfishness, excluding people that are not white.
“Resentment, envy, and above all the belief that the ‘system’ is unfair — these are important sentiments among the intellectuals of the Polish right,” Applebaum writes."
True for the right wingers in Poland...and true for the right wingers in the USA. But, in fairness, also true for many on the far left.
Take the Green Party...please. Their standard bearer, Jill Stein, supported Trump in the last election. The "Greens" claim to be pro environment and social justice, but then pull votes away from the Democratic candidates (who are also generally pro environment and social justice), allowing republicans to win. Do I need to even tell you that republicans are anti-environment and anti social justice?
What does "green" stand for in this country? Envy? It sure seems so. Jill Stein was clearly envious of the major political parties...and in particular, the democratic party. I can only conclude that the "greens" are composed of envious power seekers who are not politically astute enough to succeed in the real world, so they formed their own little party to act as spoilers and hurt their own fake causes by helping republican right wingers get elected.
Koch brothers...are you listening? Maybe the answer is yes. I wonder how much support the "greens" get from right wing billionaires to help republicans get elected by stealing votes from Democratic candidates. I wouldn't put it past them.
To save democracy, we need to vote out all republicans...and not vote for "greens".
1
Things happen for a reason
"The losers in the meritocratic competition, the permanent outsiders, seize on ethnic nationalism to give themselves a sense of belonging, to explain their failures, to rally the masses and to upend the meritocracy." - well put.
The losers lost their sense of belonging. And the losers have become a big part of society which implies that the meritocracy has failed them.
No wonder anti-establishment (or status quote) is gaining momentum. Democracy at work.
Ebb and flow...
The Trump voter did not generate spontaneously under a bell jar in a lab, nor did he crawl from beneath a rock. He (as he is as largely male as he is white) was constructed with sedulous care and a cynical eye toward establishing power by a minority party, one whose platform was never more than tax relief and financial deregulation for its donor class, racialism in all its non-disguises for its voting class, and various degrees of disenfranchisement for the rest of us.
When Republicans look at Trump, they should understand that they are not seeing a demagogue who hijacked their party nor a vulgar autocrat who soiled their noble and beautiful Burkean principles. Rather, they are a party of Dorian Grays come face-to-face with their own picture at last. With luck, and a little karma, their attempts to deny and disown it, like this one by Mr. Brooks, will end up just as Dorian's attempt to destroy his own picture did ... with the illusion hung mockingly on the wall and the grotesque reality sprawled on the carpet.
Thank you David, terrific points.
So, in the past, conservatism's "great moral cause" was to provide a counterbalance to communism. Wasn't that also German facism's "great moral cause?" Tricky territory here.
1
Mr. Brooks' concept of conservatism, and more in particular, the idea that is somehow fosters a meritocracy is a chimera. Meritocracy doesn't work in practice for a very practical reason. Merit, or excellence is you will, is not trans generational.
A parent's merit, i.e. meritorious progress in society, very often leads to his or her offspring starting life with an, in a true meritocracy, unfair advantage. It is a variant of money marrying money and clotting at the top.
For a meritocracy to work, it should, ironically be managed centrally and each individual should be tested objectively and give the opportunities that most align with discerned abilities. If that means that the indolent and stupid children fall by the wayside and do not advance riding mummy or daddy's coattails, that would be just and proper. But it is easy to see where the problem lies...
So, I doubt very much that American conservatism is anything other than the pursuit, and the conservation (!!!), of wealth, which can be money or access to power.
I have a slightly different theory: that the eagerness of David Brooks (UofChicago) and his "real conservative" friends -- people like Max Boot (UC Berkeley), Jennifer Rubin (UC Berkeley), Jonah Goldberg (Gaucher College!) and so on -- to police their movement and exclude all voices that might be accused by their political opponents of "nativism", "xenophobia" and suchlike is a reflection, not of the latter's essential mediocrity, but of the deference felt by Brooks et al. to a liberal media establishment whose leading lights all attended the Ivy League and whose esteem they desperately crave.
How do we know Brooks is excellent? Well, we're reading this in the pages of the New York Times, aren't we?
1
David Brooks makes a breathtakingly broad, and essentially wrong, point when he ascribes the control of such Polish institutions during the Cold War as “the universities, the news media and the cultural high ground” to “liberals.” Hogwash. Of course those institutions were thoroughly under the thumb of a totalitarian COMMUNIST government. The opposition to that 45-year dictatorship was broadly spread among nearly all sectors of non-Communist political and social thinking. My guess is that the preponderance of members of that opposition would describe themselves—accurately—as “liberals.” Probably no single American (perhaps except Ronald Reagan) did more to actually bring about the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was George Soros. Last anyone looked, he was no conservative. Indeed the ideals of his Open Society are the very apotheosis of liberal thinking—in the classical 19th Century European sense.
Mr. Brooks, when next looking for a straw man to knock down, please try to pick one that is remotely plausible.
It's somewhat amusing to listen to David Brooks philosophize, generalize, and externalize his way towards an explanation for the intellectual decline of the conservatism. Really, it's much more simple.
I can't speak to Poland or Hungary, but I have watched American politics for more than four decades. For at least three of those decades the Republican party has been afflicted by a gradual but consistent intellectual and moral rot from the inside. The rot does not result from the misguided grasping of a new (populist, nationalist) cause to replace the old, noble anti-communist cause.
No, the only causes of the Republican party are power, wealth and victory in what it apparently regards as some kind of a zero sum game among the citizens of its own country. This doesn't reflect philosophical confusion as much as craven soullessness. It is the opposite of patriotic.
508
@CD in Maine
The same argument can be made about the intellectual and moral rot of the Democrat party.
Al Gore made hundreds of million selling his theory, using his political connections "consulting" in the establishment of carbon trading markets in the EU that were less successful than the US in reducing emissions, while living a lifestyle with a carbon foot print at least 50 times that of the average American household.
The Clintons bought Hillary a Senate seat with presidential pardons in the only state in the Union that would elect someone who had never resided in the state, a position she leveraged into a position as Secretary of State, burnishing her resume for her run in 2016 for president. She bought the nomination by purchasing all of the Super Delegates, freezing out all Democrat contenders and wound of competing only with a Socialist who changed party only long enough to lose the nomination.
The Clintons released their tax returns as well as required information returns for the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons went from dead broke in 2000 to amassing a fortune even bigger than Al Gore's by selling influence. All you have to do is examine who paid Bill and how many billions flowed through the Clinton Foundation to see that.
The Obamas hadn't completed their move out of the White House before they were harvesting the bounty of their "public service."
And what high moral purpose is reflected in the Democrat intellectual arguments?
5
@ebmem
The proper term is "Democratic." Anytime somebody uses "Democrat" as a slur, I don't bother reading any further. Sorry.
42
@ebmem
Sorry, if you agree the conservatives or the Republicans failed and your arguments about the Democrats failed , then which party should lead? Both party leaders are dishonest, corrupt and have no moral purpose. Are we , the Americans are going through dark channel and no light in sight?
1
Mr. Brooks makes some good points. But the idea of a moral conservatism is in opposition to the trajectory of most conservative policies and the actions of Republicans in office. A meritocracy is a construction, and the rules for advancement pushed by conservatives has always been for the benefit of themselves, and people like them. A rising tide will float our boats - not theirs. You can't base a moral movement on that kind of thinking.
1
I eagerly read Brooks for some hint of how reasonable and responsible conservatives can do what they do. I am still in the dark.
How can the right turn its back on climate and choose to increase the difficulties faced the planet's poorest? Where is the logic and morality in refusing to acknowledge what science knows and in failing to accept reasonable predictions of the impacts of additional warming of 1.5 C (2.9 F), 2 C (3.8 F) or more?
All energy companies are in the First Law business (The First Law of Thermodynamics allows the accounting that enables the selling of energy - we know the energy content of the fuels that are bought and sold and are able to predict what can be done with those fuels). When that same First Law is applied to climate, it is clear that warming is happening because of the greenhouse gases that we put into the atmosphere and that this warming is going to continue. Thus we are creating dangerous conditions for ecosystems, forests, agriculture and storms.
The slimy, conservative circumlocutions used to avoid these stark conclusions are an insult to the Age of Reason. Joseph Fourier put us on the path to understanding climate in 1824 and the "yeah buts" from the denial community lack actual scientific and economic content and honesty.The Russians, Saudis and Trumpists are determined to protect the 401ks of all those who are invested in the carbon below ground. Where are the honest conservatives?
James Wilson
Golden, Colorado
1
I am fascinated by the idea that conservatism started for many as "anti-communism" and that the balloon burst when the Soviet Union collapsed. Of course this only demonstrates that conservatism is a mish-mash of feelings and beliefs without philosophical rigor, just like "progressivism". We conflate conservative with Republican and progressive with Democrat all the time, without realizing the frailty of that association. I have always appreciated your explanation of "Reaganism" as a conservative doctrine. And if you were to wonder about why he became popular it wasn't the conservative market/economic part that worked, it was the "Welfare Queen" and "Tax Hate" parts. The market, economic part didn't helped wealthy more. In other words it was all PR, relying on biases, but just like the progressives. With Trump we have found that Celebrity and falsehoods recapture the spirit of the old Soviet model of propaganda and eerily remind me of "Animal Farm", doublespeak and all. Somehow, Mr. Brooks, I hope you, Mr. Flake, Mr. Will and other "conservatives" may help save us by explaining that democracy needs an informed electorate, not a passionate one, wallowing in biases.
4
@William Trainor, well said. For my friends who supported Reagan, the number one reason was Reagan's stated belief that certain Americans were just lazy and wanted nothing more from life to sit around all day and collect a big fat Welfare check, and Reagan's stated belief that certain immigrants came to America because they heard that they too could sit around doing nothing and collect Welfare. The corollary for my friends, as for Reagan, was that if you throw people off of Welfare you could drastically reduce your taxes. Of course little of this was true but for my friends these were the issues they were most passionate about. Building many more nuclear missiles to aim at Russia was another point.
1
@William Trainor: These people haven't even conserved the meaning of words like "conservative".
@William Trainor
It is entertaining that Democrats are hostile to Reagan policies today, forgetting that they were highly popular at the time. During Reagan's entire administration, Democrats held a majority in the House, although Republicans gained a majority in the Senate two years into his administration.
Democrats also rave about the wonders of Bill Clintons administration. They forget that after he attempted to roll out Hillarycare, Democrats not only lost the majority in the Senate, but also lost the House majority for the first time in 40 years.
Americans generally benefit from divided government. But it takes having a president with executive experience who knows how to negotiate with people in the opposing party. Reagan, LBJ, JFK during his short tenure, RMN, Clinton had that ability.
Obama, the community organizer, thought that speaking truth to power was equivalent to demanding money from power and then distributing it to his allies. He did not know how to act when he was power, unable to even get a Democrat Congress to pass reasonable laws. So he resorted to autocratic rule by pen and cell phone.
Whether we accomplish progress during the next two years depends. Whether the pragmatist Trump's storied ability to negotiate is real and whether Pelosi decides that Democrat 2020 electoral prospects are better if the Democrats make legislative progress or continue to fertilize divisiveness.
Perhaps Mr Brooks could begin the path toward integrity among conservatives by permanently rejecting the notion of "entitlements" to describe social security and Medicare. These are insurance programs to which people pay. They are unlike, for example, corporate handouts and tax benefits for the rich.
8
@Dan Meyer
Perhaps it would be a path to integrity on the part of Democrats if they did not treat the term entitlements as a pejorative.
An entitlement is a government program to which an individual has a legal right. Some, like a free public education, food stamps and Medicaid, do not require that the beneficiary have contributed to the program. Others, like Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance require that one have contributed to the program or, in the case of unemployment insurance, that the individual have worked. The EITC is a federal welfare program available to refund some or all payroll taxes for low income workers.
