Yes conservatives have given into despair, yet you fail to write about how this is pushing them toward authoritarianism.
35
Despite all protestations to the contrary, I do hope that people see that you are a yellow brick in the road to Oz. You helped to give us Trump. Trump's is an exacerbation of the Right's philosophy, not the Left's. Tucker Carlson, indeed; a morally vacuous lint trap (whatever that means).
24
Another leap to failure: "the earth is clearly getting warmer, and yeah, maybe we have something to do with it, but it's too late/too hard/too complicated to do anything about it, so drill away, baby."
24
This column is a good companion to David Brooks' article about the dead end philosophy of Libertarianism (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/opinion/centrism-moderate-capitalism-welfare.html)
The current Republican party is on its last legs. Take away the Libertarian and Trump wings of the Party and nothing remains.
Good riddance.
31
Maybe what Tucker is saying is
"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."
7
"Carlson’s monologue was an expansion of themes that have dominated his reinvention as a Trump-era populist — the general folly of elites..."
I guess Tucker, being born in SF and raised in La Jolla and educated on the east coast in very nice schools, definitely needed to reinvent himself somehow.
15
Tucker Carlson is loathsome. Snearing, condescending, smirking, distorting, baiting and lying pretty much sums him up. Do not watch him after eating. You will not be able to keep your food down.
41
OK the questions discussed are legitimate but the focus on Carlson is not. He is an intellectual loose cannon, and a small cannon at that. He is not deep, his research is shallow as are his "facts," many of which are Trumpian false. He is "fair" (in the just OK sense) and unbalanced .
More to the point on his show he is reading his diatribes. Who writes that stuff? Tripe mongers interested in rousing the rabble! For some fun turn off the sound and concentrate on Tucker's expressions.
10
Wow — you mean Tucker Carlson and Ross Douthat are reconsidering Saint Reagan’s famous dictum that “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”?
You can draw a straight line from this smug, vacuous, empty claim to Trump’s equally smug, vacuous, empty promise to “drain the swamp.”
You might even say that “In this present crisis, conservatism is not the solution to our problem; conservatism is the problem.”
43
This is somewhat interesting but boils down to the question, is the quality of life more important than the quantity of money?
My take on current conservatism is: the world is going to hell, but with enough money you can live in a gated community. One reason Trump's ideas won't ever work is that they are rooted in the acceptance of defeat. Everything is a disaster. Everyone is incompetent. He alone can save us.
19
Tucker Carlson IS Conservatism.
And then there are the ivory tower apologists....
4
Sounds like Tucker and Ross are pining for an American Franscisco Franco who will restore a Traditionalist culture and crush the lefties. We all know how Spain under Franco turned out. The economy went to hell and young people revolted against the repression of free expression. Also, women were not too happy either. When will you guys give up on the idea that the only good people are conservative and white or at least subservient and silent?
12
Oh come on ... who wants to direct more $$ to the middle and lower classes (even the deplorables) - Trump or Pelosi - GOP or Dems - Fox or MSNBC - the "elite" right or "elite" left.
Until you put your money where your mouth is you are just breaking wind.
Such as it ever was ... Tucker is just a windy entertainer
9
The Republican "despair" that Douthat refers to might better be called Greed. It is greed by corporations that keep wages down and unions weak. It is greed by Republican tax payers who insist upon lower taxes for themselves while our schools decline and infrastructure crumbles. It is greed that is behind the lack of censorship that Douthat decries; there is a lot of money to be made in casinos, porn, marijuana and the unregulated internet. By calling the defect "despair" it neuters what is really going on. What Douthat really describes are Greed and Hypocrisy. Those are the real culprits behind the conservative dilemma.
25
It all started with Reagan.
20
Seems like a reasonable Douthat article and observation. It's preferable to read a sensible article than to read more of the Left's rage about whatever Trump has done in the last 24 hours or what an overall terrible person he is. Its either he left's daily take on Trump or saying that gender thoughts and feelings are as important as birth sex or that all white men are bad. That kind of nonsense is over and done with from a news worthy or garner support standpoint. It only has the opposite effect on everyone except for the naïve children they prey upon.
9
Thanks for a great column.
One thought:
Climate Change: the most important thing the conservatives are "not even (or not really) trying" on.
Please, please, can you use what influence you have on conservatives, or through your place at the NYT to help move us to all work together on this issue?
4
I am new to politics. Is there anyway I can be somewhat conservative? I can't tell any of my high school friends because believe me they will never talk to me again. What is the best way to come out of the closet...knowing that I will lose a lot (maybe all) my friends. On the other hand it is difficult living a lie. I am not raciest in any way, I love all people, but I do have conservative social values and I know there is no place for that at my High School in the Bronx.
10
@DJ Being somewhat conservative is essentially being a centrist Democrat at the moment. This might be oversimplifying, since there are many different things that can be quantified on the liberal/conservative scale, but being somewhat conservative doesn't align at all with the current Republican party.
9
DJ
I feel your pain. I was once like you but with age comes confidence. I just state my viewpoint and say that we all have a right to our opinions. You do you know. What bothers me is that the liberals freely state their opinions but we sometimes feel hesitant to voice ours. It certainly helps to have one person on your side. Try to find an organization or friend that leans in your direction. It may take some time but it will happen.
I live in ultra liberal Manhattan but still will not remain silent. I hold my breath and state how I feel. You must stay true to your convictions and be who you are. It takes practice but after a few times you feel more comfortable. It has worked for me. Good luck and I admire your courage greatly. Others will also. You never know. Someone who has been hesitant to speak up may start to agree with you.
8
So, to sum it up, it seems that Carlson and his devotees (like Ross) are finally ready to refute Saint Reagan who proclaimed "Government is not the solution, government is the problem."
Could it be that the scare tactics (Clinton's 1993 tax increase on the wealthy will cause a depression - it instead led to historic expansion) and voodoo economics (you can still get Paul Ryan to say that tax cuts for the wealthy will benefit the middle class) and crippling inaction on everything from climate change to infrastructure, all of which charatorize the right, are just flat dumb?
Go look at the most well adjusted countries with the best health outcomes, the least gap between rich and poor (which surveys show Americans admire), the least amount of violence and the highest reports of personal happiness and you'll find… wait for it… GOVERNMENT.
Government.
The notion, birthed in the blood of our founders, that a free people, through self rule, can make wise decisions about problems they face. With free flow of information (a free, inquisitive press), freedom to associate and share / debate ideas, and freedom to… um… DO STUFF(!) to make situations better - unafraid, and with faith in our rule of law, democratic process, and reason.
(the anti-Trump if you will)
Conservatives may be learning.
Government is We The People.
We need not fear ourselves.
Just paranoid, closed minded people who tell us to.
