An interesting piece, but "the beloved community" urged by Mr. Brooks, unfortunately, lacks an inspiring **story** (or saga, if you prefer) in which to see one's self as a participant. The ongoing Creation of a universe could be such a story, with "love your neighbor" as the second of our two basic work orders.
https://www.questioningchristian.com/2007/02/another_way_to_.html (self-cite)
1
I have always been a Democrat, but would gladly vote for a moderate from either party. We are truly doomed if we don’t. Here’s an idea. If we can nominate a moderate from either party, they pick a VP moderate from the other party. I LIKE IT. If the Democrats fully embrace the New Green Deal, they will hand the next election to Trump on a silver ( guess I should say gold ) platter.
5
A beautiful piece. Thank you.
I fear the Democrats will go down a rabbit hole like Labor in the UK. Who will be our Jeremy Corbyn? Plenty would like to be! That will be four more years of Trump, and could spell the end of the Democrat party.
Let moderate ideas prevail, and the ogre in the White House will be easily vanquished.
11
To follow Mr. Brook's theme, the post-1960s fourth phase is pandemic hedonism fueled by immoderate consumerism all fueled by unlimited debt - personal, corporate, and national.
Whether it's the Pentagon wanting a new carrier or bomber with unproven gadgets, bells, and whistles.
Or a corporation wanting to buy back stock or pay its CEO insane amounts.
Or a family wanting several $50,000 suvs sitting in front of a house they are underqualified to make payments all.
As long as they can add the price to the national debt, split the stock, or get the loan to replace a 1-year old suv, the only question is: Where do I sign?
It matters little if you're the POTUS; a General with oak leaf clusters, or Joe Sixpak, their hedonism and the "I-want-it-NOW!!" syndrome always outweighs the moderation Mr. Brooks thesis for moderation.
3
I too believe in moderation. So I agree with the bulk of your column Mr. Brooks. I don't believe the left is based in a scarcity mindset. The Democratic/Liberal side is based on social justice, which is based on inclusion. Inclusion can't be a scarcity mindset. Only the far right has cast this as a 0 or 1 binary disagreement.
This GOP/Fox zero sum game gives Trump the script he loves to follow. As long as he's the headliner, he'll say anything, do anything.
We all cannot let this idea, so popularized by Trump and his ilk, of everyone either being a winner or a loser, drive us down the road to hell. We are all Americans. We should all believe in inclusion.
18
Fussing over the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic!
Western civilization is mired in apathy, inaction, and dissolution. An outbreak of love and moderation is unlikely, but surely futile.
History teaches us that civilizations are formed by the ruthless determination of a few to dominate the many. Is there any source for learning but history?
3
Why do conservatives think they have anything to say to the rest of us? Their ideology, their beliefs, and their policies have been repudiated by history and experience. They are irrelevant.
Why doesn't the New York Times hire opinion writers who have a mature and realistic point of view?
Why don't they hire a liberal opinion writer? I often wonder what the liberal take on todays events are but I can not find it in the Times.
Why don't they hire a socialist opinion writer to act as a balance to the many conservatives that fill out their pages?
The answer seems to be that they only want to print rabble rousers, intellectual trolls who are skilled in pushing the buttons of the middle class and causing them to repeat stories and write comments. They are dedicated to being a noise maker rather than a source of wisdom or understanding.
Shame on you, New York Times.
3
Mr Brooks doesn’t preach love but narcissistic cowardice.
Mr Brooks love is of a “I got mine” variety. It lets him tell a good story about himself to his target audience- himself.
It is one that ignores bigotry, it ignores inequality. It is Donald Trump’s good people among the Neo-Nazis in again an attempt to blame bothe sides.
The status quo is not good enough. And lying to yourself doesn’t make a good world. It ignores problems and pain so Mr Brooks can sleep easy. His story isn’t even thoughts and prayers- it is willfully deciding that there is no problems, and that the only solution is to shut up and let Mr Brooks sleep in comfort.
This is not love because it lacks care for anyone but himself.
3
Shame on me. I just had to read another of these "moderate" pieces from Brooks.
I know of no liberal, no lefty, no democrat who is not trying to move the Nation in ways that will benefit everyone. Even to benefit the morons on the right who do actually hate their neighbors and the real ideals of this Nation.
Where are the headlines about the socialist/democrats who are hoarding guns against the Nation they say they love?
Where are the radical lefties who want to destroy unions and good paying jobs?
Where are they, Brooks. I just haven's seen any radical lefties wielding the power to turn US into the Union of American Socialist Republic.
I see Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and the others, shouting from the rooftops about income and wealth and opportunity inequalities and wanting to something about it. For Everyone.
False equivalence from our so called 4th Estate has gotten US to this point where a fascist demagogue can masquerade as a populist and destroy 250 years of Enlightenment thinking about democracy and the rule of law.
23
C'mon David. Are there maybe a few leftists who want a centralized, authoritarian state? Maybe, but they are very few. Almost everything you applaud as centrism is what is wanted by the democratic rank-and-file. Please don't set up characatures of the left so you can posit false equivalencies. Look at the policies of the actual Trumpist Republican party and the policies of actual democrats. There's no comparison.
16
"The third mission is to devolve power out of Washington to the local level. Out-radicalize the left and right by offering a different system of power, a system in which power is wielded by neighbors, who know their local context and trust one another." Say what? That's optimistic and amnesic. Surely I am not the only one to remember the nature of "local level" power structures in Mississippi and Alabama in the early 1960s. Surely I am not the only one who remembers the role of Federal courts and the US Civil Rights Commission in seeing to it that people could register to vote and get an education.
8
I am a liberal - not radical - and I always read Brooks because I think he is rational and moderate and his ideas help me to balance and hone my own. This is, I think, a beautiful piece with many good points. The problem I have with it is this. Moderation usually is accompanied by gradualism. And I am very afraid that our environmental problems have reached the crisis point and we can't afford gradualism. Some of our social issues, as well, have reached a critical enough point that gradualism just won't be enough.
12
Mr. Brooks implication that there is some sort of moral equivalence between Trump supporters and Sanders supporters is at best ignorant, at worst despicable.
10
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-pilgrims/2013/11/22/9f93e822-52c1-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4406f1a97abe
It was mostly hard economic necessity and a dseire for a better life for their children that drove the Pilgrims to America. Lucky for them there was no wall.
8
Is Mr. Brooks feeling well? This is a moderately liberal, progressive, democratic agenda. (Perhaps he's beginning to feel better than ever...)
4
This is Beto's platform. He toured Texas preaching moderation and inclusion.
4
Ideas drive history, yes. But it happens that our story is being driven by an idiot who is afraid to stop. I read articles in your newspaper referring to the present and future political and I feel that many resigned with cowardly and banal arguments. In a more or less intelligent almost identical they say, like the moral of the moral: "The grapes are green." How easy and humiliating the pusillanimous anima to face the present and the future. David, you make reference to religious texts. There the ego does not prevail but the Tu, the we. Remember it. And according to your reasoning, thinking, feeling and doing in the opposite direction to our own navel is Utopic. Nice way to avoid disputes. Either it is water or it is oil. It is impossible to tempt unions to be prrversas to the comfortable conservatism with "solid intellectual bases". Faced with this kind of approach to reality, I would say: With what people the country counts to get out of lies and chaos if they raise nlancas flags before the unthinkable disgrace of these almost three years of iniquity and collapse of what cost so much to the good people who built a just and admired society? .
Not one of David Brooks' best commentaries. No doubt he seems well intentioned. But, judging all his reader comments, he misread the sentiments of his loyal readers. Then again, if he takes what everyone said here seriously, I think his next commentary will be pretty good. Who wants to bet he reads these comments and will ask for some kind of forgiveness? I think he didn't get enough sleep when he wrote this. So there, I forgive you Mr. Brooks. Now say something I want to hear.
1
What Brooks calls a moderate I call a Nixon republican or worse yet a Reagan Republican. What’s the matter Mr Brooks, that call from Fox that you are desperately waiting for hasn’t come yet?
1
Poor little David, sitting on a fence, trying to make a dollar out of ninety-nine cents.
1
Yet more nonsense from Brooks.
Every Republican policy proposal is a combination of Hate, Greed, and Violence, sold with Lies. Every one. You can't find an exception.
And if you go on right-wing websites, comment pages, or chat rooms you will read them celebrating violence against peaceful protesters, minorities, LGBTQs, etc., and calling for the mass murder of all of the "liberals." And in case you think it is just rhetorical, they own most of the 300 million guns in this country, and many of them actually roam in packs and beat up people, some of them shoot up churches, Synagogues, gay clubs, schools, assassinate abortion providers. etc. The base of the Party of Trump is right-wing terrorists.
Meanwhile, I spent years working with Occupy Wall Street. No one in Occupy Wall Street based their ideas in hate.
Yes we have anger at injustice. That is what being a just human being demands. Yes we want to take back much of the loot that global billionaires looted from the global economy and U.S workers in particular. We have even called for as much jail time as a poor mother who steals bread
for those that commit mass fraud, stealing billions.
But the world we are trying to create, the policies that we put forth are based in Love, Sharing, and Peace.
The Left believes that all of the people in the world are one family.
We believe in taking care of each other.
We never demand war or violence.
There is the Greater Evil, Lesser Evil, and the Greater Good.
CHOOSE GOOD
9
Why the author's ideas look very much as socialist ideas of Bernie and Warren just repackage as ideas from the Bible?
3
Remember "Love Trumps Hate"?
Didn't work out so well.
Moderation has its place but we are in immoderate times.
2
neither Tribe nor Social Justice will win; Fear will reign supreme.
1
Moderation needs to take the form of actually finding a position that takes into account the truth about both sides and gives them each their due. It doesn't mean just splitting the difference. Halfway between something extreme and something less extreme is lopsided. It means recognizing the truth of everything out there. Sometimes one side's due is to be largely ignored. Sometimes both sides have points and the best way to give them their due is to find a way to elegantly satisfy as many of them as possible while mercilessly letting go of those that are too hard to reconcile. And what will works best can change over time, depending not on the predominance of advertised positions but on conditions. And at all times it's a good idea to look for first principles to derive your compromises from, so that they can be applied in the future without reference to anything else.
1
David Brooks should stop mischaracterizing what he calls "the left." The call for social justice is NOT a based on a "scarcity mindset." It is a call to realize ever more fully the promise of the Declaration of Independence by ending exclusions to that promise that have been endured through most of our history by minorities, women, and all those sorts of people whom the white men of the Revolutionary generation could not imagine were up to the demands of freedom.
4
We have to move from a worldview where greed is good and self-interest rules the day to where caring about each other is as important as caring about ourselves, i.e. love thy neighbor. Brooks is calling that a moderate perspective. Whatever it’s called, it is the next idea to drive history, where we will create the kind of programs Brooks is pointing to, and the meta-question is how to get the world behind it. Outside of positions with political labels, how to shift our worldview is what we should be focused on.
2
Mr. Brooks writes: "The problem with moderates has always been that they don’t have a magnetic idea. Recent moderation has been a bland porridge that defines itself by what it doesn’t like."
You, Mr. Brooks, are the sum of all 'political ideas' both "bland" and … woefully lacking any courage of self-examination (or of our country's history of mortal sin and hypocrisy) … selfish.
With "moderates" like you, it would be foolish to 'expect' that "the times" might even now (or ever yet) be "a-changing" -- or that one of the 'halves' you reference -- a "half" that 'makes' 99% of the GDP and 'takes home' 1-to-10% of the benefits -- might ever get the fair share prohibited 'it' by a country 'built' upon native "American" genocide, enslavement of 'persons of color' and the abuse, to this day ("mild' only in 'comparison' to 'our' prior, existential abuse of 'the other,' wherever 'found') -- and 'into' all our reasonably foreseeable tomorrows, for sure
-- of all who have not 'risen' to 'colorless' to the 'donor class.'
2
I like some of this article but like the responses even better. I have a big problem with assuming that devolving more control to locals will improve the nation. In many parts of the country the local city, county, and/or state gov'ts are the biggest enablers of repression and racism. We need a strong federal system to protect civil rights and prevent institutional racism, sexism, and segregation in all its insidious forms-- racist criminal justice systems, voter suppression, redlining, de-facto school segregation, hate crimes, racist/sexist hiring, bank loan racism, etc.
3
At the risk of simply throwing cold water onto a good column, I think the Delbanco analysis of the American Dream is wrong and a poor place to start. Americans have always been driven by self-interest, albeit thinly veiled by religion and patriotism. The only difference is that now that self-interest is naked, so conflict is open, intense and ugly, redolent of the Hobbesian scenairo.
Our current President is a would-be Leviathan, and it would appear that many Americans would accept that form of autocratic rule. So, the job for "Moderates" is to first, recognize the reality and personal legitimacy of self-interest politics, but then, strive to elevate the value of participatory democracy over the self-interest of any group. This will be a hard sell at this point, but with a charismatic leader who is willing to pitch the "common good" it may be possible to steer a course between Tyranny and the the Hobbesian "State of Nature".
1
David, Excellent column! But I believe there exists a philosophy or outlook which encompasses your moderate ideals: Personalism. Have you by any chance read the 1950 volume of the same name by Emmanuel Mounier (University of Notre Dame Press, London)? In the 1930's Mounier founded the monthly French magazine Esprit, in which he expounded his revolutionary "philosophy of service and not of domination." Yes, "revolutionary;" because the moderate is always the true revolutionary! N'est-ce pas?
1
The deeper problem, at least politically speaking and in Mr. Brooks's ideas, is that the more radical base dictates the agenda of the party. They are the ones that show up, voting at primaries and elections. They are the ones who swoon for the more "hard core" positions that excite voters ideologically. The primary system is based on the passions of what can be called the more "extreme" elements.
First of all, reduce the length of the primaries so that national attention is paid equally through the states - no more election outomces based largely on early primaries (it's non-democratic). Take money out of elections, funding elections democratically through citizen taxes in order to elect uninfluenced candidates. Make easier voting a national priority and have a commission determine what improving that outcome would be. Improve civics education in the country as a national commitment.
The problem is, Mr. Brooks, that the energy and practical effort required to make these ideas so would be opposed by the party which deems the results less to its advantage.
When basic facts such as what is required in fair elections are disputed, or what are clear, fact-based ways to improve voter representation are, how can we ever come up with meaningful progress in the running of the country?
Too many straw men.
Did Mr. Brooks just decide to divide our history into a 3 act morality play: God, Nation, and Self? After 1960, at the beginning of Self, I was mesmerized as a child and teen by the prospect of movements, people doing things in groups, communities, festivals-- civil rights, antiwar, meeting complete strangers and becoming brothers and sisters, the belief that we could change things. This in contrast to the provincial and stultifying 1950s, and before that an America with few rights for anyone other than white, successful men.
Make your GOP the moderate party again, and push the wackos back to the fringe. And lets welcome the working class back to the rational Democrats. The only thing great about the past, is that religion wasn't a part of politics. Let's return to that too.
1
Maybe we wouldn't need big government policies if we all actually loved our neighbors.
1
He's on the right track here... but going in the wrong direction. Listening to our neighbors and fellow citizens and NOT accepting the media-driven narratives is very important. I'm more liberal than most here and live in the middle of Trumpland. My neighbors are not the monsters many people seem to think (and like to think). I also lived two decades in Europe and greatly appreciate social democracy... and appreciate the American people also! We actually have an inferiority complex (compared to Europeans, at least). And our open-mindedness toward other people (believe it or not) and 'can-do' approach is exceptional, despite our abusive economic system. Despite all the dutiful flag waiving, most Americans assume that it's better elsewhere. In many other countries, they make opposite assumptions. Our country is ready for unified and major changes... but they won't be moderate, safe or centrist. The country is ready to reinvest in itself and share the dividends. Once we free ourselves from our self-hatred we can start to work together - for ourselves and not for corporations. IMO, local commerce and local government is the natural way to create a healthy and environmentally-responsible society.
2
I believe the ideas for our times is Sovereignty. This is the creation of each adult person's right to make decisions for oneself, as long as it does not cause harm to others.
Sovereignty goes beyond Self because the current era only allows the privileged classes to decide who they want to be. Women, the poor, non-Whites seldom have opportunities to experience Self. Sovereignty says that everyone has available what they need for basic survival. Then they can make their own decisions about their lives, instead of fighting to survive.
None of the affections David discusses have any meaning if they are not done with Sovereignty. When we are sovereign, we can connect with others in equality and still have different ways of living. There will be different ways of living. The current fighting to establish MY WAY as the best is a tribal battle that tears up apart. With Sovereignty tribes still exist, but they are all woven into the fabric of our society.
1
As is usually the case, here, too, i share David Brooks' basic values, outlook and objectives. I wish our country were as David would like to see it, and i hope it someday may be there. However, while I agree that "magnetic", dramatic, blood-pumping ideas can and do change societies, I tend to doubt that moderation will ever fit that bill. It is usually radical (or at least radically expressed), highly dramatic ideas that galvanize a generation and lead to important changes. David's suggested programs are sensible and appropriate to me, but I doubt they will ever "grab in the guts" any sufficiently large portion of the population, particularly the young who generally are the engines of change, to the point where they will dedicate their energies and lives to effect them and bring our country together in a good place. Can someone else take Brooks' basic thesis and clothe it in more dramatic forms and rhetoric that could motivate a generation to "moderate" results? I hope so.
Good column--For one idea to overcome differences from one who is in the arena, see the piece on "principled bipartisanship" by Oregon's Sen. Ron Wyden at open-spaces.com/articles/principled-bipartisanship/ .
It is a hopeful thought for dealing with the foreseeable future.
This is the same author who wrote, a few years ago, that having a system of universal affordable healthcare, wasn't in keeping with intrinsic American "vibrance".
Why would anyone expect an appeal for "moderation" to make any more sense?
1
@Kim R
To be exact, Mr Brooks wrote, in 2009, during the Healthcare Debate, regarding proposed changes:
"Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one." ( NYT Nov 23 2009 ' The Values Question')
"Moderate Republican" is an oxymoron. The party is so far right that the center looks socialist. What the center is these days is realist. Reality is climate change, overpopulation, the fact that we can't take in everybody who wants to immigrate here, that we have a gun problem and won't fix it, that until we get money out of politics, we are not going to get much accomplished, that regulations exist because people and organizations fail to self-regulate adequately, and that moving money around and playing some sport is worth more in America than caring for the ill or teaching people. Reality is that a few large corporations run our lives, and our calls are not really important to them, only our money.
2
David: I, too, am a moderate, one who has voted for both moderate Democrats and Republicans in the past. I live in a swing district outside of Philly, so there are whole regions of us. I'm watching this early run-up to the 2020 election with real dread.
Where are the moderates in this lineup? Will our views not even be represented by the political parties anymore? Are our moderate ideals somehow outdated? And if so, holy cow, just how polarized do we really want to become as a nation?
We really should stop arguing and start talking with one another. We moderates can lead the way out of this mess. Where do I sign up?
2
I have a question for Mr. Brooks. Is there room in this moderate middle for a gay man who lives and works as a teacher in rural Kentucky? One of the reasons I am left of center is that many on the right believe I have no claim to basic human and civil rights. I'm all for moderation as long as this "way of being" recognizes me as an equal member of the community.
2
I disagree with Mr. Brooks' presentation of our history.
The Puritans came here because they were run out of England. Their particular intolerance wasn't tolerated by the equally intolerant religious powers there. They live on in the intolerant evangelicals who still hope to burn as many witches as they can find.
The next phase was one of exploitation and conquest, whether it was slaves, the native Americans, the wilderness, the prairies, half of Mexico, the Louisiana and Alaska purchases, Americans came, saw, conquered.
He might be right about the 60's, but that enlightenment was soon quenched by our rampant capitalism that has brought us to here with a crooked capitalist leading the nation in a downward spiral.
I don't see us leaving the capitalistic stage yet unlessl we get a grip on the environmental issues about to wack us and Mr. Brooks in the head.
Mr. Brooks platitudes make sense if you aren't hungry, poor, sick, uneducated or in trump's america, have colored skin. He would do better by urging his fellow conservatives and republicans to love their neighbors more and realize the shared humanity of us all. Ask trump and his enablers to stop the war on America.
2
Whether or not Mr. Brooks is right in the particulars (I would work love of the home planet into the mix) is less important than the breakthrough concept of a striking and unifying Moderate Idea. I think you're on an important track that is both appealing/galvanizing and actionable. I am demoralized and tired of seeing much of our countrymen and women hurling rocks at one another.
1
Policy based on love of our fellows would be great: it resides with the Democrats. The Trumpists/GOP have embraced an I've-got-mine mentality.
Meanwhile, some corrections to the history of the "different ideas that, at different stages, drove American history." Before Brooks' first stage ("the first stage in our history was driven by a belief in God"), there were at least tow prior dreams: the dreams of native Americans seeking harmony with the spirits they inferred inhabited their world -- an instinct for sustainable interaction with the land and its creatures; then there was the spirit of possibility embodied by the early anonymous traders that preceded the Pilgrims -- a spirit given voice in Shakespeare's "brave new world" in The Tempest (~1610). Only after these earlier dreams, do the Pilgrims bring their God. Nor is the phase after the Pilgrims and Puritans one "organized around Nation", but rather around Enlightenment, when Americans largely recoiled from the religious wars roiling Europe leading to the Spirit of the Declaration that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights.
Mmm, yes, the children of our future Waterworld will surely look back and say "I'm so glad I was enmeshed in the warm relationship of child tax credits."
3
I won't vote for Republicans, but I may sit out the vote if the message doesn't change. Free stuff for everyone; the doomsday, end-of-days climate changers; high taxes; big spending; open borders; abolish law enforcement. Democrats were never like this. The party has been hijacked. They won't get my vote.
2
"The pioneers were settling the West. It was the age of American exceptionalism. America was to be a universal nation, a home and model for all humankind, the last best hope of earth."
Really? The plundering, murdering and raping of Native American Indians and throwing them off their lands was hardly an example of America's exceptionalism. Settling of the West was like the Trump era, with class war and racism. Conservatives do not want moderation, they want authoritarian control.
2
Every “bipartisan” idea is usually a Democratic idea, but then we have to beg and plead to put it in action. Childcare, educational spending, job retraining... has any Republican in the history of time ever not denounced these as socialism?
2
Mr. Brooks mentions our children first, but doesn't mention their greatest threat: an unlivable world brought about by corporate avarice.
3
Let it go. Moderate politics is code for gut the middle class by ending the New Deal policies that ended the gilded age.
1
"If the 2020 choice is between Donald Trump and a Democrat who supports the Green New Deal, I’d vote for any moderate alternative." This is how far fossil-fuel money has slanted this 'conversation' we're supposedly having. You know what 'is'? Trump is. Climate Change is. You know what 'isn't'? Any policy response to a disaster of epic proportions, for our economy, our children, and our planet. The GND has to be passed by Congress. In its current form, that's not possible. What it has done, and continues to do, is point out how absurd the current policy response is, the 'do-nothing alternative', given the stakes for our kids. That policy is completely absurd, even evil. It is designed simply to punish the young for being young. If the 'Green New Deal' simply existed to contrast itself with the 'Grey Old Deal', than it has done its job. So, unlike the 'moderate' named Brooks, I'll be voting for anyone who supports the GND. Because to do otherwise is not to be a 'moderate': it's to be a radical, bent on destroying the planet, and our children with it. And while we are saving our kids' future, Brooks will be found singing 'Kumbaya' with the other 'moderates'. 'Love Thy Neighbor' indeed...
3
I’m as big a fan of the beautiful ideal of the beloved community as the next guy. But, please — when you write a column like this, you need to answer the obvious, fundamental question: What should the community of regular people do when our grotesquely unequal and grievously rigged system of near-oligarchical rule works directly to thwart the “four affections that bind our society”? The wealthy and powerful people who wield power that is grossly disproportionate to their numbers actively work against all four of those affections, because oligarchs’ primary affection is protection and promotion of their economic and political power. How, then, should the beloved community respond? I'm pretty sure that ignoring the people who act on the scarcity mind-set by hoarding money and political power won't make them go away. I await the column with your answer.
2
The Pilgrims came to America for two reasons. They lived in poverty in Holland and wanted better circumstances for their families.
They also wanted to proselytize. Hypocritical, considering they left England because of perceived religious persecution.
3
For Trump's 2020 campaign he should replace his MAGA hats with HAF: Hate and Fear. Democrats should counter with LAC: Love and Courage, words that can be embraced by progressives and moderates alike.
2
A great construct of what the two sides are offering and what the middle can offer instead.
I'm all in for love your kids and find the tribalism drum beat a bit scary and Democrats push not broad enough to attract ALL Ameicans.
Who is the moderate candidate that can bring us all together?
It's past time that we kill this myth of a "moderate" Republican who will save the party from it's foolishness.
The Democrats are the moderate party and they need to move left.
49
@Alan Snipes
So country club capitlists versus socialists?
That 'extreme picture' of our political landscape is not reality.
Millions of Americans call themselves 'indepedents' because both parties scare us and don't offer a compelling vision forward.
7
Why do people think Trump desires an authoritarian State? He desires no State.
2
whats needed are magnetic moderate leaders like Reagan 2 Bushes Clinton and Obama who could appeal to moderates of each party and the independents.
How can we love our neighbors if we do not seek justice?
How can we be bound together by work when wages are stagnating and the gains from steadily increasing productivity all go to financiers, managers, and a small class of professionals?
How can we have affection for the place we live in if we ignore the vanishing bees and the rising seawater?
4
Great piece that offers me much to think about. I agree with much of it and I'll mull over the rest. I particularly agree with this statement: "If the 2020 choice is between Donald Trump and a Democrat who supports the Green New Deal, I’d vote for any moderate alternative."
1
Time to change the name from Moderates" to "Pragmatists". What works should trump ideology.
5
Anything that mentions "love for our children" and fails to mention climate change is just banging a hollow drum.
108
Get with the program.
The Green New Deal is one of those magnetic ideas. If only you could detach yourself from the resistant Republicans.
It serves us all.It is universal, It affects all classes in a positive way. It is not antithetical to private property rights, capitalism, it is communitarian.
Think big and good.
4
in the age of combox, digitalized umbrage, david brooks is a voice of reason.
1
The fact that David did not support Barack Obama at any time during his eight year Presidency exposes this column as falsehood. Crocodile's tears.
3
Yes, unfortunately, moderation creates losers out of the entrenched rabid right and ludicrous left, and this represents a heck of a lot of people these days.
“...electric....magnetic...”. Good going, Mr. Brooks. Finally leaving the squishy, undefined realm of the American soul, and getting down to the strong forces we know something about. At least physicists, if not illiterate masses out there in the hinterland you seemingly eulogize. If your imaginary communities were only able to read your prose.
In fact, among the many historic and recent wacko dogmas afflicting our country, both electric and magnetic fields now rank pretty high; higher than fear of vaccines or invading hordes of miscreants. Denial of those fields and waves we so depend on laps over into denial of climate change, science in general, and the New York Times. On the optimistic side, where it is obvious you prefer living, those electromagnetic fields might be the change agents you desire; except for the evidence that they promote those nasty modes of thought you do not like. Try a road trip sometime: call it a necessary sabbatical for researching the American psyche.
You make me laugh. What you are describing is Democrats in the Unites States of Central North America, liberals in Canada and socialists in Europe! Got it backwards!
And David the whole founding God delivered me to the Exceptionl America. Made up story. The Pilgrims were sour people who couldn’t get along, cultists being turfed. Nut bars David. And God didn’t lead them to discover the promised land.
The Pilgrims began the genocide, oh sure friends for awhile while they taught the God fearing perfect people how to survive, then took their land. Typical American.
And regarding class, yours is a society of class made bearable by elevating the poor and weak to ‘defined philanthropy’ so the individual who ripped you off now gets to ‘give’ you a bed and health care.
Sir, love in America has nothing to do with it as long as the tension between individual ‘freedom’ crushes the collective.
4
Dear David Brooks,
I have the utmost respect for you as an intellectual but I really liked this warm hearted pointer for humanity USA.
My problem is that I do not believe there is a MODERATE in reality. I think a moderate is someone who is trying to change their true color long enough to fool the other side OR both sides. The concept of moderate also suggests that someone between two polar views can be correct at all. Voting for a moderate means you trust the deceiver and you do not trust that some ideas in their more pure form are better when not diluted. Take gasoline VS water. You car will not start with a mixture of the two ONLY the PURE GASOLINE. That said you need to DRINK only water and not a mixture.
I'm looking forward to a rethink from you of what you said in this article.
Wow. I think I just read Joe Biden's Inaugural Address.
26
Right wing ideas are positive sum (economic growth benefits all). Left wing ideas are zero or negative sum (redistribute what others produce - destroying incentives). Not complicated.
3
It is quite complicated, considering that the right wing ideas in real life brought unequal accumulation of wealth, stagnation of salaries, shrinking opportunities for majority of population, corruption and periodic crisises that requires the Government resources to solve. We don't know what the left wing ideas would bring to this country because we haven't try them much. We did try some like Medicare and SS, and seems like people like them. These policy may not promote economy directly, but definitely, keep people from deep poverty. What the point of economic growth if 50% of population is living in poverty, as it was in 20s? It brings instability and revolutions. Nobody wants that, right?
3
Liberals are proposing concrete policies to address your concerns.
Liberals also love their children, so much so that they want parents to have sufficient maternity and paternity leave. Liberals also believe in our shared humanity -- that is why president Obama reached out to Iran and Cuba and signed treaties to make the world a safer place.
Its very refreshing to hear that you actually believe in wage subsidies, but these would most likely be a federal program because international companies tend to outmaneuver local municipalities and pit them against each other (see: Amazon, Walmart's pullout of DC). I don't love big government, but we need a corporate regulatory mechanism as large as the behemoths that fight restraint.
2
What is this....we are leaving the "Self" period? The heck we are! Witness cell phones in everyone's faces opposing conversation, witness the way people talk to each other on web blogs; witness our overall quest for personal gain and ever more entertainment while the country infrastructure rots and our schools get poorer; and there are so many other examples.
We are in the midst of a me-first period heightened by the like of Facebook and its ilk, and accelerated by the rise of fake-news and no-news media, and lack of integrity en masse. People do not value legitimate information....just a quick entertaining burst maybe true maybe not. As long as it makes me feel good!