Medicare and Social Security are not insurance plans. The are welfare programs where high income people subsidize low income people and the current workers subsidize retirees. For Medicare, 50% of costs are paid, not by the payroll tax or premiums, but from general federal revenue. SCOTUS has ruled that the details of the programs can be changed at any time by action of Congress. The legal right to claim benefits is subject to revision if Congress changes the rules.
It is entertaining that you are offended by the fact that conservatives as well as liberals refer to Social Security as entitlements, but take no issue with the fact that Democrats defunded Medicare to the tune of $0.8 trillion, which retirees are absorbing in additional premiums.
Many Republicans know their party left them. The emphasis on religion is problematic but the worse problem lies in their policies. And I am setting aside, for a moment, the albatross that is Trump. You can be for moderation, compromise, and cooperation and still remain a Republican. Solutions could be Republican ideas which include the money to pay for it, a very pragmatic approach that holds on to Republican values. Stop being the party of no. Yes, but we need a way to pay for it. Compromise. It's not painful. Yep, a VAT tax could pay down that huge debt that we Republicans are just as responsible for as the Democrats. Do something good and wise for your country. Not this phony nationalism. If you really love this country, help it.
6
@dudley thompson: I have been saying, for decades, that "Tax and spend" (or, more accurately, "Tax then spend") is fiscally responsible policy for meeting the needs and wants (and, yes, we do have to include wants) of the nation. Yet the phrase, "Tax and spend Democrats!," has been used as a dismissive pejorative for just as long. Nothing is less responsible than decades of the parade of tax cuts (that differentially benefit the wealthiest - those who least need the benefit) accompanied by spending increases. The Democrats, are by any historical or comparative measures, the party of sane conservatism these days, and have been for decades now.
1
@dudley Thompson
Democrats were in the majority until they rejected fundamentalist Christians, followed by fiscally responsible Democrats, followed by working people. Their support of illegal aliens has driven Black voters into non-voting.
Although the Republican Party is the big tent party, if you think imposing a VAT is part of any solution, you are neither a conservative nor a Republican.
The federal budget deficit is not the consequence of our not collecting sufficient revenue. It is the consequence of spending too much. If we cut back on corporate crony socialist welfare, there would be plenty of money available to cover human needs and other priorities of the electorate.
If you eliminated the $14 billion per year paid to renewable energy cronies, it would reduce the profits of Solar City and would drive down the cost of home roof top solar installations. If you eliminated the charitable deduction of appreciated assets to $100,000 per year, limited the compensation of employees of charities to $1 million per year, and required charitable organizations to spend 10% of their endowments, tax collections would increase.
The Ford Foundation, Gates Foundation and Buffett's heirs would lose their ability to pay themselves high salaries to lobby the government to spend money on the preferences of the mega-wealthy.
This is a welcome assessment from inside the conservative movement. The rift is widening now. In the past, I would occasionally vote for a Republican, and even when I didn't, I respected many Republican politicians as being honorable and patriotic even when I disagreed with some of their politics. I regarded myself as a centrist, a conservative on international policies and law enforcement, and a liberal on social policies.
No more. As with many, I have family members who are pro-Trump but it does seem like a new civil war era. In the past, who would have fought tooth and nail against simply counting votes? Republicans used to strongly support voting rights, environmental stewardship, free trade, and as noted here, they opposed Russian dictatorship and autocrats.
As to the ever sinking level of Trump administrative 'talent', ie., people who often audition for White House consideration on Fox, it isn't just that they don't rank well against meritocratic principles. They also usually have previous ethics problems such as conflicts of interest, public comments that are highly partisan or bigoted, or some unsavory hidden life or past that rises into view.
All of these are familiar steps towards fascism and dictatorship. Ye Olde Republican Party is gone. Nationalism almost invariably means white nationalism, and that is what is rising in its place.
10
@smb
Brooks is not a conservative.
Nationalism is a synonym for patriotism unless uttered by Trump. It is not white supremacy or fascism.
When Obama was not able to get even the Democrat Congress to pass legislation and instead decided to impose regulation not authorized by Congress and ruled by pen and cell phone, that was autocracy and dictatorship.
When Hillary's husband received speaking and consulting fees from foreign governments while Hillary was Senator and Secretary of State, that was a conflict of interest for a public official and a violation of the emoluments clause. [Trump enterprise receiving fair market value for renting hotel rooms doesn't even come close to selling government influence.] Her husband and daughter were simultaneously raising billions for the Clinton Foundation, which Hillary was spending on paying Huma Weiner, a full time federal employee, $150,000 per year, an additional conflict of interest.
When Obama declared war on coal, and Hillary promised to put coal miners out of work, their decisions represented fascism. The government, absent action of Congress, decided to take over private sector businesses and put them out of business. Democrats argue that the industry was doomed anyway, but if that were true, why not let nature take its course? If there were a public desire to take official action, it was up to those citizens to persuade their representatives to pass laws.
Obama hated America. That does not make him not a fascist.
Respectfully,
(1) Conservatives are not really pro- free market:
Intellectually, conservatives never make a distinction between markets that are genuinely competitive characterized by broadly shared risk, with no information asymmetry (as when Wall street knowingly sells subprime mortgages). They substituted private enterprise for competitive private enterprise where risk is roughly known and shared widely, and market information symmetry exists. Consequently, 'market failure do not arise, or moral hazard is not pushed to society at large. Instead, embrace market failure at the expense of the lower classes. To divert the attention of the latter, they use the standbys: hate and fear. Although, Trump is vastly superior in drumming up fear and hate in a way that no GOP conservative could, such that it exceeds the wildest expectations of the renown hate/fear artist, Lee Atwater.
No wonder the White working class base has moved over to the false prophet Trump for protection from the 'negative externalities' such as 'unfair competition', and the like.
The productivity of American workers have been rising consistently for the last four decades, yet their income have remained flat. Whereas the wealth they produced has percolated to the very top so that the top 5 percent of Americans now control 90 percent of liquid net worth- stocks, bonds, the surrender value of annuities, etc. Neither traditional conservatives, nor Trump or the GOP have answers to any of this.
7
@Jim Bob, thank you for saying that Conservatives are not really pro- free market.
In almost no part of the American economy do we have the type of competition envisioned by Adam Smith. Instead we have limited competition, virtual monopolies, economic sectors dominated by a small number of powerful corporations and so the market forces embraced by Conservatives simply do not exist.
@Jim Bob
Had Bush, operating under a Democrat Congress, not begun the bailout of big banks, and Obama had not, under a Democrat Congress, accelerated the bank bailout, the financial crisis would have been short lived and the recovery would have been robust.
The big boy speculators in CDOs would have taken big losses on one side and big gains on the other side. Consumer depositors would have been completely unaffected because no FDIC entities were involved. The only banks involved were the investment banks, and the government gave them cash to prevent their stockholders from losing their equity. Crony socialism.
No actions were taken against the real estate professional who engaged in pump and dump schemes on minorities, mostly because most of the fraud was affinity fraud, where the nice real estate agent was a lady from church.
Trump is just following in Obama's pattern of governing by divisiveness. During his first year in office, he excoriated two police officers who interceded in an apparent break-in by accusing them of racism, and praised the "victimized" college professor who reacted violently. After Ferguson, he blamed a police officer who was attacked by a criminal thug, and sponsored the BLM attacks on police. Race relations took a step in the wrong direction under Obama, and the people who paid the price were minority victims in Democrat cities who saw their violent crime rates rise.
1
You forget, Mr. Brooks, that our so-called meritocracy has become essentially unfair, exclusive, and discriminatory in the winner-takes-all world created since Reagan. It is basically money-begets-money as both government and the middle-class were siphoned of funds to ensure some semblance of a level playing field -- and the money went to the one percent where it basically stays in the family. Just look and tens of thousands, if not millions, of talented, creative and hardworking people who have been scaled down and dumbed-down, deprived of a sufficient income and meaningful work to sustain their participation as creative contributors to our national economy, now mega-corporatized.
The anti-intellectualism in this country was a cynical ploy to win votes as Republicans, behind the scenes, continued to throw middle America under the bus in the race to the bottom in worker pay - then blamed it on globalization. When corporate CEO versus worker pay rises from 30 to 300; the rest of America struggles to afford the basic tools of life -- from insurance to internet access to medicine -- while it braces for the continued automation of work; and all the GOP can come up with is more tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses sitting on more than $7 trillion in cash -- tell me, Mr. Brooks, where are Americans supposed to find an arena in which to demonstrate their merit?
Amazon answered that question -- and is being paid $2 billion for the privilege.
9
Mr. Brooks paints a lovely picture of conservatism with all the warts and wrinkles airbrushed away. The reality is rather different.
Conservative 'vigor' in fighting the Cold War also gave us red scares, witch hunts, blacklists, and McCarthyism.
Conservatism's insistence on traditional values manifested as resistance to the Civil Rights movement, feminism, and the social safety net. They've never accepted Social Security or Medicare, or the ACA.
Conservatism's anti-union fervor helped destroy the middle class and economic mobility, while fueling the increase of inequality to 19th century levels.
If conservatives have felt excluded from Academia, it's because they've abandoned fact-based reasoning and rejected the principles of the enlightenment. They have chosen the Gut over Intellect. They reject science and objective facts when it gives them answers they do not like.
Moral principles have fossilized into dogma.To dissent is to risk exile and worse. Cognitive dissonance has become endemic to conservatism. The party of so-called family values and 'Christian" morality has embraced leadership by lies and double standards.
Conservatism is based on self-interest above all. It rejects the very idea of the public or the public good. It embraces selfishness as a virtue. It has descended into authoritarianism, a hierarchy where merit is determined by wealth and/or power, not ability.
This is the night following Reagan's "Morning in America."
35
@Larry Roth
It was conservatives who voted in the civil rights laws in the 1960's, along with Medicare and Medicare. It was Reagan and Tip O'Neal who stabilized Medicare and Social Security.
It was Republicans and Bush who expanded Medicare to include prescription drugs and Democrats who defunded Medicare to the tune of $0.8 trillion.
You are entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts. Republicans believe in funding the safety net. But they believe that benefits at the low end of the income scale should be increased and profits to cronies reduced.
Democrats closed the donut hole for the wealthy which increased premiums for all, and also put in a provision so the pharmacy benefit managers could skim off some extra profits and raise prices for everyone.
Democrats defunded SCHIP, despite the fact that they did not put in place a substitute for disabled children who needed care not covered by Medicaid nor by traditional health insurance. Programs in place to prevent families from being impoverished by a sick child were eliminated.
Obamacare defunded supplemental payments that had subsidized hospitals that served a high proportion of the poor to compensate for low Medicaid reimbursement rates. They sent more Medicaid participants who were now out-of-network for wealthy hospitals and reduced payments to those hospitals.
The defects were planned to shift more money to big medicine at the expense of those in need. The Devil is in the details.
1
Mr. Brooks:
I would add one more concept to the possible list of explanations of the failure of conservatism. It is really just a self-inflicted wound caused by rational self-interest becoming more of a selfish interest. The desire for more money, more control over the lives of others, and a certain hubris supported by intellectual dishonesty, all combined to reveal the feeble and insecure man behind the curtain. But, the same could be said for the failure of communism, socialism, liberalism and other political structures that similarly ignore various realities. Until there is an honest approach to the issues we face, the pendulum will keep swinging from one side to the other.
110
Conservatism has always been about me, myself and I, against all others. When the others were communists they could happily paint their fight as being in the name of freedom, but their willingness to forge alliances with ruthless freedom-squashing dictators already indicated a very low moral bar (Saddam Hussein was a good friend until...). The talented people Brooks describes, climbing up a meritocratic conservative movement was only the paint coat giving credibility to conservatism. It was maybe the top but never the core of the movement, which relies on resentnicks.