20
A "family wage" would be just fine, if my wife could make it and I could stay home stoned, perusing pornography, gambling online, and playing computer games as if I were the adolescent in the house. Twice the income to my wife's sole credit and she'd be so giddy that she just might let me get away with it, for a blissful decade at least. (By that time, I'd be retired and home free.)
But that idyllic outcome is not what Conservatives have in mind. They somehow imagine that men naturally want to be corporate wage slaves, under the thumb of some autocratic boss, so long as they can rule the roost at home, and that women naturally prefer to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen; that all it requires is a bit a "public paternalism" to return those natural "private virtues" to the fore. I remarked the other day on one of Mr. Brooks' columns that all his Jeremiads bewailing contemporary culture tend toward theocracy as the solution. Here is his fellow conservative intellectual going down the same road. Talk about the bankruptcy of conservative thought.
Got to go. My life is leaving for work and I have computer games to start up.
7
I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but I found Tucker Carlson's monologue one of the most interesting things politically that I've heard in a long while--such a fascinating mix of the left and the right. And he's a host on Fox News! While I certainly don't agree with everything Tucker said, there is more than a grain of truth in most of it.
America depends, first and foremost, upon strong and thriving families of Americans of all types. And the worship of free markets on the right has hurt far too many American families. Yet much of the left frankly seems uncommitted to the traditional family, which they view mainly as homophobic and patriarchical, and even to America itself, which they view as mainly a racist and imperialist state.
So I actually stand with Tucker and Ross on this one. Keep up the good work!
15
This argument is over. You lost. It’s not coming back, and you’re going to be in the wilderness for the rest of your life
2
I don’t see how it’s possible for liberals and conservatives to coexist in the same political sphere anymore. Perhaps it would be best if Blue America and Red America wet their separate ways.
yes! thank you. let's just break it up into 4 separate nations.
1
Ross, don't you see the logical conclusion of this?
You, and Tucker, are essentially asking the GOP to shun their corporate interest big donor class! A wholesale repudiation of the notion that "money is speech" and "corporations are citizens!"
Republicans didn't just throw up their collective hands and give up on policy making, that's what the amoral big money told them to do.
Do you think GOP members want to have to solicit donations from the hoi polloi?
I doubt it.
7
My buddy Skip said it best at brunch today. Nothing endangers our collective well-being like an increase in the marginal income tax rate that socialism threatens. Everyone agreed this morning that a pro-family conservatism that focuses on the dangers of pornography, drugs, and working women, but eschews this nonsense of a family wage, is the best hope to keep creeping socialism at bay. Freedom! And Jesus!
1
Conservatives don't care about the middle class. Why would they? Kentucky voters put the devil himself back in charge despite his visceral hatred of health care and food assistance for poor people. (They did this because they hate the thought of racial straw-men getting free stuff.) And if Tucker Carlson is a serious policy analyst of any sort, then I'm the King of Denmark. Tucker attended the best schools because his mother married into the Swanson fortune, not because of his grades.
And I love Ross's subtle dig at marijuana; which, btw, is a miracle drug for those suffering from wasting diseases such as HIV or cancer. .... If the middle class is addicted to pornography and pot --- oh, the despair! --- it's because they have little else to do in the evening, other than recover from depressing low-wage jobs. As a share of GDP, wages haven't budged in decades. The Clintons are equally to blame, having spent the 90s advancing the policies of the Reagan administration on every front. With friends like Hillary Clinton, I do not need enemies.
Both parties have succeeded in turning working men and women against each other along racial fault lines, in order to prevent them from uniting against their common enemy. That enemy, of course, is the aforementioned devil.
8
What is accepted as conservatism, is in no way conservative. For instance, how could supporting Americans paying nearly twice as much for healthcare as the other advanced countries fit into conservative philosophy. As Tucker Carlson argues, how can the deterioration of middle American families fit conservative philosophy. It seems as if conservative philosophy is nothing more than serving insider, power, money interests. The proof can be seen in the recent tax legislation Republicans forced into law.
5
Republican conservatism really means tax cuts for the wealthy.
And it has resulted in deficits to be paid for by the rest of us.
As far as Tucker Carlson, I agree with some of this latest message but, after watching him all these years, Carlson is one of the last messengers I would trust.
6
Children born in poverty without an education can succeed— if they have strong two-parent support.
That’s what second and third generation sons and daughters of immigrants recall most about the struggles of their grandparents.
On the other hand, children of impoverished, uneducated single parent families have a 90% chance of ending up in prison and welfare. The cost? At least $40,000 per year.
Moreover, pure capitalism loves the doubling of the workforce created by our fierce march into feminism. Get 2 workers for the price of one!
However, children of today’s dual income paycheck to paycheck marriages are also highly likely to experience prison or be in need of welfare. Or passive robotic-nicks .
The moneyed class knows this and doesn’t care. Those styling themselves as liberals care but have no clue how to regain the far less expensive and much healthier benefits of traditional families.
And, as the comments clearly demonstrate, both sides can’t resist unending finger-pointing at each other.
9
@Triple
All my Republican friends say poor people can get ahead.
But as soon as those Republicans have children, they move to the best school district they can afford.
4
Exactly.
2
"it’s also true that in the 1940s and 1950s, a mix of government policy, union strength and conservative gender norms established a “family wage” — an income level that enabled a single breadwinner to support a family"
How well I do remember those days when my father, a foreman for Colgate Palmolive overseeing an assembly line was able to support 5 kids sending them to good schools. We had a tv and a car but were anything but well off. This has all been destroyed by the great hoarding of wealth by the very rich ( there were only a handful of billionaires then), the anti-government anti union policies of the far right and religious conservatism which has put people like Trump in office.
17
"...social conservatives especially need a framework of political economy to promote the institutions — family, work, neighborhood — upon which civil society depends."
To pat Tucker Carlson on the back for stating that Republicans start doing their JOB, start actually working to legislate public policy that helps poor and middle class families is a bit disingenuous. Such a low bar for a GOP pundits, both in Douthat's praise and Carlson's big speech.
4
I don't watch FOX. And I trust your words about Tucker Carlson. The little I know of Tucker Carlson is that he is a die-hard Conservative defending the indefensible Right Wing politics. That he actually spoke of the truths and pitfalls of Conservatism as it exists today is almost unbelievable. But this monologue is certainly the end of his career with FOX. And he may not be the last one!
Hey Republicans!
Want to actually help out average Americans, how about revising those massive corporate tax cuts to link them to increases in the size of their U.S. workforce, and as actual employees, not as long time contractors.
Stock buybacks really don't do much for the working class.
Oh, and let's tax ALL gains on stock bought on compensation type options as income.
4
I was a registered Independent until the advent of Donald Trump and quickly registered Democrat. During my life I have mostly voted for Democrats as the Republicans moved ever more towards money and the exclusion of those deemed unfit for membership. What is left of the Republican party post Trump may be able to find itself again. Republicans and conservatives within it will always be outliers in my mind until they move to become a fact driven, science based inclusive party. Currently, the Republicans seem to be quite happy taking the money and manipulating an ever shrinking base to maintain an evermore old white guy leadership.