Mr. Brooks tries to make a grand statement, but it is just not realistic. I would prefer he go back to being a tough political analyst and stop with the philosophical and ideological musings where he can sell more books.
Somehow Americans have to start actually listening to each other again, and finding some common ground. If not the long period of American success is over, and I don't see how it could ever recover.
3
An agenda for modertes?
Health care for all Americans
Affordable college
Adressing climate change
Adressing income inequality
Why you keep asking such question as if you didn’t know Democrats are already proposing solutions?
3
David
I agree the two extremes are “US” v “THEM” and in the middle there is “WE.”
Our founding Fathers began with “We the people...”
But what happens when policy can’t agree on reality.
Both sides can agree, “we want to protect the future for our children.” One side says, “great. And can we agree that the planet is heading towards and ecological crises so dire that it must become our top priority?” And the other side replies, “Science?...ew!”
1
"When you listen to your neighbor, you see that deep down we’re the same".. except deep down in your pockets, where one has a very fat wallet and the other has just lint.
2
@Jeff Copelan age 74
What is experience are people who worship Alex Jones, deny climate change, are against healthcare and love their money. Oh - and they can't admit that Mark Harris was a scoundrel in NC. But that's an evangelical for you.
You take so much trouble, Mr. Brooks, for tax cuts.
How about examining the "policy implications" of your Republicanism?
1
More false equivalence from Mr. Middle!
4
The stunning, horrifying ignorance of David Brooks is on display here once again. Mr. Brooks tells us we should "promote policies to make sure children are enmeshed in webs of warm relationships." At the same time, he tells us that we should reject the Green New Deal. As most climate scientists tell us, even implementing every aspect of the Green New Deal and other extreme policies to stop climate change will not be enough to save our planet. So, Mr. Brooks, please explain how we should "enmesh our children in webs of warm relationships" when their homes are being inundated with floods, or destroyed by hurricanes, or they're dying from lack of water. It's hilarious that shallow thinkers like David Brooks tell us how we should all be so good to each other, but they fail to understand that the best way to do that is to be good to our planet and reject the imbeciles who continue to claim that climate change is a hoax. Just once, I wish Mr. Brooks would call out the Republicans who are jeopardizing the future of the children of this country and the world. But that would be "immoderate," right?
5
Some years ago, I was driving with a friend. A staunch conservative.
A man (by the way) who, during a later conversation, compared Mr. Obama with Mussolini. Conservative did I say? Very!
But to go back. I pointed out to my friend the incredible spectacle of sundry tycoons and plutocrats flying (in their private Lear jets) to Washington--soliciting federal funds for their ailing corporations--
--and then!--
--awarding themselves hefty bonuses.
My conservative friend was nonplussed. He suggested that people be better educated in this country.
Ethically educated, I mean.
Right.
Mr. Brooks, I believe in laws. GOOD laws. TOUGH laws. Laws contrived to protect the many from the rapacious few. The weak from the strong. The disadvantaged from the advantaged.
I too am a moderate. And (by the way) where are my fellow moderates? They seem to have vanished from the earth. I look around--I call out--and my answer is an immense silence. Nothing.
But I don't much believe (begging your pardon) in the aches and pains of our country being healed by systems of philosophy and ethics. Educative nostrums.
These things are indeed important, I grant you. But they are beyond the power of columnists (and readers like me) and legislatures and presidents to achieve or effect.
Laws on the other hand! The civil rights act of 1965. The voting rights act of the following year.
They DO bring about change. Badly needed change.
Immediately.
"America was to be a universal nation, a home and model for all humankind, the last best hope of earth."
As with the rest of the article's thesis, we know this was absolute nonsense. The 19th century was notably about "a home" for whites only. Classifying the 60's as all about "self" is equally absurd.
Today we have a genuine cultural war on our hands. Yet moderates, according to Brooks, must sit this one out and stick their collective heads in the sand...as if they are above right vs. wrong.
2
I loved this. Thank you. I am sick of being called to anger and outrage. I am sick of prosecuting the past and ignoring the problems of the present and future. There is hard work to be done.
For the life of me I don't understand why the left thinks that if it keeps calling white conservatives racist, selfish, ill-informed, and undeserving, that they will agree and say "Yes, Thank you. Everything I have worked hard for has no meaning. I am a horrible person. I would like to join your side."
We want desperately to meet in the middle and fix taxes, climate change, infrastructure, and immigration. And we despise Trump too!
3
Q: What is the opposite of the noun, "moderate"?
A: Immoderate .
1
Will never happen with the Teflon Don as president and Putin as his chief foreign affairs advisor. Unity is the last thing they want.
Mr. Brooks thank you for continuing to remind us that since we are all a nation of immigrants, except for Native American Indians who were NOT allowed to sit on juries until what 1950? we must be kind to immigrant families. And as one of the moderates, I encourage you to continue on this quest to redirect what has become a war not just of ideas and words but unfortunately physical and environmental destruction.
The Russian trolls throw thousands of secret bombs every day in forums like this. Simply paid to screw our country by further dividing us.
The Wall Street Journal front page yesterday, focused on the Pope finally stating what should have been stated 20 years ago. Some priests rape children and they need to be removed from our polite society.
Folks look at what a few hundred idiotic politicians have done to the U.K. through tapping into an anger against immigrants. At best Brexit will diminish the UK since most of the financial wealth piled up by the EU has left but no Muslims are leaving the country. And hundreds of thousands of Britains who now live throughout Europe will be forced to come back home raising what exactly? The unemployment rates? I predict the UK will suffer a 9% recession and the EU will have a 3% recession followed by an American recession just in time for the 2020 election cycle.
Neither Tribalism which has affected the United Methodist Church's vote on LBGT membership, nor extremism on the left build up our communities. National service works.
I agree with this article completely, the problem is all the extremists think they are moderates, and when they hear moderate ideas they don't like them. People are so caught in their own point of view that thinking outside that box is getting less and less. That is what scares me.
The biggest problem that we have is we no longer have dialogue, just dogma. When people see an attempt at dialogue, they just slam it with their dogma. This comment thread has a lot of that.
I have always been a moderate, which to me is not really being in the middle, it is evaluating each issue as it comes and sometimes agreeing with the liberals, sometimes the conservatives.
Extremists are hooked on punishing the people they think are doing wrong, rather than solving the problem at hand. This distorts reality tremendously, and confuses people. Take white privilege, it is a half truth that is more designed to punish white people than help any person of color. The problem is people of color are treated badly, not that white people are treated well. Everyone should be treated well.
So to me the whole concept of white privilege is a dangerous half truth that is designed to punish, not help. That is just one example.
1
Look at Catholic church, it used to be an institution which preaches Love, the message of Jesus. What has become of it now?
We don't elect leaders who talk about unification, love and tolerance, and we have new network like Fox catering to viewers of hate, then what do we have now?
no wonder the country is a mess.
Every thinking American should read this essay.
The big question: who among us in the moderate center will use the bully-pulpit of a Presidential run to say these things?
David..?
@richard cheverton Already happened. His name was Barack Obama.
3
So the future of the country depends on an enormous kumbaya moment? The differences need to be moderated from the top down - by the example of our leaders (national or local), our teachers, our clergy. Tolerance first - love later.
"The problem with today’s left-wing and right-wing ideas is that they are both based on a scarcity mind-set. They are based upon us/them, friend/enemy, politics is war, life is conflict."
Good job presenting a false equivalency between the two major parties, Brooks!
We are doomed if we do not pick the correct side wholeheartedly in 2020.
1
I'm all for this, as a moderate myself. But how can we enact a love thy neighbours approach when the gap between rich and poor has become so wide that the two groups rarely even interact let alone understand and respect one another. How can we undo the very local government decisions that have created that disconnect, such as allowing communities to develop without mixing high and low income housing, making rich and poor neighborhoods? I don't see how that can be undone, but I think it has to be to acheive what Mr. Brooks is proposing.
Unfortunately for moderates and centrists and gradualists, mother nature is becoming an extremist.
Because fossil fuel interests have been fighting for so long to prevent moderate action on climate change, we're forced to take bolder action. And that means that people who work in the fossil fuel industry are going to have to find other employment relatively quickly.
We've been down this road before. Eliminating tariff barriers made international manufacturing much more efficient, and goods and services cheaper. It also wiped out a large part of American industry. And because we have a grossly inadequate social safety net, that gain in efficiency caused tremendous human suffering and political instability. It shattered communities like the ones Mr. Brooks is always carrying on about.
The "extreme leftists" like AOC have recognized that as we radically change the energy sector, which also requires changes in housing practices, transportation etc., we have to buffer the shock effects with social programs. And we can't allow conservatives to use the need to respond to climate change as an excuse for not doing anything about income inequality or the lack of medical care.
The idea that energy policy and social policy have nothing to do with one another is another example of conservative naïveté.
3
This discussion thread is one of the most encouraging things I've read since iq45 assumed the throne....oops, I meant the presidency.
The fact that so many of the comments reveal a great depth of understanding of the true nature of our country's problems and an informed perspective on what's needed to solve those problems signals to me that the light of reason in our country is finally beginning to illuminate the darkness. Thank you all for the brightness you brought to my day.
David still seems to be riding “they are both equal in their extremes train ,”lets let the GOP continue if they are a little better
No they are not ,Trump came in on a far right ticket slashing and burning truth and science ,
there shouldn’t be a “just tone it down administration “ the true emergencies are climate and gun control .
America needs a huge swing of correction to the left [due to the years ofKoch bros, gerrymandering tea parties .and freedom caucus ]get the legislation done ,then moderation will be in order .
1
This is a nice dream if you left religion and local power out of it.
Banning societal discrimination based on faith, enforcing universal background checks.
These must be part of any path to the future.
"The Pilgrims came because God called them to do so. God’s plans for humanity were to be completed on this continent."
I thought the Pilgrims came to America to escape religious persecution in England?
PILGRIMS: They're tough on us here in England. We've got to get out but where do we go?
GOD: Go to America and complete your plans for humanity. Just be nice to the native Americans.
1
I give this column a 5 out of 5. I’m proud of my family’s and America’s role in defeating fascism & communism. Earth’s hunger problem is dropping. China has a middle class. But I never saw inequality coming. When unemployed people who want to work can’t do as well as their grandparents did, watch out. Tribalism? Another “ism”. Like desperation-ism.
We have had class warfare ever since before St. Ronnie. The Green New Deal will will not introduce or even intensify class warfare; it is just a strategy for the other side to shift what is happening from slow and steady losses to some gains, some gaining back of what has been lost.
Devolving power is a lovely idea, but will not work unless economic power is also devolved. If our local societies are to run themselves, they must free themselves not only from Washington but also from the corporate boardroom in New York or Silicon Valley or Switzerland. At the very least they need a voice in what happens in corporate boardrooms. Local communities need a voice in replacing their citizens with robots or moving their jobs.
Appearing to be part of a beloved community preserves corporate freedom. Some corporations use raw power instead, but projecting an appearance of concern and holding raw power in reserve works much better.
Economics also drives history. The magnetic and charismatic idea of free enterprise drives history by being implemented in the economy, but this implementation works according to its own rules and not according to the ideal of a free market.
Mr. Brooks never sees big, international business as a limit or destroyer of local freedom. Doing this would force him to lose many illusions and readers who share them. He could lead some readers to reality while losing others, but he prefers to remain what he is, an artist of an unprintable sort.
Since I'm awash in moderation I'm going to buy every word Mr. Brooks!
A republican presidential candidate running as this version of moderate anywhere but the Northeast would be eviscerated by the "mainstream" of Trumpists.
A Democrat running this moderately gets a harrumph from the left wing of their party, and then a vote...
Praying!
28
Brooksian Punditry is easy. Intone your platitudes gravely, as though a firm grasp of the obvious precludes any argument. That makes it easy for anyone dumb enough to buy this treacle to not wonder how, if "We are bound together by our love of our children," we are leaving them unprecedented debt and environmental degradation. Or how, "We are bound to society by our work" while entire professions, both white- and blue-collar, are going extinct. Or how "We are bound together by our affection for our place" when...yeah, well, never accuse David Brooks of being deep.
Here's why these little wishes-on-a-star won't happen. We aren't bound together in the first place. Love of children? Sure. Just not each other's. Work? Not the next guy's when the next guy wants a union and a living wage. Place? Try the tap water, David. It's from Flint.
3
Better to quote Luke 6:27, "Love your enemies" to get you beyond tribalism.
Sounds familiar.....wasn't this Barack Obama's vision? Look how that turned out.
This is the old David Brooks! Welcome back!
1
The problem with this eloquent explanation of moderate positions is, in politics, if you are explaining your are losing. That's the challenge we moderates have always had.
Is there a chance that United Methodists might be converted to Christianity by the preaching of David Brooks?
1
Right on, Dave!
1
1980 David, not 1960.
So now that the right-wing extremists don't have quite the death grip on America that they have had for years, it's time for moderation, Brooksie?
1
Sure David, you and the Grifter-in-Chief alone have the answers and can fix it.
And we are bound together in our belief in freedom of expression and thought. At a time when governments around the world are closing off open channels of information, those of us who still have choices believe we should listen to them and avoid voluntarily being sucked into any particular reality simplifying vortex. Moderates believe you can hold opinions without having to be 'certain' about them, and that is the way to combat extremism.
What is my agenda for the next four years?
To make Obama a one term President!
Mitch McConnell, GOP Senate majority leader. 2008.
Did Bill Clinton not try to be a moderate Democrat?
A President for all Americans? We saw how that worked out for him and the Democratic Party. And Hillary?
So much for moderation from the GOP.
Trump does not pretend to be a President for all Americans (moderate) He is the President of the right.
So watch out GOP. It may be time for the Democrats to nominate a candidate of and for the left. Moderation and the right be damned. Winner take all.
GOP, you brought this upon yourselves.
2
Who said 'Moderation in all things'? And 'love is the answer'? Both suggest practical wisdom and, ideally, the way to go. This may be mighty difficult in the current capitalistic system we have, potentially lifting all boats if ethical standards and non-ideological pragmatism get a chance. Otherwise, we shall remain stuck in an odious climate of rising inequality where selfishness and greed rein supreme. You mentioned pluralism, humility, solidarity, neighborliness, all a welcome balsam in this Trumpian hell where a mantra of 'fear, hate and division' is still advocated...to our loss. Now, if LOVE could be 'institutionalized' in our hearts, and proyected by our brain, the cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance would become superfluous. But then again, you can't expect perfection from human seeds, especially whem sowed by the current discord.
Brooks lists income inequality first in his list of unifying priorities--as if that wasn't the number one priority of the Sanders left! This article is hopelessly confused.
I recently attended a small fundraiser for Cory Booker in Beverly Hills. His remarks there were virtually the same as those in David Brooks' column - each calling for building "a beloved community."
I wonder if either man is aware of just how aligned their thinking - or at least their public utterances - are?
Embarrassed about the pervasive moral, political and financial corruption that pervades today's Republican Party, Brooks wants to make it look like right and left are equally bad and claim a moderate high ground of "love your neighbor". That's appeasement in the age of fake news. We should go where facts, science, law and thorough political debates lead us, and that's where Democrats are.
Dear Dr. Brooks & Mr. Hyde. Your thesis today would be a really good read if you were actually not a former cheerleader for Trump nation. But because you were, you continue to lazily write about the left as outsiders to the points you espouse here.
By doing this, you unfairly paint the left as the left. The fact is that while there are some on the left of left, you simply can't just balance them off with the right, something you frequently seem to do.
It is as if you have a balance scale on your desk. On one side you lump the left of left, and on the other side you lump the right of right. But you brush off some of the right and add on others to the left so that these two sides balance each other out, leaving just the middle you frequently mention.
But the far left are few and a minority even to those from center to left. The right that you mention compromise not the extreme far right, but a much larger swath of people. Put both lumps on the balance scale and you will see a huge tip to the right.
So while I agree with your sentiment and new found moderate positions, you really have to stop painting the landscape so falsely.
By and large, there is just the right and then those that cling to many of the ideals you speak of here. There is NO third group of formidable size or influence.
I for one will have a much greater respect for you and others like you when you can free yourself of the misplaced notion that left of center is equal in size to the right of center.
1
As a young person who would love to help both ideological spectra come to agreements, compromises and legislation in all of our our state houses--not just the federal government--these anti-moderate comments are really disappointing to read.
We need all types of people to lead, not just one group over the other.
We are so sick and tired of "my way or the highway" from both the left and right. This isn't how our families, households, or local communities work. Why must our statesmen and stateswomen be so stubborn? Oh that's right, you have to appeal to your base. That's what's really important apparently. aa
And we wonder why the youth feel disenfranchised and don't head to the polls?
We see everyone wants to pick battles instead *attempting* to solve society's toughest problems.
42% of Americans identify as independent. By the peanut gallery's notions, these Americans have never accomplished anything significant in our communities. Hogwash.
1
In the event of "ne'er the twain shall meet," honor what had been framed in our Constitution's Preamble: "order" about which the formation of "a more perfect union" can perpetuate MOVING FORWARD. Our founding fathers never said: "Once perfection's reached, drive home safely." Hence you can't have your MAGA fake and cheat it too.
If Andrew Delbanco's book is actually as you describe, then he has an extremely limited and simplistic view of American history. Miles Standish? Not a Pilgrim and not generally, certainly not solely, religiously motivated. "Pioneers settling the West"? Primarily immigrants or children of immigrants, seeking to improve their own situation, not that of some still arguably inchoate "nation". Phases 1 & 2 were just as much about "Self" as Phase 3.
1
Moderates should make up their minds.
Do you want to continue stuffing our jails, proliferating guns, destroying the environment, bashing the poor, giving the country away to the rich, unending wars against impoverished people.
Because that would be the status quo.
Or do you want to RETURN to the progressive taxes that built the once proud American middle class? Do you want the social nets that every other advanced country already has?
There is no middle ground anymore.
1
@Tracy Rupp I don't think it was progressive taxes that built the American middle class. It was hard work, ingenuity, entrepreneurship, capitalism and a certain amount of national unity, the latter item being the only one that seems to be in short supply these days.
1
Hurrah, David Brooks! We are, still, all in this together and it's only through that belief in ourselves - white, black, yellow, green - that this country will ever re-capture the American Dream. The hatreds which now shape us (and which are far worse than I lived in as a child) are destroying the country's and each individual's life. What arrogance and what meanness - to want opportunities, status, power, and - of course - wealth for those who are like you! Without hard-working immigrants in the fields or in the labs, the USA would be even more behind than it is. No end to the hatred, resentment, and fear? Say goodbye to the country.
1
So Americans weren't always this selfish? Not buying it.
Moderate centrism is fake position for people who don’t have a clue how to address our problems.
Are you a moderate centrist? Define yourself!
We need to address lack of access to medical care for many Americans. How far would you go with universal helth care?
College has become prohibitively expensive for many families. How would you propose to solve it. AI driven automation is on the rise. How would you mitigate negative effects on uneducated Americans? Climate change is accelerating. How would you address it? Etc..
Centrists like Brooks prefer to stay on sidelines, avoid taking common sense positions, cry about faul language, and focuse on moral issues. Comically, they think this is their higher ground.
Brooks may think about love in the abstract, but he doesn't actually have a clue how to make it work in practice. Love is not proud or boastful - or narcissistic, David. Start there.
1
I realized some time ago that I'm a centrist. It's so good to have affirmation that it's a valid - not wishy/washy - position. Thank you David Brooks.
Of late, Mr. Brooks, you've seemed terrified of the Left. You're tossing and turning at night in your bed dreaming of Alexandra Ocasia- Cortez sitting in the White House tweeting orders to Democratic Socialists on how best to make conservatives weep with with fear and rage. It doesn't have to be that way, David.
Just sit back and wait patiently to see if the Left goes up on the rocks from overreach; or, whether it meets with programmatic success and general popularity. If it's the former your conservative friends will come back to power and you can go back to writing books on America's social structure. If it's the latter you can write columns on how you always thought the Green New Deal would come to fruition and success.
But please, no more sermonizing on a national "beloved community" that never was or will be. We've always been a nation quarreling; first over the competing virtues of farming vs. commerce, then racial enslavement vs. free labor, then unbridled wealth vs. redistribution. It continues.
So please, pour yourself a drink, if you like, or smoke some weed, and relax. The left has been terrified of the right for the past several years. Now it's your turn to hide under the blankets.
1
On the right, we simply apply the phrase “impractical bleeding heart” to any left of center idea, and for our own part the binding power of love just has its limits.
We are bound together by our love of our children, but perhaps we suggest you draw the “our” line just down the street but certainly not over a border. We are bound to society by our work, but sometimes not really by “your” week economic or social contribution, or heaven forbid, the parasitic existance of some non working stiff (excluding hedge fund mangers or vulture capitalists). We are bound together by our affection for our place, but only to some arbitrary boarder line, and quite possibly, not past my property line. We are bound together by our shared “humanity”, which describes folks fairly similar to my color, language, religion, nationality... you know, a short list of obviously non threatening innocents.
David, I admire the attempt! So, how do we ignite “Maniacal Moderation”.
Willful blindness yet again. You use "love" in your opening as a solution and then ignore its meaning when referring to "self" and "tribe." We don't suffer from too little love but from too much. Too much love of self. Too much love of tribe. Our capacity for love is squandered on the wrong beneficiaries: guns, gates, walls, privilege, possessions. We love the wrong things. You know what we ought to love? Justice. Love is giving. Justice is giving what is due. Universal love demeans what love demands and is an empty maxim. It is impossible. You know what is possible? Universal justice.
1
The financial tail-swallowing that’s been concentrating wealth, while shortening our time horizons must stop. The stock buybacks are an example of a disastrous change that continues to cripple the USA.
“Tailspin” is a good overview of our current plight. We didn’t get here in a day, but we need to stop digging the hole deeper.
This column completely misrepresents the social justice movement. For many of us, it is based on our baptismal vows to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
This means that we work for:
> equality of opportunity
> equal protection under the law
> an economy structured to meet the needs of all people
> participation of all people in the political processes that determine our future
It seems to us that these are the concepts that would make America what it is supposed to be.
What do we see around us?
> People without money considered morally inferior and therefore less "deserving"
> immigrants demonized
> nonwhites considered inferior by virtue of not being white
> a justice system that metes out different levels of justice to the rich and to the poor
> an educational system that provides better education to the children of those with money, thereby limiting the opportunities available to the others
> an economy designed to make the a small number of people very rich while many scramble to meet basic needs
> a tax system that reinforces inequality
> a major political party purchased by the rich to defend their prerogatives and protect and increase their wealth
And powerful forces who want to keep things as they are. Of course there will be conflict; no one wants to give up their privileges. But "love thy neighbor" requires us to act.
1
How quickly they forget! Hilary Clinton's slogan during her campaign was "Stronger Together". She got 3 million more votes than Donald Trump.
83
@ES Her slogan may have been "Stronger Together," but let us not forget the "basket of deplorables" comment. I suspect few Republicans thought her "Stronger Together" message included them.
3
@Patricia Hillary never said that the "basket of deplorables" included all Trump supporters, much less all Republicans, she was specifically calling out the racist, mysogynist and religiously bigoted among them. The fact that "few Republicans" could not distinquish themselves from that specifically identified sub-group says a whole lot more about them than it does about Hillary.
16
@Patricia
Don't forget the second half of the deplorables statement like everyone else has.
"But the "other" basket – the other basket – and I know because I look at this crowd I see friends from all over America here: I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that "other" basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he (trump) says, but — he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."
HRC 9/9/16
15
You end your column with a nice set of common sense policy proposals, and I'm glad you characterize them as moderate.
I'd say that most Democrats, including elected Democrats now holding office, support all or most of these proposals. Republicans, on the other hand? I can't think of many now in office who would support these proposals. Instead I would fully expect them to demonize them -- "nanny state," "creeping socialism," and, of course, "budget-busting," a charge that they have no embarrassment using when it pertains to something other than tax cuts for the donor class.
I agree with the sentiments of Mr. Brooks...But that's all they are. The war began in earnest under the last president--and now is roiling our nation even more under the Great Vulgarian.
I can only predict that California will lead the way as long as the money lasts. Moderates are already road kill...The few that are left are simply digging our burrows deeper.
There is NOTHING RADICAL about the "radical left".
The emergency is that FDR's vision has been stolen from us. That is destroying America.
Moderation is capitulation to the enemy - not just of America, but of humanity, and now, of life on earth.
Drop the traditions of the past. All is now change. Time to find the core that must endure through unending change.
1
There was a time when I found David Brooks interesting and insightful but I have long since found him to be an out of touch elitist. Lately his columns have followed what I call the Dr. Phil pattern. He first cites a book that he claims has special insight on human society. He then proceeds to provide trite generalizations of Americans followed by a sermon on how Americans need to recognize these generalizations in themselves, and the need for us to change for the better of society. This from the pundit that continually denied the rise of Trump during the 2016 elections.
1
Fantastic editorial. The substantial majority in this country believes in moderation and love of community. We also loathe partisan warfare and extreme political ideologies that offer zero solutions to our families real challenges (deteriorating educational standards, environmental pollution and climate change, radically changing technology affecting our jobs, high healthcare costs, crushing national debt, gun control, etc.)
Unfortunately the extremist on the right and particularly the left (media likes them more) with their intolerance of of other people's opinions have the bigger megaphones.
1
As a moderate, I don’t recognize myself in David Brooks’ columns at all.
Brooks is a centrist. There’s no issue under the sun that he can’t straddle.
I am a moderate Democrat. That means I am in the middle of the Democratic Party. Democrats like Joe Manchin or Claire McCaskill are pretty far to my right. AOC is way to my left. I believe immediate, drastic action on climate change is needed, but I see that the Green New Deal isn’t even aspirational. It’s a Jackson Pollack of every progressive idea possible. To people who object to this characterization, have you read the whole thing?
In any case, while stronger community ties are a nice idea, I believe we should consider climate change our WWIII, as climate change can, in fact, destroy the world as we know it. It requires that level of mobilization. Brooks wants to cure polarization? Polarization is overcome by a common cause. That cause should be saving our planet.
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@Mercury S: Fact check. Climate change will not destroy the world as we know it.
I have a problem with this:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The problem with today’s left-wing and right-wing ideas is that they are both based on a scarcity mind-set. They are based upon us/them, friend/enemy, politics is war, life is conflict.
"They are both based on the fantasy that the OTHER HALF of America can be conquered, and when it disappears we can get everything we want. They are both based on the idea that if we can just concentrate enough power in the centralized authoritarian state, then we can ram through the changes we seek." [My emphasis]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The world in which we live is not divided half-and-half, whether the subject is food, assets, housing, healthcare, education or any other metric you like. It is quite unevenly divided with those on top and in power (socially, economically, any other measure you select) than "HALF and HALF." That is a piece of rhetorical sleight of hand worthy of Houdini (or Madoff or Marie Antoinette or Czar Nicholas or King George or President Trump).
1
Well said. While the far right and far left make the most noise and get the most headlines, most of us would be happy with compromise and staying in the center.
Trump's strategy has always been conflict and "I win, you lose." Whenever he's gone, I hope we go back to center-right and center-left.
Those who hold extreme views, in either direction, tend to have strong emotional content involved in their points-of-view. They are often passionately committed to their position, and offer comparably passionate arguments in support of those views. When you view the range of individuals and their views on a scale, you would find these passionate types clustered at the ends of the dataset in increasingly smaller numbers. These select few passionate believers wear their passion as a badge of honor and as a sign of their commitment. They feel as if the more passionate they are, the more likely they will be to convert others to their cause. They are often disappointed at how infrequently this works out.
Moderation occurs in the middle not because of a lack of belief or passion, but because it is really a statistical description, one that describes where most peoples’ views fall within a range of views. For this reason, moderation is the key to a democratic system. The constituents in a democracy always have a range of views, with most of the views falling in between the extremes. To achieve a majority in any democracy on any issue, requires tapping into the views of the most constituents. That majority will always be somewhere in the middle simply because that is where the largest number of constituents are to be found.
Moderation, not extremism, is always the key to political success.
Shift decisions to the local level. Sounds good. Oh, wait. Our experience with this nostrum has not been salutary. Let voting rules be decided at the local level? Segregation? Denying women access to medical sound advice on birth control? Hmm. The list could go on.
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I could see these suggestions as a Democratic program. Work councils, training, family leave etc. Of course structural inequality is not addressed here. Hard to see any of this as a Republican program. Republicans talk about family but their only idea is tax cuts for “job creators” which will trickle down to the deserving and punishing bad undeserving people.
I am shocked to see the overwhelming spite in the comment section. So many comments sum up to be "No, Mr. Brooks is wrong because I refuse to see any good in the other political party. Only my party is right." This seems to prove his point precisely.
I understand Mr. Brooks to be arguing that we should be looking away from party polarization and instead be coming together on common ground. We came together on criminal justice reform, and I hope that leaders again find the fortitude to work toward shared goals.
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Because we are a democracy, what counts for politicians is re-election. Political consultants for both parties have determined that the easiest route to re election is to get your base to actually vote. Further, the easiest way to convince your base to show up on election day is to make them angry at the other party.
Republicans have The Wall and Democrats the Green New Deal, neither of which are popular with the majority of Americans. Yet, these "ideas" are what are driving today's political debate because the true believers can be very angry that their very important priorities are not implemented and that the dangerous others ones are against them.
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St. Francis of Assisi has been whispering to David.
"What big idea counteracts division, fragmentation, alienation? It is found in Leviticus and Matthew: Love your neighbor. Today’s left and right are fueled by anger and seek conflict. The big idea for moderates should be solidarity, fraternity, conversation across difference. A moderate agenda should magnify our affections for one another."
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Having read some of the comments, I am impelled to emphasized one point made: Brooks's proposal here is already embraced by the Left.
Already central to the Left's agenda is the well being of our families, communities, and planet. Whereas the Right just want to get more for those already have more.
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@Doodle: Do you not see your extreme polarized view demonstrated by your post?
The solution Mr. Brooks serves up is essentially to do nothing, work towards no change, let things ride. The four elements he mentions require social action to fulfill, sometimes stringent, not diffuse iteration of ideas devoid of a program to bring about those needs.