8
The ideology of "excellence" or as the Greeks say "arete" signals that individual achievement is a primary value. An individual standing above the crowd leads the community. In hierarchical societies needing single minded direction this
concept is temporarily instrumental. It meshes with physical coercion, competition and war But a realistic and longer term view of human history shows that "leading" individuals (great men) are of little importance to social change. Starting with fire and moving through agriculture, urbanization and science, the most important factors guiding human civilization, are technology and organization. Many conservatives worship the individual and "character" because the idea of "excellence" justifies the status quo -- their power and their wealth. Moreover, many people perversely vote for conservatives because they resent their own inferior social status. They are not conservative and can be switched this way or that by propaganda that plays on their resentments. But social groups do not endure because of individuals or leaders but rather in spite of the individuals (even kings) who come and go. Few of our leaders today would have followers if they had no personal material wealth or were not backed by powerful organizations. Instead of dwelling on the "excellence" of individuals, a true conservative would rank nurturing love as a primary value and advocate preserving the living planet and its diversity as a whole.
6
@JSS: History mostly records elephants trampling grass.
@JSS
There is a fascinating contrast between the beliefs of Democrats and reality.
Trump is not a conservative, although he has signed into law many provisions that are consistent with conservative values.
Establishment Republicans and well as Democrats who have spent their lives in politics are all about personal aggrandizement and not about principles.
The second point is that if you look at the wealthiest Americans, they are overwhelmingly Democrat donors of dark money. They pay as little taxes as possible themselves, but support Democrat desires to increase taxes on the middle class and fund the fake news that the Republican tax reform benefitted the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
Charitable foundations are overwhelmingly leftist organizations who pay their executives excessive salaries and use their political clout to advance their personal advantage. There is the charity hospital that paid Michelle $175,000 per year while her husband was in the Illinois legislature for a part time job and doubled her pay when he became a US Senator. There is the Clinton Foundation that paid Huma Weiner $150,000 per year while she was a full time federal employee and laundered another $120,000 though Hillary's friend Blumenthal [the originator of the birther conspiracy] to Huma. How much is the Clinton Foundation is currently paying Huma?
Kaiser Permanente has raised hospital charges 3.3 times the inflation rate and Medicaid patients are out-of-network.
i’d add to Brook’s list... even the more intellectual thoughtful Conservatives began to lose the economical battle when their supply side economics and anti big government became more of a religion and less intellectual. Government regulation isn’t just an arbitrary process to designed to grow big government, it’s to solve a problem that the free market can’t.
22
@Rick Jefferson: In the absence of competent government, Gresham's Law rules.
@Rick Jefferson
A basic lesson in civics. Congress passes laws, the president either signs them or they do not become law or Congress overrides the veto.
There were no immigration laws passed under the Obama administration, so he implemented DACA in violation of his authority after spending four years asserting he lacked the authority, exploiting a vulnerable population to enhance his prospects for re-election. The dark state leftist judiciary is now pretending it can force Trump to continue the illegal regulations. They will ultimately be stomped down by SCOTUS and the rule of law, but they reflect the disrespect Democrats have for the law.
There were no environmental laws passed by Congress during the Obama administration. The partisan EPA created the Clean Power Plan in order to impose high costs on red states, his political opponents. A federal judge familiar with the rule of law blocked its implementation, a decision the Obama administration appealed, hoping they could get it to an activist appeal court.
Under Obama, regulations were an arbitrary process designed to grow big government and to favor Obama cronies.
American democracy demands that the people have a voice, through their representatives in Congress. Unaccountable partisan bureaucrats do not get to write law to increase profits of the companies favored by their masters and to punish opponents.
There are logical arguments in favor of reducing the production of greenhouse gases. Pass a law.
What happened to that Republican "moral-values" compass regarding God, abortion, gays... and the worship of guns?
Let's see:
Trump, lies, and revenge (not quite WWJD by any measure);
Angry women -- even many Republican women;
Need those Log Cabin voters, especially after 2018;
Hate crimes up 3 years in a row, including murders by gun.
It's not just the "morality" of promoting democracy (that's really "oligarchy by the wealthy elite" in GOP-speak) around the world. It's all of the above that were championed by Republicans to rile up their base and divide citizens; all of the above that have exposed Republican hypocrisy.
8
Last sentence
"When you take away excellence and integrity, loyalty to the great leader is the only currency that remains."
That bring down any nation ( might or tiny) to inevitable end, Tyranny.
No need to describe more just example's says a lot
1- North Korea
2-Russia
3-Phillipines
4-Turkey
5-Hungary
6- Poland
7-Israel
8-China
etc.
It kills freedom.
7
It would also help to abandon the racism, anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, and Christian fundamentalism.
11
David, I’m just wondering what moral purpose Republicans should reclaim. Are you talking about something like Nixon’s southern strategy? Or something like Reagan’s dog whistle “state’s rights” speech campaign kick-off in Philadelphia, MS; or the elder George Bush’s Willie Horton campaign ad; or the younger Bush’s whisper campaign that John McCain fathered a black baby; or Newt Gingrich’s slash and burn house speakership; or the “Swift Boat” campaign spitting all over John Kerry’s military service; or eight years of Republican’s attempt to completely delegitimize Barack Obama’s presidency?
24
@Longfellow Lives
When LBJ signed into law civil rights laws supported by a higher proportion of Republicans than Democrats, he said Democrats had lost the South for a generation. He was concerned that the Blacks, who had been denied voting rights by Democrats since Reconstruction would naturally vote for the party of Lincoln. He underestimated the appeal of Democrat lies to the uneducated, and Democrats held the South for the next 30 years. The narrative that Republicans are racists has always been nothing more than a lie.
Only a Democrat would call states rights a racist dog whistle. When a logical argument for their position doesn't exist, allege racism.
During political campaigns, partisans always highlight vulnerabilities of their opponents. It was true that Dukakis was responsible for the furloughing of Horton who raped a woman. It was not true that Romney didn't pay income taxes, as Harry Reid lied.
John Kerry made a strategic error when he received the Democrat nomination in 2004, by saluting and saying "reporting for duty" in an attempt to highlight his military service. He was in the Navy for less than two years and does not have an honorable discharge, he has a general discharge because he failed to complete his service commitment. {Ironic, because that is exactly the charge Democrats made about Bush, who has an honorable discharge from the Texas Air National Guard. Dan Rather famously published false data with respect to Bush's service.}
"Compassionate conservatism."
Never was. Never will be.
11
@Ronald Aaronson: "compassionate conservatism" is empathy for poor misunderstood people like Donald Trump.
Are conservatives in need of moral principle? Perhaps "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" would suffice.
10
@SJ: They abhor having what they do to others applied to them.
1
@SJ The conservative motto is more along the line of "Leave me alone while I do to others".
"First, it has to find a moral purpose large enough to displace the lure of blood-and-soil nationalism."
Ok, how about global warming, the current great extinction, and the fact that the world as we know it will be gone in a hundred years? Why leave these problems to Democrats, liberals, and globalists?
8
Men like Brooks were used to create a smokescreen of moral fervor, disguising a movement rooted in greed, cruelty and Bible-coated self-righteousness. Look around you today and see what they have accomplished. That's the story I'm telling.
9
Can we please come to understand that a December 31, 1999 New Year's Eve party would not welcome in the new millennium? As there was no year Zero, you start at one and go to ten, and repeat. The new millennium started the day after Dec. 31, 2000.
3
I think you are confusing "anit-elitism" with "anti-intellectualism."
3
@Joe
Democrats get confused about intellect, intellectuals, and intelligence.
Kerry represented himself as an intellectual, and Democrats took that to mean he was more intelligent than Bush.
Bush sheepishly reported that he spent his four years at Yale partying and drinking and was a "C" student. Kerry represented that he studied hard and was a skilled debater.
There is a reason why Kerry did not release his academic and military records until after the election. Bush scored substantially higher than Kerry on the officers candidate exam, which is the equivalent to an IQ test, indicating Bush is smarter than Kerry.
Their grades at Yale were indistinguishable. Both were "C" students. Bush got the same grades as Kerry while partying an drinking while Kerry was a hard working serious student. Kerry is an intellectual, but not as intelligent as Bush.
I think the Russians?Soviets called it Red and Expert emphasizing the RED over expert. We have the same issue with the current administration here, and it's funny that they use the same color designation.
1
In think it is incumbent upon "conservative" intellectuals to unconditionally disavow Trump. Calling him a "king" as suggested here is not enough.
Conservatives need to look at the fascistic tendencies of the right wing, the same way they used to obsess about the communist tendencies of the left. The George Wills and David Brooks' pushed hard on the right without realizing that in doing so they were letting loose the sort of anti-intellectualism exemplified by Trump. So, you got your FOX news, your anti-abortion rulings and your corporate tax cuts, but look at the price paid in intellectual honesty.
7
Let's hope that conservatism doesn't crawl back in bed with evangelicals and other moral ineptitudes from the right who want to once again make everything about religion, abortion, and other causes in the service of ole white men, No one mistakes Trump with having religion, morality or even the capacity to ask any questions of moral importance. He is the opposite but the other side that went way over the edge including the writer of this column.
1
Conservatism does not belong in revolutionary times. We are in transitional times that require high taxes and empowered governments. The conservative model can only give us fascism or stagnation. Reagan gave us stagnation and unless we realize conservatism is a dead end we will see a further rise in fascism.
2
Methinks the broader "conservative" movement was powered by "resentniks" from the start.
3
"From here on out, it's Whitakers all the way down." That's a deeply unsettling thought. A House and Senate full of Republican cynics, opportunists and cowards have allowed this to happen. When this Administration finally folds and the mass hypnosis wears off, we'd better hear the country vowing NEVER AGAIN. No more garbage cable reality TV shows produced live from the White House, please. We're better than this. Aren't we?
7
Those friends who do not want to speak to Anne Applebaum and her husband Radoslaw Sikorski may have been offended by the ideas and language (lowest gutter expressions with racist overtones) he used in private conversations with other politicians in a restaurant in Warsaw (surreptitiously recorded). It was about relationship with US and general state of Poland. He lost his post soon after, due to general disgust and outcry.
This fantasy history of conservatism leaves out McCarthy, Nixon's Southern Strategy, support for Apartheid South Africa, Iran Contra, invading Iraq... everything that made conservatism despicable long before it ever became soulless and technocratic. Frankly, I don't recognize the soulless technocratic moment at all. Being so spiritless, it must not have ever got in the papers... Oh, maybe he means Ford. OK, sure, he was pretty boring, I guess.
3
According to Brooks, "Some conservatives . . . wandered into territory that is xenophobic, anti-Semitic, authoritarian."
Please. They did not "wander," except in the Latinate sense "to be in error." They ran. They jumped. They CHOSE.
8
Dear Mr. Brooks, This is not your usual understanding and compassionate column for the vindictives like me.
Welcome to the real world. Tis the season!
This is a typically dishonest column by David Brooks.
American Conservatism was not based on anti-communism as a moral cause. It was always for power for the wealthy. Conservatism used fear--for years it was fear of communism-- as a tool to support power for the rich.
You can tell this is correct because when Soviet communism ran aground, Conservatives found other fears to exploit--fear of Al Qaeda, fear of Saddam Hussein (remember WMD?), fear of Isis, fear of immigrants, now fear of the Caravan. It is always the same bait and switch--exploit fear of the Other to support power of the wealthy.
Only one question: is David Brooks fooling himself or is he trying to fool us?
5
INDUCTIVES AND DEDUCTIVES
There seem to be two kinds of responses to David Brooks’ columns: inductive irritation and deductive appreciation. To pull a Brooks, there seem to be two kinds of people in the world: Inductives and Deductives—those who search for principles and those who search for facts.