3
Forty years ago a GOP presidential primary candidate named Bush blasted the economic policy of a GOP presidential primary candidate by calling it voodoo. The idea was that big tax cuts to big people would trickle down to working people and their families. (We will leave the GOP policy idea that unions should be crushed and education should be less affordable for another time). This policy, deemed "trickle down", was enacted into law. It nearly bankrupted the country.
Eventually another Bush came along. He eyed a budget surplus. He adopted the view of the rich that rich people were job creators who could shower the working people with jobs and better wages in a second round of "trickle down". Bush and his GOP policies blew up annual deficits and the debt.
Most recently Donald Trump inherited a fragile economy that was recovering from the Bush II debacle. Trump adopted Paul Ryan's trickle down III tax policy. It cut the top marginal tax on corporations by nearly 35% and slashed the top marginal tax rates for individuals and their pass-through entities. (See Reagan for the creation of pass through entities, taxing social security benefits received by the elderly, legalizing stock buy backs, and accounting rule changes that left pensions underfunded). Deficits are skyrocketing.
Conservative trickle down economic policy has failed under the last three Republican presidents. Tucker Carlson is right. The right is terrified.
9
For years I've been amazed that Dems have not tried to make the point that laissez faire corporate capitalism (there are other forms of capitalism than the one we backed ourselves into) is *by far* the single greatest force breaking down traditional families, neighborhoods, communities.
Even at the most basic level, doing well in the modern economy means almost by definition that you will need to move from your place of birth. All your siblings will be scattered across hundreds or thousands of miles just to land and hold onto good paying jobs. The possibility of raising your own family within a strong extended family is virtually impossible if you are also making a decent salary. Beyond that, local ownership of stores and businesses are replaced by distant and impersonal, but more economically efficient, corporate ownership with no ties to the local community.
Even "the media" and "Hollywood" which the right loves to hate are simply following the capitalistic imperative to maximize profit. The reason there is so much skin, sexuality and violence in our advertising and entertainment is because, like it or not for the conservatives, it sells. It generates profits.
You can't be both for minimally regulated capitalism *and* against the media. Sorry. You have to pick one or the other.
13
The best spin with him is that he asks appropriate questions. But then he goes through the looking glass for answers.
My overall reaction is that he is searching for new advertisers, having trashed himself with the last publicity stunt.
2
"There are wounds that public policy can't heal."
True. But policy can stop the practices of keeping them open and unhealed. Policy can head us towards a healing. Policy about public education for all did that. Not perfectly, but it moved us in that direction. It demands maintenance. Not coming to absurd judicial conclusions that the national striving towards being the light on the hill are now over, so rip up those policies. (killing the voting rights act. or Brown v.Ed, for example)
I don't expect a policy to heal personal wounds that society has inflicted. Just to stop inflicting them further on current or future generations.
Conservatives are, for the most part, still clueless about what Trump did, what he awakened. Even Trump remains clueless. Many Liberals and those on the real Left (lets stop mixing Liberal with Left) remain clueless. Most Trumplodites are clueless as to what they wanted and thought they found with Trump.
For the most part what most Americans want is a Govt for and by the people. Not for and bought and paid for by Corporations and commercial interests. That such interests do not ever protect and help Americans. The Market is not altruistic.
While the majority of voters support Capitalism, we know it needs constraints, that bad actors must be reined in and when need be brought to justice. We know that only looking thru the lens of Capitalism is not a proper way to govern. That profits over people is not the proper decision making matrix.
8
"Modern conservatism was forged in the crucible of the 1970s inflation crisis..."
Really? Because I kinda sorta thought it was forged in the crucible of the Civil Rights Movement and LBJ's Great Society. That's certainly what conservative politicians since Nixon have been telling us, isn't it? That government money shouldn't go to the undeserving? That we can't legislate thought? That certain groups have made their agendas too central to be borne?
5
Mr. Douhat,
I am a regular reader of your column and very much respect your commetary(also Tom Friedman and David Brooks). This is another example of your putting out some ideas that should be fully considered. However,what exactly are your ideas on a wise immigration policy? Here, like in many of your columns you seem to be critical of the approach taken by many in the Democratic party.
While stating that I know of few if any Democrats who favor open borders,what exactly are the Democrats and the elites getting wrong?
2
I'll give a recent example of conservative disease.
Trump and his advisors actually said they doesn't want to acknowledge climate change because then "they would have to do something about it."
God forbid that a free people would make rational, consensus decisions based on available information. Better to stonewall and deceive in the name of power and profit.
There's the conservative disease.
13
@Paul King
Great point.
Under McConnell the GOP has become so atrophied and so apathetic towards their jobs - its hard to figure out why any of them show up on Mondays.
MCConnel has said time and again he's not there to do the work they campaign on (my words not his exactly) but to make sure Dems cant do anything at all. He simply desires the GOP to win elections, not do any of the work that follows. His is a human wall.
7
Thank you for this column, Mr Douthat. I often profoundly disagree with your views, but on days like today I am reminded why I keep engaging with your contributions. I was half thinking: "Next, Ross will discover Ludwig Erhard and Oswald von Nell-Breuning!" I hope you and others will succeed in giving a fresh impulse to American debates.
Good luck, Ross. I don't trust Carlson any farther than he can toss his president, but I would welcome a debate with the kind of true "conservative" you long for - not that the current climate is likely to spawn such a creature. Rather, I suspect the current Republican party is doomed repeat the same mistakes its 1930 predecessor did; cut taxes, throw up its hands, express ultimate faith in Austrian economics, and fiddle while Rome burns. A crash will happen, it's inevitable. And there will be no one in the party with a clue what to do about it.
6
@Jim
Carlson, like many Repubs are simply seeking a means to maybe win elections. Not govern. To spout better campaign slogans.
Carlson has his gripes, but he has no new ideas. Like the Republicans in general. No ideas, nothing that is truly progress oriented...but rather destructive.
Tucker, et al, have for so long preached to their audiences their sermon of hate towards the US gov't, that they forgot that the Repubs once tried to govern from a place of principles.
I don't expect them to rediscover, or find any new ones in the near future. Doubling down with Trump seems to be their shtick now...its what happens when you are prone to being a cult member, over being a self-determined individual.
1
Back in the begining the the Federalist Party lead by Jefferson feared what we would become if the Democratic-Republican Party for the sake of argruement lead by Hamilton had their way. We became it. The banks, corporations, military and the growing security state being too big are still questions that still need to be answered today. We are lead to believe the welfare state is the only thing that separates liberal from conservative. Washington was accused of treason with both France and England by both parties of his day. There's nothing new under the sun.