The left, the progressive agenda, means progress toward something: social justice, helping the oppressed and poor (50 million in the US live below the poverty line), limiting the scandalous cornering of wealth by the very wealthy (they have increased their income by 250% in the past thirty years, while income for the rest of us has remained stagnant). This diminution of income has come about because of the deliberate suppression of the power of the left and labor unions. Mr. Brooks mentions none of this.
Lcve our children? Warm relations? Child tax credits? Love humanity? All four have been contained in the left, progressive program of action long before Mr. Brooks suddenly thought fit to mention them.
solution
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How are any of these ideas "moderate" in the context of our politics, though?
Our love of our children clearly stops at our own front doors - the opposition to allowing "my" money to go towards supporting "somebody else's kid" is quite strong, as demonstrated by widespread opposition to any taxpayer subsidization of the policies you suggested.
Our embrace of work-based socioeconomic mobility ends at the limits of our own careers, as indicated by the widespread opposition to any of the work subsidies you suggested.
Our affection for place ends at the beginning of any local political campaign, where straight-ticket voting in Presidential elections and lack of voting outside of Presidential elections are the norm. There is also bound to be significant opposition to taxpayer-subsidized service organizations, whatever their cause.
Our perception of shared humanity clearly ends far short of the border as well, since backlash to any discussion of privilege, disadvantage, or oppression is guaranteed to be drowned out by defensive backlash, and the opposition to racially or culturally integrative housing and education policies is one of the strongest political forces operating in this country, under the guise of premise #1.
Mr. Brooks, what you've described is not "moderate". It is the shared platform of virtually every Democratic candidate, minus the element of "shared humanity" that considers healthcare a human right.
2
...What you are talking about in this article is Social Justice. You choose different words but the core is the same. In holding that your arguments are somehow different and more "reasonable" than Social Justice, you continue to advance the notion that Social Justice is a radical concept.
2
Moderation towards Republicans led by McConnell and Trump?
No thanks, I prefer Stockholm's government policy over Stockholm syndrome.
3
I love how the "moderate" policy proposals are more or less Democratic ideas.
"The left offers the idea of Social Justice. The left tells stories of oppression. The story of America is the story of class, racial and gender oppression. The mission now is to rise up and destroy the systems of oppression. This, too, is an electric idea."
It's also true. It is our history. We can't claim to be a country of freedom when it really only applies to a subset of the population.
So call it a war if you want, but right winger's either reject that history and how is shapes today, don't care because they are white and it doesn't affect them, or know they are proposing discriminatory policies because they are racists, but also know they have to couch it in non-racist language to get it to pass. Those are basically the three options. People that believe these things are the enemy.
What are historically oppressed peoples to do when a segment of society doesn't believe they should have equal protection under the law, or that they shouldn't exist and should be exterminated? The only choice is to fight back, because there isn't much to lose.
1
David, most of your columns embrace what I call the Myth of America - "American Exceptionalism" is part of that myth. This was a time period where genocide and slavery happened in order to make America the most prosperous country in the world, not "American Exceptionalism"
1
@Len
It is apparently immoderate to think of slavery, genocide, and the imperialistic actions of the CIA and other paramilitary operations throughout the 20th century as having any significant bearing on our history, let alone our present.
What happens when you're moderate but the other side only takes advantage? Judge Garland was moderate and now we have 2 more activist right wing judges. What happens when we moderately reduce carbon in the atmosphere? Do we get an extra 100 years before the earth dies?
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“The moderate seeks the beloved community. That, too, is a magnetic idea.”
With all due respect, you need to come out of your theoretical bubble, David. Your ivory tower, as it were. You’re not living in today’s real world. And it isn’t Mayberry.
The idea of beloved community is about as magnetic as polished platinum—it sure looks pretty but it just won’t stick.
There are times, like the present moment, when righteous anger is not only called for but demanded. All too many folks are fed up with the inaction, the inanity and, yes, the injustice in today’s society. What with the planet, and its inhabitants, in ever increasing danger; with income inequality spiking to breakneck heights; with modern-day -isms running roughshod through people’s lives and over their basic rights; and with partisan gridlock bringing vital legislation to a maddening crawl, it’s all too apparent why an angry, passionate response is rational, logical and necessary.
This does not mean, however, as David seems to imply, that one’s proactive policies need be developed IN anger, only that they be motivated BY anger. This way, room is also left for love to come into play, as it should.
3
Mr. Brooksie, at the risk of sounding flippant, your "four affections" seem just a touch arbitrary. Here are some alternative affections to bind us together (a bit Lord Of The Rings but let's go with it):
We are bound together by the need for food, shelter, and safety. THE 1ST MISSION is to reduce economic inequality levels so we all can live safely and in reasonable comfort
We are bound to society by our interactions with the fellow humans - nice dashed people most of them - who we meet on the street, at work, concerts, self-study groups, neighborhood watch meetings, local community love farms, and elite delicatessens. THE 2ND MISSION is to convert an elite delicatessen into a self-study neighborhood all-purpose social fix-it-all whatsis kind of thing, to stop that bothersome government godawfulness hanging over our heads.
We are bound together by love of our families. The 3RD MISSION is same as the 1ST, just with more soul.
We are bound together by our unique and sacred / self-evident human characteristics, to wit, the desire to learn, explore, play, and share. The 4TH MISSION is to organize a weekly bowling league at which between frames we can tutor local kids, raise funds for Ms. Hildebrand who is behind in her rent, discuss our common characteristics of wanting food shelter, humanity, whatnot, whatever I said above, and wallow in a kind of satisfied glow of self-sufficiency such as the world has never seen ever before this blasted column and dashed zippy comment.
2
'Argumentum ad temperantiam':
"Argument to moderation—also known as false equivalence, false compromise, [argument from] middle ground, equidistance fallacy, and the golden mean fallacy—is an informal fallacy which asserts that the truth must be found as a compromise between two opposite positions. An example of a fallacious use of the argument to moderation would be to regard two opposed arguments—one person saying that the sky is blue, while another claims that the sky is in fact yellow—and conclude that the truth is that the sky is green. While green is the colour created by combining blue and yellow, therefore being a compromise between the two positions—the sky is obviously not green, demonstrating that taking the middle ground of two positions does not always lead to the truth." (en.wikipedia.org)
3
"The second phase, through the 19th century ... The pioneers were settling the West". -- And this was the phase that shaped the Usan ( = American) character of "Trust thyself and thy gun, shoot first and ask questions later".
You cannot seek the beloved community without actually wanting all members of the beloved community to flourish. Social inequality prevents flourishing and causes suffering, though I am not sure I expect you, a heterosexual rich white man, to really understand that since your social identities invite you to flourish and do not cause you to suffer. We progressives are not interested in war or conflict for its own sake, we are interested in a society where every person gets to have as good a life as you, David Brooks, even those of us who are female, people of color, poor, and/or not heterosexual. We do not live in that society now and never have, though I don't really expect you to understand that either since your social location means you do not need to understand it. And there is nothing modest or humble about your moderation; it is full of the arrogance of the rich white heterosexual man convinced he knows what is best for people with less status, power, and money than him. I would encourage you to read the Gospels and consider Jesus' understanding of the beloved community, in which the last were first, the poor were blessed, the hungry were fed, and the truly humble were justified while the arrogant were sent away. That sounds like a beloved community I could get behind.
1
@Amanda Udis-Kessler I am neither rich nor male but I find your rhetoric as offputting as the white nationalist rants of Trump’s followers. What do you want exactly? Society of perfect equality where literally nobody owns more than anybody else? I just came back from Cambodia where the victims of the dream are buried in the killing fields. And the arrogant are “sent away”? To the gulag, I assume. And finally, it’s a tad arrogant, not mention insensitive and patronizing of you, to tell Mr. Brooks who is Jewish to study the Christian scriptures. You may be surprised to hear it but as a Jew I do not consider Christian morality to be superior or binding upon me in any way.
Yeah, maybe the readers of the New York Times are bound together by those things, but other parts of our society are bound together by their resentment, other parts are bound by the Lottery or OTB, and other parts are bound by race or gender. What we should be bound together by is liberty. A reminder that we are free to live our lives only because others are free to live their lives. We are free to worship or not only because others are free to worship or not. We don't stop and shoot someone mowing their lawn while we're on our way to church. We don't ram our vehicle into a hamburger stand on our way to 'Veganville'. Our shared goal should be to live our lives the way we want without blaming others if some choices don't work out.
1
The next stage of America is pretty clear.
It's Subservience.
1
As always, very well said, David Brooks. I salute your wisdom. Readers of NY Times, go to the book of Genesis, in the Tanakh, and read the story for the conflict between Abraham and his nephew Lot, Chapter 13.
"So Abram said lets not have any quarreling between you and me, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you?...If you go to the left (Democrats?) I'll go to the right (Republicans?)" and vise versa...
Can we use this elementary wisdom to bring the country together?
1
I really dislike reading about Brooks' idea of what "THE LEFT" is. I consider myself a life long left leaning person at 68, and I do not recognize "THE LEFT" as Brooks describes it. He keeps inflicting his right wing preferences for autocratic rule, oppression and intolerance on "THE LEFT". Simple projection. I wish he would stick to his fantasies about how loving and democratic the right wing is and how trickle down economics always works. Brooks should not write about things he knows nothing about.
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Wage subsidies? How about mandating livable wages for everyone. Who is going to pay for wage subsidies? The richest among us, who could most afford to pay, have been given huge tax breaks. Will working stiffs be taxed to pay for their own subsidies? Ridiculous!
We in the USA are paralyzed in the face of uncomfortable issues. The persistence, for example, of racism and illiberal political and theological notions in the southern US is a problem that has festered for centuries. But we find it almost impossible to identify this situation as a social pathology and bring all our weapons to bear on the problem. So, too, many Americans see no hope of changing what we are reticent to identify as an African-American dysfunctional subculture. I see no hopeful signs that crime rates, substance abuse, and poverty within African-American cultures are about to sink to the levels common to most middle and upper class white families.
At some point we'll have to face facts and devise negative and positive reward systems that will, I suspect, be needed to coerce these sub-populations into healthier and more productive cultural adaptations.
Great column with a desperately needed message. The rigid "No, I insist that I really must hate all those other people because they are EVIL!" tone of the most-liked comments, however, is discouraging. Yes, Trump is horrific. But if you allow yourself to be so filled with hatred for the other side that you can't even contemplate reaching out to them as individual people then he has bamboozled you as much as he has "them".
David. The fact that you see The Green New Deal and Donald Trump as two identical, opposite poles exposes a bias from which you seem unable to unshackle yourself. Trump is an extreme. a vulgar, incurious, tribal extreme. The Green New Deal is a passionate if somewhat misguided attempt to create sustainable communal progress. Moderation is not about finding equal offense - its about finding truth.
2
@Nick The Green New Deal is a manifesto for the governmental takeover of the economy masquerading as a program for combatting climate change. Most of it has nothing to do with actual measures that would mitigate carbon emissions. I don’t buy its vision of “sustainable communal progress” because I know from history that its result is going to be violence, repression, poverty and social unrest. So yes, truth is important, and the truth is that the left wing of the Democratic Party has embraced outdated, dangerous and corrupt ideologies. To be fair, this wing does not have the same power as Trump does over the GOP.
1
This sounds like a vaguely liberal agenda, although it's hard to actually know without policy specifics. But it's unlikely to strike white nationalists as moderate. And this agenda claims the biggest problem to be solved is division within the polity. Perhaps. But if Brooks' moderate agenda is successful without global warming being brought under control, we might all be singing Kumbaya My Lord while piling sandbags together to hold back the flood. So how about combining Brooks' vaguely liberal agenda with a national commitment to decarbonize the economy? Wait ... that's a lot like the Green New Deal Brooks will vote against. How very moderate of him.
1
Here is the realistic, pragmatic, cynical, stoic, whatever, agenda for moderates:
1. Tell no one you are a moderate. If you do tell anyone, or if they suspect that you are a moderate for any reason, each side's extremists will label you as the opposite extreme, and - most importantly - treat you as such. Keep as low a public profile as you can with everyone, including family and friends.
2. Violence between the extremes is already happening and will certainly escalate - there's simply no rational way to deny this. Although only one side is heavily armed, both sides have at least some access to firearms. If word has gotten out that you are a moderate, guns on both sides will be aimed directly at you.
3. So what can you do about such posturing, dung-hurling baboons shooting at each other, with you in the crosshairs of both sides? At least hunker down somehow. Assume a cataclysmic social and cultural distaster and protect yourself and your family accordingly. Unfortunately, protection in that sort of context means that you may have to arm yourself. Can't be helped, and you WILL be in that war, like it or not.
That's all there is. All else - pontification, ideology, morality, philosophy, punditry, Rush Limbaugh, Rachel Maddow - is irrelevant hot air from those rival groups of screaming baboons.
Yes, the Goths have returned. Ba-bye and good luck.
2
@Ben Alcobra
If your argument hinges on an equivalency between Rachel Maddow and Rush Limbaugh, your argument is a fallacy.
The Pilgrims didn't come because God called hem to do so: they came because they couldn't make a go of it in Holland even though they had complete religious freedom.
Nope, David.
As with so many other terms today, moderation has lost its meaning. There was a time when I could have called you a liberal minded conservative. Now that would be viewed as an insult on both counts.
Univeral healthcare, racial justice and inclusion, sustainable energy production, reducing greenhouse gases, studying and preparing for the impact of climate change - none of these ideas are extreme!
Here is "extreme":
1. A government working hand in hand with the fossil fuel companies to expand the release of CO2. A government that denies science!
2. An unfair tax system that enriches the rich and punishes the poor and middle class.
3. A government that embraces trade deals and provides tax support for automation investment - that send jobs elsewhere - with no job retraining for the unemployed.
4. Racial profiling that to this day means that some people are more apt to be shot, imprisoned or red lined.
5. A president who is an antivaxxer.
6. A political party that speaks of "freedom" but wants to violate womens' reproductive rights.
7. A Vice President who says that MY government is a Christian government!!!???
There is no moderation that should be applied to "these people". They are anti-American. They embrace a lying cheat of a president.
Simply put, "they" need to be beaten back politically and as more young educated people assume the reigns of power, their influence will continue to shrink.
signed,
A liberal minded conservative
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@Bob Bruce Anderson
Yes! Very well said!
This is not the kettle calling the pot black kind of situation. This is the fox telling hen they should not complain for being eaten, they should take the middle road of loving,... the fox?
What is the moderation to people who believe Trump whenever he uttered "Fake new"? That the anti-Trump also said fake news and both sides should stop?
The Left already love thy neighbors. Some of their ideas on how to achieve it might not be practical but their intentions are definitely good. The same can't be said for the Right.
5
@Bob Bruce Anderson
You have totally missed the point. The point is why do people believe those things? Trying to understand people rather than the continual outrage you express is the point.
People who don't want their children vaccinated are afraid. People who are pro life believe that abortion is murder. And etc, just being outraged and righteous like you are is getting us nowhere but into the war that Brooks is trying to find a way past. I am afraid you did not understand the article, either.
6
@Bob Bruce Anderson
David Brooks does for the American mythos what the Obama administration did for the Big Banks after the financial crisis. Re-inflate a superfluous bubble with a lot of hot air instead of actually addressing underlying problems.
Excuse me, Mr. Brooks-- but maybe, just maybe there is a "scarcity mindset" because of actual "scarcity conditions." And the "growing gap between rich and poor" is not ameliorated by "loving your neighbor" if all of your neighbors are in the same tax bracket.
No. The Christ we need at this moment is the one who threw the moneylenders out of the Temple. The one who said it was as hard as a rich man to enter the Kingdom as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. The reformer whose first act was to enter the Synagogue, take down the Yobel Horn, and declare "This is the Year of Our Lord". The "Year of Our Lord" is the year of Jubilee--- when all debts are cancelled, the debtor returned to liberty, and the Earth, which belongs to God--- is returned to the People.
11
Moderates? Come on, David! The Republican Party has utterly rejected moderation. Republican moderates from Teddy Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower are now big government socialists. Even actual conservative such as John McCain have been reduced to RINO status.
Democrats run a wider spectrum and if you're looking for moderates, that's where you'll find them. The real roadblocks to adoption of moderate community oriented policies are voter suppression, gerrymandering, big money, and fear tactics.
Enough of the Republican base may come around to finally allow some real progress, but by time that happens Mar-a-Lago will be under water.
1
This is Occam's Razor's Revenge, Mr Brooks.
People like simplistic solutions to complex problems. To be clear, a lot of solutions to real problems can be surprisingly simple but it is one of those 80/20 scenarios, i.e., 20% of the efforts might solve 80% of the problems but 80% of the efforts might be needed for the rest of the problems. But a minority of people with the biggest voice pervert that equation.
Ironically, it doesn't matter if you are a lefty or a righty, everyone just wants one's pet peeves resolve in the name of others. During the Obama era, some well known Tea Party founder would complain the Federal Reserve for not raising rates fast enough saying it is hurting the fixed income people. Now, the same person says the Fed should be in hurry to raise rate to cool the overheated market and overheated Trump. No more care about the fixed income people!
But the left has the same problem too. The labeled NY's rebate of Amazon's HQ as a giveaway but in fact only 1/6 of the $3B is upfront inducement. But the simpleton idea stuck. Now no more 25,000 jobs.
Being pragmatic and rational means one has to think in complexity, give and take, greater good etc. It is hard for the ego to handle. Ironically, the more choices some people have, the more they want simpleton idea and solution. Hence scapegoatism is such a hard thing to eject even though we learn from history again and again it will produce the worst outcome
@Bos
The inducements were not the primary objection of all of the Amazon opponents. Many people regarded the following facts as paramount (though I'll acknowledge upfront that they are exclusive).
-Amazon's presence would cause local rents to go up, period.
-Amazon's presence would cause a lot of affordable local establishments to be pushed out in favor of those that cater to well-paid Amazon employees.
-There was no guarantee that ANY of the 25,000 jobs would go to local residents.
-There was no guarantee that ANY job training would go to local residents.
-There was no guarantee that Amazon's presence would bring ANY new infrastructure or community investment
-There was reason to be skeptical of the $27 billion in expected tax revenue that was being bandied about, considering the $0 in tax revenue that they contributed this year.
@Bos
Humans are mislabeled "The Thinking Ape."
The thinking, not the ape, part. We're just apes with car keys and those shiny car keys make us full of ourselves.
These are admirable sentiments but not workable ideas. Many of the goals of such a unity plan are planks in the platform of reform espoused by the left: child care, better education, the nobility of work with a living wage, etc. Even if Mr. Books forgot that the world will fry in the lifetimes of his grandchildren, how can any of these necessary things be brought about if one half of the country willfully choose to believe in lies, basing their decisions in non-scientific, non-factual data?
The fact is Mr. Brooks is that one party in this debate wants to know and act on the truth, the other is acting in bad faith. In this situation their can be no compromise. Can you live with only a watered down version of Antisemitism? Should we compromise and only allow a little bit of hate towards brown skinned people seeking refuge? Should be more tolerate of White Supremacists? Should we allow just a few states deny women the right to determine their reproductive health?
You ideals have to hit the road of practicality. That is where most of us are right now. Please join us.
This piece appears to have been delivered not so much to provoke action as to prompt thought. Otherwise, it is so abstract--from idea to practice--as to be worthless, unless Mr. Brooks is willing to undertake a revolution to obtain his ideas. And that seems to be the problem with most of Mr. Brooks' pieces: they leap with aspiration but never really address core issues of our culture, including the wealth gap and climate change, which require revolutions in thought and analysis to be mitigated. At some point, Mr. Brooks has got to make a choice: either continue to have no utility or get serious and start calling for fundamental change to this stagnating, corrupt, putrid culture.
Brooks and Douthat become more philosophical the more insane Trump and the conservatives become. I guess it's their coping mechanism but I also think it's their way of trying to find some serparation and absolution from their years of championing conservatism. How ironic that they must rely on the New York Times, "the enemy of the American people".
2
Hi David and readers,
There will be no beloved community under capitalism. Capitalism is a system that prioritizes the expansion of a external force (that's the 'capital' part) at the expense of the humans that create it. Not until humans get together and create a system that centers what Marx calls "positive humanism, beginning from itself," will any sort of beloved community exist. What you're asking for is quite literally having your cake and eating it, too.
1
Your moderate ideas sound a lot like the modern democratic platform. You cite the Green New Deal as the left's main policy, but really that's fringe and if it went up for vote today it wouldn't pass with Democrats' support. Yet every moderate policy you finished the article with would get every Democratic vote but wouldn't become law due to Conservative and Republican obstruction.
You propagate a false equivalency with the left and the right. They are not equally bad. They just aren't. It's this theory that's fueling the populist hatred of our institutions and government.
"All government is bad." No, about half of government is fighting to truly make American society more fair and more equal. The other half, the half that lies to your face and tries to put more money into the hands of their rich sponsors, that half is bad and at this moment in history they overwhelmingly call themselves Republicans.
Perhaps this hasn't always been the case and maybe it will change in the future, but right now it is undeniable if you just go through the Republican party's elected officials one by one. They are actively trying to disrupt our democracy to enrich themselves and a small minority of Americans, and they exhibit no shame while they're doing it.
Please write about that.
You lost me when you suggested that our choice is "between Donald Trump and a Democrat who supports the Green New Deal." Donald Trump is chaos, bigotry, and narcissism neatly packaged in an orange hunk of meat. The Green New Deal, on the other hand, is an honest attempt at bringing the country together to save the planet. If valuing the health of our planet (the only one we can currently sustain life on--at least for the time being) over corporate profits and tax cuts isn't a moderate idea, I don't know what is. It is a big and bold idea for sure, but that doesn't mean that it is radical (with respect to the political spectrum).
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Lack of understanding or walking in the others persons shoes is where friction often begins. People work with their mouths instead of their ears 90% of the time. So there is a lack of understanding and learning. Often you hear that social media has given everyone a voice. Ive never heard anyone suggest Twitter is a learning or better understanding platform.
This essay is too full of platitudes and empty generalizations to be of much use politically. Politics is not about “a way of life” but about a way of governing. But insofar as the political polarization is concerned, Brooks is right on point. The radical left has become a mirror image of the radical right. Consider the main charges against Trumpism: racism; imposition of a partisan morality on the rest of society using legislative means (abortion); lying or “alternative facts”. Now consider the record of the radical left: antisemtism; imposition of punitive taxes on the rich to punish “greed”; lying about socialism (Europe is not socialist, no matter what they say) and taxes (to have Medicare for all you’ll have to raise taxes on everybody, not just the rich). Of course, since the left is not in power, these things remain on the level of rhetoric rather than legislation. But of the Democrats make the mistake of having as their nominee Sanders or anybody else who embraces the oxymoron of “democratic socialism”, we are better off with Trump: at least he is a known quality.
Media and advertising do a great job of tapping into the four affections, maybe this is where many Americans unconsciously get their fulfillment.
David Brooks is the most hypocritical columnist writing today.
For years, he articulated the need for American leaders who bridged divides and strove to build a better country for ALL. But when Barack Obama strove to do just that, Brooks fell in line with GOP orthodoxy and helped to paint Obama as a divisive figure.
So today he points to the need for Americans to "love your neighbor." If any candidate in 2018 spoke that message loudly and clearly, it was Beto O'Rourke, who avoided partisanship and spoke of unity and love. He not only attracted many voters in a "red" state, but earned the respect of Ted Cruz - itself a sign of a bridging of divides.
So will Brooks encourage O'Rourke in the coming election? Maybe until the daily GOP talking points are distributed; then he'll fall in line with other conservatives.
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And a moderate will lead them over a cliff into ecological devastation.....
The mid-point between the right and the 'left' isn't the middle anymore. The right has gone so far to the right that the middle is just Republican. The problem with that? The Republican party is dead. Brooks' premise is, I'm afraid, fatally flawed.
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False equivalencies of the right and left just do not work. The right does want to overpower, defeat, and dominate the "other": women, poor, people of color, LGBT, immigrants. The dominant group is the white people who are now in power and want to keep that power. The right is not saying let us live and reason together as a diverse people. The left wants to wage a war on oppression as a broad agenda, I would agree, which is depriving a major swath of the population from a decent standard of living. The left wants a society that spreads the great wealth of the country to "the masses" to a greater degree. Your demonization of the Green New Deal as the "flag" that liberals will take into "war" fails to recognize any of the "good" that is in that blueprint. One side seeks to dominate and control various groups - limiting opportunity, jobs, basic needs and quality of life (look at the Tax reform), and basically maintain the level of inequality that exists. The other wants to provide greater equality by engineering the sharing of the wealth that has been limited to 10% of the population. "Love thy neighbor" as the moderate big idea simply does not cut it. But what really boggles my mind is your cavalier demonization of the "left" and the moral equivalence you give to both right and left. I know you are reaching for a middle ground. But I do not think you get there by a predication of moral equivalence of the right and left. Must the poor simply accept their lot?
As I read this, I kept thinking and envisioning the men and women
at Trump rallies. The people screaming "lock her up" or the chanting of "Build the Wall". I saw the look of hate in their eyes.
Would they understand what David was saying? I doubt it. And they are nearly half the country. Trump has changed America.
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I am surprised at how Mr. Brooks can be so intelligent yet so ethnocentrically clueless.
Did he really think God intend for 'pilgrims" to spread God's words to the native Americans, by wiping them out? Did he forget Columbia and many Europeans who came were neither "pilgrims" nor least bit kind people? And did Brooks really think the Christian God was/is the only God worth worshiping? In this part one, in one fell swoop, he obliterated all others who not Christians!
As for the phase of Nation, let's just utter one word "Colonization", which was basically invasion others' land, then robbing their resources cultures and heritages.
For the sake of space, I'll skip on to the fourth phase. Here, Brooks has the usually blinders of "aboutism" -- both sides are wrong, because he cannot bear to say that his sides are very wrong.
Whatever the faults, the Left have always cared for the people, Their focus has always been about the people, unlike the Right. Sometimes they miss the mark on how best to help the people but their intentions are good.
What Brooks has proposed is the Left's idea of how we should live our lives and treat each others. When the fox refuses to NOT eat the hens, it cannot be the fault of the hens, which Brooks implies it is.
People like Brooks forgets that "CAPITALism" is about Capital'', not free enterprise whereas, "SOCIALism" is about "Social" which is people. All our ideas and actions should support good lives for everybody.
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@Doodle
The Right's biggest thing, their primary alt-reality, is false equivalence.
Without it they have nothing. They cannot prevail in a straight-up fair fight; the meager good they have is nothing compared to the much greater relative good of the Left.
So all they can do is cheat, by pulling the Left down to their level and trying to convince themselves and others that the two sides are equivalent.
They arbitrarily redefine truth, and always in their favor. That's why you can't talk to them. It's like trying to play a game with a known cheater.
Again, Brooks comes close to satirizing himself.
Does anyone think he seriously believes in "love thy neighbor"?
I suggest everyone hold judgment until the next time he writes an article supporting the basic GOP positions of lower taxes on the rich and deregulation.
1
Truth to tell, for me, the current era is one where we are rapidly destroying jobs leaving most with few chances for a decent life. I ma see tribalism, but we need to solve the issue of how to provide jobs.
An agenda is more like an action plan. Moderates do not have that.
What they do is defend the status quo by doing nothing and always complaining about others who are changing things.
The motto of the Moderate is, "Don't rock the boat."
They're solipsists who fear the future because they might have to stir from their cushy comfy chair. These low-energy types drag down everyone who work to make things better for everyone.
Of course, when things improve due to the sacrifice and hard work and risk-taking of others, those Moderates jump right on board.
The worst trait of the self-satisfied Moderate (we're lookin' at you Mr. Brooks) is that they always feel more virtuous than anyone else.
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I have yet to see proposals by the progressive Democratic wing that are not already implemented and successful in advanced European countries.
It seems to me, the American political center is currently calibrated so far right that the real center (~ average of advanced democracies) looks extremely far away.
This position, characterized by very accommodating policies and laws towards corporations and investors, has not produced any incremental benefits for American citizens compared to countries like Germany or the Netherlands. They too have healthy, growing economies with full employment. Yet their citizens have much better public services, job conditions (paid leave, severance, decent minimum wages, collective bargaining, healthcare independent from employment...) and infrastructure.
In short, the sacrifice and hardship asked of Americans has been for nothing. The difference is in the pockets of the rich shareholder class.
Mitch McConnell has been unreasonable for years, in 2020 it is time for him to be on the receiving end (though he'll likely run away into retirement).
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Mr. Brooks,
Maybe you should reread Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I'm sure you have read it, but maybe you have forgotten what it said about his frustrations with moderates.
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@Brian. As a society, we can't even get through the Oscars without it becoming an online and pundit civil war.
It's hard to believe a call for moderation and tolerance is a bad idea.
9
@Brian
MLK was ahead of the curve on this as in so many other things. I now hate moderates as much Dr. King and am working to rid my world of them. But it is slow going since they won't listen and they continue to write like David Brooks.
David, it appears to me that what you are now embracing is what you and your fellow conservatives have been lambasting the left for supporting for decades. I do appreciate your willingness to entertain a more humanist approach.
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"The problem with today’s left-wing and right-wing ideas is that they are both based on a scarcity mind-set. "
That's not a problem, Mr. Brooks. And "scarcity" is not a mind-set, it is a gut reaction, chemistry if you will, imposed by the ecosystem on social animals. If you analysis fails to recognize the fundamental motivating influence how can your solutions have any significant impact?
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It is unfathomable that climate change doesn't merit a mention in the discussion of our love for our children. A habitable planet surpasses making sure 'children are enmeshed in webs of warm relationships' (see Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.) Mr. Brooks and fellow opinion-makers ought to spend time growing some of their own food or otherwise educating themselves on how natural systems function. Climate change is not in the same category as other social and political disagreements.
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David writes that left and right wing ideas are "both based on the fantasy that the other half of America can be conquered, and when it disappears we can get everything we want."
This sentence is a perfect example of what's wrong with American political commentary. The right says "blame, oppress and exile the 'other'." The left says "everyone should have equal rights," and the media says those are equally divisive positions.
Ensuring equal rights for every race, class and gender only sounds like erasure to wealthy white men. Because, like that old saying goes, "When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
The left is already advocating for the ideas Brooks is proposing: love, safety, community (equal rights/climate action/redistribution of wealth). He just can't see it, because he feels personally attacked by his own privilege.