Inductives always accuse Brooks of being too general, and they use all the contradictions inherent in factual reality to disprove whatever his thesis is. They cannot see that he is trying to bind all those facts together into a coherent unity, and so they attack his thesis without adequately weighing it first.
Deductives like to add up all the facts into a perspective. They thrill to words like “zeitgeist,” “ideal,” “ethics,” “excellence,” “democracy,” “justice,” “metaphors.”
It makes me think of the person who frets over how many trees make a forest. Whatever the number is, does one less not make a forest? A Deductive won’t spend a second on such silliness, but an Inductive can go crazy for years trying to find an answer. Psst. There’s no answer. It’s an abstraction. Language is an abstraction. Is the answer to eliminate the word “forest”?
I do not agree with David Brooks on many things—Reagan, religion, morality—but I always appreciate his thinking. Sometimes it’s a bit loose, true—welcome to the human race—but it’s always worthy of deep consideration.
For all those who want David Brooks to come down from a mountaintop, maybe it’s time they started climbing a few.
3
Before casting aspersions at those who critique your beloved, take a look in the mirror and think of the group you forgot to include--the REDUCTIVES. Irritation with Brooks' sweeping discursives is not an indication of some intellectual failure on the part of the critic. @H. A. Sappho
The word KING insinuates that most of us are serfs because we are. Collectively, the serfs are finding out their power is ephemeral.
Americans bristle that they are not serfs.
People, you can't even get into the castle to be heard.
The king is having a full-blown clinical depression. Pills. If the King concludes there is no hope for his reign of Personality Disorder, are we doomed for nuclear war. You are telling yourselves that this could never happen.
History is rife with kings who lost battle after battle, war after war, and all the trembling serfs with their rakes in the air were meaningless.
Until the serfs concluded that chopping off heads was their last resort.
Blood flowed in France. It is not an accident that we were never really a vassal state. France was busy with more pressing issues. The liberals cut off conservative heads. The conservatives cut off liberal heads. Load up the donkey carts.
In the States, the liberals lose. American conservatives truly believe they have won.
A mirage. It is power that simmers a lot like soup
Lost and loss. Gandhi is dead. Murdered. Please, inform the liberals. Conservatives crow that Jessica Simpson is one of them. Jessica who.
The real issue is violence. Liberals are appalled by the idea of it. Conservatives look back at the French Revolution and shudder.
The guillotine does not care.
Violence must be given at least a meet and greet.
Conservatives love a reception.
Let the arrests begin. Assemble the donkey carts.
1
"Liberals controlled . . . the news media" during the Cold War? In the 1950s the most widely read magazines in the United States included Time, Reader's Digest and TV Guide — all solidly right-wing, and often unapologetically McCarthyite.
5
Mr. Brooks refuses to admit that what this country really needs is more cowbell.
1
Welcome to the era of the Keystone Cops. It would be humorous excepting these are the folks commanding the helm of our country. Collisions with icebergs appear inevitable....
So it goes.
John~
American Net'Zen
Good insights but enough with the deer-in-the-headlights navel-gazing. The first step to conservatives regaining relevance and self-respect is not dependent on finding a new ethos . . . it begins by simply dumping the one they’ve got.
3
I have come to believe that the Conservatives in our Congress have turned into Socio-paths, especially Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Paul Ryan, Susan Colins, et al. They have proven this over and over by the their reluctance to take sensible steps to ensure Healthcare for those who cannot afford it, sensible Gun reform, protecting Voting rights, the extreme unfair Tax Reform bill that only takes care of their donors and adds 1.5 Billion to our debt. These are just a few examples of the lack of Conservative values these poor excuse of Legislators portray.
Since when do Conservatives add to the National Debt by giving money to the wealthy and ignoring the rest?
Since when do Conservatives not support Separation of Church and State?
Since when do Conservatives believe that Corporations should be bailed out, like Banks. They are supposed to be believers in the Capitalist system, which by its very nature means if your company fails, some other company will come in and fill the void, not get a Government bailout, let alone go unpunished for mis-deeds.
I cannot even remember when we have had a true Conservative serving in Government. And do not say Ronald Regan or Newt Gingrich. Reagan may have been affable, but he was not a true Conservative and neither was Gingrich. They were destroyers of our economy.
There are more true Conservatives in the media, than in Congress.
5
Reading Mr. Brooks's columns, I sense, as I imagine most readers do, his sincerity, his earnestness. And yet, he is so fundamentally confused about politics, and political history, as to be an object of pity. Surely the platform this paper affords him could go to someone with more competence and merit. And surely Mr. Brooks would be the last to object.
96
@jrm344, I couldn't disagree more. Brooks is the last editor I respect on this board. But good on you for getting your distaste of Brooks in the Times Picks. Wow.
11
@jrm344 one suspects Mr. Brooks qualifies for his post based on his "conservative" leanings more than his logic. The Times may be applauded for its at least token attempt at "balance" by keeping him. Any other "conservative" would be as wrong as he, or, more likely, even more so.
4
David, your work is improving. Your next step needs to recognize the inherent weakness of a political ideology whose classical thought traded granular assessment for the ease and emotional power of a dogmatic steamroller - prepopulist movement. For example the North Vietnamese were readily seen as no friend, let alone lackey of Mao and the Chinese. The other critical piece you need to grapple with is how and why a foundational philosophy could possibly find itself with no moral compass and no practice framework for securing an integrated set of policies. This should inherently flow from the principles of the foundation.
It's so strange that someone who I think is smart and is arguing in good faith, and who identifies the same problems and similar ideal goals as me, still continues proceed down a logical trail that I just can't follow.
The problem with the conservative movement is a lack of 'spirituality'? I thought it was because they want to impose a theocracy, oppress LGBTQ people because their TV pastor told them too, and reject science because its arrogant to think human influence could overcome God's will...??
5
The solution to the radicalization of losers in the meritocratic competition, as Brooks put it, is an education system that guarantees continued, well paying, employment and a national plan to adjust to changing circumstances. Somehow the Chinese were able to transform their backward country into an industrial power house. Somehow the Germans were able to maintain strong footholds in competitive industries. Somehow Singapore is thriving. Somehow the Netherlands is booming. I admit that there are dark forces of Nationalism and blood and soil thinking going on in all of these examples, but each of these governments stepped up to their responsibilities, provided a strong educational base, protected jobs, encouraged investment, etc. Why not sink $5B into West Virginia, training and re-educating coal minors, providing relocation incentives, etc.? Why not turn Detroit into a special economic development zone that provides incentives for people to stay there, and new folks to move there? These are programs that conservatives and liberals could support, but instead we are stalled out in a deadly embrace of political incompetence.
1
@Brian Will
Why, because that means we need to pay taxes, together we can, not Republican dogma.
I detest the use of the word tribe and the thought process along with it. View the world as humanity as a whole and what makes common sense for all to thrive. Quit using the word incentives too. For example the tax credits Amazon will be given by New York and Virginia are obscene and logically can be interpreted as bribes. What will you give me in order to do business with me?
Tribes, incentives are deceptive words.
1
"In office, what the populist nationalists do is this: They replace the idea of excellence with the idea of “patriotism.” Loyalty to the tribe is more important than professional competence. "
At my university, there is literally a large sign that proclaims "Diversity IS Excellence!" While it may be desirable, it is not excellence. In the US, the hard liberals act like the ethno-nationalists, only they replace the idea of excellence with the idea of diversity.
A certain type of person seems to be driven to "get to the top", and they discover that in a capitalist society, there is rather little room up there. Resentment ensues, as Brooks describes.
1
@Scott: Okay, for us grammar mavens, "Diversity IS Excellence!" Is an example of the error found in writers' handbooks under the title of "Faulty predication." "Diversity" and "excellence" are not commensurate terms. But hey, it's a slogan, not a Ph.D. thesis! The intended meaning is "We cannot achieve excellence without diversity." Can you argue with that?
Many heads, varying perspectives, different principles and approaches: bring these to reason together, and the policies arrived at are likely to be far better guides than an autocrat or a homogeneous oligarchy can come up with. Such is the faith of democrats (with lower-case 'd' or upper-case).
1
Lots of ideas being floated here, but simply the conservatives did whatever was necessary to grab and retain power and there is no philosophical underpinning to it. Their "think tanks" spin justification, but it's about raw power and the exercise of it is manifested daily by the Trump regime. David, I think someone poured some truth serum in your coffee today, but you're spinning your wheels--there is a simpler explanation.
2
Traditional conservatives should have no trouble with meritocracy in government service, especially tethered to the goal of efficiency. Bureaucracy really does tend to bloat, so even a relatively amoral commitment to penny-pinching performs a valuable service. And the general goal of public policy as promoting human flourishing provides a perfectly adequate moral banner to rally around. The problem is recent conservatism's simple-minded absolutism. If conservatism could accept that unmitigated free market capitalism tends to certain excesses and omissions that need correction, they could acknowledge a limited legitimate role for government and serve the public interest constructively. But the prevailing tendancy to deny any legitimate function of government dooms conservatives to destructive approaches only. It's a disaster -- we really need conservatives performing their proper function of limiting and improving governance...not opposing it tout court.
2
David Brooks' "conservative meritocracy" was in fact a marginal clique who deluded themselves for decades that they were the ones who were really in charge. Pundits less clueless than Brooks have now begun waking to the awful fact that the critical mass of "resentniks" in the GOP base have always been in the driver's seat.
Brooks inadvertently reveals a core truth about Conservatism with his statement "...Liberals controlled the universities, the news media, the cultural high ground...": Conservatism has ALWAYS about false resentment using false claims about the 'other's power or control.
- Brooks even here falsely equates "controlled" with "had any voice at all".
- it is only VERY recently that liberals had even an equal voice in those environs, and only in some places. They still really don't control any of them.
- And in every other place in society, liberals were crushed, villianized and ruthless oppressed out of existence.
- But Brooks won't acknowledge either, because they are the basis for his the narrative of oppression.
Brooks' problem is that he is still clinging to yesterday's false Conservative villain, while other Conservatives have moved on to new ones.
1
Individuality has taken a back seat to belonging. Excellence has never been a trait that Americans truly embrace. Standing out from the crowd is somethiing every kid knows will only make him feel like a loser. Be part of the group, part of the team, part of the gang, part of the cult, part of the party that is the majority in your area. There is a great story about the person who developed the Spiderman comic for India. He had to rewrite Lee's stories for an Indian audience that would never understand a "nerd" being astracized. He had to make the hero a poor kid from the underclass instead who couldn't belong.
If we want to Make America Great we have to prize excellence, in education, in scholarship, in craftmanship, in everything and teach our children to aspire to excellence. The opposite is not failure, it is mediocrity, which where most of us wind up. Conservatives and Liberals as well, have to start defining themselves by what they can accomplish and provide for the world, not how different they are than the Other.
"Resentnik" is an apt label for Newt Gingrich and his brand of take -no-prisoners politics. Republicans have been following his example--with some refinements--since the early 90s.
Since Republicans have continued to push a manifestly unpopular economic agenda, they've been obliged to partner with evermore unsavory and untruthful allies, to wit: the NRA, the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, the fossil fuel industry, evangelical Christians, the tobacco industry, the financial industry, white nationalists, the pharmaceutical industry, and Sheldon Adelson. All of these allies have discovered the most reliable way to stir up their constituents is through fear and resentment.
Resentnikism is absolutely nothing new to the conservative movement. It's their life blood.
1
Excellent Article that describes much of modern America. We see it in business as well. A lot of this modern white anxiety is that excellence comes in all colors. Obama was excellent and he saved us from the Great Recession. The wide spread lie that Obama wrecked Obama is built on a loyalist lie, repeated over and over.