Moralist, the quasi-religious or religious can come out for or against pornography, drug and alcohol use. The moral among us always has solid ground to stand on. But from a purely non-moral point of view can we ask does the wide spread acceptance and media encouragement of the above make us worse off? Is it a question of right and left?
1
Mr. Douthat gives undue credit to the general conservative movement. Conservatives for the most part never “gave up”, their ideology is seldom open to either communal support or fresh ideas.
1
Interesting that almost al of the repubs values are shown to be destructive
AntiUnions- Yes, wages down, corporate profits up family resources down . Unions prevented a lot of this.
low taxes- Yes, corporate and others become very wealthy and middle class not so. Wages static or down income inequality up. Revenue for vital public services down. Infrastructure not done.
Decrease regulations-Banks, pharma ,etc. raising prices, selling suboptimal products , decrease consumer protection . less environmental safety and job safety.
Just a few of the conservative programs which not only do not help but have destroyed much of our society.
13
It is now official!
The Jim Acosta Wall Reveal and the Pelosi-Schumer Wall Rebuttal are definitive proof.
The Left bubble has permanently replaced the Left brain.
2
Mustn’t forget Bush1. He started the ball rolling. He gave us the Clintons who gave us Bush2 who gave us Obama. Kleptocracy & betrayal & incompetence made Trump inevitable. And the coup in progress ensures Trump's reelection.
3
@Marian. Crushing unions, taxing social security benefits of the elderly, changing accounting rules that left corporate pensions underfunded, making higher education less affordable, scrapping environmental regulations, and making ketchup a vegetable were all part of the Reagan Revolution. How many from the Reagan administration were convicted in regard to Iran-Contra? Didn't Reagan come on TV and admit that he committed a crime while claiming his crime was not a crime in his heart?
Bush 1 lost his bid for re-election because he had to clean up Reagan's economic and legal mess once he was elected.
5
Tucker is as concise and entertaining as his bowtie.
“Democratic” socialism is dangerous delusion: Open borders & an entitlement state where all needs are rights & all wants are free are mutually exclusive. Acceptance of Obama-Clinton’s terrorist diaspora & Iran nuke deal are existential threats.
US will be EU in a blink of an eye. The logical endpoint of this leftist madness is the US as the permanent repository for world's increasing billions of dependent poor.
Progressivism, preversely, will be the end of progress.
Trump’s warning on European soil of the danger of EU dependence on Russia oil was the energy equivalent of Reagan’s “tear down that wall”…vs Obama, who exploited EU's weakness, endangering the world.
If EU’s naïveté, pc mindset & construct erased borders, sovereignty & western civilization, EU's greed erased its survival instinct: The Iran deal is not about denuking Iran. It’s about making money in Iran. Obama knew greed would save a deal so flawed that—*even if obeyed*—gives Iran nukes in a blink of an eye as it defeats the grim logic of MAD.
Merkel, like ally Obama, will be judged by what comes next. There is no reason to assume it will not follow the Bush trajectory.
Bush 41 gave us Clinton & Bush 43, Obama… & Obama, despite all his corrupt efforts, or perhaps because of them, gave us Trump.
Watch for the progressives to do a 180 on open borders. Blame it on the Acosta/Pelosi-Schumer wall memes that proved the Left bubble has replaced the Left brain.
2
@Marian
Is this your acid trip weekend ? Your post looks like a Mad Libs script.
I love (not) how folks like you lump Liberals, Left, Progressives, etc into one neat little pile. Truly funny.
Please cite where anyone, not on the extreme fringes of any group, if even then, has ever expressed the US should have what amounts to raw, open borders. ??
All the rest is silly nonsense written to appear revelatory. Of course one POTUS begets another. Duh!
Name the Obama corruption...
8
Wherein Ross Douthat endorses censorship and social engineering.
2
Remember Obama Derangement Syndrome?
Birtherism?
Remember how united the Slave State Conservatives were in their abject horror that an African American could be elected president?
The Evangelical party (they are not a religion) was formed in 1845 to protect slavery in the South and to extend slavery to the new states of the American West.
Conservatives sold their souls and surrendered their conservative principals in return for the support of the deeply racist and hate-filled Evangelical Party.
Tucker Carlson is just another tool of Slave State Conservatives, the Evangelical Party.
13
Fox News has blocked "Tucker Carlson’s recent Fox News soliloquy" video so it cannot be seen. Funny thing, that.
9
@Aodhan51
Censorship. Say it ain't so, Fox News.
3
I just get tired of this constant talk on the right about "family breakdown." As notorious RBG has said, neither a woman nor an african-american would have been considered an equal citizen in times past, and their reduced big-decision making power within the family and society reflected that inequality. I fail to understand how a tendency towards equal voices reflects a breakdown. The old way, where people systematically made life He** and created life long trauma for certain people and their families, certainly broke many.
A second point; families have become more blended, marriages perhaps shorter since the 50s - ie families have CHANGED. Change over time is always the name of the game, and it doesn't mean that more modern families are broken.
This article, and the Tucker Carlson show could be renamed "I don't like change so you shouldn't too." His recent segment saying that higher salaries for women lead to drug overdose in men is just the latest example. The meaning is all in the spin cycle, and as we've found out in the FOX news primetime empire, anything can be spun as anti-democrat and pro Donald Trump-ish.
4
WOW! The words of Tucker Carlson: “Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in GDP is an idiot... Market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it... Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having.”
In a follow up Vox interview Carlson mused about the cultural reasons for black poverty. “What I missed, what I think a lot of people missed, was that the economic system you’re living under affects your culture... The reason I didn’t think of it before was because I was so blinded by this libertarian economic propaganda that I couldn’t get past my own assumptions about economics.”
The idea that the US economic system is bad for families needs discussion among Democrats and Republicans, and real action, NOW!
Congratulations to Carlson for his contribution to the discussion, that Senator Bernie Sanders has been promoting for decades.
I'd like to see Tucker Carlson and Bernie Sanders do a Townhall together.
Common ground is possible!
8
The idea that Tucker Carlson can be taken seriously by anyone on anything is laughable. Ross, you can do better.
6
@Fred
Do not underestimate the opposition. That is how Trump won.
4
Tucker Carlson brings no credibility to this or any debate.
I catch his Fox show for five minutes at a time until I get sick of his intellectual dishonesty.
If he is not hatching conspiracy theories about "The Ruling Class"-read it as Liberals. Forget about the reactionary Koch Brothers or the Mercer family.
If not that phony scape goat, he rails against George Soros, the Violent Left, Black Lives Matter, the Deep State and the "PC" crowd. Oh, and the Caravan and Islamists, read the latter, anyone who is a Muslim.
No other Fascist, alive or dead, has had that many groups to
blame.
The only thing that Tucker lacks is a tin foil hat
9
@Richard Pontone
40% of the country totally support Carlson and Trump. Do not be dismissive nor disrespectful of the opposition. That is a recipe for losing.