Wamp wamp.
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Fighting oppression is seeking an end to the fight that was brought to 'us'. I would argue that the Left has offered a more inclusive use of the pronoun than the right. Mr. Brooks seems to be struggling to grasp the failings of his centrist ideologies even as they lay in ruin around us.
If our civilization is to survive the only agenda for moderates is to keep their mouths shut and get out of the way.
I am reminded of the Book of Jonah where the King of Nineveh is told his Kingdom is about to be destroyed. The King believes what he is told and Nineveh survives because it starts following the laws given by the highest authority.
Today the highest authority is the ladies and gentlemen who know how to measure weigh and count and they tell us if we don't change our ways in the next decade we don't need to worry about the future.
Those of us who want future generations know fighting conservatives and teaching science is a formidable task given the power of conservatives. Saving our biosphere is a long shot. Fighting moderates who don't believe we can handle dramatic change makes thinking about future generations moot. The choice is radical change or future generations there are no options in between.
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Here's the meat amid the lovey dovey fluff.
"They are both based on the fantasy that the other half of America can be conquered, and when it disappears we can get everything we want. They are both based on the idea that if we can just concentrate enough power in the centralized authoritarian state, then we can ram through the changes we seek."
Yet another false equivalency. (Which is a big part of how we got into this mess.) The left isn't trying to conquer the "other half" of America. The left is trying to subdue the tiny minority of individuals (both inside and outside the country) who have gone to extraordinary lengths to buy media and politicians to steadily remake our country to suit their wants.
The left doesn't want an authoritarian state. They want the freedom to be their diverse and sometimes wacky selves. What the left wants is a state with the power and will to protect its citizens from the greed, lust, and violence of those among us who are particularly predatory. We want, for example, an EPA and a CFPB.
Wealth is being ever concentrated in the hands of a few. Markets no longer even pretend to be competitive. Unregulated monopoly power is growing. We need a functional central government that is controlled by We The People.
Brooks is right in proposing a core problem (but not the only one) facing America today is our division. But he fails when he suggests the solution is moderation. People, especially uneducated ones, function on a much more basic level than that. It seems Brooks has forgotten the lessons he should have learned from Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs." They posit that that physiological and safety needs must be satisfied before any love/relationship needs. So perceived financial security as part of safety needs is a much more powerful driving force than love for our neighbors. And that is why many people turned to the tyrant Trump, to deliver for them at the expense of those people they dislike.
What Brooks ignores is the value of a public school education to open people's minds to overcome their hatred of others not like them. He refuses to see the advantage of an integrated public school education in which people interact with others of different races and religious beliefs. And that goes counter to the right's support for charter schools and home schooling which puts people into ideological silos. Where is Brook's support for strengthening our public school systems?
Brooks your dismissal of the Green New Deal is sad. The odds appear pretty good that within my grandchildren's lifetime much of the Earth's climate will be irrevocably changed, creating disruption of civilization the likes of which we have not seen in centuries. So, tribalism vs social justice vs some moderate communitarian ethos is simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We are staring down the barrel of slow moving tsunami of disruption and we either deal with it or it deals with us. That Brooks, is the major problem facing our nation and the world.
Brilliant and so true. I hope enough people are paying attention.
"The fourth mission is to embrace an immigration policy that balances welcome with cultural integration. It’s to champion housing and education policies that encourage racial integration."
In inner cities, rural communities, and working class suburbs, many of our own citizens are in desperate need of better housing, education/ retraining, and other support systems.
According to the federal Department of Housing and Urban development, in 1/17, the nation’s homeless count was over 554,000 people.
We cannot accept poorly educated, economic migrants from other countries when our own citizens, of all races, are in need our attention and resources.
The right is led by a man who is in all likelihood deeply deranged and compromised by Russia.
The left is led by social justice warriors who worship at the altar of identity politics in all things from politics to movies.
A reasonable proposal for comity and cooperation is quickly met with derision and fury. It is indeed a lonely time for moderates.
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Thank you David Brooks for articulating thoughtful and meaningful suggestions that can really help us out of the zero-sum politics pushing the Republican party to the far right with echoes of Fascism and the Democratic party to the far left with echoes of Socialism. The resulting demonization of the other is only exacerbating the challenges we face as a nation. It feels like we are losing sight of the value of the art of compromise in politics and forgetting that even the U.S. Constitution was a product of compromise.
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Reading this piece, I immediately thought of someone who has for years been talking about the importance of trying to see both sides: Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU, whose philosophical background coupled with his research in psychology, has helped him be a beacon for those, like me, who have long been troubled by being able to see both sides. See, yes, but not without my own personal biases – which Haidt says we all have. The analogy he uses repeatedly in his landmark 2012 book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, is that of the rider and the elephant. The elephant is our emotional (or intuitive) side, and it exerts a powerful force on all of us. The rider is the more rational, sensible side, and it does well to try to keep the elephant on a reasonable course.
Sadly, as Brooks and others point out, it is the extremes that tend to get our attention (certainly it does the media’s), and thus the moderate position – probably where the truth actually lies – does not easily attract millions of adherents.
That said, one place where I do believe a radical way of doing things is called for is with respect to climate change. Perhaps the “Green New Deal” is a bit naïve, but it comes from an increasingly desperate feeling among young people. I care deeply about my children’s and grandchildren’s future, but I’m 76. At 29, AOC can easily envision not even reaching 60 if our planetary decline continues unabated.
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As always, an outstanding article by Brooks.
However, no ideology or vision for the future can stand without a serious proposal to address climate change. Climate change is the single largest challenge facing humanity today. It is an existential threat to our entire species.
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@Scientifically Minded
Given that the GOP, and its base, do not believe you or the scientists, how can you praise the article?
Where do "moderates" meet?
How do we afford "respect" to their opinions?
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I believe that the majority of Americans are either center right or center left. The GOP (I used to be a Republican) lost its way several years ago. The Democrats are flirting with the ultra liberals and run the risk of becoming like the current GOP but from the left. In the past the extremes served a purpose but they were always marginal now they are center stage and the country is in a mess. We are Americans and it used to be that pragmatism was what would define us but now it seems it is ideologies. Maybe the time is ripe for somebody like Mr. Howard Schultz.
A strong central government is essential to prevent local government from legislating harmful, oppressive, or abusive policies. Only a strong central government, itself limited by rule of law and constitutional checks and balances, can effectively limit devolved power.
Otherwise local government risks capture by local economic interests and tyrannical majorities.
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@John
Which is why the GOP is so in love with state's rights and "localism". They cannot stand up to the transnationals.
Witness the "deal" Amazon wanted from NYC.
David is suggesting that my political position should be based upon my moral principles, and above all by the call to love my neighbor. I agree, but suggest that the call to love my neighbor could also be interpreted as practicing the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Practicing either moral precept would of course mean doing everything reasonably possible to reduce the impact of climate change. It would also mean that those most able to afford it would agree to pay to help those unable to afford adequate health case, food, housing and education. It would mean that while we may focus on the needs of Americans, we would not do so to the exclusion of the needs of others in the world.
Loving my neighbor and and practicing the golden rule would mean that we would do everything in our power to make sure they are able to vote and have their votes counted. We would not countenance gerrymandered voting districts or seek to reduce their voices by allowing the wealthy to unduly affect legislative or executive action.
Who is more likely to adopt the policies to implement the love thy neighbor maxim? It does not matter who the Democrats nominate because none would be as incompetent or immoral as Trump.
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What the left wants is only a war if the "haves" fight the claims of the "have nots." If the rich don't feel responsible for the poor, or try to pull out of community with the larger society, then there will be a fight. But if they do feel responsible and want to join in a common purpose with everyone else, then we can end up in a situation more to Brooks' liking.
But I don't know how to get each an every one of them to come along for the ride, so at least some of them will have to be... you know, taxed.
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@Maria
Why should the rich be responsible for the poor? Aren't we all responsible for ourselves? The poor have to be willing to learn how to fish. Sink or swim.
@Driven The rich decide how much to pay themselves AND everyone else. They can either decide voluntarily to do this in a way that benefits everyone, or they can submit to the will of the majority and pay their taxes.
Or they can, you know, subvert democracy. That option is not advisable, but that's where some of them seem to be heading.
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@Maria
Or they could leave. Then you can start with the next layer of 'rich'.
Another deepity from the apostle of False Equivalence. Social justice is not, and never was, a zero-sum commodity. John Rawls knew that--you might be well-advised to read what a real philosopher thinks about justice. Endless political war can end when people agree on fairness.
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Thank you David Brooks for such a great article. I would encapsulate the argument into the need to act once again as one people, one nation. Not a Trump or Brannon type of nationalism, which is dependent on excluding people who don’t look like them, But an inclusive nation bound by our founding ideals: liberty, equality, justice, rule of law and a commitment to a broad based democracy. I would also add to Mr. Brook’s argument the need to protect our home, the Earth. The Bible also tells us we are stewards of God’s creation, only here for a short time as occupants, not the owners. We need to leave the planet in better shape than we found it, to the benefit of our children and grandchildren.
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The social justice front of the democratic party is having to cede control to those pushing for economic justice (and thereby social justice). This movement is far more of a threat to the establishment - and far more popular, extending well beyond the party faithful. Many recognize that economic injustice is the product of globalization. Social justice, on the other hand is a great marketing tool for globalization (remember the "United Colors of Beneton"?)
The other mischarecterization by Brooks here is that Trump's support was NEVER an expression of tribalism. It was and is motivated by the need for economic security which, today, likely REQUIRES a degree of protectionism for most areas of the country. This, too, is an establishment threat that has been misrepresented as xenophobia. There is no revitalization of "Americana" underway here. Nor is there any significant increase in hate crimes, despite recent articles. (The modest 17% increase in 2017 is an extension of a trend starting in 2014, before Trump; and this is just an incomplete RETURN following an Obama effect that seemed to reduce these - despite all the predictions of rural unrest from our "natives".) Globalization is playing itself out across the world. Its establishment benefactors are fighting to hang on, in opposition to all those who lose by it.
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These ideas come from left and right and would require compromises of both sides to get some things that are near and dear to them. If voters can avoid the temptation to join the food fight between left and right, there's hope that a moderate can rally those sitting on the sidelines and if successful early on, some of those throwing the food.
Who knows, maybe when contrasted with the mosh pit that undoubtedly will be the 2020 election cycle, a moderate will look like the bright new shiny object. Maybe "above the fray" will have relevance again.
But who would that moderate movement? John Hickenlooper? John Kasich? Amy Klobuchar? Bill Weld?
Bravo, David! Thank you.
Clean, clear, and concise, David's "Four Affections" should be posted in every public space in our communities. They are simple, basic truths that remind us that homo sapiens is a social animal, that we need our villages, and towns, and cities.
My only quibble is that the title is too narrow, too small. This is not an essay for Moderates, it is an essay for Humankind.
(And thank you also, David, for writing this piece without diminishing it by letting hints of blame creep into it.)
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Although the word “compassion” is conspicuously absent in this piece, Mr. Brooks seems to be suggesting that both Tribes could use a little bit more of it.
Inquiring minds will brook no arguement that the Green New Deal is somehow “too radical”. But if it’s built on the backs of the yellow vests, the failure will almost certainly be one of moderation.
Moderation is a clear-eyed calculation of who bears the economic brunt of the dramatic changes in lifestyle the GND will require, no matter the absolute necessity of our hand-wringing eleventh hour approach.
And where was the clear-eyed calculation of how many lives would be disrupted by a global open- border trade program like NAFTA? A bit of moderation, a bit of compassion would have gone a long way in blunting the tribal acrimony we see today by funding programs to retrain and reimagine all those disrupted rust-belt lives.
You are right about the need to accept our shared humanity. The years of turmoil ahead due to overpopulation and climate chaos will change the world as we know it. At the same time, the religion called Humanism must accept its limitations. You cannot legislate morality, and you cannot legislate love and respect for your fellow human. Those things come from within and must be learned. A year of national service would be a great start. You wrote about scarcity. For some people, it isn't just a belief. it's very real. We'll start to see progress when every able bodied person contributes to society instead of taking. That should be a shared goal.
I am a moderate. To indicate that I am registered as "unaffiliated" at any type of gathering (family, or otherwise) is seen as being unprincipled and met with scorn from both sides.
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Sounds like the European model, where the only substantive discussions on Mainstreet are about football. The religious, familial, and cultural stuff simmers elsewhere: the underground. Brooks dreams of a society were God, abortion, capital punishment, war, climate change, marriage, immigration, borders, gender politics are left out of the public square, or reduced to "points of amicable disagreement." The rise of an authoritarian Right in Europe is the result of long suppressed taboos forced underground. Best to get it out of your system above ground where the rest of us can at least grit our teeth and bear it, than to have it erupt from the dark worlds beneath. Political rancor ill suits Brooks' opinion of himself as Renaissance man capable of squaring all cultural circles. His bland and shallow version of love/morals would produce zombies who would soon find themselves terrorized by monsters from below. This is currently the state of hapless Europe--ripe for takeover.
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Here we go again. Just encourage the kids to organize neighborhood bake sales to resolve the nation’s domestic problems.
History teaches us that many people cannot love their neighbor or refuse to do so. This should be the premise of Mr. Brooks’s discussion, not the “policy implications of love your neighbor.”
Democratically elected governments must legislate and oversee human behavior.
Moderates continuously negotiate the importance of individual freedoms and the need for mandated supervision.
Come on folks. David Brooks is right on. As far as the selection in the upcoming election goes, sit on your self righteousness if you must. The center of the electorate is with Brooks. Get too far left or right and you will lose. I am for moderate candidates who are able and willing to talk to both sides of an issue and bring zealots from extreme positions to a win-win decision.
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@arogden
What do "moderates' stand for?
What is a "moderate" position on healthcare?
Or on climate change?
Or on the income gap?
I suggest that both sides battle it out and in the end, some form of compromise be reached. But one does not start out in the compromised position. This is basic advocacy and negotiation.
For decades, I watched the Dems start at the compromised position, while the GOP stood firm, or moved even further right. So we ended up with neoliberalist government and how things are now.
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@arogden -- I refuse the idea that "talking to both sides of the issue" is anything but lying, on most issues of fact.
Further, the idea that a viable center is found by bisecting the extremes is nuts. This just encourages extremism, to tug that "center" one's way.
I refuse a "center" that compromises on reality: the earth is not half-flat. It is not "well, maybe it's 12,000 years old?" No rational center will play "I'm not a scientist" as an excuse to promote utter nonsense.
And then finally -- there is no acceptable center that includes even a dash of groping, frauds, paying off adulteries to keep quiet, lying incessantly, adulating Putin and MBS, and racism.
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This is an excellent start David. The central tenants of Christianity are summed up in this single verse in Matthew: first, Love God, and second, love your neighbor.
Jesus goes on to further explain what it means to love your neighbor in scriptures such as The Sermon on the Mount and through parables. How is this love of your neighbor defined?
Care for the poor such as the widow, refugee, and orphan.
Forgiveness rather than harshness or judgmentalness.
Peacemaking rather than aggression and wars.
Stewardship of Gods earth and common resources.
Clothing the naked, helping the sick, visiting the prisoner.
Personal responsibility for our behaviors.
Honesty and truthfulness.
Now, you tell me which political party prioritizes loving Thy Neighbor. It is certainly not those on the right.
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This opinion...this summary is so accurate and true. Where is the middle....where is the simplicity in our value for truth and equality for all? Why are we butting our heads against varying viewpoints and beliefs? Thank you, David Brooks, for “cutting to the quick”. We have become as a society so very oppositional.
@Katy
There has never been a "middle".
Both sides would advocate for their version of governance, and the "middle" (compromise) would occur in the form of the legislation.
But, beginning with Rush and O'Reilly, our nation's discourse has gotten nastier, with the concurrent refusal to reach legislative compromise. With Fox, denial of fact added the element of inability to agree on what is actually happening. In the meantime, our national problems have grown so that not coming up with solutions will spell disaster.
To expect some consensus "middle" in these circumstances is delusional.
We talk, talk, talk. What about TERM LIMITS?
Our politicians don't do enough for the people. Limit them to two terms in office. If they want, they can pursue another office but not the same one ever again.
Then you"ll see moderate people doing the work of the people not for there own re-election.
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@nora m. Your kind of rigid political thought helped give us Donald Trump as president. The beauty of our two party system was that it tended to prevent extremists from reaching high office. Otherwise, the flaws in the Constitution would allow a radical minority to seize power. This is what happened in 2016. Now we have the prospect of living with a Supreme Court dominated by Trump partisans well into the future.
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You're picking around the edges, David. The way to win U.S. elections has always been to appeal to the middle. The 2016 method of appealing to the middle was lies, subterfuge and deceit by one of our major parties. The interference and cheating was inappropriately covered by our press.
In today's America, Democratic party identification is 34%. GOP self-identifying voters is at 25% and falling. Independents are 39%.
That means, out of the gate, the Democrats need to attract 1 out of two Independents to win, the Republicans need 2 out of three. Of course, this will vary by state but I expect Trump to be gone in 2021. (There's always the chance that cheating could impact the result but voter apathy will not be the factor it was in 2016.)
After Trump leaves the White House, the criminal indictments can be pursued and if convicted the rollback of laws and appointments made by a proven illegitimate president can begin. Letting the official acts of a person proven to have cheated to win the election is too ghastly to contemplate.
A FIERY PROPHET
The Democratic party thought it could profit from the idea that industry emissions are endangering the Earth. If it improves the ecology that we all want, what could be the harm?
We are indeed in global warming, sea levels show, but at the same pace for 250 years, so it's not industry driven. The Greenland ice record GISP2 shows that the current warming rate, 1C/century, is the most common one on record in the last few millennia. The official records show no increasing trend in hurricanes landing or in their intensity. I am a research physicist and checked the official data carefully, as I am supposed to do, and as I am trained to do professionally, and can link to that data.
Now a madwoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, without any sense of money or economy or employment, took over the Democratic party and is clearly running it into the ground. Before trying to run the whole country into the ground.
It goes to show the dangers of using a scary lie for what is thought to be a good cause. Madmen will take over.
She is a figure like many prophets of doom, like Savonarola for militant Christianity or Robespierre for the French Revolution. All end of the world extremists, all ending badly after first taking everything down.
The rate at which the oceans are heating up has nearly doubled since 1992, and that heat is reaching ever deeper waters, according to a recent study. At the same time, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been rising. Furthermore there is nothing linear about the rate of shrinkage of the polar icecaps. It is dramatic.
Good science means looking at all the facts and good scientists do so. 97% of those actually trained and publishing peer reviewed findings agree that man made global warming is a serious problem.
Distortion of the facts for political purposes is just plain wrong even when done by extremist right wingers claiming to be scientists.
2
@Jefflz
Further to my last comment, the GISP2 data often cited by climate change deniers has been discredited as completely fraudulent.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/10000-years-warmer.htm
1
@Jefflz "The rate at which the oceans are heating up has nearly doubled since 1992"
I had looked at that, of cause. That heat, in 1/100's of degrees Celsius is notoriously difficult to measure, it was certainly measured badly in the 1990's and cannot be compared to a century ago. It is typical mindless scare. The shore sea gauges see nothing unusual.
Did you ever ask yourself, how would a 1/100 warming of deep oceans, NOT producing any extra unusual sea rise, destroy you or your family? Is it worth having the Democrats lose, or ruin the country?
"concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been rising"
We are, as I said and the evidence shows, in a period of global warming, at a historically normal rate. Most CO2, 96% or so, is dissolved in the oceans. It is normal for warming oceans to release CO2, as anyone who has warmed up a soda bottle knows.
"there is nothing linear about the rate of shrinkage of the polar icecaps. It is dramatic."
Did you ever try to check the actual measurements, since as you say "Good science means looking at all the facts"?
Here is the sea ice area, plotted. The global ice surface is at average for 1979-now when it was measured. The data is from NSIDC, the official database, which does not plot it.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20GlobalArcticAntarctic%20SeaIceArea.gif
********
Because you fall prey to scaremongering about 1/100C in deep ocean or an extra 1/100 of 1% of CO2 in the atmosphere, you will lose your party
As Texans say, they only thing found in the middle of the road is a dead armadillo.
Joking aside, with regard to The Green New Deal, Brooks is clueless, but no surprise in that.
The encroaching environmental emergency is not going to respond to political notions of compromise or “reasonableness”. Mother Earth is indifferent to the fate of mankind. Either we nurture our place in it according to what scientists say must be done, or we as a species will perish and be replaced by something else.
When it comes to survival, the reasonable, centrist thing to do is hope for the best while preparing for the worst. A church provides for the former; The Green New Deal provides for the latter.
6
Thank you, David Brooks. This is the position for which one should strive -- but like all higher values, it is very hard work, and most people are not up for hard work.
2
The legal system sees the world as either the state against the accused or one man against another. The free market sees raging competition as a good thing. (although Adam Smith himself remarked that the first thing any group of businessmen would do when united was to conspire in restraint of trade.) Trade unionism sees itself as countervailing power evolved after breakdown of the paternalistic guild system into modern capitlism.
There is a reason Leviticus and Matthew (and St. Paul) speak powerfully of love. It is rare, especially for neighbours. Mothers have it for their offspring. Other peoples offspring get conditional acceptance; males are useful as conditional allies. We are only slightly better socialized than chimpanzees after eons of 'civilization.'
We are bound together by religious institutions and cultures that have fragmented in a globalized world, and which have a long history of hatred of those who believe or live otherwise.
We are fragmented nationally by a political system which causes otherwise decent people (mostly) to demonize their opponents in order to obtain power. Those in power find it pleasant. They are willing to debase themselves to keep it. The current Senate Majority leader is an object lesson in how principles are lost to maintain position. The current President is a poster child for how this column understates human failings.
The world does need love. It will take major effort from all of us to get there.
2
Brooks analysis would be a lot more persuasive if not for Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, the Voting Rights Act, the Housing Rights Act and the ACA. It is clear that the right has attempted to make benefits scare to those people favored by the right largely White people. Liberals, not moderates have meanwhile have expanded the benefits to reach more and more people.
2
I would adjust your model. It seems to me we can see a linear progression toward love. Phase One--we are to build God's kingdom in North America. Phase Two--build it globally. Phase Three has had two tracks, making the Kingdom more specific: Love your neighbor (social justice) as yourself (realize your potential). Your moderation phase seems to flow naturally out of this progression. What you call Tribalism is not new (slavery and ongoing racism, Native American genocide, WWII Japanese internment, etc). Throughout our history, the current of love has been slowed but not deterred by us-vs-them. The specifics you propose--especially national service--could provide deeper, more effective channels for that current.
There’s lots of this Brooks column with which I agree, and his thoughts are right down Biden’s alley (for whatever that's worth). But there’s at least one big flaw in his argument.
Brooks says moderates should/must "devolve power out of Washington to the local level. Out-radicalize the left and right by offering a different system of power, a system in which power is wielded by neighbors, who know their local context and trust one another.”
Regrettably, that localization of power is merely the empowerment of the very “tribes” Brooks dislikes. We can’t have all the other (national) programs he advocates in this same piece… if the power to enact/enforce them is “devolved” to “the local level.”
3
@Ralph Begleiter
.... and also makes them easy pickings for the huge corporations.
"The big idea for moderates should be solidarity, fraternity, conversation across difference. A moderate agenda should magnify our affections for one another."
Is it just me, or does Mr. Brooks seem increasingly fearful of the coming avalanche of the left?
2
I agree that there is an equivalence in tactics and philosophies of the extreme right with the extreme left. It's easier to see the dangers of the Right, but supporters of the extreme Left as embodied by Sanders and Justice Democrats and articulated by the green new deal fail to see that their own ways are a kind of dominance that feels anti-democratic and that can only create a corresponding reaction to the push. There is also a facile labeling within the intolerant Left: they blame the religious and the rich, they accuse white men and vilify by calling out "white privilege" and "the 1%." What's most disheartening to me is that this new left only sees what's wrong with the U.S., not what's right with it. Brooks points out that it's a fruitless political war meant to dominate the opposition that can only create more opposition. Brooks is one of the few writers openly searching for alternatives. In this environment, it seems brave to do so.
2
@Gloria -- it is very hard for any decent person to see much that is good about a nation led by Trump.
As far as "accusing white men"... has it escaped your notice that Bernie Sanders is a white man? Indeed the Democratic Party and even the Progressives are dominated by old white males ... just not to the degree that the right is?
As to blaming the religious ... do you know the old line "you don't need to tell me you're a Christian, let me figure it out for myself?"
Jesus was not a Republican.
@Lee Harrison
I understand. The election of the current president changed my life and the way I look at this country. Even worse than the president is the fact that over 40% of Americans approve of him. The undeserved hatred towards Obama should have been a clue. But my grandparents came from Mexico and we have experienced prosperity and genuine freedom in spite of starting off poor. There must be something right about the system. My dad used to say, “best system in the world” but now I see a genuine hate towards Mexicans. I see it more and more. I’m concerned that 1st generation Mexican-Americans won’t see themselves as Americans. On one hand there’s the president and his hate; on the other hand the Left constantly reminds them how bad they have it. : ( sad times
I appreciate the ongoing attempts by Mr. Brooks to encourage us to find joy, love and meaning in our everyday lives.
However, his arguments are built on stages of history seen through a white dominant-culture lens.
The first stage, that of the Pilgrims and God, resulted the genocide of Native Americans and the erasure of sophisticated systems of government, education and economics that organized the many different tribes in North America.
The genocide of Native American culture continued in the second phase, that of the pioneers and exceptionalism, and slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow became acceptable elements of the American way of life for much of our country.
The third phrase, which Mr. Brooks criticizes as focused on self and the individual, for many Americans has been a step forward to attaining rights long enjoyed by and guaranteed to white Americans. Social media has been instrumental in getting voices heard that haven't been heard, in showing images that haven't been seen, in bringing together and organizing people who haven't had a voice in white-dominant systems.
Oppression is real, historically and right now. Deep divisions in our country can be traced back to historical events. They are not based on an era of self.
I challenge Mr. Brooks to take a year off from moderation and work through a social justice reading list. I'm curious what he would have to say in his first column after that exercise.
3
While I admire Brooks' attempt to bring moderation back into the national discourse and behavior, his view of three stages of American history is over-simplified and his solutions are idealistic at best. Not going to happen. Real social change does not happen when someone comes up with an "idea." Ideas don't change behavior, social and economic realities do. And history proves that again and again. The real problem that needs to be solved is the influence of money in politics. And that's not going to happen through plodding moderate policies. It will happen when a national crisis slams us --like a plague, disastrous war, or other large event that sheds light on what we have been doing wrong as a society for many years. That will force us to change. Then people wake up and begin to take control of their own fates as well as their government. The main issue in today's political world that keeps us from progress and is leading us towards becoming a siloed nation with seemingly no direction is that both political parties -- the GOP especially -- is playing to the fringes and small minorities in America -- the white nationalists, the super rich, the socialists etc to win primaries. And people have become numb to it and accept the idea that Trump's "base" in 35-40% of the GOP. It's not. The real GOP base and Dem bases are slightly right and left of center. But those voices get overwhelmed and unnoticed by the media and politicians who rely on the fringes for personal gain.
1
David you view of history is unique at best. Yes the early Americans were called by God. But also by the need to away from those who persecuted them for their religious beliefs. The 19th century was indeed about Nation. For the first two thirds of the century the question wasn't about exceptionalism. It was about national survival. Generals Grant and Lee seemed to arrive at answer. As for the era of self, doesn't it permeate American History? From the beginning?
1
While I think James Madison got it right concluding that factions will always be present in our politics, I agree that our nation as a whole would benefit tremendously if all of us would make an effort to break bread with Americans we don’t know or understand. We just need an app to make that happen :-/
Vote for some mythical moderate alternative to a Democrat and you basically vote for Trump (assuming he gets the Republican nomination). Moderates, should they exist, need to promote equality and justice and international cooperation which makes them, 'em, Progressives.
2
I too am against anger and division. Originally from L.I.—-I have lived in western NYS for fifty plus years. With sadness I read in today’s local papers of a movement for upstate NY to separate from downstate and to be renamed New Amsterdam.
"The fourth mission is to embrace an immigration policy that balances welcome with cultural integration. It’s to champion housing and education policies that encourage racial integration."
This may be a slow process. I think immigrants in the past were more likely to strive for integration, learning English and melding into the community as soon as they were able. Perhaps racism is the core impediment to this process now.
I think a lot of division is exacerbated by labels such as "left" and "right." I used to be a state delegate in the Utah GOP. Now I'm part of "The Left."
["The third mission is to devolve power out of Washington to the local level."]
This is what Republicans used to stand for. But their concept of devolving power morphed to devolving it out of the local level too. They don't believe in any role for the public sector except to enable cronyism bordering on feudalism. This is a symptom of our division. Why contribute to the common good when that contribution may end up helping people you hate?
But we need the public sector - local, state, and federal - to function and to be effective. We're facing a climate catastrophe that will lead to much more than an American civil war. It will lead to a world war without intervention.
I believe in David's love-thy-neighbor message. But when the human race starts to panic over climate change, all bets are off.
2
I agree with others that Obama (Hope, Yes we Can) and Clinton (Putting people first, thinking about tomorrow) had pretty optimistic and inclusive slogans. I think they resonated with moderates and the affectionate leanings of people and communities. Unfortunately, they could not deliver and inequality and alienation has gotten worse. Our history has been characterized by struggles and victories of classes, genders, and races for economic and political power. I believe people still are fighting each other for what FDR called the freedom from want and the freedom from fear. The policies you propose could help. But how do we realistically get there without increased taxes or other transfers of wealth and capital? Unfortunately, the power of the corporation has remained unchecked and seems to be growing stronger. Multinationals like Amazon play our communities and countries off each other for tax breaks without contributing to the well being of the entire community around them. They can't be blamed. Individuals, communities and countries need to act together to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, so we can care for eachother. We then might be able to assure people that things like the healthcare, education and housing for themselves, their elders and their children will be taken care of now and in the future. "Have No Fear, Our Care Is Here" ?
1
I don't know how Brooks does it. He finds a false equivalence in every corner.
First, let's examine his inevitable allusion to God. That's why the Pilgrims came, he reminds us. Then he uses Leviticus and Matthew to provide a civics lesson. Who knew? America is evidently a Christian nation despite all evidence to the contrary including the Constitution of the United States, which fails to mention God and prohibits the establishment of religion.