For the most part, I agree with Mr. Brooks. I belong to the Liberal camp and voted Democratic until Al Gore started doing the Macarena on the campaign trail. I started voting for the Green Party candidate in 2000, but in 2016 voted for Donald J. Trump. So I never embraced Republicanism, although I support the free-market capitalist system. I thought and still do that Republicans are hypocrites, especially when it comes to religion and moral issues, issues which the Democrats, or the Radical Left, could care less about and never cared about in the first place, as demonstrated by the Clintons. I sided with Trump because he is Trump, he's neither a Democrat nor a Republican. He is Trump. The Republican Party became his vehicle to power, and he has made it his party. I support the President. I support Trump. MAGA! Thank you.
3
@Southern Boy I'm assuming the Times gave you a pick because you are presenting a point of view that others should be aware of. You make no sense, I have no idea what you believe or why you support Trump or what you mean by Gore doing the Macarena. I think you work from your gut which is legitimate but again doesn't further the article David wrote. Trump is Trump and you like that even when it means the degradation of our democracy. Thank you.
77
@Lucas Lynch
Southern Boy's argument is summed up as "I like Trump because he is Trump," which might as well read "I support candidate x because of no particular reason at all. Long live x!"
34
@Southern Boy
While they were in the White House, the Clintons attended church services regularly. Governance, not religion, is the primary concern of government, . As far as governance is concerned, Trump hasn't provided any, nor will he, because he could care less. The adults in the room who actually think about these things are well aware of this.
I'm starting to suspect your posts are computer-generated.
35
Mr. Brooks' final sentence sums up the current political/moral situation very well:
"When you take away excellence and integrity, loyalty to the great leader is the only currency that remains."
The solution is to dispense with the current collection of Party goose-steppers and their leader. It appears that a straight Democratic vote is the only solution currently available to that end. Republicans seem unable to fix themselves.
It was the marriage of evangelical Christianity and conservatism that really sparked the beginning of the end. Conservatives gave up on their "moral purpose" and gave in to the pablum dished out by the "leaders" of the religious right. Too late, conservatives realized they had made a deal with the devil. Now, neither conservatism nor evangelicals can claim to have a "moral purpose." They are slopped together in a soup of xenophobia, bigotry, greed and the mendacious musings of Trump, the "leader" they have abdicated to.
300
@Ms. Pea: You could not be more correct. Between "The Southern Strategy" and the craven embrace of the radical religious right anyone with two firing neurons in their cranium could have accurately predicted the trajectory of the GOP all the way back in the Reagan era. But what brought a more rapid decline and fall was the ongoing embrace of every fringe element that the conservative movement of my parents and grandparents generations had spent decades relegating to the fringes, where they belonged. When you cannot gain popular support among "the silent majority" with your policy positions you have to spend decades cultivating a base of the benighted who can be manipulated by fear mongering and demagoguery. Well, congratulations Republicans, you've succeeded!
35
@Ms. Pea
And it was all about money. The large mega churches are merely businesses for the preachers (prosperity gospel anyone).
The Republican money men do not sit around the country club talking about God, guns, gays, and fetuses. They talk of profit and which politicians are for sale.
25
@Ms. Pea I think I might argue that religion has always been a tool of autocrats. And conservatism is, at its base, a yearning for the 'comforts' of autocracy. For some of us, the burden of thinking and responsibility, not to mention realignment of social hierarchy, is just too much.
If I'm correct, the beginning of the end was the decline of the monarchy which, while it may have started earlier, was really an achievement of the 20th century.
10
The entire conservative movement is an overreaction to socialism and communism, which is why it's unmoored. Consider the "small government" argument. America has lots of government, but only because it's broken into 50 separate entities -- a process we would call Balkanization if it happened anywhere else in the world. This gives us two layers of government with overlapping responsibilities. As a result, combined state, local and federal taxes mean we just a hair less in total than Europeans do, while getting much less for the money.
The irony is that conservatives consider themselves good with money.
1
So what's the matter with the basic (non-political) definition of "conservatism" - "commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation"? I would say this really means (fiscal) prudence, thorough consideration of change on fellow-citizens, respect, individual morality (acknowledging church/state separation), working within our institutions to effect positive change?
The big banks are too large. The corporations like Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are too large. The leaders of many corporations are becoming increasingly invested in maintaining their near monopoly power. Even Paul Volcker who was recently interviewed in the NYT with regard to his latest book said that the bottom line is that we are becoming a plutocracy and that worries him. What's happening in America and maybe the world is that economic power is becoming indistinguishable from political power. Congress is filled with people who are too beholden to corporate contributions and PACs financed by the uber-wealthy. Occupy Wall Street was a wake up call. The Dodd-Frank bill to curtail the concentrated power of the financial sector was a wake up call. A true conservative would lock arms with progressives to fight the growing political and economic power of the plutocrats who exercise too much control over all of our lives.
2
Brooks has written another great column, but I take issue with his definition of "patriotism" as a synonym for "tribalism." In my mind, they are quite different. Applied to politics, "tribalism" describes partisanship, not unification behind a common interest in the success of the state. It is about differences within the community (e.g.,red/blue, liberal/conservative), not unifying principles.
Applied to America, success is measured in service to moral principles, equality, security, and economic progress. "Patriotism" is about bringing all together for the common good at national and international levels, about humane behavior, and accepting "the tired and the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free." It is belief in a strong, beneficent, fair democracy.
1
The article left out the religious right, which has been an important driver for many. Of course, they have mostly collapsed into the blood and soil crowd by now, but they had their own identity through the 80s and 90s.
It's always people who succeed who trumpet about "meritocracy." This is where conservatives have lost the wisdom of Western Classical culture, which recognizes the role of luck. The only deity Julius Caesar mentions in his account of the Gallic Wars, for instance, is Fortuna. The Greeks and Romans were much more likely to recognize that magnificent individuals might also fail magnificently.
Resentment is the fuel of modern American conservatism - without it there is nothing. It has been resentment of the other - that my tax dollars are going to "them", that "they" are taking my job, that "they" are destroying our morality, that "they" are telling me what to do - that is spread and cultivated and nurtured for the benefit of the party. It is no great wonder that resentment is turning in on itself.
Intellectual conservatives have always had to walk a very fine line because their beliefs can so easily fall into unsavory territory. At its core the meritocracy reigns supreme where the cream rises to the rightful top unhindered by the desires to legislate equality. If we each take just care of ourselves everything works out the way it should because somehow respect is instilled in us through some moral code.
I know I am doing a disservice to true conservatives but I have never understood it in light of human nature. There will always be some among us who hold no qualms about taking advantage of the other and, with the power and advantage they gain, they are capable of even greater destruction. It is government, which should be the will of the people, that is to protect the many from this reality.
Republicans employed resentment to manipulate people into voting against liberals who were trying to secure more freedom for more people and stop the abusers. They failed to see when you use a negative force to achieve a goal all manner of perversion results.
2
Modern conservatism - at least American conservatism - was never an intellectually honest movement. It moralized and preached responsibility and excellence and achievement, but at its heart it was (and is) about money. It cloaked its anti-communism in morality, but really the rich didn't want working people to rise up and chuck the blue blazer set off their yachts.
That's what motivated conservatives in the old days, and that's what motivates them now.
30
Mr. Brooks misses one other important failure of US conservatism: it has failed to develop any ideas beyond cutting taxes and trying to gut the social safety net. Having the Cold War and communism around masked this failure.
The irony is that GOP conservatives were pro-free market economics which creates winners and losers, yet always want to cut the social safety net - an action which would reinforce the plight of the "losers". This Ayn Rand vision of the world greatly helped the rise of nationalism and xenophobia.
The GOP has spent decades blowing in the ears of rural and less educated voters, telling them that everyone else is getting a better deal than they are while at the same time trying to pull the economic rug out from under these same people.
36
If "conservative" means maintaining and protecting traditional values and "republic" means "not a monarchy", then Republicans are neither conservative nor republicans. Their king-like following of Trump seems dangerously monarchic. Their seeming embrace of Nationalism, tax reduction and loss of interest in a balanced operating budget combined with today's tribalism renders them somewhat useless as a governing party. Unfortunately, the democratic party doesn't appear to be any more effective but I'm all for giving them a shot.
7
"Conservatives," at least the ones like David Brooks, ignore the rural-urban dichotomy in both mores and economics. There is growing inequality in cities, but the economies of the metropolitan areas around them are doing well. Booming in many cases.
The left-behinds out in the country are not doing so well. They are vulnerable to the "blood-and-soil nationalism." Ruthless people, politicians, the corporate "people," and wealthy individuals will feed the resentments of the left-behinds.
The market will do its work in this environment. The rich get richer and the poor get more resentments.
When the ideology of conservatives says individual responsibility and small government is the only answer, the result is predictable. Unless the Republicans find a new way to address our big problems, or step aside to allow those hated "liberals" to do the job," the downward spiral will continue.
8
The Conservative ideal of meritocracy never worked because it cannot be realized. It did not fail due to resentment among those who "failed" at the game. The meritocracy fails because when reduced to practice the ultimate metric is money. Your pay represents your merit. Winner-take-all becomes a moral imperative. I recall back in the mid 2000s when the cyclist Mark Cavendish remarked that he did not understand why the other teams even paid their sprinters since they had so much trouble beating him. The idea that 2nd place is worthless is pathological.
So Conservatism built the idea that the 400 families at the top of the heap are most meritorious and deserve, in this view, to be treated as royalty. Their means of earning deserve lower taxation. They should be able to pass their piles on to their heirs via gifts and at death without taxation. Those who work should have no support nor means of redress other than arbitration.
It's not resentment, it's pathological.
16
Mr Brooks: Much of what you say rings true but you absolutely, astoundingly fail to mention the rise of the religious right and how intellectualism was replaced with a dogmatic adherence to creed on the right. Bible thumping took the place of any search for knowledge among "the resentniks" and here we are with climate change denial, reliance on coal and oil, and decreased funding for research. The rigid resentment and distrust of intellectualism on the right has frozen out thought and served to promote hate and xenophobia in the name of Christianity. We are no longer, with Western Europeans, a part of the search for the better life for all. We have become isolated in our fear of government and our reliance on the gun culture. The frighteningly violent anti-intellectual society we live in today is a direct result of the the replacement of thought and humanism with rigid adherence to religious fundamentalism.
16
“Prosperity theology” says that one’s spiritual worth is measured in wealth, because wealth shows that God loves you. God has made you rich because he loves you, and you show your devotion by increasing your wealth.
Jesus is nowhere in that catechism.
Brooks bemoans "how spiritually flat conservatism has become" as if it's a relatively recent phenomenon. In truth, the Republican Party has not "stood for" anything since the Eisenhower years. Today's Republicans are most easily identified by what they are against, which is nearly everything except encouraging and enabling earth's most rapacious and vicious individuals and ideas.
9
Mr. Brooks remains stubbornly obtuse about conservatism's complicity in the right-wing populism he abhors. In his telling, conservatism was once a noble calling. Conservatives fought the good fight against communism, but their victory in that long struggle was their undoing. Bereft of a sense of moral purpose, bad actors infiltrated the conservative movement and the result is Donald Trump.
Historians know better. The modern conservative movement born in the 1950s rejected the isolationism of the Old Right in favor of the anti-communist crusade (begun by liberals!). They married their muscular foreign policy to patrician values, Christian morals, and free markets. The leading figures of the New Right were politely anti-Semitic and opposed the civil rights movement in the name of states' rights.
The conservatism of the 1950s was largely an intellectual movement. It wanted to win the war of ideas. But in the ensuing decades conservative activists began to focus on winning elections. And they succeeded by exploiting the nation's religious, cultural, and racial divisions. This was no moral crusade. Even when conducted by means of racial "dog whistles" and polite euphemisms, it was nasty and vicious. In time, the dog whistles and euphemisms gave way to the blunt speech of Gingrich and Trump. And the party faithful lapped it up.