Carlson ,who can read the polls,realizes that young,progressive Democratic politicians are the future.The aging and declining Fox News viewership is beginning to like Medicare and Social Security.They are slowly realizing the these are actually government programs despite Fox's attempts to obscure the issue.Tucker senses that Fox needs to suck in a newer and younger demographic to mislead and confuse.He is cynically trying to boost his future ratings.Don't worry Ross,Carlson will never put the rights of the living,breathing working class over the rights of the fertilized egg.You needn't worry.
5
Carlson and his ilk, Hannity and the other Fox propagandists, keep spewing their misinformation in order to gain power and money. When will the American public wake up to the reality in who these people are? Carlson is nothing more than conservative light weight preppy, born with a silver spoon in his big mouth, and Hannity is a former cabana boy, house painter and college dropout who moved from Long Island to California. Need I say more
3
Tucker Carlson, of whom I am a huge fan, is echoing themes that Christopher Lasch wrote about from the 1970s to the early 1990s, and what Chris Hedges currently writes about, most recently in America: The Final Parade, and lectures about across the nation. I see nothing inconsistent with Carlson lamenting the decline of the family due to capitalism; in fact, preservation of the family is essential to conservatism as is making the capitalist system more just. Freidman argued that capitalism is essential to freedom and during the Cold War we saw the Marxist-Socialist-Leninist societies had to impose a brutal totalitarian regime in order to make their Utopias work. That's the danger in the current call for so-called "Democratic Socialism" by AOC, who makes Warren looks sensible in comparison, because people are not easily going to turn over their hard-earned livelihood for the collective good unless there is something in return. In all of this, the family suffers and is ultimately destroyed and replaced by non-traditional alternatives which are promoted by advertising. Capitalism must be reformed, it must be conserved, conserved by conservatives, not over-turned by communists calling themselves "Democratic Socialists." There is nothing democratic about socialism! Nothing! Thank you.
2
There is also nothing mutually exclusive of democracy and socialism. One is a political orientation and the other is an economic system. This is Government 101. Do you realize in 1912 Eugene Debs got 6% of the votes for President, what would be equivalent to over 18 million votes today? And that was with TR running as a pro-government Progressive. So let go of this kryptonite fear of “socialism”. It is the price free democracies may choose to pay to avoid a lapse into utter class conflict and chaos.
8
The basic problem with today's conservatives is that they take to heart the "godfather" of American conservatism William F. Buckley, Jr.'s, mission statement in the first issue of “National Review (1955) that his mandate was to stand “athwart history, yelling Stop.”
The world does NOT stop. To stop is to die.
The word politics comes from the Greek word, polis, which means community. Politics, or government, is how communities function. By claiming to be anti-government and pro-community conservatism shows just how empty and self-serving the conservatives’ intellectual argument really is.
There is no commonality to conservatism. It isn’t conservative, and really hasn’t been since 1964, and now there is nothing but inertia to hold it together. Edmund Burke would not recognize it. Or want to.
3
The thing is, Ross, the Right has no authority to preach about private virtue when it worships a leader who is a thrice-married serial adulterer with a life-long habit of sexually harassing women, who is a con artist and thief, and who treats 55% of his fellow Americans with hostility and distain. Conservatives may need to have the "conversation" Carlson wants, but it will lead nowhere until the Right purges itself of Trump.
9
Tucker has two choices. He can quit Fox or become a voice of reason. I don’t have high hopes.
2
Having read Mr. Stephens opinion the conclusion I draw is that "conservatism" is really just the incoherent thoughts of reactionaries. Other that elevating the mythical "family" as a cure all for societies ills, there really doesn't appear to be any unifying principle. Yeah, I know they like to talk a lot about personal responsibility but we all know that's just talk. Then there is the evil "government", but government hating is kind of stupid considering it is a human institution thousands of years old. Hating it seems kind of ... dumb. So what's left? Protecting religion is kind of quixotic considering that religions probably have killed more people than they have "saved". I mean battling fantasies about the origin of the universe and whether there is an after-life seems pretty irrelevant to me.
Conservatives without relevant principles seem pretty irrelevant.
2
The key point is the one douthat avoided, as do all conservatives: that commerce—the exchange of goods and services—and capitalism—the key component of which is the commodification of everything (including moral values and ideas and ideals) is a product for sale. Douthat and Fox won’t touch it because it hits too close to home. Instead, they have their “war on Christmas “!!!
1
I am gobsmacked. Is Ross Douthat actually:
1. Agreeing with Paul Krugman about the Republican (non)response to 2008?
2. Admitting that the decline of unionism has damaged the working class?
Why can't he see that the moral issues he raises in his third point are all the product of an out of control capitalism anything can be rationalized as long as it makes a buck?
America was not always the way it is today. CEOs didn't always make 400 times that of the average worker. Businesses weren't always run for the benefit of shareholders and management. And this older America wasn't in some faraway, mythical time. It existed in the 1970s, pre-Ronald Reagan and before today's conservatives were at Ivy League universities writing nasty, reactionary columns for their student newspaper.
8
Did I read this right? Douthat, a bonafide conservative, publicly admitting the Republican fixation on tight money (and opposed to Obama's loosening of money) in response to the 2008 financial crisis, was wrong? Though it was only one densely worded paragraph, it's a start.
5
There is nothing conservative about the republican party.
Stubborn and reactionary are not conservative properties.
Deliberate ignorance and slander are not strategies of wisdom.
Abusing power and embracing authoritarians is not being American.
And preventing votes in the House or Senate; in an attempt to control the resulting outcome...well, that may be treasonous.
5
This week, to soothe my nerves, I've been rereading Plato's Republic for the first time since my teens. If you recall, Thrasymachus argues that self-interest without regard for others is the best life. Lie, cheat, steal, murder as much as you like but don't get caught. If you can appear to be conventionally virtuous and be chosen leader, all the better for plunder. Quit reading at this point and you have the current state of affairs.
I am reading on.
Donald Trump has brought me back to reading Greek classics. I suppose Ravelstein is nodding with approval from wherever he is hanging out.
2
@Democritus Jr Keep reading. When you reach The Satyricon go on to Boccaccio's Decameron, then, The Prince, then get an account of the Republic of Salo. Once that's read, you've got the Essentials of Donald Trump.
1
There is little difference between modern feminism on the left and the old boy’s network on the right. Each believes a woman or man respectively should be able to live comfortably and decide to put economic interests over family and children if that is their choice. The common philosophy is to put self-interest over family and anyone else.
Affirmative action has succeeded in harming historical white male interests and feminism is emasculating boys and young men. Tucker Carlson is willing to take on many of the cultural and legal factors that are destroying the traditional natural family. He also has trouble seeing the options needed to promote and balance family interests.