But most egregious: The Great Frontier and the Great Fortress are "magnetic ideas" that define our nation? The Great Frontier was a romantic aspirational idea, to be sure. The Great Fortress is narrow, jingoistic, racist dogma. But neither of these "magnetic ideas" are embodied in or embedded in our Constitution or the body of law that emanates from the Constitution
He then writes, "The left offers the idea of Social Justice," which I suspect he capitalizes sardonically, as the more recent equivalent.
It is a false equivalence, as social justice is the essence of our national founding. The Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, seeks to protect the minority and the Declaration of Independence promise life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all Americans. The founders promised equality under the law, not under God. The idea of "Social Justice" is not just an alternative "magnetic idea," a phase or political idea. The idea of social justice is America, not to be dismissed as a liberal mind-set.
2
David Brooks is the most sane man in America.
"The {OBVIOUS} policy implication of love your neighbor" is get rid of Trump and Trumpismo.
6
Dream on, Mr. Rogers.
2
Just once I wished people who write would define these terms: moderate, what/who is that, what makes someone a moderate versus a lefty or a righty. The Center: again who/what is a centerist? What sets them apart from being labeled left or right? Non partisan is a non starter, that shipped sailed to long ago to be used in our lexicon these days. Take the No Labels group, their emails asking for support and money are such pablum that they serve no purpose, but they want you to get on board to being non partisan with them so that we can all come together and work on solutions, great! no one ever thought of that before in the history of mankind. We all just need to talk to one and other, blah blah blah, says everyone everywhere. Practice what you preach, come down to, say Arkansas, talk to liberals in these red states instead of excoriating us to talk to Trump supporters to understand what drives them. Maybe, just maybe, they are the ones who need to spend some time listening and talking with liberals/progressives, but, oh nooo, no one tells them that. Why is that? Because their capacity for being open is clogged with their bile towards others and until they vomit it out it is a waste of time and energy. Obama was right about hoping that their fever of hate would eventually break, maybe one day, after this generation of hateful old people die off.
5
@tjcenter Here is what Brooks means: Not the crazy rightwing GOP that he has been working for for 30 years, promoting its war theories and trickle-down nonsense plus market-solves-everything absolutism. (He is afraid to admit that his life's work is in ashes.) And certainly not democratic politics of inclusion and fairness and fiscal rationality. He doesn't want to hang out with those pinkos who end up cleaning the messes left behind by hypocritical Republicans (see Clinton and Obama Admins). It's the Leftover Group of self-righteous moralists and disaffected who are convinced they are right because there are so few of them and they are so powerless. But there are a couple of billionaires in that coterie, so people like Brooks want to coast on that loot. (see Schultz, Howard, et alia)
1
A moderate Republican would call you a socialist.
2
I am so tired of Mr. Brooks peddling his false left-right equivalencies that I could just SCREAM!
7
Brooks for President!
Oh it sounds lovely. And it could work, as soon as the parents of brown and queer babies decide it really is ok if their babies are second class just a while, or a few generations, longer. In short, just as soon as those perpetually offered less opportunity accept that they deserve their struggle and you deserve your contentment.
6
#Brooks2020
1
"Recent moderation has been a bland porridge..."
You know, Mr. Brooks, it occurs to me that's the perfect metaphor for...uh, 'cough'...never mind...No...No, sir, Mr. Brooks. No, I certainly do not want to be shown the door again...
Demonization is one of our biggest problems. It means we do not listen to each other. It is fun and easy to call people names and assume that those who appear to disagree with you are a monolithic group. We actually are closer than many think on so many issues. The quality of political discourse is usually just bash people. When asked what the basher’s position is, there often is no response. It simply is enough to say others are idiots. News media falls into the trap all the time describing people as liberals or conservatives, but spending little time looking for the common ground.
@Robert -- how "close" are you on groping? Paying off adulteries to keep quiet? Lying constantly? Taking small children away from their parents as an act of terror? Promoting the interests of Putin and MBS?
And the biggest one: that Trump's supporters demand a new Jim Crow; LBJ's lowest white man must be put back on top.
I refuse to "listen" to any of this. I am a 67 year-old white guy and this is all NOT MY AMERICA!
1
Millions of Americans are presently reveling in the gross behavior of a President who:
lies about everything;
cheats on his wives and his taxes;
insults women, Muslims, Mexicans, black people. Puerto Ricans and FBI and CIA agents;
spends most of his time watching cable TV and playing golf;
believes McCain wasn’t a hero because he got captured;
frequently went bankrupt;
never goes to bed without increasing the Federal deficit;
flies around the country every day aimlessly wasting millions of taxpayer dollars;
believes that Obama was born in Kenya; and that Ted’s Cruz’s father participated in the Kennedy assassination; and that Frederick Douglass is alive and well and gaining more public recognition;
regards global warming as a hoax;
is unable to locate North Korea on a map;
thinks the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is a prince of a guy;
loves to put crooks and incompetents in important government jobs;
writes idiotic tweets that are frequently misspelled;
ogled teenage beauty queen contestants;
manhandled women passengers on airplanes;
opened up a fake university;
appointed a Supreme Court Justice who spent large parts of his teenage and college years in an alcoholic haze;
thinks he is a genius;
dyes his remaining hairs bright yellow-orange;
is building a wall to nowhere that Mexico refuses to pay for;
and pals around with Putin and Kim and Kanye.
Mrs. Clinton calls them deplorables.
I choose to regard them as Trump’s committed core voters.
11
What I see is that “winning” is more important than “governing”. That leads to more money from outside interests (and while Exxon gives a ton, the Sierra Club is no slouch through their PAC either). And, whether one likes it or not, money is a form of free speech according to the Supreme Court (and before you @ me, the Supreme Court is why a woman has a “right to choose”, so you can’t pick and choose what court said what about your particular interest).
Since the 90s, our political systems at the local, state and federal levels have become poisoned by “social programmers” from both the right and the left. The right pushes an aggressive agenda that propels the left into office who then take their shots until they overreach until the right takes over again...and so on. Try being a business making long term investments in a political stew like that one.
What I see from AOC, et al is more “social programming” building on the Obamas “we know what’s best for you, if you’d just shut up”. Grow vegetables in your publicly funded garden and live a life of peace and justice while still keeping the country involved in any number of foreign conflicts. From the Republicans, I see “build a wall” since OUR voters are losing jobs to “the other”. President Trump didn’t start racism in this country, he simply revealed that it was still a factor for millions of Americans.
Brooks’ palliatives are nice thoughts, but no “moderate” will get out of either primary. Sad.
Don't listen to David Brooks who is a center rightist.
Maybe this column should be called "Pulpit Fiction".
9
Love it!! Thanks, David Brooks!!! I am SO exhausted by these endless tribal wars between extremists both left and right! Both extremes self-righteously condemn the “other” tribe as evil: the very embodiment of all that oppresses or exploits. No compromise! No acceptable ideas or solutions from anyone except “our” tribe.
1
@Garry
Awesome! Now explain what is an extremist in the left or the right because those words you tossed about mean nothing without some definition of what they mean. Is it extreme leftist to want to do something about inequality, the climate, or healthcare? Is it extreme rightist who want to do something about limiting voting rights, women’s reproductive rights, stealing immigrants babies? “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”.
Convenient of you to have skipped out on the Slavery Phase, you know, the period between 1620 and 1865 where the unrelenting pursuit of profit and power drove millions of Africans into subjugation, torment, mutilation, rape, and death at the hands of "real America."
You know, that period that never fully ended, even though the worst abuses were curtailed through emancipation. Jim Crow laws, lynchings, the KKK, the backlash to the civil rights movement, and now, finally, Donald Trump.
These are the people you defend. These are the people taking the side of hatred, cruelty, and malice - and you pine away wondering why the rest of us aren't nice enough to them?
4
Could you please run for president?
Nice follow up to your Moderate Manifesto.
David is just too shy to say he's a republican. Come on David...nothing to be ashamed of, you can do this. Okay now everybody, come close for a group hug! Don't you feel better now!?
1
If we weren't facing catastrophic climate change, Brooks might make sense. But really, what kind of fool rejects the Green New Deal?
4
Well said, Mr. Brooks.
Something's not right about this column and I want to criticize it. Can't quite get a grip anywhere, though. Like nailing jelly to a wall.
3
Terrific
So, David – I think I got it...
My neighbor is a lovely person...
And the neighbor of my neighbor is a lovely person...
But what if my neighbor voted for Trump in 2016 – and likely will again, in 2020...
Or the neighbor of my neighbor did – and likely will again, in 2020...
There goes the neighborhood...
Just wait till the big guy absorbs this later tonight...
Hear he’s an avid reader of your column at 3 AM, during the commercial-breaks in the Hannity reruns...
Can hear it now:
“They want to put safe needle places in your neighborhoods”
“I want to put safe Trump spaces in your neighborhoods”
Hey – took a while, but it played quite well on the UWS...
He (still) has more buildings in the city with his name on them, then you guys do...
His neighbor down the street is a cathedral...
Yours is a bus station...
The author doesn’t even realize that he is trying to start his own war with conservatives.
” child tax credits, early childhood education, parental leave, schools that emphasize social and emotional learning.” Who is he kidding? This is left wing policy started by Clinton. According some think tank, it will cost tax payer $1000 trillion. (If you argue that number is wrong, that just proves you are fake news.)
“help people find vocations through which they can serve the community: wage subsidies,” He said he doesn’t support green new deal. But he is not afraid of copying some lines from it?
“a system in which power is wielded by neighbors, who know their local context and trust one another.” How could neighbors know better than entrepreneurs? Look at struggle of Amazon second HQ in New York! If he thinks the neighbors there know better than Bezos, he is just another socialist like AOC.
“shared humanity.” Oh my God. Is he seriously thinking That Christians and Muslins can happily live together? Or is he thinking Muslins will happily be integrated into Christian culture?
We conservatives have to fight AOC first – She raised pay for her entry-level staffers. She said them should not be happy with non-living wage. That is totally socialism. If we allow her to do this, every American will stand up to entrepreneurs requiring living wage! That is outrages!
But don’t forget to fight Mr. Brooks! Now he is on side of AOC!
If you believe in “Love thy neighbor,” you believe in “social justice.”
Wrong choice David.
1
When Brooks talks of racial integration I am reminded of his admiration for the racist wf Buckley and David 's demands for an honorable platform for the racism of the odious Charles Murray. As a result I guess he is asking me as a black man to sit next to him at a Murray speech at say Columbia where Murray tells me I'm subhuman. No thanks.
3
Ok, sounds like you’ll get your reward in heaven in other words. And we get there by how? Oh yeah, more tax cuts for the wealthy, right brooks?
3
You speak with forked tongue. What you propose is really the agenda of the left. It’s all social justice. So it doesn’t really sound all that bad, does it?
“The problem with today’s left-wing and right-wing ideas is that they are both based on a scarcity mind-set. They are based upon us/them, friend/enemy, politics is war, life is conflict.” No. As we move developmentally from I, We, Us, All of us, the U.S. was moving into Us. The right is retreating into We—my group/tribe—right or wrong, might makes right (Trump). The left is moving toward All of us. And, yes they defend different identities (All of us) which on the surface looks like tribal, but it is not. It is the American ideal that we are all created equal.
David, i live in one of those small towns. There is no trust here and county government is dominated by far right extremists. The division we see in Washington is just a reflection.
5
I like this. So far, Klobuchar and Castro on the Dem's side seem best positioned to champion this. Still waiting for a moderate leader on the Republican side to demonstrate the courage and consistency needed.
2
Lovely words, Brooks. Just say, hypothetically, that my neighbors are devout, rabid, proud members of a quasi-religious, social group, a brotherhood. Well known and respected in their small community, they are real old school Men, and their broodmares/household help. They have “ social gatherings” on some Saturday nights, don their freshly washed and pressed white sheets. Then, they perform their version of community service. Love them ??? No thanks. I’m a lifelong Democrat, but I’m tired of ALWAYS compromising And understanding.
2020. Tick, Tock.
8
Mr. D., I wonder if, when you say Pilgrims, you mean, um, Puritans. Asking for a friend.
1
Right. If the proposed solution to our current situation, from left or right, is "revolution," as opposed to incremental progress, well, I think we know how that ends: with blood and, eventually, atavism.
"So a lot of us reject these two ideas."
No, we don't.
1
Love is the only meaningful thing that exists, when you get right down to it.
Maybe it sounds platitudinal, or trite, or reminiscent of some Hallmark ad copy, but it does have the benefit of being “objectively” true.
Love life. You only get one.
On Breitbart, they'll sometimes use a Brooks' quote in their propaganda, but there's no way they would ever print something from this.
Which in reality is a good because itt means the ideas herein are 100% correct.
Brooks wrote a thoughtful opinion piece and because he is a registered Republican, a lot of people did not read it all the way through as evidenced by their comments! In HIS OPINION piece, Brooks is trying to offer a balanced and moderate position. One or two hard core Republicans did dump on his opinion as not “right” enough when he referenced Fed versus State so that could demonstrate he is a moderate? Sorry, David Brooks- once again- even with a “clear vision”- a moderate position loses everyone. Haters going to hate.
1
I wonder as I watch the attack by moderates in both parties on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez if they understand that she is the one living in the 21st century. The numbers she uses to start narrowing the wealth gap come from the economic schools Inequality studies founded by Atkinson and continued by Saez and Piketty and now Zucman in its newest generation. The current consensus on climate change is we have less than a decade to take action until the cascade effect prevents any amelioration.
I have heard congressmen from both political parties say that Americans will never accept the radical agenda of people like AOC. It isn't radical if our society wishes to survive.
Unfortunately conservatism has prevented us from implementing policies that may have give us options. We have no options, moderation will not help.
When I hear moderation called for I understand more than ever Gary Larson's cartoon where the Dinosaur announces the extermination of the dinosaurs because of the comet. Gentlemen I have some very bad news because a comet is going to destroy us all because we need to evolve very quickly but we have a brain the size of a walnut.
6
Does the United States have a “left?” I must be blind. I can’t see it. All I see is a bunch of people who think that a great and wealthy country shouldn’t send 30% of its people to bed hungry every night. All I see are people who think educating new Americans worked really well for the country in the past and would work again, and who think it’s ridiculous that most of Western Europe has a literacy rate of 99% but in the United States nearly 40% of our people can’t even read. All I see are people who think nobody should die for lack of healthcare or lack of food; nobody should die of gunfire in a high school; and nobody should die freezing to death homeless on the streets of winter.
Are people who think such things on the “left?” Golly, I thought I was a moderate. According to Mr. Brooks I must be a leftist. Well, he can call me whatever he wants. He’s wrong. I don’t know what the heck he is — well, actually I do — but I’m not a leftist. I’m an American.
5
The command to love your neighbor as yourself is what motivates many of us who believe in social ju
I’m afraid this piece assumes an awful lot about what bonds we share as a nation. Our children? Have you seen the violent Trump rallies where children are engaged in the same hateful behavior as their parents? Screaming horrible multigenerational chants? What caring parent exposes their children to such demonstrations and encourages participation?
Bonds of shared humanity? How can people, in alarmingly large numbers, spewing racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, anti-climate change views be relied upon for their sense of humanity?
These are desperate, horrifying times. Love, sadly, is not THE answer. A sea change is needed!!! Right now, the left-leaning/green thinking/socialist minded Democrats seem to be the only ones really paying attention. I will happily follow them!
2
Tribalism actually is not based on a theory of scarcity, but on a theory of laissez-faire in a group sense. I have no problem with Social Justice Warriors organizing in collectives where children run their schools, there are Diversity Olympics ever summer, and 51 flavors of gender. They can move en masse to Manhattan, if they so choose, or to Poughkeepsie if they are priced out of the five boroughs, and create a SJW paradise. If they do not impose their values on my children. I promise that I will not impose mine on theirs. However, if you do form a collective, do not expect my children to put our your fires, respond to your 911 emergencies, pave your streets, fix your planes, or pay for your high school dropouts not to work.
“The Pilgrims came because God called them to do so. God’s plans for humanity were to be completed on this continent.” This is an interesting if trite and grossly inaccurate gloss on the reality of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were expelled from Holland and England because they were a radical splinter group of Puritans who denied the primacy of the king and the legitimacy of the entire New Testament as a tool of the devil. They burned witches and branded sinners (the Scarlet Letter) and in fact were a kind of ISIS. That Brooks readily buys into their glorification sheds doubt upon his other generalizations.
3
90% of what Mr. Brooks says is wonderful and dead on, but that 10% is noxious. We don't all love each other. Blacks have been oppressed in America for 400 years. Why is it that people like him keep talking about evil Washington DC? The feds are the ones that broke open Jim Crow in the South. It’s not gone. Jim Crow in the South now runs on stealth mode. Today, there are huge disparities in America between black and white families.
An open white racist sits in the nation's highest office courtesy of the white Southern and white evangelical vote. NO: we don't all love one another and the government needs to get out of the way. About 35% of white America has a sadistic addiction and compulsion to inflict pain on to the nearest not white person. Childcare, wage subsidies and fix immigration? Great. The party that holds a bunch of angry white men does not want those things.
They want a small government that can't protect the weak so they can continue their exploitation. The panic in the white world is we can see the end of the inequality track. MLK will win, sometime probably in the near future and no white lie about ending the evil government that enforces equal rights for all under the law will stop our march towards Dr. King's Dream.
1
Could we not build a magnetic idea on the sociobiology of who we are? Darwin removed the naivety of Rousseau (god of PC) and Adam Smith (god of free market capitalism) from science's concept of the human species. We have tendencies (e.g. we are all racists) in common with other primates that make us avoid being altruistic toward those not like our tribe. If we admit to these tendencies and prioritize--in terms of those consistent with our survival as a species--the ones we should act on, we have a guide on which to construct a magnetic idea model. "Community" would give focus to this model. For example, climate change can become a threat to our survival. Addressing it would be a community priority.
1
Sadly, David Brooks has fallen into the trap of "both side-ism." He promotes the false moral equivalency syndrome that plagues the media. Conservatives, particularly evangelicals, are dishonest, racist, immoral, and corrupt. Liberals are idealistic and aspirational. If he can't tell the difference between them, he's got a problem...
Brooks has been a scribbling scribe and justifier for the worst characteristics of 30 years of Republican policies but wants us to forget his role in the downward depravity that has resulted. He never listened to his critics nor begged for forgiveness. Here he misrepresents the side he has argued against for decades. But now he has found a mushy middle he is trying to sell that’s promises to Bette than Reagan! No thanks. The Brooks brand is bankrupt.
1
Liked this sentence:
"What big idea counteracts division, fragmentation, alienation? It is found in Leviticus and Matthew:"
To be specific about Leviticus, the passages are Leviticus 19, verses 33 and 34 whereby they admonish the Jews to "welcome the stranger, for you were once strangers once." (rough translation) The evangelicals would not like thumping the Bible with these verses in mind.
As much as I like Mr. Brooks his editorial is full of inaccuracies. "The Pilgrims came because God called them to do so." God’s plans for humanity were to be completed on this continent is the typical white protestant excuse for pushing native Americans out of their land followed by slavery and genocide and interment of Native Americans on reservations. Conservatives will howl at my take on white settlement of America: It was driven by greed, and slavery and genocide provided the means. White settlers saw a virgin land for the taking and did everything necessary to ensure that happened despite all of the immorality and evil logic that was provided as justification and still is today. It is imperative that white America come to grips with past injustices and stop this thinking that America is so exceptional. To do so is to make change unnecessary since all is right with our nation when it is not. Many injustices remain.
When the bus is driving off a cliff to the right, you don't keep the steering wheel in the center, going straight ahead. You have to steer left, or die.
4 Noble Truths....or 4 distractions from the roots of suffering? Children, Society, Place, and Humanity are all tools of exploitation by the wealthiest to become powerful and wealthier.
Republicans hate born children and use fetuses to oppress women. They have enlisted sincere religious people to divide all against women by citing superstition from male supremacist religions. Women will never be equal to men as long as “freedom of religion” does not also mean freedom from religion.
Society? Society is what makes rich people rich. Without society, the value of wealth would not exist. Society protects the wealthy from the brutality that it’s absence guarantees. Yet, the rich can never get enough wealth and push society to the extremes of inequality. Place? Global warming is secondary to profit. Pollution is just an externality, right? And loss to Hurricanes is paid by taxpayers, right? In every circumstance place is an issue only the wealthy and their servants can choose.
Humanity? When we hear “the American people” from any Republican it is absolutely clear that it refers to the 1%, but really to the 0.1%.
Brooks promotes the meme that “tribalism” is the source of these responses. It is crucial that moderates and progressives recognize that that is precisely the same as the rich screaming “class warfare” or white supremacists screaming “race card”. Let’s be nice and say that Republicans are not all racists, plutocrats, misogynists, exploiters of religious beliefs. (joking)
Brooks, with no sense of irony, puts Social Justice on par with Tribalism. Seriously?
1
Brooks’ straw man constructions and his equally vague ‘solutions’ are getting tiresome. On the chance that one of his columns might contain more than platitudes rendered from on high, I click. He’s nothing if not consistent. Drop the idealism and offer something concrete, backed up with facts and grounded in reality, and maybe the next column I click on in a month or so will surprise me. Until then, my ‘opinion’ is that Brooks could star in a remake of Wicker Man. All he would have to do is act naturally.
Sure, Brother David, there are "very good people...on BOTH sides."
Right?
"Let the left and right stand for endless political war. The moderate seeks the beloved community. That, too, is a magnetic idea."
So that's your "us against them".
So that's yopu us against them.
1
In 2019 David Brooks discovers and reads the lyrics to John Lennon’s “Imagine” written 48 years ago.
3
Bound together by love of our children...Sounds like a sanguine start, except that's also the way the anti-abortion movement begins: Those liberals are killing fertilized eggs! Our babies!
If half the population isn't blowing up on this issue (which begins with our shared love of children, remember), another whacked-out portion of our child-loving population is figuring ways to groom and abuse those grown-up fetuses, now that they're out of the womb. And that's just the first tenet of what seems like such a modest proposal.
Mr. Brooks, I'm afraid you greatly overestimate your fellow human beings.
Yes, yes and more yes.
One of the most clumsily constructed, divorced from reality columns Brooks has written. Sure the left is screaming bloody murder and demanding ACTION! That's because the right has set our house afire and then retired to their palace.
1
‘Love the children’. This from the spokesperson for a party that violently separated parents from babies with no idea or care as to how they would be reunited. And he deems that the equivalent of a party that fought to reunites those babies with their parents.
Brooks hypocrisy knows no bounds.
2
But all our neighbors think like we do. That is the problem.
We will only overcome our differences with a common enemy, or a common cause. That common cause should be climate change. Unlike leprosy-ridden Mexican Islamic terrorist caravans, it’s coming for all of us.
The version of American history Brooks presents is exclusively the history of white America. Native Americans, Chinese, Africans....they did not have Pilgrims and their experience of the ‘settling’ of the West was rather different than that if whites!
Perspective matters......
This is so easy. In my little town we still have hard feelings after 15 years. Vote on bond to fix schools. Affluent part if town with kids in private schools, NO. the rest of us, YES. We won. Every republican worships money. Democrats will fix the boiler so kids can take their coats off. We have friends here in NJ who move to DE over taxes. They want everything for free. Won’t buy a box of cookies from a Girl Scout. Turn your big brain off, David.
Could you please run for president in 2020?
David, what a load of nonsense. In my hometown, and across rural North Carolina, the radical right took over all political institutions. Their first move was to cement their hold on power by gerrymandering. In other words, ending free and fair elections. They then set about re-segregating the schools and defunding public education, libraries, and pretty much all other social services, such as parks, universities, environmental protection, roads, etc. In conjunction, massive tax breaks for the wealthy.
And apparently the problem all along, according to the author, is that I have not listened to them closely and earnestly enough. I continue to fight for a free and fair society, but I have hunkered down in a small enclave of relative freedom (in NC, we are only allowed to set local rules that the State approves). I probably am fighting a losing battle but it won’t be won by listening more empathetically to the white supremicists.
2
I agree with many of the philosophical points in this column. However, it inspired me to go and take a closer look at the Green New Deal and what it says and what it doesn't say. I'm at a loss to see how you how you find it a radical, divisive document David.
Moderation can be a tactic or a philosophy. Don't make it a pathology.
In simple Gratitude for the public voice of Mr. Brooks, who is able to magnify his Presence with an honest analysis of our social Condition. I am an 82 year old, long-retired Protestant pastor
and Licensed Family Therapist. Forgive me, please, but I discount President Trump’s Chronic Presence. I call it our “CEO
as our COA” (Center Of Attention). He is, I contend, a clearly
diagnosable Sociopathic Personality Disorder. Meanwhile, he is
thoroughly Enjoying his active Presence in the National
Spotlight. He is Beyond Treatment. We, the People, are in Need
of it. I must add that Brooks also cited the “Love your Neighbor”
Wisdom of God.
1
You say nothing about the really pressing problems of health care and climate change. You dismiss addressing the persistence of racism and sexual exploitation as victimhood. You want the government to pay for business's disrespect for, and underpayment of, workers to further enrich the rich.
When problems are neglected until they become urgent, "moderation" means failure and anger.
I have been sick for nine years. I can only work part-time. When do I get to simply go to the doctor and get as many visits and tests as I need to to get well?
Your fantasy ideals dodge reality. How do you build "the beloved community" with an opposition party that believes the wildest falsehoods but won't believe the truth? That accepts the lying and damage Trump is doing to our country because he "owns the libs"? With a government that openly insults the majority of the country while being more corrupt than we've ever seen?
We will only be able to address the ideals in your article when our most urgent crises have been met and people can AFFORD to simmer down. When people are falling out of the middle class, when they can't get health care, when lies and idiocy are tolerated in government ), we're not thinking brotherhood but survival.
Please wake up and look around you. Some of us are desperate, and no one is doing a thing about our problems.
2
The idea of social justice is based on scarcity? C'mon DB, you can do better that that.
1
I often think how would JFK’s “salad” speech be received in this world of perpetual tribalism.
A world that needs some form of a common collaborative direction.
“Let is not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer.
Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept or own responsibility for the future.”
The line from Green Book after RFK gets the main characters out jail...
“ Those 2 brothers are trying to save this country”
How would they be received now..
Maybe that was as close to Camelot as we will get...
Welcome to the 1960s. flower power. Peace, love, acceptance.
Mr Brooks, it's time to retire. You are out of step with your own party, that you desperately want us to believe is reasonable, all evidence. Democrats view most of your pronouncements as suspicious or hypocritical. Yes, the center is bereft because the right has been so extreme in pushing its ideas over the last quarter century that finally there is a backlash against the interests of capitalists and fundamentalists. You are speaking into the void.
We had eight years of moderation with President Obama--okay, the first two years were crisis management that demanded crisis intervention--but Obama's pragmatic approach was always based in moderation (see ACA, not Single Payer). But, no, your party had to blow it up--couldn't work with him, aimed to make him a one term president, Tea Party, sequester, Merrick Garland. As long as your party is led by flame throwers like Mitch McConnell, our party cannot not offer moderation. Of course, the mess we'll have to clean up after this president and his enablers will demand crisis intervention again and oh, you'll all will be crying for moderation!
2
"The problem with today’s left-wing and right-wing ideas is that they are both based on a scarcity mind-set. They are based upon us/them, friend/enemy, politics is war, life is conflict."
Wow. Talk about both-sides-ism. The left's social justice is about us, about all, about inclusion, about recognizing centuries of othering and reversing that. If there's an "enemy," it's the one who works tirelessly to retain the status quo.
1
Dear Dr. Brooks & Mr. Hyde. Your thesis today would be a really good read if you were actually not a former cheerleader for Trump nation. But because you were, you continue to lazily write about the left as outsiders to the points you espouse here.
By doing this, you unfairly paint the left as the left. The fact is that while there are some on the left of left, you simply can't just balance them off with the right, something you frequently seem to do.
It is as if you have a balance scale on your desk. On one side you lump the left of left, and on the other side you lump the right of right. But you brush off some of the right and add on others to the left so that these two sides balance each other out, leaving just the middle you frequently mention.
But the far left are few and a minority even to those from center to left. The right that you mention compromise not the extreme far right, but a much larger swath of people. Put both lumps on the balance scale and you will see a huge tip to the right.
So while I agree with your sentiment and new found moderate positions, you really have to stop painting the landscape so falsely.
By and large, there is just the right and then those that cling to many of the ideals you speak of here. There is NO third group of formidable size or influence.
I for one will have a much greater respect for you and others like you when you can free yourself of the misplaced notion that left of center is equal in size to the right of center.
1
Fear and anger, fear of other, anger at social inequity, are more powerful motivators. Love can only appear when anger and fear disappear. Sorry David...
David Brooks and his history and philosophy "light". These big "ideas" he talks about...well. how did the first 2 work out for indigenous and African peoples? And the 60s about "self"? So that is what all the sacrifices and efforts to end the immoral war in Vietnam were about? Not to mention that most all of the local progress for women, environment etc etc came from those of us who came of age in that era. it is the "conservatives " now running the Senate and this president and his cronies who are the selfish ones. wake up David and look around!
1
Yet more bromides and contrived equivalencies from Mr. Brooks. So, to earn this seemingly noble label of “moderate,” I need to accommodate the other side’s view that climate change is a hoax, or that the best way to protect our children is to arm teachers? Maybe, just maybe, the “anger” of the “left” (quotes very much intended) is perfectly justified, in light of the patently preposterous, and utterly destructive, views of the right (no quotes needed here) that are actually driving national policy.
3
Brooks has never been a moderate. He has spent his career as a propagandist and apologist for the business wing of the GOP. The fact that these folks (Bush for example) used cultural and racial divisions to get voters to support their unpopular economic policies never bothered him. That is why he is the last person who should be telling moderates what to do.
2
@Mrsfenwick
Indeed. His life's work of scribbling for the GOP is in ashes, and he knows it because the logical conclusion is in the White House. With these recent columns of Love & Kumbaya & Community he is clearly not admitting that out loud and can't make a clean break with his fellow ideologues, paymasters and the related bowling leagues and coffee klatches. He is in the mushy middle of self-righteousness and no power.