So here we are, and Brooks is shocked to discover that conservatism has been taken over by vulgarians and haters. He shouldn't be.
12
David, you speak of this on a political level, but reasserting professional competence and the importance of integrity and craftsmanship needs to happen throughout. How many times have I experienced autorepairmen, plumbers, HVAC men, remodelers, painters who are dishonest and trying for $ and not honest business? Or doing repairs without concern for craftsmanship? Sometimes it’s the person but often it’s the business requiring it of them. This societal problem is throughout.
2
During the heyday of modern conservatism, we heard the lofty principles of 'limited government', which sounded less racially tinged than did "states rights" but meant exactly the same thing: a blowback to the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s. We heard 'government is the problem, not the solution' coming from the mouth of a future president in his campaign kick off in Mississippi, and it sounded better than 'segregation now and segregation forever' mouthed by an Alabama governor. We heard what our neighbors said when they (often union members) said they would support these principles even if it meant a lowering of their personal standard of living, and endorsing thinly disguised racism.
Mr. Brooks continues to deny the reality of what we saw and heard over 40 years of living among blue collar, middle class suburban voters in Dearborn Michigan (Orville Hubbard) and Macomb County. He is as much to blame for what happened to his party as Donald Trump
4
The conservative mind--and this is a real-life-actual-proven-fact--is more sensitive to fear stimulus. This is what defines being a conservative: fear of the unknown/new.
It stands to reason that some people that are naturally fearful overcome their fears (that is called "courage"), and some (many) do not (that is called "cowardice").
So, there is a large contingent of absolute cowards that are voting out of fear. It's up to those that have overcome their fear to put some spine into those that have not, yet.
4
Even though I am a Democrat and I always vote along party line, I agree with you and your conservative colleague a lot more.
I have a bad news for you. It's not going to happen. It's human nature at work and it's in our DNA. At work, poor performers always blame others. I am always puzzled by these people. Seriously, how could they survive in a global economy? Of course they want guaranteed jobs and incomes. Of course they want less competitions. Of course it's never their fault. As a naturalized US citizen, I see plenty of opportunities in this country. American dream is well and alive. But it is not a sure thing and we need to be prepared for opportunities. I hate to point out the obvious - something is very wrong in this country! Many small businesses desperately need good workers. But most of the job seekers are the same kind of people. They can certainly talk. But they are too smart to work hard on "dirty works". Speaking of that, job securities are plenty and loyalties are definitely valued. For any business, building a core team is a must. Of course team members will be treated well. Stability, continuation and reliability are essential to run any business especially small businesses.
It's not enough merely to point out problems. It has become more and more obvious. What is the solution? How can any system win over human nature? We are all doomed!
1
This is a profoundly wrong-headed column. It's primary motivation, I believe, is to let Mr. Brooks's Progressive and Democrat friends know that he's really a good guy and not to be confused with those deplorable deplorables.
I was, and am, a conservative, not because of anti-communism or because of NATO or because of the free market, although i was and continue to be opposed to communism (see, Cuba, Venezuela and China), am in favor of NATO (but do think -- horrors -- that they should pay more of the costs) and support free market principles (looks like the market, imperfect as it is, is trouncing Obama's new normal highly-regulated economy).
I'm a conservative because I believe in all of the principles embodied in our Constitution (not just some of the Bill of Rights) and because i believe that we should have a smaller Federal government and let the states and localities do what they do best. I'm not racist, sexist or xenophobic, and i believe that the Left cynically uses those terms against its political opponents. I am a nationalist, but i'm not a white nationalist or a black nationalist. I'm not a globalist, which is what today's Progressives are. But, while i think they are wrong, I don't hate them and am happy to talk with them.
In truth, it is most often the Left who insists on our all following, without any dissent, their path, which they believe is the only moral one. They're wrong, but it is an unforgivable heresy to dare tell them so.
"Most of the guests were conservatives — which in those days meant being anti-Communist and pro-market, but also believing in international alliances like NATO." Ah, yes. Conservatives on the Supreme Court gave us Bush via Bush v Gore. Bush and conservatives gave us 9/11, Dick Cheney, Iraq, and no-bid contracts, Black sites, Torture, Phil Graham, Alan Greenspan, and the Great Recession where jobs, savings, and homes were lost. Which all led to Trump and Mitch McConnell. And before that conservatives gave us Newt Gingrich and incivility. Thank you for reminding us, David Brooks. Let me try to think of a narrow-minded conservative I want to have over for Thanksgiving Dinner.
7
Conservatives vs liberals. Right vs left. So boring and so last century.
That war is over. The left lost (there is no successful country in the world with a communist regime).
The right won. Free markets ideally allow individuals to make their own decisions about their future.
However, and before you jump on my throat, let me say that unbridled capitalism will end up eating us alive and destroying the world, even for the 1% John Gault "doers".
So I would like to see a political party discussing issues like:
How will 8 billion people find fulfilling and rewarding work when we can already produce all the goods and services that we need with about half the human resources?
How can we avoid environmental pollution?
In the meantime, the Resentniks are gazing at their bellybuttons and loading their assault weapons while they march backwards towards oblivion.
4
Translation: Republicans used to be hypocrites who espoused moral theories to justify their rapacious greed and abuse of power, always in the service of white men. Now, under Trump, the shield of hypocrisy is gone, but the actions and true goals of GOP leaders remains the same. Ironically, I find Trump's approach (overt white nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, science denialism, and incitement to violence) that views morality as a weakness, is a more honest representation of Republican party goals than those of Reagan or the Bushes and their fake "morning in America" and "compassionate conservatism" appeals to feeling humans.
5
Well, well, well. Intellectual honesty does reign at long last. Yet and still, Brooks as usual refuses to own up to what fueled much of the conservative movement in the US and what it cannot now contain -- white resentment of the inexorabvle march to freedom for racial minorities. Brooks couches the comforting unity of international conservatism in fighting the Cold War and defending democratic institutions and values. That was all true. Except intellectual conservatism in the US gained momentum and heft by leveraging the resultant southern white anger at black enfranchisement. Nixon's Southern Strategy provided the conservatives with people -- electoral heft -- while white conservative scholars such as Brooks chose, and choose, to avert their gaze from the growing white backlash. In the late 60s and early 70s conservatives neeeded to win, and the racialized south was abosolutely essential to their victories. Brooks, et al. were warned. They denied the racial animus. What bellows from today's column is the absence of the racial factors that seamlessly evolved into the racism and all of the other anti-intellectual knee-jerking that has taken possession of American conservatism in the form of Trump's Republican party. Intellectual conservatives fed the angry beast and rode it. They were dumped when the beast got out of control and now celebrates Trumpism.
4
You have on the one hand liberals who are taking their collective consciences to the next level ( we are still a racist society; how to we progress further. We are still a sexist society; how do we reconcile the past and move forward. And so forth). Then, on the other hand we have "conservatives" who never wanted to make the first steps in the first place. They want a lily white society that shares nothing. They want white men to be at the top of the pyramid. They don't ever do anything wrong. And we have a religious right that only cares about eliminating a woman's right to choose. No matter how many people suffer and/or die as collateral victims of their pursuit of the great white whale. The reality is just like with slavery, Fascism, and other human endeavors that cause suffering as a means to an end, these efforts will eventually fail. But they just get suppressed, never eliminated. And they will rise again. The question really becomes how many will die to suppress them ? Trump may be leading the way to extremism. But the rest of us will join together and lead us back from the precipice. Kind of like a moral equivalent of a stock market correction. Humanity will move ahead. We just have to stop once every generation and remind ourselves why we all belong.
3
@Walking Man wouldn’t it be nice if learned some history or at least tried to understand Mr. Brooks’ essay? Do you know what he is talking about when he describes the conservative opposition to communism? Do you know that 50 million people were killed in the USSR? Do you know Anne Applebaum’s work? How about reading her books about the concentration camps and the man-made famine unleashed by the people who tried to create a utopia of equality? Believe it or not, the world is bigger that the US and you may learn something if you get our of your liberal social media bubble. It’s not all about you.
The United States is not a meritocracy. Those prostrating themselves to Trump and his brand of hate-the-others are better described as underachievers in a system built specifically for them win. These losers seek an answer not in themselves, but in organizing around the hatred of others in attempt to save, and if possible, invent new privilege to maintain their way of life. The “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” advice given to the disadvantages for decades has absolutely no introspective appeal.
2
Friends who call themselves "conservatives" seem to think that I'm just being a disruptive smart aleck when I ask what, exactly, it is that they want to conserve.
9
"If conservatism is ever to recover it has to achieve two large tasks. First, it has to find a moral purpose large enough to displace the lure of blood-and-soil nationalism."
You might be better off starting small, like allowing people to enjoy some dignity and security in their lives.
Trying to repeal Obamacare in the house over 40 times is a good example, not to mention the relentless lawsuits in an effort to sabotage it that continue to this day.
That whole sordid effort perfectly distills what modern "conservatism" stands for, a sick, perverse winner take all contest, where the "winners" can't even live with themselves knowing that the "losers" among them are able to obtain affordable health care.
So, before you go in search of your new moral purpose, you might need to first let go of the idea that affordable health care is a slippery slope back to communism.
BTW, the assertion that the right attracted "outsider personalities" and that this phenomenon was brought about because "Liberals" controlled the universities and media is a howler. There's nothing more preposterous than the ultimate insiders trying to paint themselves as having their faces pressed against the glass.
This same kind of blinkered thinking is echoed today by the absurd, unironic claims of white, privileged conservatives that somehow it is they, not the minorities, that are continually under siege in all sorts of terrible ways.
But I do hope those people from the party made up, so sad!
5
This is an example of what Glenn Greenwald has called a major commandant of the right: Conservatism cannot fail. It can only be failed. A few points:
1) A strain of blood and soil in the form of dog whistle racist appeals has been a part of the conservative movement since Barry Goldwater. The nasty little troll that the GOP would let loose every now and then and then shove back into its cage suddenly grew into a monster, broke its chains and is now raging about out of control. For David to imply coded racist appeals were not part of the modern conservative playbook from the very beginning is either disingenuous or myopic.
2) People turned away from expertise and chose leaders like Trump because the experts failed so miserably. In the last 20 years, they have given us the Iraq War, the mortgage meltdown, financial deregulation, monopolization, de-industrialization, outsourcing and a failed immigration system, all while insisting to us that everything would work out in the end.
To David's main point, some conservatives did not turn far right and begin flirting with and even embracing economic nationalism, racism and antisemitism because they were a rebelling against meritocracy. They did so because the system failed, because conservatism as it was being practiced failed. If we are going to step back from the abyss, we have to acknowledge the shortcomings of both conservatism and liberalism and fix them instead of insisting they are pure and have simply been failed.
1
And here is the nub of the problem...as the Republican party has sold its soul to the devil it has forfeited any claim to be the party of "family values". In its support for a completely amoral man will it ever be able to assert its moral superiority again?
4
Being a conservative today is being resentnik-lite. You miss the good-ole-days. Wish it were like the good-ole-days. And then, there're always those who want to 'make it like the good-ole-days.' It's the basis for the MAGA fervor.
3
Easy to campaign, difficult to govern. Maybe incompetence is the explanation.
2
"If conservatism is ever to recover it has to... reassert the importance of experience, integrity and political craftsmanship."
For example, high integrity by the old conservative vanguard was:
1. Reagan: Selling arms to Iran illegally (it was against a signed law) and then transferring the money to right wing murder groups in South America.
2. Reagan: Promising to cut spending while authorizing a $1 Trillion dollar "Star Wars" military spending program on missile defense that never materialized (but the money was spent).