Taxes: A blend of wealth and income taxes can permit inverse taxation so low wealth families can pay lower income and payroll tax rates. High wealth families would pay higher income tax rates. Government subsidies would consider both net wealth and family income.
Abortion: Let men refuse consent to the abortion of their unborn and have a cause of action for loss of a fetus against an abortionist.
Affirmative Action: Not only should the practice be banned, but business and educational institutions should be prevented from collecting data on race, sex, religion, etc.
1
@Eugene Patrick Devany "Let men refuse to consent to the abortion of their unborn..." This is reasonable as long as the man agrees to carry the balance of the pregnancy to term.
5
Douthat is saying: ban pornography literally! But Denmark has not and it has families thriving there (due to liberal social policies) ... Oh I see: He wants paternalism so that he (not she) can say what's good for society. Women gave up freedom to make the family thing work but they don't want the abuse anymore (lots of married women face spousal abuse). They want to be free. Note to Douthat: create equal society for women and it can be achieved without your paternalistic family-trope where a man works and the woman stays home, take care of family, get zero pay and can't get out of abusive married life. That's the sad history of women.
2
Ross you state: "But in recent decades, the right’s elites have despaired of censoring pornography, acquiesced to the spread of casino gambling, made peace with the creeping commercialization of marijuana, and accepted the internet’s conquest of childhood and adolescence." Do you really believe that these are the root causes of the break down in families.
The Republican conservative meltdown started with Nixon and watergate. No other single event shattered citizen confidence in the moral decency of those in charge of our government. Then along came Reagan who demonized government and labor unions all for the economic benefit of big business certainly not for families. Conservatives have continued on this course unabbatted with promoting tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and the shifting of wealth to the top ten percent. We made up excuses for Bill Clinton and his "what is, is", a "fine" example to our children . We had a president and his vice president lie our way into the Iraq war and all of the terrorism that has followed it. Forget about pornography, marijuana, internet creep and casino gambling, we have trump and conservatives largely support him. trump is the culmination of all that is wrong with conservatism today. He lies, cheats, lines his own pockets and abuses power. He has no respect for anyone. Conservatives need to look deep into their hearts and souls to see where destruction lives. It is time they started taking personal responsibility.
3
Tucker sounded like a Democrat.
Most liberals would love to have a conservative party that wasn't based on racism, lies, disproven theories and tributes to the wealthiest among us.
The world is messier than conservatives would like. I suppose you can have a society that works for the majority by suppressing those that aren't. But that's not America as it was founded.
1
"Maybe it isn’t possible to recreate a family wage for a less unionized and more feminist age — but are we sure?"
Yep. But we need to get the cause before the effect. The weakening of unions made it so necessary for wives to work that it became OK for wives to work. That the honorable and essential roles of homemaking and community building were denigrated (stay home and bake cookies) is just one sorry "unintended" (but obvious) consequence.
What weakened the unions? Foreign competition. (No, it wasn't Reagan. It was the zeitgeist. Every union worker in America would have gone on strike if Kennedy had fired the Controllers.) Our labor laws worked because they bind ALL competitors. Companies could not fight unions by outsourcing to Japan, then China and Mexico and the rest.
Once it became clear that unions could be defeated by outsourcing to foreign countries, it only made sense to outsource to South Carolina. And so unions fell, and wages fell, and women went to work, and wages fell some more. Duh.
There are only two ways to deal with foreign competition: distribute the benefits of cheaper goods among those displaced by cheaper labor, or impose tariffs to level the playing field. The first would be best, but the best is often the enemy of the good, and, in this case, the good may be doable whereas the best is not. OTOH, the robots are coming, so a victory over foreign competition won't solve the problem. Robots are equal opportunity displacers.
1
Conservatives and libertarians must finally admit to themselves that there really is no such thing as a "free market," as markets are created by government. They should also admit that capitalism and markets do not occur in nature, and therefore are incapable of solving any of our social ills. The party that constantly preaches family values continues to pass policy that does nothing to make is easy to have and support a family. It's all me, me, me, and my money, money, money.
3
You don’t even have to get to the argument about market capitalism vs populism, because we don’t have “free markets.” I’m not talking about “over-regulation” but about under-regulation. Concentration of wealth and corporate power always leads to some form of monopoly unless you put up guardrails such as antitrust rules and limits on campaign financing. T. Roosevelt understood this very well. Today, lots of public policy experts bemoan income and wealth gaps that they seem to think are intractable, but the answer is manifest and has worked before. And, pace Ross, it has little to do with regulation of private behavior through “sin laws.” Break up the big banks, and in 10 years you won’t have to worry about marriage rates.
3
I agree that income and security have a lot to do with the strength of the family. I also think that "values" or "morality" as defined by many conservatives have pretty much nothing to do with the strength of families. Our family is very close and tight. Our kids talk to us. They ask for family time together, playing board games, listening to music, hanging out. They get good grades and are involved in community service. One of our kids just won a scholarship for being a good citizent. Yet, in our home we sometimes use curse words. We believe that LGBTQ people are A-OK just the way they are and support their right to love who they love and express whatever gender they feel is right. We have sent one of our kids on vacation with a family that has two moms. We smoked pot in our youth. We support a woman's right to choose. My husband does a lot of the cooking, and I am building a table. We have a strong family because our affluence currently makes it possible to live without the kind of desperation and uncertainty that are the true causes of the so-called "decline of the family."
6
The point made in this piece should be obvious but many on the right are often blinded by greed. Busch 43’s first Treasury Secretary ran afoul of Cheney when he questioned some policy — I can’t recall what it was — aimed at filling the pockets of the rich. Cheney replied that “it’s our turn.”
1
"The deeper point here is that public policy is rarely a cure-all, but it can often be a corrective."
Welcome to the group that believes the government CAN be here to help you. I'd love to hear in what ways Mr. Douthat thinks that it can.
1
Why must you attempt to label what Elizabeth Warren writes about in her book ("The Two income Trap") as being "reactionary." Are not some values universally appreciated by all Americans of every political persuasion, in effect beyond labels?
Who among us would not like to rear our children in a world where there is someone there when they get home from school? Who among us doesn't appreciate the fact that women are being squeezed between having to be moms and having to be workers (and cheap labor at that!)—trapped, as it were.
Warren is anything but reactionary. She is pragmatic and speaks for a lot of Americans positioned across the entire continuum.