How about spending $1 trillion on climate change and see if it does more good than the same amount spent on drone strikes? Would it be radical to expect writers to not refer to Bible verses as authoritative texts? Because in 2019 that should be a moderate expectation, but I’m sure in MAGA country that would make me a Satanic socialist.
David Brooks,
It seams for a long time now you have been slipping into the land of magical thinking.
There can only be moderates when the majority of the country sees and believes that they and their kids are and will be doing better than their parents. Since that is not happening anymore, there is no middle and no space for moderation.
I like your use of the bible in this article as an example of cherry picking. You did not mention Job 7:1 which in the old testament basically says man life on earth is constant struggle or warfare.
I fall into the camp that says there are two world views in competition in the world. The last of the Enlightenment Generations and those of a New Dark Ages.
No amount of love thy neighbor is going to move people from one or the other of those world views. It will be done by force or coercion.
The one commenter is correct in that how children are raised and under which world view make a difference. No amount of love thy neighbor is going to get people to change how they raise their kids.
It must be nice to get paid to live in the land of Magical Thinking.
I read the entire thing a couple of times just to make sure I didn't miss it. There is really no mention of healthcare here at all?
Love thy neighbor? Isn't that a liberal idea?
If I love my neighbor, if I love my children and their descendants and hope for their survival, I'd better be supporting the Green New Deal.
1
Yes to David Brooks's humility and love thy neighbor, maybe it is time to take power away from Washington by just holding "Talk Ins'", who are you?, tell us how you feel?, all tat already is happening in anonymous support groups. We feel that the politicians are spiritually undeveloped people who have no relationship skills, they spend all their time preparing to duke it out.
Skip the debates! Who cares who wins in Iowa? So what! Why should we continue to participate? Yank the plug.
After years of cheerleading foreign wars, uncritically writing the PR for the Bush administration, and a condescending commentator of the Obama years. Now that his party has revealed what its critics for years having charged -- Trumpeters of patriarchy, racism, and bold patrons of the 1%. Brooks develops amnesia and becomes the Wizard of Strawmen and the Beloved Community. Now who might have valued that term. Yes, the moderate Dr. Martin Luther King.
1
There's a line in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology...by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war.
I wish my neighbor well, but I will not sacrifice myself for my neighbor.
Right you are, Mr. B.....but the sad part is we have very few moderates left to moderate.
Racking the muck and stoking the flames of division is our media and social media. Labeling ourselves left or right is what Dr. Seuss called the senseless exchange of "stars upon thars."
Driving the divided on to the precipice of political nihilsm are the media who make billions causing more bluster. Those among us who troll social media separation are no different than the corporate dividers whose talking TV heads or coneheaded columnists (save Brooks) who deepen the political precipice.
1
I would of loved a Moderate Biden two years ago, but now with all the damage done, especially climate change, radical. Plain and simple just to get us back to the middle.
Division is essential to democracy. The core problem facing America today is the Republican Party's current dependence on flat out lies.
I read the headline and the subhead and immediately went to the comments. When David Brooks gives advice to "moderates" and implies that all it takes is "love thy neighbor", I know he's pitching for the bad guys.....as usual.
A wolf in sheep's clothing for sure.
Last spring I read a chalk writing on the sidewalk as I walked my dog that has stayed with me. “How shall I treat the other? There is no other.” Profound!
This opinion is "an agenda for dreamers." Not in our lifetime will we see any of this. David's "first affection" is regarding the education of our children. Sounds great but it appears our children are being indoctrinated by the left. Prime example would be the young CA students meeting with Sen. Feinstein last week in DC. We all know she is quite liberal but she immediately shut the kids down when they insisted that she must push for the New Green Deal. The kids throughout our Nation are being brainwashed by their liberal teachers. The same must be said for college students as well.
There goes David Brooks again with his equivocation and false equivalence about "both sides". If Brooks stepped down from his conservative/Republican soap box he would notice that the left is, in fact. embracing the love your neighbor dictum.
The left put ordinary people first - not the wealthy or corporations. Republicans have always held themselves out as being more religious than Jesus but their hypocrisy stinks to high heaven.
I prefer to see the left try and fail than have the wicked and misguided right succeed in benefiting the rich all of the time.
How do we elide from identity politics to green politics? We don't- Brooks is still as sneaky and underhanded as ever, in spite of picking the low-hanging fruit of anti-Trump.
Another straw man destroyed. "Since 1960 it has been about self".. Only for Republicans. The civil rights act, the war on poverty may have been futile failures in the eyes of Republicans but they were not about self!!
David has provided his own summary of American history “driven by ideas”. His selection of ideas is just a bit curtailed, neglecting expropriation of native peoples, slavery, extermination of wild life, unprincipled foreign invasions, subversion of democracy both at home and abroad, imposition of fundamentalist doctrines, and a few other matters.
He suspects “the left” of aiming to abet these misuses of government with some new ones.
Let’s look at these abuses. Among the proposed abuses of government David seemingly opposes are: affordable housing, environmental protection, combatting global warming, health care, genuine education (not just temporary job training), child & elder care, rehabilitation, a living wage, ...
All matters somehow neglected by David’s favorite role for individual enterprise, with “individual” in the corporate sense defined by Citizens United and various “conservative” members of the Supreme Court.
Here is an idea deeply held by the GOP today: me-me-only-me.
Ideas to live by, eh?
1
I'd vote for this. The details are a repackaged "social justice" agenda but you can call it what you want if we can all make it happen!!
What happened between 1900 and 1960? You cut those 60 years out as if they didn't matter. What phase was that fourth capped time frame? A time of imperialism, colonialism and fascism that led to two world wars and a cold war. How can you convince the reader of your phase theory when an entire era is dismissed? Anyway, your utopian dream of friendly neighbors is just that: a phantasmagoria of an America that never was. We've been in conflict from the get-go with Native Americans, with African slavery, with Mexicans, with white supremacists (Remember the Civil War?), then with imperialists, then with fascists, then with communists, then with Islamic terrorists. Dream on, David. Maybe we can sleep through the latest conflict, but I doubt it. History says no. The real magnetic dream is a democracy that works for most of us, and we will struggle for that dream.
1
Why don’t you run as the moderate candidate, David? I am not aware of anyone who does a better job articulating and communicating the moderate American ideals. Why not throw your hat into the ring?
This piece falls into "...Why can't we all just get along..." category.
Mr. Brooks- the Right has declared War. The rest of us are fighting back.
For you, the question is "....Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?
You are going to have to decide.
1
The American dream was written by a french guy in 1780's : Creve Coeur.
It does mot bother Americams today that all US major corporations are established fiscally in Europe and not in the USA . They cheat and pay no taxes while invading the European market . Apple, yahoo Google, Faceboof, Amazon, Starbucks, Netflix. etc,,, I have written that several times and never any comments from Americans.
There is no support in the Republican Party for these ideas, David. I think it’s time to fearlessly face the facts. You’re a Democrat.
Mr. Brooks, how about a plan for some government sponsored daycare that is means tested.
We need to remember about "content of character" without gender, race, sexual preference, age, region of country and religion. We have broaden our minds and avoid being one issue voters. We have to vote.
38
I can't help thinking the Democrats are closer to these ideals than the Republicans - at least the ones we see in Congress. But, thanks, David Brooks, for articulating it.
Mr. Brooks, this is an excellent analysis of the current political divide and the proposed platform for bridging that gap. I nominate you for president for 2020! Or maybe you can find a clone. :) But, where you are, as a "watchman on the wall," you are serving us well, so please keep being a prophet for our country.
While some of your proposals might need tinkering or expansion and you leave out a huge issue (climate and the environment) moderation in opposition to extremism is welcome. Indeed it is almost an orphan child these days, even at the Gray Lady now on a marked swerve from center-left to the hard left. (Two or three critical op-ed pieces on the Obamas in two weeks?).
I'm convinced that a wide swath of America is desperate for healing, and a lowering of temperature. Neither the toxicity of a Trump rally nor the ideological bent of activist marches on the left captures the hopes and dreams of most of us. Heaven help us if the orange one is re-elected, a likely scenario if the Democrats go all hard left including ending private health insurance and pushing "reparations". Try selling the latter position to Americans whose ancestors didn't arrive on these shores until long after the 13th and 14th Amendments were in force. How are they culpable?
1
Why does the Right, led by the extremely corrupt, divisive, wall-builder, tax-evader, Nazi-apologist, ACA-destroyer, national-emergency-declarer, pedophile-defender, environment-destroyer, deficit-exploder, Putin-lover Trump, keep telling us on the other side, that we need to be moderate?
Nice try, Mr. Brooks.
Nice try.
Brooks' suggestion that Americans love their children is a myth. It will take more than child tax credits and parental leave to end the terrors that millions of American children live with every day. The US has one of the worst records of child abuse among industrialized nations – losing on average between four and seven children every day to child abuse and neglect. Over 7 million U.S. children come to the attention of Child Protective Services each year, and 80% of child fatalities involve at least one parent. Romanticizing our relationship to children is a form a denial that helps perpetuate abuse. How can we move forward toward "the beloved community" Brooks seeks if we can't even care for our most vulnerable citizens--our children?
David, your prescriptions for a "moderate" agenda to bring America together and end its war of divisions sounds a lot like the proposals from Democratic members of Congress and candidates for president over the last decade.
1
You say that the core problem facing our society today is division.In the great American experiment this is not new.At the very founding of the nation there was much dissent and infighting involving Washington, Jefferson Adams, Madison and Hamilton.They clashed often and openly.Washington as he reluctantly accepted a second term complained that perhaps all the agony of the fight against British rule perhaps had not been worth it.He was dismayed that people would not value nation over self.The Civil War again made the American people ask this question.We are a nation which has always fought for our values-think World War Two.Our history has been to fight for Democratic Values.It still is and we do not elevate the individual above the nation.
1
The media and our popular culture doesn't care about moderate viewpoints. They are only in it to agitate and maximize profits.
All things in moderation - especially moderation. Moderates lack a 'magnetic idea' because the very notion of moderation rejects a positive or negative, hence a rejection of polarity in favor of a neutron, if you will - i.e., a mass lacking a positive or negative charge. David, while you have accurately described the Tumpian right, in your effort to establish the false equivalency your argument requires, you have mis-described the 'left'. What passes fo the left today offers social justice but as a means not an end. What it seeks is universal participation in the project that is America and which cannot be fully realized as long as some are marginalized and oppressed and so the left is seeking to give meaning to the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all are created equal. And I think we can agree that the notion that none are born higher or lower than anyone else occupies the highest place in the pantheon of magnetic ideas. To come full circle, the magnetic idea you ascribe to moderation is actually the idea of what passes for the left today only wrapped in the frumpy shift of equivocation, the language of one who dares to dream big dreams, but not act on them, to wit, a moderate.
One small quibble... the first colony established of the thirteen original states was Virginia, which was settled for profit, not God. The same with New Netherlands (which became New York as a result of the Second Anglo-Dutch War) which even accepted Muslims and atheists. Even Massachusetts was about 1/3 God and 2/3 Profit on the Mayflower. Georgia was founded as a colony for debtors. Even the First Great Awakening (1730s and 1740s) did not have that great an impact on overall Church membership, that didn’t come about until the Second Great Awakening in the 1800s. So, God does not seem to be the great unifying idea for the start of what will become the United States. The only mention of religion in the original Constitution (before amendments) Is that there should be no religious test for public office or trust.
1
The problem is that history has call the bluff on Reagan-era neoliberalism. That period is coming to a close because it's blind spots have gotten too big. But as history tends to do, it has shown us with Trump that just when you think things couldn't get worse, they do. But there is no going back to the salad days of centrist capitalism. It has been exposed as a hollow lie. Principled conservatives need to abandon right wing nationalism now, even though it will mean a meaningful shift to the left and all that that implies.
3
Here we go again. The latest Brooks stew of pop sociology and highly questionable historical assertions. He seems to have forgotten American isolationism not to mention the peculiar institution. He personally has been a Republican Ultra for his entire career but now wants to pose as a "Moderate." Watching him advocate policies in his final paragraphs which he's opposed all his life and which are generally anathema to Republicans but very likely to be enthusiastically endorsed by liberal Democrats whom he dismisses is mind boggling.
1
Ignorance and the Internet have teamed to make the type of moderation of which Mr. Brooks speaks unfeasible in today’s world.
Everyone’s opinion now can be shared with equal weight due to modern media outlets, and the satisfaction of finding refuge within these outlets to perpetuate personal biases without regard to differing opinions precludes the knowledgeable discernment required to embrace the type of social harmony he outlines.
The heart of conservative (i.e., Republican) philosophy is adherence to a status quo and an inflexibility toward change. Conservatism, by its very nature, precludes accommodation and flexibility. Moderation can only occur through attitudes that encourage dialogue and problem-solving behaviors. Such behavior is foreign to the ethos of Republicanism.
It is why the future of America must be placed in the hands of the Democrats.
1
In order to make a point David Brooks once again has to say: "A curse on both the left and the right." In effect, a false equivalency. As many have already said, the idea of an inclusive community is a progressive a liberal concept. Civic engagement --- remember Ralph Nader created "Public Citizen" and has been the nation's loudest voice for civic engagement. There is no "extreme left" in the US today -- there no community nor socialist party or even wing of the Democratic party. The divides are over accountable power -- Corporate or Government. Our biggest challenge today is the extremism of the President and the ultra-right. Michael Gerson in the Washington Post gets it right this time
I don't have any hope in any of this. Trump and Republicans will do everything to divide Americans on race. It is their only hope for reelection. In this environment we can't possibly address the existential threat of climate change. I guess being kind to each other and holding hands as we build communities is a noble goal. But if temperatures rise 4 degrees by 2050 what will it matter?
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@charles
Quite right, and I am the first to agree - the Paris Agreement is not enough, nor cap and trade, nor any other nibble around the edges measure. However, there is always hope.
We can get our act together in two years. (there were many hopeful signs in the mid terms - massive and historic swing of 40-41 seats) The power of the purse is now in Democratic hands, as is oversight. Progressive messages and policies are on the rise.
As I always say, we can have whatever we want - even inclusive of saving ourselves and our planet, we just have to have enough of us voting for it.
Keep the faith.
23
@Charles
4 degrees in Ohio really won't be that bad. I do like warm summers and milder winters.
2
@Driven In case this isn't satire, that doesn't mean your temperatures will rise by 4 degrees Celcius. That's a global average which will have much more severe effects in some places than others. The data is a bit outdated, but there's a pretty interesting interactive map that lets you look at what the impacts of 4C/7F warming would be in different areas published by the UK government called "The impact of four degree temperature rise." You can access it from NOAA's climate information website if I remember correctly.
6
It's a false equivalence to lump Trump's right-wing tribalism with AOC's left-wing Green New Deal. These ideas are not opposites on a political spectrum of extremes. One side looks forward to renewable energy and inclusion, the other looks backwards promoting coal and archaic walls of division. One is a good idea; the other is a bad idea. A point of moderation does not meet in the middle of these ideas because the ideas are not even in the same zip code. In terms of good policy that will help our children, support employment, promote neighborhoods, and unify people, a real moderate might meet between say Klobuchar's and AOC's ideas -- those are the healthy extremes we want to debate and fall somewhere between. Let's not give Trump any ink in this debate of coherent, "magnetic" ideas. Moderation is great, but let's set up the "extremes" in an intelligent way.
260
The problem is that renewable energy doesn't need a Green New Deal - it's almost inevitable at this point. The hard problems in global warming we need to solve are things like CO2 from concrete and steel manufacture and Chinese CO2 emissions. The proposed massive rebuilding programs and transfers to people so they can buy more things (which will, of course, mostly be made in China) will make these worse. The Green New Deal promises solutions to the problems we already have solved at the price of making the hard problems harder for no reason.
2
@PE
The problem with your analysis of false equivalence is the roughly 35% of Americans who form Trump's 'tribe'. They will exist whether Trump continues on or not. Their ideas might be backward, but to them they are real. A much smarter politician than Trump with real skills will find a way to include them in a future coalition, and right wing tribalism will live on. If we want some of Trump's people in our camp, we have to be another kind of word. Or two. Empathic. Pragmatic.
4
@makomk -- your point is one most readers won't understand. AOC's GND proposes a Bolshevik command+control system (run by AOC and her kiddies no doubt) to "solve" a problem that a modest Carbon Tax would fix easily.
And if that carbon tax is 100% rebated per capita (to adult citizens, residing in the US) it becomes very progressive, is revenue-neutral, solves the "green vest problem" (an increase in the tax rate helps the poor), AND enjoys substantial support from conservative economists!
A carbon tax will force concrete & primary steel manufacture to sequester their CO2 ... this is both technically and economically feasible.
Aviation is preparing to go carbon neutral; feasible either by carbon offset or fuel synthesis from biomass (or possibly hydrogen fuel).
The existence of a carbon tax allows nations to use the GATT "border adjustment" mechanism ... in effect a world tariff system on CO2 will be inevitable no matter what (though it won't necessarily have a uniform carbon tariff).
The USA will need to prepare for that. A unitary CO2 pricing for labor content will force the USA to drive per capita CO2 down if we are to retain our ability to export.
3
Mr Brooks, if we were "bound together by the love of our children" we would have reasonable gun control. If we were" bound together by our shared humanity" children of immigrant parents would not have been snatched from their parents, many of whom have never been nor or likely be united with them ever again.
252
@Diana
I think, fundamentally, the issue is how we define "our." Fundamentally, I agree with you on your following arguments, as I'm a liberal. However, if one defines "our" as being "those who belong to our tribe" then absolutely the proliferation of guns makes sense, as people see them necessary to protect their tribe from outside influence. Similarly goes the immigrants issue.
Mr. Brooks addresses this when he says that racial integration "is the prerequisite for national unity." He's spot on correct about that. There will be no unity until we can see past racial divisions.
On that note, I get so frustrated with people who insist that economic inequality is the driving force behind racism, because absolutely the converse is true, as racism is ultimately the root of oppressive economic inequality.
5
@Diana The most depressing part of it all is that the majority of Americans support universal background checks, oppose the wall, believe in climate change, etc.
But it's the Republicans in Congress that are fighting hard against progress.
2
@Diana
And then there is that thorny issue about having children and if so, the social net to support them if required.
And then to vaccinate them for their protection
The list of trials and tribulations is long.
"Moderation is not an ideology," intones David Brooks. "It is a way of being." I beg to differ. The most ideological people in the United States are the "moderates" and "centrists," who seem to be under the delusion that their political preferences just happen to coincide with some imagined objective reality or common sense.
Brooks's caricature of progressives is unrecognizable to me. I have known some intolerant and combative progressives, but most of them have been decent, good-hearted people, not the angry battlers described in this op-ed essay.
I cannot resist adding that the policy proposals at the end of Brooks's column are much more likely to be supported by liberals or even progressives than by moderates, much less by conservatives.
170
@Chris Rasmussen
The right defined as those who want less taken, by government.The left defined as those who want to take more from government.
So then there is this small hand full in the middle who
want neither to take or be taken.
And the agenda of this nearly non existent group is to
do nearly nothing?
Sorry In politics you've to be for or against
something specific. After all who says they
are "anti-community".
@dr scott Ayn Rand and her feckless disciple, Paul Ryan.
I can't like this enough. I am proud to be a moderate, although that often leaves me and those like me scoffed at by both ends of the political spectrum, dismissed as DINOs and RINOs (Democrat/Republican In Name Only). I do think this--mutual respect, consideration of ideas and perspectives--is the way of the future. I hope things won't need to get much worse before getting better.
3
"What is the core problem facing America today? It is division: The growing gaps between rich and poor, rural and urban, educated and less educated, black and white, left and right"
And guess what can heal these divisions: spending money on programs that help people, that train or retrain people for jobs, that provide affordable decent housing and medical care, that pay teachers enough money to support themselves when working in poorer districts so that children in the schools there don't have 3 teachers a year for each subject. Conservatives (although they aren't true conservatives) and others on the right in American politics don't support any policy that involves spending their money to help others.
This essay Mr. Brooks, is merely another woolly headed attempt to justify your support for a party that is no longer worth supporting. The GOP has played identity politics in America, has warped the discussion to the point of no return, has given its richest donors an outsize say in government. Why? To cement its power, to deny people the vote, to ignore the crisis that has been coming since the Reagan years.
3
You are absolutely correct.
David, I empathize with the intention of your column. However, you could've given a couple of things more thought:
#1. It's nice to think about shedding aside divisive conflicts such as class war. However, the reality is that there is a class war being waged in this country, there has been for a while. Its results are seen in the obscene inequality within our country, and in the rising costs of healthcare, rent, tuition - all of which benefit the capitalist class at the expense of working people. You can't wish away class war when the capitalist class is waging one very successfully on a daily basis. Unless this massive imbalance is redressed, things are going to get worse, not better.
#2. Secondly, there was a recent political figure who very much espoused the values you listed: Barack Obama. Think about it. Every one of the points you list is something that Barack Obama stood for or tried to advance via policy and rhetoric. The public largely supported this, given the fact that he governed for two terms, and was quite popular when he left office. However, it wasn't sufficient, as reflected in Trump's ascent and our present political moment. Why wasn't it sufficient? For an answer, look at point #1.
284
@Vin
Alas Brooks didn't empathize with Obama.
12
@Vin "For an answer, look at point #1."
This is just not true. Fox news and a divided media and popular culture are the reason Trump won.
You say Obama left office very popular. But for a large segment of our population Barack Obama and the Democrats are to blame for all the problems our country faces. The truth is irrelevant at this point.
2
Well said!
4
Stronger Together.
Good thought.
Didn't work too well as a political slogan.
Economic fairness is the way to go.
3
Another wonderful column, Mr. Brooks.
Unfortunately, AOC, Bernie, and Elizabeth Warren are alienating moderate independents and republicans and pushing them into the Trump camp for 2020.
1
Mr. Brooks tells us that “If the 2020 choice is between Donald Trump and a Democrat who supports the Green New Deal, [he’d] vote for any moderate alternative.” He might want to consider that if that "moderate alternative" is not equal to the tasks of arresting either global warming or widening economic inequality, then 2020 might well be regarded by those looking back on our politics from some dystopian future as an “Era of Good Feelings.”
1
"The best life was the life of maximum self-expression, self-actualization and maximum personal freedom, economic as well as lifestyle."
If only we realize the truth, and it is taught from our childhood, that we are truly the expression of the universe, each one of us, without exceptions. Just as much we value self expression self actualization, so does every human being, no exception. Our being able to self express does not diminish anyone else's expression. It is not a competition, it is permission to express multiplicity diversity and plurality. The Universe thrives in multiplicity and rejoices each time each one of us fulfills our self expression. Once we realize each one of us is part of the SAME universal expression, we will be kinder to each other, gentler to each other, more empathetic to each other's difficulties challenges and trials.
1
It is a serious mistake to describe what is happening in the United States as a battle between liberals and conservatives, It is a struggle for the survival of our nation and our democracy. It is a battle between Trumpists and those who care sincerely about the future of our country. Trumpists have no respect for the Constitution, no respect for American traditions and cannot distinguish the Apprentice Reality TV show from truly governing our nation. After two years of gross incompetence as so-called president, they can no longer claim Trump is going to fight for the little guy with his massive tax cuts for the super-rich at the expense of all social programs and his ego-driven and useless "Wall".
Nearly half the US population supports the hard right wing Republican Party. They have bought into Voo Doo "trickle-down" economics and reject climate change despite massive scientific support. They have been convinced that national healthcare in one form or another as practiced in every advanced nation is "Socialized Medicine". They still live in the McCarthy era, even those who never heard of Joe McCarthy!
It is going to be a struggle to drag this country out of 19 Century Trumpism. Even moderates are considered lefties by today's Republicans. However, the Democrats have moral obligation to make a sincere effort to generate a huge voter backlash in order to save our democracy, even if it means developing a balanced ticket. .
212
@Jefflz: Here in the South, Jeff's description of today's partisan divide makes a lot more sense than Mr. Brooks' column. Mr. Brooks presumes that we have an educated electorate that is willing to listen to the ideas of those with different views. Unfortunately, millions of people in the South, Midwest and other areas get their news and ideas only from hard-right sources and have no conception of foreign policy, racial justice or much of anything else except Trumped-up tribalism.
50
@Jefflz I agree with some of what you say. I think we are in a struggle to survive as a united place. If that is possible anymore. I have to say though that when I read your last sentence it felt a bit off. I think instead the Democrats have a moral obligation to not generate a voter backlash against themselves if they want to save democracy. Which might be a little of what Brooks was trying to suggest.
2
@Bearded One
Needed - analysis that goes beyond big money and big media shaping right wing opinion.
In a long term frame, the US had a historically weak radical labor movement; and its social safety net interventions came later and were weaker than in many other industrial democracies.
In a shorter frame, the shift right of US politics - right wing and liberal - has been happening since Reagan. Weakening of New Deal coalition due to a) decline of % of industrialized/unionized labor and b) failures of New Deal safety net to protect and engage enough Americans to keep people loyal to it.
In a 'recent' frame, some who voted for Obama voted for Trump. Here the cause is partly political - a right liberal Democratic Party that did not speak to key Obama voters: economic populist but cultural right wingers who supported Sanders in primaries - but reverted right once he was out of running:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/24/16194086/bernie-trump-voters-study
2
This is excellent. I am so tired of anger and division. It solves nothing. If we are to save our country from self-destruction, we have to learn to listen and talk and respect one another as human beings.
97
@Janet Wikler
Talking is fine but there needs to be some agreement on facts, on numbers and on reality. Otherwise what are we going to talk about?
Then we need to find solutions based on facts, otherwise we contine wasting money on things that don’t work, and accelerate self-destruction.
24
@Janet Wikler
Absolutely, Janet. And the tone of so many of these comments shows how desperately listening and respect are needed. The anger and vitriol pretty much prove Mr. Brooks' thesis and support your comment.
7
@Janet Wikler
Well intentioned ..... but very naive. No amount of "love" politics will make the Republicans play nice in the sandbox. They are bullies. We can't afford to be tired of the anger and divisiveness that they create and foster. We have to express our anger in the most constructive way possible ..... Resist, vote the bums out, go far left with policy and THEN moderate where and if appropriate.
10
It seems to me that the Republicans went radical a long time ago, back under Reagan. Their politics of fear and their manipulation of the voting system—Texas is probably neither the least nor the most gerrymandered and voter-id’d state—are just two examples of the ways they have radicalized the party. And all those things Mr. Brooks mentions that moderates should embrace—child care and education, wage subsidies, giving people opportunities, national service programs, encouraging racial integration—all seem to be anathema even to the “moderate” right, if such a thing exists anymore. The Republican Congress under President Obama’s administration went so far as to do everything they could to shut down his attempts to pass legislation, rather than negotiate reasonable and nationally beneficial legislation. Congress has packed the Supreme Court with justices—Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh—who have endorsed radical ideas to ensure their own radical ideals prevail. They went to the extraordinary (radical?) length of refusing a vote on President Obama’s nominee to the court in order to give themselves a “free” nominee.
So now the left gets radical with their social program and immigration ideas, and the right—including Mr. Brooks, apparently—suddenly call for “moderation”. Where was their moderation when President Obama lawfully nominated a justice; where is their moderation now when the chief executive is gutting social programs and environmental protections?
4
Sorry, no sale. After years of having the agenda and legislation pushed rightward, there desperately needs to be amelioration to the left by some big bold ideas, such as the Green New Deal. If Brooks can't sign on, then he remains part of the Republican problem.
I might also add, the 'moderates' are to be overwhelmingly found in the Democratic Party. And they are embracing going left.
175
Let’s welcome the moderates on a slight turn to the left.
And let’s embrace effective local governments with the backing and direction from the feds... it takes away the ‘big government’ rebuttals from the right if you advocate for federal support but local implementation.
8
@Gerard -- while I sympathize with the goals, at present the GND is an inchoate unlegislatable word salad.
Worse yet its implication of draconian centralized-control (e.g. "Bolshevik") as the means by which CO2 must be reduced is disfunctional, provably unnecessary, and politically impossible.
There exists considerable support for a carbon tax 100% rebated per capita {to adult citizens residing in the US). The 100% per capita rebate makes it both revenue-neutral and substantially progressive (poorer people do not produce as much CO2 via their consumption, and thus would receive more in rebate than the tax would cost them). This also solves the "green vest" problem: poorer people gain if the tax rate increases.
Both economics (and a very wide range of economists) and science argues for a carbon tax, as the most efficient and least damaging means to control CO2.
The "green" part of the GND is simultaneously the most shrill, incompetent and Bolshevik part of it, and entirely unnecessary. The rest of the "new deal" passes much closer to FDR's.
Progressives haven't legislated anything yet. The "GND" will keep it that way. In order to legislate anything one must assemble the votes in Congress for bills, finding those votes bill-by-bill. Go read some history of Roosevelt's presidency, and think about it.
3
Trouble with Mr Brooks is that the Democratic Party would be ok with everything he suggests and the GOP would NOT. There are no moderates that can be found in the GOP. Not even Brooks can make them emerge from their “Trump” shells.
259
Making nice, as Brooks urges us to do, won't heal the nation's divisions or solve the very real problems feeding those divisions. Rising inequality and diminished opportunity for members of the middle and working classes can't be wished away. Nor can the racism and misogyny deeply ingrained in American life. If we want to change the country we need do more than adjust our personal attitudes. We need the sort of programmatic change that a conservative like Brooks is hard-wired to resist.
3
I like where this is going, I just fixed a few of the details for you. Hope you don't mind.
We are bound together by our love of our children. So the first mission is to save the planet, so our children don't grow up in an apocalyptic hellscape.
We are bound to society by our work. The second mission is to respect work, and workers, by ensuring that all jobs pay a living wage.
We are bound together by our affection for our place. The third mission, then, is to allow people to remain and thrive in the places where their affections lie. So let's take some of the obscene wealth horded by a tiny minority in a few elite neighborhoods within a few elite cities, and redistribute it to the poor and middle class nationwide.
We are bound together by our shared humanity. Since nothing binds humans sickness, suffering and death, the fourth mission is to guarantee everyone access to quality healthcare, regardless of ability to pay.
What do you think, David? Now we're on a little more solid ground, right? Oh wait, am I being ... "immoderate?"