3. Bush the "W". Lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to hand over billions of dollars in no bid contracts to Haliburton.
4. Bush the W. Lying about success in Iraq as failure loomed large and still does.
5. Bush the W. Lying about military success in Afghanistan as failure loomed large and still does.
6. Reagan, Bush I, Bush II. Lying about pretty much everything.
So, David, take your imagination someplace else. Conservatives were always thieves, liars and cheats. I know. I was one of them.
But, not anymore.
8
I think the Republican party lost its moral compass years ago when it turned against and tried in every way to thwart the civil rights movement.
6
You write: "Liberals controlled the universities, the news media, the cultural high ground, so the right attracted many people with outsider personalities." Translation: the best educated, informed and with greatest influence on societal trends are liberal.
and you contrast this with.
"Then with the election of Reagan and Thatcher and in the years afterward, conservatives built their own counter-establishment — think tanks, publications, broadcasting outlets. As conservatism professionalized, it despiritualized."
Translation: As less well-educated, dogmatic believers in a Manichean view of the world, notable for their lack of creative cultural impact won politcial power they erected institutions that would serve their personal greed.
By the way, Lech Walesa was notably anti-Semitic and Solzhenitsyn notably nationalistic (sensu Trump).
6
@D. Yohalem are you saying...what exactly? That the USSR was good? That those in the West who defended communism and denied the existence of the Gulag were right? That the fall of the Berlin Wall was a historical misfortune? That the dissidents persecuted by the KGB were at fault? That we should try to bring back socialism? If yes, just come out and say it openly, so we’ll all know where you stand.
I hope that Mr. Brooks’ recap of Anne Applebaum’s superb essay in The Atlantic prompts more readers to seek her article out.
Now, let’s talk about Charles Schultz and Charlie Brown.
Schultz said once that the moral objective of his cartoons was to teach, thru the often defeated Charlie Brown, the acceptance of failure. In all our gung-ho about success (and in our increasing tendency to reward success with drastically disproportionate material benefits, while punishing failure with penury), we breed massive resentment as a matter of course. And that resentment is indeed poison, teaching the righty to claim that blood-and-soil loyalty is the real super-power and the lefty to proclaim that love for the Dear Worker or the Forgotten Minority is the real superpower. For both types of Resentnik (thanks for that coinage, Mr. Brooks!), loyalty to the ethnic-state on the one hand, or to progressive sentimentalism on the other, trumps all considerations of pragmatism and talent.
My hope — admittedly a faint one — is that the non-Resentniks on both teams can put aside their particular differences for a time and begin to work on the problem that singularly threatens us all: climate change. We’ll need all the talent we can get, all the amelioration we can afford, all the innovation we can imagine. Look at the wildfires in California and tell me that you don’t think it’s time to put away childish resentments.
2
@Ex-Texan
I guess I'm just too left for you since I believe in a decent living wage for an honest days' work, not slave wages for Americans and worse than slave wages for the illegal immigrants which we hire unashamedly in the name of cancerous capitalism.
We have Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg taking over what should be our national initiative to address climate change. Jerry Brown is a definite lefty, Michael Bloomberg seems to suffer from political identity issues, but hey, at least he gets the importance of climate change. I'll have to content myself with looking to their leadership. This nation has zero conservative leadership.
When David Brooks conflates conservatism to being anti-Communist, pro-market and supports NATO- he implies that Democrats do not support these same things- which is a lie and always has been. This trope is dangerous because it dog whistles to people that Democrats are really treasonous Communists.
I resent this lofty description of conservatives while the reality is that most conservatives are just greedy people who resent paying taxes and just want government so small that it includes no social safety nets- specially for poor people.
It was Reagan who was very clear of his intentions when he demonized people of color on welfare and said government was the problem and small government was the answer to everything.
Actually, the GOP supports pro-market capitalism on steroids to the point that is has run amok and corporations run this country.
Who told big business tycoons to take all their manufacturing jobs to China so they could drive low prices, low wages and low quality? Was it Democrats?
I resent this nostalgic, false sense of how noble GOP conservatives used to be- they never were.
7
Wholly missing is any sense of the contributions David Brooks himself made to the descent of the Republican Party into blood-and-soil nationalism, and any sense of the damage done to the United State by the David Brooks entourage.
Take this sentence: "Compassionate conservatism and the dream of spreading global democracy were efforts to anchor conservatism around a moral ideal, but they did not work out."
What Mr. Brooks means by "spreading global democracy" is the American invasion of Iraq, of which he was a strident advocate. And what he means by "didn't work out" is, you know, just the trillions of dollars wasted, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, the damage to American prestige and ideals around the world.
This is what David Brooks does: implies that some other people on the right were responsible for all the bad stuff, while he was just an innocent, well-meaning intellectual.
It's way past time for Mr. Brook to take responsibility for his own actions, a process that would shed far more light on the current, dismal state of affairs than his normal columns.
7
Like many conservatives, I had Trump spotted as a fraud and a charlatan the moment he came down the escalator and announced his candidacy, but it didn’t occur to me until much later that there were sufficient Republicans around willing to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage and actually nominate him.
So here I am now, a still committed conservative now happily trafficking with far-out liberals I once had considerable contempt for.
Anyone looking for conservative values today had best seek them among committed liberals.
There is nowhere else to find them.
11
@A. Stanton
I've always been a liberal. I never had contempt for conservatives. Conservatives were just people who preferred small government but recognized that the environment and poverty and education and health care and retirement security were real issues. It was always a push-pull between private industry vs. government being better able to deal with these concerns. And, of course, how much national debt should we carry. On foreign issues, liberals tend to be dovish while conservatives tend to be hawkish. I could see both sides, although I strongly and deeply believe killing should be avoided at all costs--it creates centuries of resentment.
Once your boy Mitt labeled the 47% of Americans who pay no income taxes 'moochers expecting a handout from the government' (BTW, that number came from tax returns, so they are basically our working poor) I knew things had changed forever in this country. He exhibited such contempt for the very people he was hoping to govern that I gave up hope. And, he was the most decent candidate your side could produce. Sad.
So, congratulations for seeing the light and deigning to cavort with liberals, but your former contempt for people like me makes you a person I would definitely avoid at a party.
1
@CF
I don't attend liberal parties. They are much too
racy for me.
1
Before you can "restore integrity and political craftsmanship" to these Conservatives, they have to cease debasing themselves before the "so-called" president and attempt to be open to those of other persuasions. Those on the left are told that they must reach out and try to understand those on the right who follow "King Trump", but the right is allowed to wallow in their resentment and bigotry, because their expectations for self haven't been realized? It is extremely sad when we can't solve the problems our nation is confronted with, because we've allowed the likes of Donald Trump to so distort our political discourse for his personal advantage, that there is little chance of having meaningful dialogue, let alone compromise. It shames me as an American that 40% of our country and government leaders have become so resentful and bitter about their future dreams and aspirations that they would take it out on distraught immigrants and impoverished children and elderly. Go ahead and blame whoever for your troubles, but it isn't going to help your situation any. Ridiculing the elite and liberals may feel good for awhile, but you still won't gain health insurance, living wage or decent roads and bridges to drive on, nor have public schools where your children can compete in a global economy. We have had far more opportunities to succeed than most of the world, but folks are so busy feeling sorry for themselves and being angry that they have lost sight of the American dream.
4
David, it might also help if conservatives distinguish truth from myth, data from ideology, and reality from fantasy.
6
I have these suggestions for higher moral purpose for the Republican Party:
Eradication of racism, the betterment of all citizens rather than the ultra wealthy, adequate funding for medical needs, and providing homes and jobs or job training to the underprivileged.
Many of your members profess devout Christianity and Biblical values. They completely forget the fundamental change wrought by the Israelites, that each of us is indeed our brother's keeper. They also forget that Jesus taught. above all else in this world, love of one's neighbor.
Finally, I think that remedying climate change is one of the highest moral callings in the world today. But conservatives and republicans deny that it is happening and discount its effect. Get with the program, David. Surely an educated man such as yourself believes in science?
8
@A Good Lawyer
All good suggestions. I might add that we could go a long way toward a better future if we went back to that old timey concept of universal education for every child. And by that I mean a real education with real science, real math and honest history--not some fairy tale of a 10,000 year old planet with magical beings and a magical promised land--and some myth that the world is not getting warmer or more polluted.
And maybe we could stop the war on public teachers who have the difficult job of holding the attention of many children, and putting information into their heads, and teaching them how to use that information in their lives.
Let's stop being jealous of techers' "short" work year and short work days, and trying to take away the retirement benefits they negotiated for by accepting lower wages in past years. It's been hundreds of years since teachers were paid in part by being invited to dinner once a month by their students' families. Just like doctors no longer take chickens as payment for medical care.
Respect for teachers and education--now that's a concept from the '50s we should really get behind--conservative, you might say.
1
Perhaps you could start with renewing your commitment to the US and the ideals upon which it was founded (fairness, equality, rule of law). We all agreed on that up until just a few years ago.
3
I hold conservatives responsible for allowing words to lose their content. They take statements that are demonstrably untrue and then make part of the evolving belief system by proclaiming untrue things to be true loudly and persistently. Proof comes from emphatic assertion but not from actual reality grounded in fact. As long as conservatives operate in a fact-free zone, they should be condemned to the conservative wilderness.
3
Isaac Asimov: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, says something to the effect that the conservative and liberal impulses pull at each other (ideally, at least) in a dynamic tension.
Says Diamond, true conservatives want to conserve (and preserve) that which is valuable. In so doing, they resist change. At their best they want to preserve the environment, democratic and republican values laid out in our Constitution.
Liberals OTOH know that the world is in flux and to stay apace with the world, flexibility and a willingness to change with it remains necessary.
Conservatives at their worst are [formerly were] rigid and as Wm. F. Buckley argued, merely defending the liberal positions of 100 years prior. F'instance, who would advocate taking the vote away from women now?
Liberals at their worst are wind socks, changing direction with every new gust of modernity.
In an ideal world, we could change as rapidly as conditions require, while holding onto the best of our thinking. The liberal & conservative impulses would be in a check-and-balance milieu. *But that would require compromise. And the so-called leaders like McConnell have abandoned that. Whitakers all the way down.
1
Mr. Brooks, with all due respect many conservatives and others need to get out of bed with big business, oil and finance that do not exercise an obligation to the common good. Bought.
7
As long as conservatism aligns itself with returning America to the “good old days” circa 1955, it will continue to decline. Is it beyond the wit of a decent right wing intellectual to make a case for a fair and decent economic system? Apparently it is.
4
David Brooks wishes that conservatism were intrinsically Christian in some way that Jesus might understand.
This is utterly delusional longing, and the idea that it ever was so in the past is farcical.
Conservatism's only positive role has been to stand against the horrors of the French and Bolshevik revolutions -- duly noted.
But conservatism at its heart rejects the American revolution -- the conservative would have been a "Loyalist," siding with the English masters.
1
There is no longer any need for the kind of conservatism Anne Applebaum (who I greatly admire) talked about. Communism is dead. Socialism is dead. The new enemies of the liberal world order are populists and Islamists. They have to be fought with the same tools that were used against the “evil empire” of the USSR: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, free markets, science and rationalism. Of course, zombies do have the tendency to come back. Just as Trumpism is a sort of zombie fascism, a zombie socialism stirs into life on college campuses and in the comment sections of Slate and Daily Beast. It may still grow into the monster it used to be. But for now, right-wing populism is more of danger and erstwhile conservatives should take it on.
1
David writes about all the ways the conservatism of his youth has gone astray. And yet he persists with a loyalty to the term “conservatism.” Why? If today’s conservatives have abandoned the precepts he originally believed in, why does David still cling to the label?