8
Since Conservatives often proclaim the need to adhere strictly to the language of the Constitution, they should re-read those passage that address the duty of the government to provide for the general welfare of all its citizens. Such language provides ample justification for various social program such as Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, etc. Theodore Roosevelt, a leader of the Republican Party in his day, articulated such principles in his New Nationalism speech ((http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/new-nationalism-speech/ ). He was not the first -- and only-- American political leader to do so. The concept of providing for the common good is as American as apple pie. What seems be out of step is the Conservative view on the wisdom of sensible regulation -- or regulation of any sort-- to control the abuses of capitalism, abuses that have occurred over and over during the history of our country, also documented by Roosevelt in his speech. As a result, the Republican Party is a party that is by and for the rich. Since there are not enough rich people to vote for them to win elections, they distract their "base" by focusing on social issues, e.g., abortion, affordable medical care, deregulation, and culture changes related to immigration -- all of which they have no intention of doing anything about. Such laissez faire government, i.e., letting the free market system sort all of these things out, only benefits those in power, not the middle class.
6
What came first? The goose or the golden egg?
We have the government we have because of the influence of money. The longer political debate, the greater the flow. This leads to stasis.
That is why Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan almost never called a vote unless they were certain it would become law. That way, their members could remain uncommitted, thus accepting checks from both sides of every argument.
Money fouls the works. This nation can't function well when our elected representatives work not for the people, but for the money.
7
Looking at the US from across the Atlantic, I'd say the trend is much the same as in the United Kingdom: Conservative and Republican conservative governments have been playing the blame game for years. Those who do not belong to the more privileged class are guilty of not being wealthy or successful enough and are responsible for their own lack of success - so runs the mantra.
In Britain the situation is aggravated by a system of "public schools" - which are, confusingly enough, private and fee-paying. A total of 19 British Prime Ministers have attended one such school, Eton College (boys only). In the US the privileged tend to live in appropriate areas where the majority of the students are from wealthy backgrounds. The system is rounded off in both countries by varying fees for study at university, which make it more difficult for students from less wealthy backgrounds to finish a course of study, and then to buy a home and start a family.
Now this is something that British Conservatives and US Republicans have in common, and they also share a complacent attitude toward the idea of it being in any way unjust. "All men are created equal" but as the saying continues, "some are more equal than others". If Republicans want to strengthen America's core values, they should be doing something about the situation (I see little chance of their British cousins changing anything in the foreseeable future).
2
There will be no over correction as long as the party of the left is run by millionaire lawyers and billionaire finance guys, when the previous candidate was a board member of Walmart. Where the elite, in the middle of a government shutdown, are in luxury resort watching Hamilton.
This a substantive discussion that the leadership of the Democratic party needs to have, not outliers like Bernie Sanders or Beta or MS Orcazio, and not fall into intersectional debates that will not get you 270 electoral votes.
I was thinking that finally, finally, Douthat had written a decent, reasonable column until he threw in his little paean to censorship, paternalism, and prohibition as _good_ things.
Then he gave us a dose of what I used to think was the worst of conservatives: a demand that conservatives be allowed to dictate everyone else's private behavior, based on whether that behavior offends them, and regardless of whether that behavior affects anyone else.
These days that seems like a minor thing compared to the disaster in the White House, but Douthat reminded me it was still there.
2
The fix that Carlson proposes regarding public policy to help average working Americans is still based on fear of socialism, not belief in social justice. Access to health care and decent wages are intentionally denounced as socialist policies, suggesting that self preservation of wealth and power is still the main driver of conservative political thought.
3
Things are swirling about. Conservatives raging about income inequality, Democrats being hawkish on foreign wars. Conservatives saying character doesn’t matter a bit. Liberals saying it actually does. I think we should know that the liberal/conservative dichotomy we have known is becoming meaningless. Maybe that is good. Time for reconsiderations and realignments.
Maybe one party for all those determined to stay on the pockets of the corporations/donor class. Another party for the rest of us, willing to use science, economics, and love of country to address the needs of our country.
272
@JK
The first crisis the liberal Left faces in fitting the close of your comment is the heavy dependence of long-time Democrats on campaign money from banks and all manner of corporations AND radicalized environmental advoates like Tom Steyer.
But the Dems ALWAYS have the most money to run for office with, so they'll stay in the game no matter what.
6
@JK
Liberals have always felt that character matters. Claiming that they didn't care in the past is disingenuous.
Of course, what we're primarily talking about now is corruption, not a sexual peccadillo. That's never been acceptable to either side of the aisle until Trump.
Not that infidelity was acceptable, either. Remember Gary Hart? The debate over Clinton's adultery, which I'm assuming you're referring to, was not about whether it was OK, but whether it was an impeachable offense.
The issue over Trump's infidelity - which is really a small part of his overall unfitness for office - is that he covered it up during the campaign. Even that probably wouldn't be impeachable if it were not a part of a much larger, more visible pattern of behavior.
45
@JK
Things are not "switched about". Conservatives were always for stuff they did not believe in when they actually got power, like fiscal responsibility, moral character and ethics.
48
It is of some interest to debate the principles mentioned in this article, but the debating the best was to serve the needs of our citizens is far more important in my opinion.
My first presidential vote was cast for the honorable and centrist Republican Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. By the end of Ronald Reagan's second term, it was obvious to me that the Republican Party was drifting much further to the right. As far as I was concerned, supply-side economics was a failure, and it seemed to me that the evidence showed that Democrats were doing as well or better at controlling debt and in providing personal freedom. I didn't see regulations designed to protect the public with the same disdain that most Republicans did (and do), so it occurred to me that I was in the wrong party. Now that the Republican Party has become the Party of Trump, I couldn't be happier with my decision to switch to the Democratic Party.
I hope Democrats will always be concerned with running government for the benefit of the citizens of this country. The first place to start is to raise taxes on the wealthy, so we can afford infrastructure projects and provide healthcare for all our citizens. I don't think Tucker Carlson or any of the other Republicans mentioned in this article will favor either of these projects.
310
@RF
John Karl, ABC Chief WH correspondent, shocked "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos this AM, when responding to a NYT story on Trump being a Russian agent. Karl said: "My sources indicate when Mueller issues his final report it will be anti-climatic." He continued "these sources also indicate that there has not been any evidence of collusion nor obstruction."
Then when George asked him to comment on the WAPO story on Trump-Putin transcripts missing, Karl indicated "Trump has had many similar meetings with other world leaders, giving examples." Trump distrusts leaders so Karl dismissed any wrong doing, again surprising host Stephanopoulos.
This is the FIRST TIME I've heard a MSM correspondent make such a positive and declarative statement about Trump's future. It should be noted that Karl has the reputation of being a very objective and respected reporter and member of the WH press corps.
2
@RF I have traveled a parallel path. My first vote was for Eisenhower in 1956. My primary complaint about the Democratic party is their dependence on wealthy individuals and corporate money.
7
@Frank Leibold There is evidence of both collusion and obstruction, will it be enough to indics or impeach, Karl seems to think not. We'll see. So far Mueller hasn't leaked, hard to know whether Karl has reliable sources there, again we'll see. In any case Trump is not qualified by either character or intelligence to hold the office, he's both an embarrassment and a danger tot he nation.