605
@B.C.
Thank you.
David needs to read Maslow. Basic needs must be addressed before people can consider higher needs.
We are falling farther and farther behind in addressing basic needs for ordinary people.
39
@B.C.
Excellent suggestions, proposing realistic programes to achieve worthwhile goals for our whole society.
19
@B.C.
Wonderfully stated!!
5
It's completely wrong for people like Brooks to consider ideas like Medicare for All and free education as "radical". Just because the US lags behind the rest of the world in implementing such ideas doesn't make them radical. It's called loving thy neighbor.
4
David Brooks adds to the political conflict he pretends to deride by persisting in creating a caricature of the left.
Although he admits the existence of unsustainable gaps between rich and poor, rural and urban, he can't bring himself to consider with thoughtfulness any of the proposals coming from the so-called left.
It seems to me that it's liberals who "love" the people, no matter their background, education, status because it's only liberals with the deep policy ideas designed to address our most divisive and ultimately dangerous problems, namely income inequality and environmental devastation.
5
A nice aspiration. But if there has been an effective political movement in the history of human-kind centered on loving-kindness I have yet to hear about it. Apparently it doesn't work ...
A big problem with moderation as described here is that the right views such moderate views as leftist and the far left fears that moderation makes one vulnerable to the predation of the right. The right may love their children but they will buy out or step on anyone who prevents their children from getting a leg up. The far left is paranoid about conspiracy theories in their view of what is happening based on past corruption by both left and right.
After years of preaching in the Presbyterian Church and watching the decline of all churches, I think the magnets of endless war parties and the Beloved Community must be turned the wrong way, repelling each other.
More and more I see the Democratic Party as the home for moderates and social justice seeking persons. It is the fighting arm of the Beloved Community which would rather win by non-violence. The contradiction here is that "resistance" is always the strategy of the outsider, which may explain both the moral high ground and the ineffectiveness of the Obama years.
3
Community starts with listening; listening starts with respect for others and their ideas; respect starts at home. If we wish a safe, fair and dynamic society, we must be willing to consider the opinions and suggestions of "the other side". To do that, we must look for the commonality that unites us and not look only at those differences that divide us. This is Mr. Brooks' message. For those who desire small government, a system that encourages and enables local decision making is suggested. This is in no way in conflict with a federally supported program to encourage and enable public service. Government supported programs to support workers and work retraining serves to create economic opportunity for workers and provide an educated work force for business thereby increasing the buying power of workers and increasing the market for products. Programs and initiatives to improve educational opportunities for all children and to allow parents to stay at home with their children benefits all segments of society in both the short and long term. Finally, a populace that feels respected by its government is more likely to be engaged in its operation. As a consequence, government is more likely to actually listen to the concerns of the governed and enact programs/laws/policies that consider the long-term needs of society (and planet). At this time, we need to take the path less taken and search for commonality in order to solve the problems facing our society.
1
I love so much of what you say here David. I also believe that most Americans essentially agree. But for you to end it with a refusal to vote for a candidate that makes climate change the important issue that it is, you have just made your entire point null. "My way or the highway".
3
In the United States, moderation is a process, not a position or a place. That is what David misses. Moderation comes about when the various branches of government check each other and there is either gridlock that slows down progress but ultimately creates a moderate rate of change that can be absorbed gradually into the social fabric (i.e. Social Security, Medicare, Voting Rights, etc.), or it is the result of the political pendulum swinging back and forth between Democrats and Republicans. This process can also be seen as a fluctuation between hope and fear. Tribalism is driven by fear. Progress and change are driven by hope. Obama’s message was one of hope and the forces of fear made progress slow and not entirely successful. Trump’s message is one of fear and the forces for progress will ensure his agenda is not entirely successful. Thus five years from now, either moderation will have won again, or fear will take a victory lap as the planet overheats and we're killing each other in ever greater numbers.
4
Barack Obama seemed like an extremely moderate and “love thy neighbor” -oriented president. The Republicans spent 8 years painting a picture of him as a radical
socialist, an incompetent, an elitist and a foreigner. They blocked everything he tried to accomplish whenever possible. Hillary Clinton had a record of pro-corporate legislation and repeatedly “conservative” foreign policy... “Lock her up, lock her up.”
The longer we perpetuate the fantasy that there are two opposite and equal sides to every real problem that this country faces, the longer we will do nothing substantive to address those problems.
11
Let me see if I have this straight: David Brooks says that Americans need to pull together, start talking to one another, even learn to love their neighbor. He then proceeds to slander progressives for waging class war, and slanders conservatives for tribalism. It seems to me that Brooks should begin by practicing what he preaches.
6
@Chris Rasmussen I'm not sure where the slander is here. Progressives really do push race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality to the fore, so much so that it is hard to tell where they can even recognize ordinary, interpersonal harm. Conservatives really do amass at rallies against immigrants, believing objectively false things about their criminality and voting accordingly. David Brooks is largely correct in these assertions.
I consider myself a radical moderate and the only real opposition I can see is the Right Wing Republican Party. Democrats have pushed for many moderate programs....sensible immigration and gun control are clear examples of moderate efforts. Obama did everything he could to work with the Right while they did everything they could to destroy any good thing he wanted to do. This so-called radical left has only come up because the primary strategy of the Right is to create division and anger in this country. Blatant racism to anger people of color and the all out destruction of our planet to anger those wanting to prevent a climate catastrophe. It’s almost inevitable that young people are going to blow up some day as they see this old greedy generation destroy the world they have to live in. You and the Right try to make us believe that the Green New Deal is radical when it’s simply what we have to do if we care about future generations as opposed to the selfish Right who want to destroy the world so they can have more wealth. The Rgiht worships Capatilism and the guiding principle of that system is Selfishness.
5
Here's yet another example of David Brooks developing his entire central idea around a false moral/political equivalency. If this political presidential campaign is to be based on the outright demagoguery of Trump's attack on the "green deal" as overt socialism, then David Brooks and anyone else who discusses the presidential campaign using that blatantly false attack is playing right into Trump's manipulative hands. The global climate is a Trump fight that reactionary Republicans are willing to fight because those who accept the scientific facts of our present and future jeopardy can be painted into an ignominious political corner by denigrating them as socialists. David Brooks, as is the case with some many other Republicans, can't discern just how they are being used by Trump.
6
Brooks continues his sneering disdain for anyone proposing ways to mitigate climate change. In this he is fully complicit with Trump.
3
This is a great piece. But the third leg will never fly with the far left Democrats. You can’t let control be local. It conflicts with the groupthink of the progressive crowd.
1
More false equivalency.
The tribalists, if that's what you want to call them, want to be the last people allowed into America, and slam the door behind them. They are the ones pushing an us v. them agenda, not the social-justice-seeking left, which only wants access to the American dream for a wider swath of Americans: women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, gays and lesbians, etc.
Moreover, this whole structure fails the sniff test. 19th century America was all about Nation for half the population; the Confederacy, on the other hand, was all about dissolving that Nation. Slavery was certainly not a part of American exceptionalism.
Once again, Mr. Brooks has set up a flawed metaphor in which to to couch his out-of-touch ideas for solving today's problems.
3
Simple solutions to complicated problems have always been more attractive because, especially now, they require no dialogue, just stances, declarations, and more often lies. The GOP has endorsed this approach in our national political life which is that LIES ARE FAIR GAME. The Liar in Chief, as the head of his party, has stained the entire GOP membership regardless of its stances, moderate or extreme. The GOP will live in infamy.
Leaving the era of Self and headed where? The Left offers the idea of Social Justice and tells stories of oppression. Sounds like a return to the early days of communism. The Trumpian right offers tribe. Sounds like a return to the early days of man.
1
All of which sounds like social democracy. Welcome to the world as it should be, David Brooks.
David, whatever floats your boat, but before your 4 affections is the need to combat climate change, and the GND is the only proposal on the table. So agree with it but dump the social justice angle. Nobody else has put something in the table that is big enough to address this problem. You will be gone before the impacts hit big, but will your children?
Your 4 affections can wait.
Here's a name for a party of moderates who endorse a policy agenda of rejecting the self in favor of the four affections that you identify: Outward Bound
1
Nope, not buying the caricature of the 'oppression'-obsessed Left. Do you have any examples of left-wing officials using the oppression-lens? Or is it just a couple of misguided college students who get a disproportionate amount of ink spilled on them?
As usual, David blends some 'fine' ideas with a bunch of false oppositions. The folks who want to preserve clean air and water are not 'radicals.' Has David not read his Ibsen? He's supposed to be the educated one in the crowd. The folks who want to raise the inimum wage from 7 bucks to 15 are not engaged in 'class warfare'. Nor are the folks who would like to see those who have rigged the entire system in their favor, and created levels of welath inequality that presage civil war, pay a few bucks in taxes.
When we look at David's 'fine' ideas, the question arises: who will pay for them? Certainly not those who just received a $1.5 trillion gift that was paid for by bloating the national debt. That would be, you know, 'class warfare.'
5
"Moderate" Republicans make the world safe for extremists. They accept the Southern Strategy and support Religion in government. They are as bad as the extremists. They are not moderates.
1
nice opinion piece by Mr. Brooks. I am with him, tribalism is tiresome, you can't turn on any media without some appeal to get you outraged. i am too old to spend all my time being outraged.
i have a good friend who denies climate change. instead of yelling at him, i just say he was a business major not a science major. what is the point in yelling?
and it is nice to see an article with love your neighbor as a theme.
you go Brooks.
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Mr. Brooks’ conception of progressive thought is distressingly shallow. I don’t know who, if anyone, he interviewed to come up the half-baked idea that progressive ideas are based on “us/them, friend/enemy.” Nor is the mindset of progressive thought based on war and conflict. Progressive thought seeks mutual understanding; it advocates for rational solutions to endemic problems. A “Green New Deal” isn’t about concentrating “power in the centralized authoritarian state,” but rather mobilizing at local and community levels to effectuate life-preserving changes. It’s just as ambitious but significantly more necessary than going to the moon was in the 1960’s. Wake up, Mr. Brooks. It’s way past time for you to stop wagging your tongue at so-called left wing authoritarianism, when all about you are signs that those labels are substitutes for real analysis and thought.
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Brooks says since 1960 we have been living in the Era of Self, and now both the right and the left have ineffective or pernicious ideas on how to make the transition to a different society.
Beatniks and hippies are not the equivalent of Reaganites and yuppies.
Maynard G. Krebs ≠ Gordon Gekko.
Ed Meese was no Bobby Kennedy.
As others have more eloquently said, many on the left want to get back to FDR values. The only reason Brooks sees that as tribal is a specious call to false equivalency.
And I hate to tell you Brooksie, scarcity is going to have to be part of the equation in the future. The Earth is too warm, and cannot brook increased industrialization and consumerism.
As environmentalist Bill McKibben said, ‘When it comes to building a movement, we should consider “being a little bit less of an individual,” he says. Together, we can build “the right kind of pressure.”
Everyone will always have a Self. But it will have to be embedded in a less individual and more collective system. The current system is not working.
Not one mention of climate change by a so-called moderate.
"The Trumpian right offers Tribe. “Our” kind of people are under threat from “their” kind of people. We need to erect walls, build barriers and fight"..."The left offers the idea of Social Justice." Conclusion: "the Tribe and the (unhinged) left--about the same--both no good." They're both based on the scarcity principle. You can call that an argument if you like but if I were Brooks' middle school debate coach, he'd be off the team.
And by the way David--heroic defender of values, civility, shared humanity, humility, etc. etc. why is social justice so objectionable? For me, the idea seems like a highly laudable objective, just like civility and shared humanity.
Later in the piece we get some concrete ideas...
Children-- Brooks suggests "early childhood education, parental leave, schools that emphasize social and emotional learning." All liberal ideas, all forcefully opposed by the GOP.
"Work--wage subsidies, apprenticeship tracks, subsidies to help people move to opportunity, work councils.." Wage subsidies and apprenticeships are featured in the GND but Brooks hates it. Too expensive. Too hard. And let us not forget those ancient words of wisdom: "What, me worry?"
I'll be brief. Having spent his entire career cheerleading, supporting, and apologizing for the 40 year Republican effort to destroy American democracy and turn our ecomomy over to their plutocrat owners, Mr. Brooks of late now retreats to his phony baloney murky moderation (which Republicans never practice), and the usual GOP and media strategy of false equivalency designed to mute the debate and neuter the Democrats.
Sorry Mr. Brooks - more and more Americans are wiseing up the long Republican con game. They are beginning to understand that YOUR PARTY, the one you have defended and supported, the Republican Party is nothing more than a criminal cabal impersonating a political party, with neither the interests or the welfare of ordinary Americans in mind. They have to go, all of them, in their entirety from American political life, and furthermore be punished for their 40 years of malfeaemce, criminality and corruption with investigations, indictments, trials, convictions and JAIL FOR REPUBLICAN CROOKS, LIARS and TRAITORS - from Trump, Pence, McConnell, McCarthy, that vile creature Nunes down to the dogcatcher and school board member. 2020: NO MORE REPUBLICANS. NONE. NOT ONE.
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Climate change, tax policy, evolution, and gun control are omitted from this slice of Brooksian whimsy, and there is a frankly creepy fantasy aside about power being "wielded by neighbors, who know their local context and trust one another" --- but other than that it is a pretty little picture of a progressive agenda. Diverting, entertaining, escapist moderation fluff - what's there not to like?
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truth telling might be a good way to start- the Pilgrims came because God told them to? What history books are you reading? I am reminded of the the old New Yorker cartoon with two gents in Pilgrim garb and a turkey standing by - all three on the deck of a sailing ship, and the one guy says to the other, "My short term goal is religious freedom. My long term goal is real estate speculation."
Treating each other with kindness and civility would be helpful as would getting rid of the racist in the WH but we are still left with the poisoned national debate. The Green New Deal so easily dismissed by the author is a reasonable blue print for dealing with a climate crisis that threatens a real world wide security emergency. So what are you going to do about it Mr. Brooks? We first have to start with agreement on facts. Wake up!
"We are bound together by our affection for our place. The third mission is to devolve power out of Washington to the local level. Out-radicalize the left and right by offering a different system of power, a system in which power is wielded by neighbors, who know their local context and trust one another." As a resident of Georgia who just witnessed an election stolen by voter-suppression, voter purging etc. by the GA Secretary of State who was the candidate for Governor and would not recuse himself from his position, and used his position to gain the power of a higher office , I could not disagree more with Mr. Brooks about "local control" We need to have the federal government involved in "pre-clearance" where certain states must have pre-clearance about laws affecting voting rights. The Supreme Court struck it down because they said it was " no longer needed" - it is needed -and needed badly. Unfortunately, racism is not only alive and well , but Trump and his supporters are responsible for it. They NEVER denounce racism!
These columns are so tiresome now and it saddens me - to a degree. Trump has exposed fissures in our society I didn't even know existed. My sibling (a former Republican) is angry for not being more aware of the poison being spewed by Breitbart, Alex Jones, the Koch animals and so on. It's not just partisan politics - its predatory capitalism that seeks to destroy the host it feeds on - aka citizens. Sorry but the whole love everyone's children mantra doesn't work when any semblance of intellect is being dismantled for profit and destruction. Let's talk about that for a change. When things heat up there aren't going to many of us or children left.
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Brooks: The third mission is to devolve power out of Washington to the local level.
Sorry, David, but I don't see that as a moderate position. It's conservative pablum. That stupid idea that government is evil makes me ill. It is extreme. Moderates would not be a slave to such a broad brush ideology. Some federal power is good - like with civil rights and health care - where patchwork state-local laws just won't cut it.
Overall, though, the piece is very good and raises some excellent points.
But two of the most important points are missing. 1) Moderates need to be all-in on growing small/regional business, and 2) all moderate politicians must swear off big money. Then, the moderate message would have a chance to work.
Equation of the Radical Republican Party and the left of center progressive wing of the Democratic Party is a non-starter for me. False equivalence, circa Sunday morning political talking heads shows. Please let’s not indulge this fantasy any longer. There is a large “moderate” and “reasonable” party in the United States. It is called the Democratic Party. And you can look it up.
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Absurd false dichotomy. Since 1980 the right’s idea has been “don’t hurt the rich, they make all that is good”. The left’s idea has been “education and investment leads to greater prosperity for all, even if billionaires have a few less million”. Right now the big fight is between the rich who want everything for themselves and the rest of us, who are okay with shared prosperity — including tolerance for a lot of wealthy people. But the wealthy are so selfish they are supporting Trump and hoping the idea of shared prosperity will be vanquished. Either they’ll succeed by destroying democracy or they’ll unleash a French Revolution style backlash upon themselves. They would be smartest to get behind a TR-style pro capitalist reformer like Elizabeth Warren, but I doubt the wealthy are smart enough to see what they’ve unleashed.
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A moderate huh David should be careful what he wishes for because the last leaning moderate we had was Clinton and I don’t think that’s who David had in mind. The 21 century is new and so should our politics, we need someone a party that is not based on previous mistakes and norms but a 21 century idea that will rally and raise us all. We need to quit raising children from fly over states to fight our wars, make farmers pay taxes and not rely on a socialist handout. We need a shared vision not a slogan a “ask not what your country can do for you but what can you do for your country” moment. The love and caring for your neighbor will be shared by working through 21 technology issues and cures
What pablum.
As has always been the case in America, the far Right favors Darwinian theory - it’s for survival of the fittest, those unable or unwilling to compete lose. There are no participation awards for just showing up. Cheating is fine, just don’t get caught.
The far Left is for equality of outcome, everyone gets a participation trophy, whether you contributed or sat on the sidelines eating funnel cakes. Cheating is fine as long as it’s disguised as giving “protected classes” special advantages.
As always, success lies in the middle, where success depends on willingness to sacrifice, delay gratification and work hard; and those who refuse to do so are able to survive, but not prosper as voluntary parasites.
I keep thinking that the moderate stance is best expressed by our three-term Texas Democratic congressman from El Paso- Beto O’Rourke. Nothing phony about his views on immigration, health care, education, gun control or capitalism. He is a natural leader, thinker and passionate lover of America. Hope he gets a say in our future.
First of all, the "moderate" agenda seems like the progressive's goals. And we need to stop pretending that this is a 50-50 split on any day except the first tuesday in November, when only 50% of those eligible vote. between 55 and 75% of this country would support most of the Green New Deal, with a few of the more idealistic pieces excised. People want gun control, DACA amnesty, more progressive tax rates, and anything that will stop our planet from burning up. The deplorables and the conservatives are a minority, and we need to relegate them to their rightful place on the sidelines while we deal with the incredible mess Mitch&Ronnie and W&Donnie have made of this "Shining city on a hill"....
Moderation: Love thy neighbor, but don't tax the rich to do anything to help.
I need many things: healthcare, a healthy environment, economic fairness, an end to endless wars, the blessed peace of a President who can shut up about himself now and then. A hug is not one of them.
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To so many fellow commenters:
After repeated howls of protest from my own corner, I've finally decided that asking David Brooks to stop his absurdly blinkered equations of the political left and right is like asking him to grow an extra ear on top of his head. He just can't do it.
But if we can set aside David's tic of illogic and denial, sometimes he nevertheless has a useful point.
Regarding his words today, I agree with him that if the U.S. is to recover its / our sanity and, well, become great again, we have to work from the middle generally with the ideals he suggests rather than from an attack type mode under the sainted label of "progressivism." The great and very real risk of the latter approach is four or more years of Trump or a similar clown and a continued slide into the abyss. This is a lesson that too many of us, voters and candidates, seem to clamp our hands over our own ears, over and over again, rather than learn.
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@RBW The strategy you describe has been failing for 30 years. Democrats triangulate to the center, Republicans move farther to the Right. Democrats speak in moderate & inclusive terms, Republicans attack. Remember the Clinton administration? The Obama administration? Hillary vs. Donald?
@Martin,
I'd guess we'd agree on far more than not, however regarding the way this particular issue has played out we'll have to agree to disagree, at least here. Do you think the Rs will behave differently and succeed less if the Ds come from the far left? Moderation does not in any sense indicate, by the way, lack of willingness to fight for good or ill-defined principles or any such things. It means, for example, being smart about what can be accomplished to the good at a given moment, without the self-righteousness that denies the big picture and the likelihood of unforeseen consequences.
While I appreciate that it’s fun to play The Hegelian Synthesis game, can we dispense with the tired “left vs right” dichotomy? Americans have a range of viewpoints that don’t near”rly reduce to two opposing sides. Most “left” or “right” ideas don’t intrinsically go together — we are just habituated to think they do. Don’t reduce all of American politics to a convenient metaphor. Embrace orthagonality.
Those who are born with everything intact, do not need to make waves to exist. They think they are not selfish.
They think that what pleases them is the middle.
But for the people with much less, things are hard edged, mandatory, and real. Your middle is not their middle.
When I was a teen, men who were attracted to men were routinely taken away to jail in paddy wagons for being together in a bar. The newspapers published their pictures and their names, and they lost their reputations, families, and employment. Suicide was common.
We did not want an identity, our "neighbors" gave us one.
Our "neighbors" locked us up.
At the "neighborhood church", we were scorned, reviled, and molested.
That was our "place", where it was illegal to be and we got beat up.
Our love that was demeaned.
Just ten years ago, we could still be sent to an American prison for making love. It is hardly a done deal. Mike Pence, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are flicking their satanic tails.
And so, I find your timeline to be disrespectful.
I think this thing you call "moderate", to be the most selfish thing of all.
What I see is the violence with which you don't want to let go of this world where you never had to make waves.
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“If the 2020 choice is between Donald Trump and a Democrat who supports the Green New Deal, I’d vote for any moderate alternative.”
Whoops, lost me. Not playing the “just as bad as Trump” game, but nice try.
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One problem with your beneficent design is it forgets we are not static creatures and neither is the economy. If you want to right the ship, the pendulum will have to swing back some fifty or so years.
Another problem is that your (former?) party has pulled that pendulum so far to the right that too few are left in the middle. You have the religious zealots willing to sacrifice themselves, their country, and their countrymen and women to a twenty-first century Moloch in the hopes that by sacrificing enough children, he will make America great again.
And yet another problem you cannot seem to comprehend is that the GOP has not had a change of ideas in several decades if not a century. Courting business is great if they are small businesses, but it's painfully obvious that the GOP and large chunks of the DNC (between 1980s and present [call it the Clinton years]) have been Republican light by throwing bones to the poor and minorities while making sure the top 0.1% growth kept consuming 99.9% of our children.
The only answer is a Green New Deal or something similar. The pendulum needs to swing the other way--for a change--if we are to ever regain a sense of meritocracy, the American Dream, social and economic mobility, and finally tamp down the unreasonable advantages of the white male--I am a white male whose whiteness kept him out of jail for teenage infractions and maleness gave me more respect than I ever truly deserved.
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How exactly is social justice a scarcity mind set?
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What is the core problem today? Human overpopulation. Which in turn drives economic and environmental devastation as well as climate change.
"The second phase, through the 19th century, was organized around Nation."
And genocide.
"The pioneers were settling the West."
And wiping out tribes with guns, smallpox, and starvation.
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One expects the usual both sidesism from Brooks. Because in his world, it must always be that right and left are equally to blame, so he can shine the light on the centrist path that is to be our salvation.
Enough has been said about how false this is. And Brooks knows it. He cannot have avoided reading Ornstein and Mann. But he willfully turns a blind eye to what does not fit his preordained narrative.
Its not that his ideas about what is good in communitarianism and civic republicanism are wrong. They are fine. It's his mendacity about who is to blame for our present dysfunction, his ridiculous oversimplification of history, his People magazine pop psychology, his utter lack of any realistic suggestion for the implementation for his Kumbaya-meets-picket-fences social fantasy, and his condescending come-down-from-the-mountain to tell us unwashed folks how we all went wrong attitude that make a reader want to retch.
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The first thing that needs to be done is get rid of that enthusiasm killing word "moderate". How about Passionate Pragmatists,
For Mr. Brooks and The New York Times, an update on Social Justice on this date, February 26, of this year and more:
Guterres: Hate Speech, Misinformation Are Global Threats
UNSG Guterres warns the erosion of human rights around the world is threatening peace and security and putting restraints on people’s right to development. The SG has opened the 40th regular session of the Human Rights Council. Guterres said the human rights agenda is losing ground in many parts of the world with negative consequences for social justice and people’s ability to improve their lives. VOA
‘Informing is not a crime’ UN chief calls for better protection of journalists, press freedom
Paying tribute to reporters around the world who “put their lives on the line” to tell important stories, UN chief António Guterres lamented on 25 February that freedom of the press was increasingly “shrinking” worldwide, and called on decision-makers to better protect journalists and media workers. UN News
"What is the core problem facing America today? It is division: The growing gaps between rich and poor, rural and urban, educated and less educated, black and white, left and right."
You do realize those are issues of social justice, yes, David?
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So you're against the Green New Deal, David. That's probably because you think your grandchildren are great swimmers.
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It's time for David Brooks to give up his column and become a clergyman. He might make a good one. But in the opinion pages I'd rather see muscular, intellectually honest arguments based in grim reality than toothless pining for a world that never was, full of reasonable, giving, people who love their neighbors as themselves. Yes, significant improvement is possible on a small-town or person-to-person community level. And enlightened, idealistic clergy can help bring it about. So get thee to a seminary, Mr. Brooks. You'll be happier and so will many readers.
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We need more of this from the NYT. The choice between Trumpism and Quasi-Statism is indeed a scary proposition and the call for moderation needs to be louder.
“The first mission is to promote policies to make sure children are enmeshed in webs of warm relationships.”
This metaphor undermines the suggested idea.
This stylistic tic characterizes the entire essay—excessively schematic language that masks a poverty of ideas.
Nuff said.
Typically bland and vague Brooks blahblahblah. I am an Obama Republican/ Bloomberg Democrat. And what do I want? How about plain simple common sense? There is a lot of low hanging fruit that is in easy reach, if there was sufficient political will. Rationalize the tax code, adopt a carbon tax, get health costs under control. But really, there are only two issues that matter: climate change, and the risk of nuclear war. That's what we should be talking about, not some wishy-washy call to love each other.
Well, regrettably, David is wandering off further into the weeds with a sketch of American history startlingly oversimplified and mistaken, followed by his weird views of the “left”. He says: “The mission [of the left] now is to rise up and destroy the systems of oppression.”
The ideas of the Dems epitomized by Ocasio-Cortez aren’t about “oppression” so much as about correcting misdirection.
David is agog over the “threat” of big government taking over our lives, while he ignores the actual facts that corporate greed and favoritism for billionaires is neglecting very obvious human needs like affordable housing, child & elder care, rehabilitation, infrastructure, living wages, health care, real education, environment, global warming ....
These concerns are about fixing real problems that affect everybody, instead of assisting competitive advantage for the me-me-only-me version of “capitalism” dictating the behavior of the GOP members of Congress. And Trump, of course.
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Nice sentiments, but I don’t see anything addressing the impending climate change crisis.
Please stop picking on David Brooks. He recognizes that Pandora's box has been opened and the furies have been released in the current era. Mr Brooks sees all that is left behind is HOPE.
For the sake of all our children, we sure need it.
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Shorter David Brooks:" What is the core problem facing America today? It is division: The growing gaps between rich and poor, rural and urban, educated and less educated, black and white, left and right..." To Brooks, apparently, vicious bigotry against immigrants is the same as opposing growing inequality. The solution is to love the rich and for god's sake don't return their tax rates to the levels of the 20th century.
David, you leave me deeply disapinted today.
I’d suggest a sabbatical spent looking at how climate change is influencing our politics and community.
I understand you don’t believe Washington can run the economy. Please do some deep work on the issue of climate change and come back with some reasonable suggestions. You’re contempt for the GND is not helpful.
A magnetic op-ed as far as an op-ed piece can go. The perspective has a lot of merit and I, for one, would like to see it take hold in our coming elections. But, of course, it is much more complex as we as a species are rife with such comity and also crass selfishness. The opinions and decisions of those in power have significant consequences as compared to Joe Six -pack and hence our sorry state of affairs resulting from decisions based on narcisstic mind sets in DC.
The reason political and religious conversations are so difficult is that we find purpose and meaning in our social life from political beliefs and purpose and meaning in our beliefs about the universe. Challenge one or the other and you challenge the very foundation of our sense of existence.
I fear we are going the way of all past empires because we cannot escape who and what we are in the macro sense. At least, though, we can conduct our local affairs in the manner David writes about and perhaps it will have enough force to effect better decisions from those in power.
Mr Brooks bases his piece on the concept that there is no 'scarcity' to be warred over. This is fundamentally wrong for both America and the world.
The world has too many humans and persons and diminishing resources. America is a microcosm of the world; too little: space, water, food, energy and employment. Too many bipedal "rats" crowded into teeming "warrens"; stressed into suicidal behaviour. Migration and tourism simply compound the stress.
However unpalatable to the moderates, both the 'green new deal' and a significant restriction on migration (from all sources, not just Latin America) are required to stabilise the US.
Also required is a population policy that reduces America's headlong growth into disaster and real support for global population reduction.
Without these the future has been written in numerous works of science prophecy and it is bleak: "nasty, brutal and short".
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We need a less war-like people-- so the emphasis on early childhood, caring for children, defining best practices for parenting, and making things safe for little kids, is the MOST important. Because un-self-regulated people will never cooperate.
Early childhood sets the template for the brain for a lifetime. If you grow up alienated and afraid, these become set points and presumptions that will follow you as an adult as "reality." If you grow up in support and trust, you will see the world differently, have a different "reality," and become capable of the self-regulation and moderation advocated in this piece.
We do not choose to be enraged and warlike. We learn either to battle or cooperate by the way we are raised.
So in my mind America has two concurrent #1 problems-- Climate change, and teaching parenting skills/supporting vulnerable families, so that a warmer and more nurturing early childhood experience produces more peaceable, self-regulated people who can pull together for the greater good.
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Community, and all that it entails, should trump Trump, and all that he entails. Humanity has more in common than we want to admit. If only our elected officials could accept that and act accordingly. Arriving at consensus, rather than “winning,” is a worthy goal for all of us. And that is more than “agreeing to disagree.”