1
I think this is the first David Brooks column about the Republican party that did also mention the Democrats. Headway? I doubt it, but hope is eternal.
1
David, if you want anyone in Trump's orbit to notice, then you must limit all proselytizing to 280 characters or less. Your perspective along with you communication method are both mired in the 80's.
I often wonder why there are no political comedy shows that are right-leaning? I think it's possible that says it all. The right are depressed, angry and lack creativity. And instead of looking in the mirror, they blame and vent on the outside world--blacks, gays, immigrants, animals--you name it. Sadly I think this has been in them since they were young, if not born this way. Perhaps they grew up in a household that featured anger, hate, competitiveness, cruelty of one form or another, and/or abuse. In my mind, it is a mental health issue of a low grade but chronic type and behavior that displayed it was not recognized in the early years.
1
We have all lost a "moral purpose," folks. Not just the Conservatives, either. Morality has gone the way of spirituality which has gone the way of religiosity. None of them was sufficiently politically correct....the difficulty being that poltical changes like the weather. Yes, the other anchors have moved too, and some too far for the allegiance of an unsettled generation.
Looking for some stability in your life buckie? You don't need to attend a Mensa party to find more wavering answers. Just remember the two great commandments issued by a carpenter years ago.
If, in this generation, you don't know how to find your compass, you either don't need it or you're lost.
2
No serious discussion of modern conservatism can take place without the discussion of money. There is no morality, no apparent rule of law and no check on racism or sexism because your donor class does not value these things. You would be better off discussing how the Adelsons or the Mercers or the Prince/DeVoses define morality and purpose, because even you dear Mr. Brooks are no longer at the party (even if you don't know it).
3
In 2018 America, the word "conservative" has come to mean white nationalist more than anything else. That is unfair to the majority of Republicans who would never characterize themselves in such a way but, in today's American reality, the closer you move toward white nationalist ideals, the more "conservative" you are considered.
White nationalism is the thread stitches together massive deficits, romances with racist authoritarian regimes, xenophobia, militarism, intentional ignorance and lies, lies, lies.
America needs a conservative party that actually wants to conserve things rather than to destroy them. So-called conservatives, have worshiped at the temple of Shiva for so long that destruction is all they seem to know. It is long past time for the billionaires who have financed this fission to reckon with the wreckage they've wrought, time for them to set aside false fealty to Jesus and to have a come to Edmund Burke moment.
1
How one can so accurately describe the Democrat party, its roiling of resentments for political gain and creation of rabid divisions and then ascribe it to Conservatism is a puzzle.
The difficulty is that the 11 million people here illegally are not here because they are "excellent". They are here because the country is confused. THIS news paper itself routinely conflates legal and illegal immigration.
So it is inevitable that some sort of nationalism arise simply as a nod in the direction of common sense. And then of course racists and xenophobes will join that nationalism.
But it is a mistake to think that nationalism is nothing more than racism and xenophobia. Nationalism is respecting the identity of the country and defending its borders.
1
It's ironic that the US conservative movement has also defined itself as christian(purposeful small "c")when it certainly doesn't follow in the foot steps of Christ.
3
There never was a good old days of conservatism. It is and was always based on greed and bigotry. The only difference between yesterday's and today's group is how openly corrupt and amoral its leaders are today.
Conservatives like Mr. Brooks always have their "Oops" moments when a Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, The Tea Party and Donald Trumps raise their ugly heads. The outcome never changes, they always want to drag us back.
1
Good column, Mr. Brooks
As a former teacher in public schools, I wonder if 'excellence'
and 'striving' have disappeared from the curricula. Teach to the test. Learn to pass the test.
To me, one of the salient questions of "what happened?" is "Why didn't "compassionate conservatism" -- that morally grounded sense of community -- hold? I suppose the easy answer is that human nature is too self-interested, if not selfish, to sustain such feeling, but I actually suspect that the failure was by design as political leaders like Gingrich found it useful to stoke the tribalism of the religious to the point where the gospel's message of compassion for the outsider was replaced by a conviction that the religious were the victims in a culture of radical individualism that denigrated their faith and sought their marginalization. By casting this as a "war" with all the attendant language of violence, conservatives retreated to their bunkers where compassion was not so much a luxury they couldn't afford as a compromise with the forces that embattled them.
David, I think you've outdone yourself. The column was clear and concise on the topic you chose. Some readers find a lot of fault in it, but I don't. The reason is that You are talking about a segment of America and one of its parties who are in power now in three of the four centers of governmental power. Sure, arguments can be applied to the other party and its adherents, but right now, not in the past or future, your analysis of an undeniable social movement seems well thought out and truthful.
2
I have read a fair sampling of the comments to David Brooks’ essay and am dismayed by the almost universal contempt for our fellow citizens who identify as “conservatives.” Surely, there is a difference between those who believe in small government/free market and nationalists/blood and soil.
There are issues which Trump has exploited: immigration, trade, crime, guns, entitlements, which are not easily answered by being liberal or conservative.
There are many Republicans/conservatives who are looking for an honorable response to Trump (Jeff Flake comes to mind), who do not want open borders, Medicare for All, and free college tuition (even if you need remedial courses), but who want the Mueller investigation to be continued, believe in the rule of law, are not racist, and want qualified individuals in important positions in the government.
1
@Thomas Gilhooley Very few if any liberals want "open borders." Conservatives who don't want government involved in health insurance are no better than those who demonize others, because the end result is the same. What you're claiming is that your freedom is more important that others' lives. Sorry, no sale.
Al, I do not get the connections you make but I appreciate the tone of your comments. That is what we all need to do. Respect and courtesy. Best to you. Tom
I can't help but think David's notion of "resentniks", shaped by his own affluent and comfortable beginnings, ultimately comes from a place of resentment itself. It isn't meritocracy that is resented. Or excellence. To the contrary. It's that merit wasn't earned but bestowed-- in birthright and geographical luck. You got the chance because you were born to it, no matter what you did. The easy walk to 3rd base advances environmental, educational, and economic advantages. Social connections that open doors for a lifetime. It's easy to love capitalism when you're the beneficiary, right out of the gate. As the recent Harvard trial shows us, some 40%+ are given priority status simple because of legacy. Starting the game as winners. The social contract promises opportunities to reach 3rd base-- to spend a life in effort and cost getting to where the 3rd base starter starts. But only 3rd base starters seem to win. How could this not breed resentment? Most people are just trying to survive. Those born on 3rd never have to consider surviving and all the trauma that comes from worrying about basic survival. How can we begin to repair the divisions if we don't even acknowledge, but for litigation, the disparities, bias and unfairness in our culture and institutions that make it difficult for all of us to have a 3rd base chance? The biggest issue is that the voices controlling this very discussion are the 3rd base starters. And we know David's playbook by now. Delay. Deny. Deflect.
15
@ Underhiseye
There’s an assumption here - it’s fairly universal and driven by the media - that no life lived short of 3rd base, can be honorable, meaningful, and or otherwise worthwhile, notwithstanding innumerable examples to the contrary. This artificial definition of success is terribly harmful. In any event, the solution is not to remove those at 3rd base, arrived there by whatever means, and send them back to 1st or 2nd. This advances no one’s cause at all, whether they’re at 3rd base or not.
With the ascension of Trump the GOP chose nationalism as its high moral purpose and discarded competence and integrity altogether. As a result, today's GOP handed the highest possible moral purpose - protecting American ideals and institutions - to its opposition.
14
Short version. The Republican party like all conservative parties attracts a lot of angry misfits with a grievance of some sort. They're not unknown on the far left but far more common on the right. Unfortunately, Brooks still won't acknowledge his own 30 odd year role in recruiting these very people into the Republican party by peddling various nationalist and extreme free market dogmas. Now these people have got out of the basement and taken over the Republican party shoving aside "Respectable and competent" Republicans and he's shocked, shocked.
30
@John
Great analogy, "got out of the basement." Thanks!
1
It's interesting to see Mr. Brooks articulate that American conservative views of small government and entitlement reform are not moral ideals. He seems to be saying that conservatives need to find some way to feel good about themselves while promoting what might arguably be called cruel and selfish policies. And as for anti-communist sentiment in the cold war being strictly a conservative moral cause, that's not how I remember it. I grew up during the cold war in a liberal democratic household in liberal New York and never met anyone who was pro-communist. The overwhelming majority of the country was anti-communist. It was one of the few things that almost everyone seemed to agree on. I know there were a lot of fringe groups that were part of the larger anti-war and civil rights movements in the 60's but they never took over the liberal establishment in the way conservatives are experiencing today. Finding moral purpose when your policies don't provide it will be a difficult if not impossible task.
21
@BillFNYC
And, I will add that being "anti-war" does not make a person a commie. Our adventures in SE Asia were disgraceful at the time and have not been proven to have made any sense whatsoever in hindsight.
1
While I admit that this analysis reflects Mr. Brooks personal values, morals and politics, I fear he has been led astray by his idealistic, almost idiosyncratic, perspective. From my perspective as a "social justice humanist" conservatives have never understood the value of government agency to temper the assertive, nay aggressive, human spirit and behaviors. He should read today's NYT column by Paul Krugman. Just as conservative economics is mostly a rationalization for serving the wealthy and has empirically been proven wrong, conservative (small government) politics has no moral center nor values and merely serves to rationalize and expand the power and wealth of the already powerful. Thus this "philosophy" and its "fundamentalist religiosity" has always been vacuous and, as our recent Republican Congress has demonstrated, vulnerable to shedding any sense of "values" to seek selfish ends.
26
@paradocs2 Alas history is replete with the hunger for more government to solve people's problems and it never ends well. People's problems are infinite and therefore government has to keep infringing on individual liberty until it is no more. Equality and freedom are deadly enemies.
2
@Douglas Nonsense. The conservative idea of liberty seems to be the freedom to trample the rights of others to make money. Conservatives don't seem to think the tragedy of the commons is any tragedy at all.
This column is an attempt at nostalgia for a conservative past that never existed. "Compassionate conservatism and the dream of spreading global democracy" as "efforts to anchor conservatism around a moral ideal" did not work out because they were fig leaves to cover the real project: the maximizing of corporate profits at the expense of workers rights, environmental rights and human rights. That internal contradiction cannot be reconciled when greed is the real motive.
What can be reconciled? The through line of modern conservatism and its go-to strategy from Buckley and Goldwater through Nixon and Reagan until today: the use of race and nationalism as a unifying force for retaining political power.
48
Most of the people I know are center right. They support equality. Everyone is equal in their world. They’re too busy to exclude anyone. They think it’s nobody’s business what happens in your bedroom. They are oblivious to skin color. A great idea is cherished no matter where it comes from. They are charitable and very educated most with advanced degrees. By the time all their taxes are paid its many months each year before they bring home anything. Resentment kicks in when they’re scolded about not doing their fair share or held accountable for things that happened long before they were born. You can dislike or disagree with these core tenets but they are true. Oh yes, these people tend to be very communal and successful, productive taxpayers. They are givers not takers. Interestingly not one of them inherited money— they worked their tails off to make it. Most graduated from State Universities. When others slowed down they sprinted past. I’d be hard pressed to describe this group with one word but a definition would start with committed and tireless.
13
@BigG These "core tenets" are "true" only in your mind, and your group of intimates does not make up America or even the conservative movement. Shorter BigG: I've got mine, Jack, and those who fall behind deserve to.
@BigG your friends need to get new accountants if "by the time all their taxes are paid its many months each year before they bring home anything".
What is conservatism anyway? I am trying to figure that out. It seems to be something that some people believe in. Possibly something with moral and/or philosophical substance. Perhaps something that is in its essential core, honorable. Brooks seems to leave the door open for that possibility, but I am not seeing it. Maybe I need to read more.
9
@Vincent Aleven Conservatism is sticking with the tried and proven rather than the untried and unproven.