Child tax credits,, early childhood education, parental leave, wage subsidies, apprenticeship tracks etc Brooks is writing like a Bernie voter. What he proposes is clearly how Denmark and Sweden see how society should be organized. Add free university education, subsidized day care , reproductive freedom etc and David would be seen as a social Democrat.
Who knew?
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Everyone agrees that one should love one's neighbor. The disagreement that we have to deal with is who counts as one's neighbor.
Does loving your neighbor mean pulling strings at your company so your neighbor's kid gets a good job over a more qualified kid from far away? Does it matter if the other kid is from a different neighborhood, different state, or different country?
If you're a property owner, does loving your neighbor mean supporting tight zoning to keep property values for your fellow owners up, even though that decreases affordability for others who might want to move in?
If you're a renter, does loving your neighbor mean supporting rent controls to keep rents for your fellow renters down, even though that decreases supply for others who might want to move in?
Does loving your neighbor mean making your city a sanctuary city to protect your local illegal immigrant neighbors from faraway federal immigration enforcement?
Does loving your neighbor mean supporting immigration or trade restrictions to raise blue-collar wages in your country at the expense of far poorer people in foreign countries?
There are "love your neighbor" arguments on both sides of these issues and more, and these are the arguments that divide us.
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Well put, Mr. Brooks--the problem of course with moderates is they lack emotional appeal---an emotions drive voters to the polls--policies or people or candidates they love or hate. The four ways of being a moderate are very Zen, but in today's environment our public graves sturm and drang.
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Brook's definition of moderation: begging for equal status and waiting patiently, humbly and stoically until the majority in power provides the illusion of equality that does nothing but temporarily quiet the existential crisis roiling the broad population and the very planet itself.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand." Frederick Douglas.
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@Anam Cara
Well said.
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I was stunned to see the article - it's incredibly well written. The Times seems to embrace the radical left - AOC et al - it's nice to see a rational explanation for moderation - it's all about partisanship and negotiation. Not strong arming - not threatening - not calling our the rich - or the poor - not attacking capitalism, but finding a way of increasing wages for all. America is founded on great principles - we need to understand, we can maintain much of the foundation which made our Country great and still take care of its own. We don't need angry politicians yelling and criticizing the other side - we need to find a middle ground.
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@JMS
Ask real nice. They’ll let you have crumbs. Moderation....Been there, got walked. You have yours .
I hate the straw-man structure of so many of David's essays. To characterize Trump voters as purely tribal and anti-other is unfair, just as it is unfair to say that people on the left want to destroy their opponents. As a man of the left, I see a lot of Trump voters as people who felt abandoned by elites in Washington and turned to a huckster for help. I believe that the scales will fall from their eyes, which already seems to be happening. I think the hope of social justice is something shared by nearly all Americans, even by some in the One Percent. David's epistle to the lukewarm encouraging them to celebrate their tepidity is exactly what is not needed. What Democrats ought to do over the next year and a half is to coalesce around a candidate and a platform that is thoughtful and inclusive. Trump voters will abandon their false god when they are shown a path toward sustainable universal health care and real economic opportunity.
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There is an important fifth affection—respect for and protection of the environment—entirely conststent with the greatest commandments found in Leviticus and Matthew. To love God, you must cherish his creation; to love your neighbor, you must protect the environment, because it affects us all. It is also worthy of note that love of God and love of neighbor is central to all three of the Abrahamic faiths.
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One of our greatest crises is the simple act of holding elections. Holding fair and open elections is a problem that cries out for uniform, nationwide standards. We need a federal oversight to ensure citizens are not denied their right to vote in free and fair elections.
Recent events in North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin tell us that election standards are too important to be entrusted to localities even though localities are the best option for conducting elections.
My sense is that the issue of conducting free and fair elections that protect voting rights is similar to many other issues. We need uniform, national standards that can only be established by a federal government. We need state and local government to actually implement the solution.
Mr. Brooks presents a false choice. Government is neither better nor more fair and accountable because it is local. We need both local and federal government and we must hold government and officials, the Trumps, the Kobachs and the Kemps accountable for their actions.
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And how does moderation deal with the existential threat of climate change. Its astounding that these 2 words appear nowhere in your column - except indirectly when criticizing an effort by Democrats to forge a structural response called the green new deal.
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Mr. Brooks. Thank you again for another fantastic op-ed. I was that fire breathing progressive in my youth, but now, as I have aged and experienced life my views are far more subtle. I also use a different analogy for left -vs- right: The college dorm -vs- the corporate board.
It is hard to dismiss both sides, many want too though. Having traveled this country for so much of my career I have developed friends in some fire breathing red states. Nicest people I have ever met. They even called me prior to 2016 and asked about Trump; to which I replied "He is a snake oil salesman!"
We, as a country have a long way to go before we heal these deep and divided wounds. I am scared of what will happen in the next election. I have lost faith in the Democrats and have lost faith in the GOP long long ago. The freshman class of congress is to radical for me, and the existing members are too established in their ways. Trump is a microcosm of what our country has become, divided and spiteful.
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The problem with Brooks is that he still such a federal swamp creature that even when he recognizes a good idea he ruins it by federalizing it. He is right that power should devolve out of Washington. This is an old idea, called subsidiarity. But then he ruins it by pushing a national service program to support community organizations. How ironic. One can successfully devolve power out of Washington by creating another national program. The key here is that the state legislature is the primary unit of government in our federal system. If we remembered that, all our divisions would be healed. If Massachusetts wants Medicare For All, that is none of the business of Texas. If Texas wants to do away with food stamps because they destroy the initiative to work, that is none of the business of California. Over time, people will migrate to the states that do things they way they want, and the life-and-death struggles over winner-take-all policy choices at the national level will go away.
You don't get a more civil society with a Trump at the helm. A divider who's intent is to sow discontent is prevailing. New ideas on the left or right are not likely to have a chance with an effective suppressor and autocrat running roughshod over our country. David obviously gets the idea of change, but the current environment is way too toxic for implementation. I find it difficult to find any solace in our social and political discourse as long as Trump has all the power and we continue to give him more. Wrong headed to say the least.
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Please reread the article. @Paul Raffeld
"The moderate seeks the beloved community. "
And where, exactly, is that? Community left with the 80's and the commercialization of everything. It left when we became afraid of each other, when wedges were exploited by the right, when Willie Horton replaced jiggles promoting candidates.
Brooks, that ship sailed and it was your party at the helm when it happened. Good luck putting it back together.
By the way, the things you are touting as shared interests look like the Democratic policy lists for the 2020 campaign.
6
I don't agree completely with Mr. Brook's categorical broad brushes of history but, I agree with his skepticism and criticism of ideology as a means to solve problems. I also agree with with this sentiment about listening, common ground and the strength in community:
"When you listen to your neighbor, you see how many perspectives there are and you’re intellectually humble in the face of that pluralism. When you listen to your neighbor, you see that deep down we’re the same and you hunger to deepen that connection."
We must listen to each other and then respond with the acknowledgement that we heard and have a real understanding for the problems, struggles and successes in people's lives. The next step is offering a solution that works to solve those problems or maintain the successes, that is feasible, efficient and a wise use of tax dollars.
Ideology doesn't listen and I have yet to see it solve real problems- regardless of location of the left-right political spectrum.
2
When Congress, our leaders, became tribal, the nation followed. The country is split by a Congress that is so divided that it can not function. We pay a great deal of money to our representatives not to draw battle lines, but to legislate. Since Congress stopped functioning, presidents rule by fiat and courts have taken on an expanded role. When Congress relearns the art of compromise and cooperation, otherwise known as moderation, the nation will follow.
9
It's hard to disagree today with David or Ross, who both seem to be searching for a way to rebalance America back to a more civil society. I guess i don't see any leaders in the Republican Party who are strong enough to move past their fear of the party leaders to start this conversation. I do see several of the Democratic leaders, some running for president, who are actually starting to promote a similar conversation. So what's the nation to do when there seems to be no-one on the Right willing or able to move this way?
8
@DJK. You are falling into the same trap: our side is moderating so we're not the problem. It's the other side's fault. Come on. Fear of party leaders? Really? Isn't Brooks advocating listening to the other side? I don't see you doing that.
4
@DJK.
my gosh I must not be reading the news correctly. Which Democrat Party leaders are promoting this conversation? All I see is the Dems lining up to promote the inane socialist agenda of Bernie and the idiotic fantasies of the tiresome scold referred to as AOC.
David is right: love is the answer.
Like a family, nations require love to hold them together. Without love, families and nations break apart. Love bridges the gaps between our differences. Love makes families and nations strong and beautiful.
We don’t have to agree with one another, but if we love one another, America will be strong and beautiful.
In the words of the song “Under Pressure:”
"Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love
Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love (people on streets) dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure"
Like a family that has to live under one roof, we Americans have to live under one set of laws that govern and protect us all. Our laws are not perfect. Nor are we perfect. In some cases, the laws that we have inherited and the laws that we ourselves have made do real harm. We should try to minimize this harm and improve our laws, but we should remember that we all have to live under them.
2
Quite right David. But: 1. Child are and parental leave are certainly left of center. 2. Meaningful work and a living wage are again leftist. "Work councils" are unions. 3. All of human history should give us pause when considering local control versus rules from a (benevolent, hopefully) central source. 4. Integration has historically been a two-way street. Good thoughts all, but all definitely left of center.
5
@Mike
That "benevolent central source" scares the life out of me." I don't trust it at all. Big brother is watching you, 1984, the IRS, OSHA, the CFPB (at least when the detestable scold Pocahontas was running it) - none of these organizations are benevolent. They usually are out of control and run by unelected partisans. Nope, the benevolent central source is not the answer. I could deal with a little left of center - hopefully moderated by the right of center so it is a compromise.
Great insights, thank you. The roadblock is that people in the middle, "moderates", don't place politics high on their passion or commitment lists. They are consumed with job, family, enjoying life and getting through the day. Activists on the Left and Right are consumed 24/7 with political thoughts and information. They invest time, money and influence candidates seeking to get elected. The Left and Right have armies. The Middle sit on their hands until election day and then vote R or D or not at all. Those are the mechanics and reality of our politics.
4
@William Living in a state of war is not a great place to have children or grandchildren. Please reread what you wrote. Do you really believe that?
David says: “The left offers the idea of Social Justice. The left tells stories of oppression.”
Well, not exactly.
The “left” is out to start work on a few huge problems. Things that affect us all and must be corrected. Float all boats, not all yachts.
Things ignored by the “me-me-only-me” mantra that says the role of government is to confer competitive advantage to those with lobbyists, not to aid society as a whole.
Things like: affordable housing, a living wage, health care, child & elder care, rehabilitation, environmental protection, real education, and oh yeah, addressing global warming.
All stuff the GOP Congress has bypassed for decades and Republican voters don’t support because they get their alternative facts from a billionaire backed brainwashing machine.
18
Mr Brooks,
The left/right dichotomy by definition stands for political division, but interestingly the policy proposals you suggest are essentially "left" leaning ones. I would argue this is because the agenda of the left is actually not that extreme. Dare I say, its moderate. Ok, there is language in the draft of the Green New Deal that sounds more socialistic and maybe there are better, more capitalistic ways of achieving some of the goals. But to say, for example, that the left and right don't talk about integration anymore seems absurd. Integration has been front line thinking amongst liberal education researchers for a long time, and organizations have been combatting segregationist housing policy for what seems like forever.
There is a lot of noise coming from both sides out there Mr Brooks, but what the left, indeed America itself, is contending with today is an extreme version of the Republican party that has become verifiably unhinged, not simply from the moderate path, but from normal governance.
I don't know any liberal who would not be happy with the proposals you highlight here - but you have premised your article on a false equivalence to suggest that both the left and the right need to move to the center. I'm sorry, Mr Brooks, the left is already there, waiting for some sanity to resurface on the right side of the equation.
16
The Pilgrims didn’t come here because of some divine calling, they were fleeing religious persecution. There’s a reason that Puritanical culture has permeated through into modern society.
And it’s probably a good rule of thumb, when speaking of love, to lead by example. Demagogy just isn’t the same.
That said, respect to Mr. Brooks. It’s a far better thing to be promoting love than nationalism.
1
You don’t ‘love thy neighbor’ by facilitating the concentration of 50% of a nation’s wealth and income in the hands of 1% of its people, and using the power of money to exacerbate and perpetuate this inequality from generation to generation.
You don’t ‘love thy neighbor’ by deriving massive private profit from the plunder of the planet’s natural resources; while refusing to be restrained, denying the damage you have done and leaving others to deal with the mess.
You don’t ‘love thy neighbor’ by building walls, demonizing the vulnerable fleeing violence and poverty who merely come seeking merciful safety and opportunity - just as your own ancestors did no more than a few generations ago.
You don’t ‘love thy neighbor’ by leaving most of a nation’s citizens to live in fear of economic ruin should they fall ill, in fear of poverty and loneliness in old age, in terror of heavily armed neighbors who through malice or madness or mere accident will maim and kill tens of thousands every year with brutally effective firearms.
All of that is pretty basic stuff, Mr. Brooks. The problem is that the ‘left’ seems to be on the ‘love’ side of all of these propositions. How can anyone call it ‘right’ to be on the other side?
19
“If the 2020 choice is between Donald Trump and a Democrat who supports the Green New Deal, I’d vote for any moderate alternative“
Millions agree, which is why there is a real chance Trump gets re-elected if any one of Harris, Warren, Gillibrand, Booker, Sanders etc. is the nominee. As of now, the only electable candidate is Klobuchar, and she is now herself vulnerable due to her “management style”, which the NYT wrote a piece on and rest assured will flog to death. Maybe Sherrod Brown?
Regardless, unless the Dems run a candidate who’s closer to center, many voters will stay home or vote for a moderate third party candidate.
6
@them
" As of now, the only electable candidate is Klobuchar, and she is now herself vulnerable due to her “management style”, which the NYT wrote a piece on and rest assured will flog to death."
Funny, I don't recall the NY Times flogging to death the Trump management style, the deceit, lying, abuse, and illegality of many of his business ventures.
Perhaps it's desirable for Democrats to be pure and honest, but not Republicans?
@them
Speaking for yourself, of course.
@Erik Nelson
"I don't recall the NY Times flogging to death the Trump management style, the deceit, lying, abuse, and illegality of many of his business ventures"
Do you not read the NYT every day?
"The problem with moderates" is that they cannot win in elections that have two very specific parties hard coded into our electoral system. Once through the primaries (in too many elections in the US, including that for the presidency), we are inevitably left with two "meh" candidates; and at least one other whom a majority of voters would prefer to both, but who cannot win a primary.
1
This is all well and good, Mr. Brooks, but I'm afraid you're ignoring two important facts: 1) that we're dealing with a Republican Party that has truly gone off the rails and has proven itself far more interested in holding on to power than in passing anything resembling bi-partisan legislation; and 2) the role of money in American electoral politics and the passing of legislation, which I consider to be the THE most fundamental and important issue facing the US today. In 1971, when Louis Powell wrote his manifesto to the corporate sector urging it to become more deeply involved in the electoral process by making ever increasing donations of money to candidates and lobbyists to further its interests, it forever changed the nature of American politics. Until we control the role that money plays in our political system, I fear that true change is impossible.
11
If the green new deal was ever passed, it would require that Democrats had basically all branches of government, which, given the bias in the Senate and electoral college systems in favor of rural America, would be fairly broad based. I'm not sure I would call that authoritarian, when compared to say actual authoritarian governments.
But at the same time, how do you factor in any sense of the urgency of climate change in this analysis? Isn't it the elephant in the room? You dismiss the approach in the Green New deal, but you suggest that, in the choice between it and doing nothing, you would choose doing nothing.
Climate change is bigger than American history, or it certainly will be if we don't do something.
8
Like "Whipping Day" or "Hanging Day" in oppressive societies, we now have regular elections to celebrate "Democracy" and extol its virtues as a means of imposing control on the unruly masses. The side that gets the most votes (or wins the most voting categories –– think Electoral College), gets to rule over the rest in any way they wish. Democracy is just another tool of oppression.
Walt Whitman, on the other hand, saw Democracy as an ideal form of life rather than a means to control life. Democracy was "diversity" and "individuality," since people are already diverse and unique. The voting process was seen as a means to bring forth more expressions of diversity and individuality for the purpose of improving living conditions. There was no debate as to whether or not to help those who suffer ill health, but rather how to provide it in the best manner.
Clearly, the Republican agenda now views Democracy as the "Thing To Be Avoided," as it is expensive, unruly, widespread, powerful danger. Likewise, I find Mr. Brooks's use of the word "Love" as a replacement of "Democracy" untrustworthy.
"Love" and take care of thy neighbor since we will not be allowed to create a system that helps alleviate suffering. "Love" and be meek and do not challenge the rich Oligarchs who feed off thy labor. "Love" with your thoughts and prayers, not your mind and actions. As Yossarian was told at the end of Catch 22, "Just like us."
2
I am always startled and amazed that folks like Mr. Brooks can ignore the dead elephant in the room - climate change. Per a consensus of climate scientists, we have about 10-12 years to avoid catastrophic climate change. While I can appreciate and share his desire to avoid living on a 'war' footing, we have little choice - radical efforts to reduce carbon emissions and promote mitigation, or gift our grandchildren into a changed world, an earth with a reduced carrying capacity for human life, and the resultant societal spasms, wars, mass migration and conflict.
8
@Mark Stave,
All of a sudden, we have become weather experts and carrying on about 'Climate Change' which fell on deaf ears when Al Gore issued a warning two decades ago. As of now it has been declared by World News as 'Standard Gold', the biggest threat humanity is facing, one that President Obama brought to our attention when leaving office.
Mr. Brooks has the freedom to address another topic when writing an essay for his readership. I believe it is about Social Justice, and one interpretation is the need for better communication skills and learning to listen.
My neighbors next door are not expecting my unsolicited visit early morning with a home-made apple pie with a gigantic heart posted on my house-coat - they would worry for one about this opulent gesture, but in the meantime the weather is no longer a topic for the unimaginative, but one that brings us together, and fare forward, while expecting an early morning call from 'Baltimore' who has probably walked her two-miles with her pup.
1
Social justice is not an idea promoting a scarcity mindset and it is incredibly telling that Brooks would label it that way.
The bottom line is that while we may not always love our neighbors, it is long past time for individuals of all political persuasions to acknowledge and embrace the interdependent realities and relationships that are required for us to have a more just and equitable society for ALL.
Having one side of the street safe and thriving while the other is neither is neither desirable nor sustainable.
8
It is careless and disingenuous, at this point, to equate today's political right with the left. The right is based in fear mongering, misinformation, and half truths in order. The left actually does use facts and pushes agendas which are not quite out of the mainstream: dealing with climate change, universal health care, reducing inequality, ending needless wars. The two sides are not the same and moderates between these two sides want to compromise a fairly rational, and non-extreme agenda of today's "left"
10
@Bret
Mr. Brooks 'sounded' his readership online a few weeks ago about the development of a Third Political Party. In the meantime, the Democrats are not bleeding-hearts who spend their time changing baby diapers, but a Party which needs to 'unite' and not break into progressives, liberals, and NGD passionate advocates, unless we want a second Trump presidency.
As of now, Mr. Brooks is our 'Moderate' voice, while Ross Douthat leans on the 'Conservative'.
2
@Bret The “non extreme” left has no idea how to pay for stuff. At all. I mean, recent example is Occasio- Cortez who suggested taking the Amazon tax incentives and instead using them for the poor and the schools in the area instead of “giving them to Amazon”. I; fine with the left and the right- it’s the extremes on both sides....
Love thy neighbor, Mr. Brook urges, and while you’re at it, forget the Green New Deal. I find this a curious pairing because, if you love somebody, you don’t lie to them about climate change. The Green New Deal is something every moderate should consider and build upon. I can think of nothing less neighborly than ignoring the prospect of millions of people dying on a planet emptied of wildlife and natural beauty.
12
Child Tax Credits. Wage Subsidies. Paid National Service. Subsidized Integrated Housing.
One, tax credits and wage subsidies are unnecessary when a living wage is paid. Why do we need to overly complicate the tax code on these items?
Two, where is the proposed revenue to pay for these proposals?
Three, building better communities takes BUILDING. Where is the discussion about infrastructure?
While I laud the vision here, a living wage and a bold infrastructure plan, coupled with a more equitable tax code are the three legislative goals that can realistically deliver these priorities.
9
@JohnMcFeely,
Farewell to Syria;
Farewell to Infrastructure;
For 'Climate Change' is no longer a liberal fabrication, but a reality that is facing us all regardless of our Party affiliation.
If there is not room in our politics for these ideas, we are lost. To those whose first reaction is, "Yes, but..." I would ask: what are you afraid of? Consider the comfort you take in bemoaning the negative -- how it absolves you of responsibility for your own actions, and how safe it feels not to hope. Then consider what you lose by hiding from a better future, by ceding the field to the agents of conflict and cynicism. Then read this piece again.
6
@Mike
Spot on. I forced myself to browse the reader's picks and, predictably, found naught but post after post exemplifying the conflict orientation that Brooks attempts to address. Brooks does not oppose a just society. He writes about how to get there.
4
We all have to go into this moderate mindset together, or the jackals will eat alive those of us who go first. That is what I fear, from past experience.
1
Isn't all of this about fear? Sadly, ironically, it's fear that unites us while dividing us. And of course, we're not alone in our own style fear mongering, even among the 'most civilized' of societies on the planet. Always has been, always will be. It's the worst of human nature. Calling attention to something so obviously apparent may not be the answer, but it's always worth repeating.
It starts at the individual level and ultimately transcends conventional borders.
2
I think the tribalism is an artifact of the media and a capitalist system morphing into plutocracy. The vast majority of the country tends to be somewhat fiscally moderate with socially liberal ideals. Despite the support from all sides for the value of liberty, we exist in a vastly wealthy country with chronic feelings of desperation that we are either disenfranchised, or soon to be, from the political process which will make us personally insolvent. People are tired of the din of the media echo chamber that has lost its mooring in fact and accurate reporting and has devolved into infotainment at best, and the distortions of editorialized reporting to increase viewer/readership of market targets. But thinking about real issues and real facts are boring and not presented at all. Image management and outrage becomes the substitute for real information that might be the basis for pragamtic actions. DJT is a chief example of the triumph of the media that created him. He is good copy. Complain about him or offer excuses; ratings follow, particularly when there is nothing else to watch/read. The last election resulted in both candidates hovering around 25% of registered voters. When almost half the country doesn't show up, it reflects the severity of the disconnect, the normlessness of our culture and the learned helplessness that comes with the chronic awareness that voting doesn't really matter when you have to pick between extremes.
6
@Zinkler
We were not "picking between extremes" in 2016. Hillary was right of center with her hawkishness and "eat your Brussels sprouts and ask for nothing" policy statements. She was milquetoast to Trump's braggadocio. They both stole ideas from Bernie because neither of them cared about principals, only about winning.
1
@nora m,How is your comment, that is in response to mine, addressing the main point of how I see the problem which I will try and recast here. We elect minority presidents and candidates because almost half the voters have become disaffected with how party politics in conjunction with the media, plays to extremes and confuses the issues and creates conflicts that pit one group against each other. The plutocrats who control political funding and media are the producers of these political dramas to capture our attention for viewer/readership, not to help us decide. If Bernie ran it would have been good ratings, but he didn't. Hillary lost because, in addition to the negative events that unfolded around the election, she has a lot of history, some of which was not palatable and she was not a good media creature. Hillary was cast by the media and the RNC as many things, but mostly extremely corrupt and an opportunistic, cold woman that, even in your appraisal of her is a mere caricature. What matters are the ratings and not the meaning or actually to be able to lead. In your comment, you communicate a sense of betrayal by the process which illustrates my point. A few more go rounds with this kind of experience and you may not bother going to the polls either.
1
63 million of "our children" make less than $20 an hour with no pension and few if any benefits. That isn't tribalism or ideology. It's a fact. And its unconsciounable. Too often, "moderation" stands for complacency and the protection of status quo. In this country, "moderate progress" has meant the creation of an impoverished underclass of millions of Americans who cannot provide the basics for their own children. And all the while wealth concentrates more and more in the hands of corportations and small number of individuals. That's what the politics of Moderation have given us, Dr. Pangloss. Sorry if our impatience for real change offends you.
7
This country was founded by corporatism from the beginning. We've been "railroaded" over and over by the profit motive of a few. The moderation you beg for here, is not possible, as long as the power of corporations to run our government remains. There's no moderation of civil concern in their headlong and over riding push for more and more profit. Take back the charters of corporations, and make them responsible citizens. Make energy local and even individual, if you wish to decentralize power. But most of all, break up the monopolies.
14
Communities of love are rife with conflict. But the difference with conflict at this level, and conflict as a cudgel, is that we experience it up close and personal. For most of us, this is too scary. The irony is that institution and organization drive out conflict at the expense of others and freedom. Community embraces conflict in a deeply personal way. To live in a strong community is to live in the most conflicted environment you will ever know, but it will be deeply meaningful and satisfying. You cannot hide behind calls to fake justice or bogus identity in community. Strong people, able to contradict and stand up to failed institutions and deceptive organizations, are shaped in strong communities (but rarely in strong institutions or organizations, as it is too hard to bite the hand that feeds you and stand as an equal person without institutional protection). Such love is enormously messy, something which moderates tend to politely recoil from.
3
The nation needs this perspective and the Times (as well as other news outlets) might well reflect on this as it reports on the "news" of fragmentation, conflict, and power struggles. These headlines are improving the bottom line. And I have noticed how the text that moderates and modifies the headline is often buried several paragraphs down.
5
A thoughtful perspective on the need for connection and policies to encourage that...
But focusing only on local communities and ignoring the national bonds that require federal involvement on some things (think Fed or EPA) and international organizations on others (think climate change) make this kind of "love your neighbor" moderation seem pretty limited given the challenges at hand.
I'd add that the only thing scary about the Green New Deal are some poorly worded comments by sponsors. So there is a false equivalence with rightist tribalism.
9
Another way is seeking to build a vibrant democracy that finds a unison and strength across all communities.
If only moderation and love of neighbor were so easy!
But we can see how moderation has consistently bumped up against strong resistance, and unfortunately the only way to break that resistance is something more powerful than moderation, even if it leads first to great destruction.
It would be nice if reason and altruism could break through, but so far they have not.
What Brooks describes as foundational to our politics is the Judeo-Christian notion of Exodus – the story of oppression/corruption, liberation, backsliding and purging, failure and messianic reaction. This is not left or right, radical or moderate, but something deeper, needing exposure and escape.
Then we read his list of essentialist ideas that purportedly determine eras, when we all know that ideas have origins in social, political, and economic (as well as previous ideas’) history, and none are determinative in themselves.
And local often means racist, misogynist, homophobic. How was school integration achieved? Without outsiders the oppressed would have no chance.
And Brooks understands realpolitik. He is not so naive as to think that calling for "love thy neighbor" will in fact lead to loving neighbors.
So what is his essay about?
His point is simply “don’t support the Democrats trying to change things.” He'd rather go with a non-Trump Republican supporting the status quo of inequality and oligarchy than any Democrat calling for major tax reform, universal health care, and sustainable growth.
9
@JustThinkin,
The weather was icy but filled with sunlight as my weekly companion on errands took us to MA. for a museum outing. First we stopped at a small sleepy town with beautiful colonial gems and empty of residents; reminders of what America once was. He wanted to use the car wash, a novelty for this passenger.
'This lovely town is failing', I lamented, while he explained that the Rich live apart, secluded in the mountains, where they bring their own food on visits. It was reminiscent of Jackson's 'Summer' where an affable married couple now retired, well known to the local community, decide to extend their stay on retirement, and spend an autumn season in their house.
Soon there are no grocery deliveries, no gasoline for their car, their phone wires have been disconnected and the tires have been slashed.
If you ask around, not everyone in the rural community is anxious for change, but change is coming and best to be prepared, while Mr. Brooks is cautioning us that relying on this current presidency for financial support for children's education and more, may not be the right direction to follow.
We are going to have to do more than think, and reach some viable solutions, without depending on this G.O.P. to get its act together.
Mr. Brooks,
"The pilgrims came because God told them to do so." Your summary of our earliest forefathers is an incomplete description. Many of our early pilgrims were Puritans and other severe protestant sects. They were extreme in their views and practices. Control down to their members behavior and dress. They were the Taliban of our early history. Two hundred years later a very different group of leaders were ascendant--- our nation's founding Fathers. Jefferson, Paine, Franklin. These were men who believed in, not an organized religion, but in an all powerful spiritual being. The Constitution and bill of rights were products of secular men seeking, not to eliminate religion, but to create a safe place for all citizens to practice their own beliefs in their own way.
We are in the midst of a backlash against our own freedoms. Religious Americans can fully practice their own beliefs. It is when these beliefs are forced onto others that the lines are crossed. We are in a fight for own freedoms. I don't know if moderate positions will be enough to resist the extremes of the current corrupt administration. Blue wave 2020!
3
Sounds like being more George Bailey and less Henry Potter. I could sign onto that and imagine lots of others could too.
4
Call me simple-minded, but I somewhat more than agree with David Brooks here, and I think it's Bob Carey below in Comments too. First of all thank you for this wonderful breath of fresh air this morning Mr. Brooks.
Having spent my 'formative years' being trained in biology then other sciences, then experiencing several life calamities that 12 years ago left me in debt, emotionally devastated and very lucky to be here health wise, at some point I turned to things spiritual for a bit of help. I was trying to answer the question why should I continue at all. Thankfully I found many answers and am happily enjoying the beginning of the last third of life.
Somewhere in there though, the scientific me asked the spiritual me a question: are we evolving as a species, into a better species? Are we adapting, is natural selection at work? Too many questions of course for here but what I came to (as many others have, see Eckhart Tolle's book "A New Earth", possibly an imperfect expression of this idea but still good) is that humankind's evolution must truly be in the direction of us becoming less warlike, destructive and jealous of each other, into humans more peaceful, generous, and understanding of each other. Jury's going to be out on whether we're actually evolving toward a better place, for a long time but I say yes, we are.
What resonated so strongly with me after reading this, is that I think David Brooks points us squarely in the direction of a better place.
9
The states are the laboratories of experimentation. Local political subdivisions are empowered by their state constitutions to imagine and legislate as well. We cannot get frozen into partisan polarization on a national level.. That's not what federalism is all about.
1