25
The Republican party has evolved over the last few decades into a communications strategy firm. They are very effective at packaging and getting simple messages out to the public, and I think contrary to Ross' dismissal of it, the current immigration impasse is a perfect example: Republicans propose an obviously dysfunctional solution (the wall), and when Democrats protest, claim the Democrats want open borders, a false but outrageous policy. This sets up the voter to choose between the party with bad policy (Republicans) versus the party with insane policy (Democrats). This strategy may appear to be harmless political jockeying, but it severely boxes in the Republican policy makers and prevents any creative problem solving on issues the party has identified as valuable messaging opportunities. Republicans don't just need to start considering the social implications of their economic policies: they need to re-consider their communications strategy and how it has created the societal maladies that have given us Trump.
202
@Allison
Well stated, Allison.
13
@Allison I think the Democrats have also boxed themselves in with their intransigent positioning on this southern border wall issue...despite the fact that 600 miles of it (plus or minus) already exists. The only "dysfunctional" wall is one that is too low, or has bar (or slats) that are wide enough for illegal immigrants (or drug mules) to walk through.
I think the American people are no longer listening to their government, owned by the Military Industrial Complex, when they claim that we need to spends $TRILLIONS over there, to keep them (whoever they are) from breaching our borders over here. This is one of the reasons that Trump soils the Oval Office right now.
The Army Corp of Engineers could legally oversee the completion of a barrier between Mexico and the United States. Would it be money well spent?...no, it wouldn't...but, it's easier to justify to the American citizenry than continuing to feed the endless U.S. military war machine who are fighting " over there " for who knows what.
Perhaps after the wall's completed, and we're safer as a nation [sarc.], we can close 400 of the 800 foreign military bases that we're currently spending hard earned taxpayer monies on, which are located in 70 sovereign nations.
9
@Stone
One more time - the vast majority of drugs get into this country via ports of entry. There is not a significant inflow across the desert.
23
Mr Douthat, I'd like to remind you ( although I am not a member of the tribe of conservative thinkers ). The the modern conservative movement began well before the 1970's inflation crisis. I recall the John Birch Society was waging war with liberal democracy in the 1950's and 60's. William F Buckley was the first right wing intellectual that paved the way for all of you who have come later. Barry Goldwater was a right wing conservative in the 1960's, and after him the Republican Party got rid of all moderate Republicans, and replaced them with fire breathing right wing conservatives. This concept of Populism that is being foisted on the American public delivered by the monied class of
Republican Party is a joke. Real Populism began as a liberal Democratic movement in the Wisconsin area for more rights and representation for the rural famers and working people. It was a bottom up movement, not a top down farce Trump and his crew ( Fox News and Tucker Carlson )are pushing forward today.
4
I did not watch Tucker's rant, then again I do have cable and even if I did, Fox Noise is not my idea of an entertaining use of my time.
On the other hand, I did read his rant and while he makes some compelling points, they also exist in a vacuum because his definition of a working family is not how life is actually playing out.
It is true that in the aftermath of WWII, the working family, or should I say "white" working family, never had it so good. It became a generational expansion of opportunity.
If anything, the GI Bill on its own terms may have been the best and most effective social policy ever deployed by our government.
So what changed?
Let's use GM and BMW as an example.
At the height of GM's crisis pre-bankruptcy, a worker's wages and benefits averaged out to around $72 per hour. Now, new employees are making half that.
Compare that to BMW and the wages they pay in Germany and South Carolina.
A BMW worker's wages and benefits in Germany average around $70 per hour, yet BMW pays an average of $38 per hour to their workers in South Carolina.
GM went bankrupt due to producing lousy cars and BMW, a better run and better produced car, continued to expand production here.
I wonder why?
What Tucker does not grasp is that we have become a variation of a third world labor pool. Forcing wages down can do that to a country.
BMW is profitable in Germany and pays a better wage there.
Why not here?
What changed and why?
3
All that is solid melts into air, eh Ross? Tucker is so loathsome most of the time that few outside his tribe will pay attention, but he does have a point. A far more sophisticated take on the whole mess is "The True and Only Heaven", by Christopher Lasch, which I highly recommend.
1
Liars will say anything to recover their lost credibility. Sadly the GOP is now the party of hypocrites, thieves and liars. They have a deplorable base that will soon see the truth and melt away like ice cream in the oven. We desperately need a new truly conservative party which defends the constitution as well as the environment. One whose values are not for sale and one that knows that the difference between "speech" and "money" is that the former constitutes freedom and the latter only bribery and tyranny.
1
We have a conservative party. They're called Democrats.
4
Perhaps Douthat has it wrong when he says, "... in recent decades, the right’s elites have despaired of censoring pornography, acquiesced to the spread of casino gambling, made peace with the creeping commercialization of marijuana, and accepted the internet’s conquest of childhood and adolescence." Maybe, the "right" just doesn't care about theses "evils." Maybe, having their big tax cut, they are undisturbed, resplendent in their suburban mansions.
2
Ross, you left something big out re: 'in the 1940s and 1950s, a mix of government policy, union strength and conservative gender norms established a “family wage': the Second World War. The nations of the world destroyed one another's industrial capacities, except for ours, which expanded enormously. That industrial capacity, and the lack elsewhere, largely created the "family wage" you attribute to second order factors. Rather quickly, the world caught back up, and our family wage is dropping to the common level.
2
Oh dear, all you self-appointed conservative intellectuals, so excited. You still think you have a movement to fight over, when all you have is racist backlash against the first African-American President, stoked by Putin's bots and trolls, and fronted by an incompetent reality tv personality. It's all doomed, the moment Democrats nominate a candidate, almost any candidate with an ounce of charisma, who is not a Clintonite wedded to Wall Street. That is, if your dear leader's life of lies, lies, lies and silver-spoon-in-the-mouth crime doesn't catch up with him first.
4
Carlson, an entitled white rich boy, angry that he isn't President or dictator, is like a mosquito. He serves no purpose other than bothering people and spreading disease. He should move Russia.
3
Conservatives say only one thing, "I want more money." The song and dance routines that goes along with that statement are just to amuse idiots.
2
That post war family “enlightenment” myth was the bubble reserve of white Americans. Hence the appeal of MAGA. News blast, wer’e not made like that anymore. We never really were.
Just lived off the fat back and blinders of willful ignorance. Well, move over Willie, a new day is comin thru!
3
I recall a much ballyhooed debate between Bill O’Reilly and Paul Krugman where The Mouth that Roared comstantly interrupted and yelled over the Professor. Meanwhile the sainted moderator Tim Russert sat like a log and let it happen. Carlson emplots the same proven Foxian tactics, invite an opposition guest and then overpower any attempts for them to speak. These people are human garbage.
7
American conservatism is not dead. Senators Grassley and Ernst and Iowa Governor Reynolds all backed a racist White supremacist for Congress, Steve King. This is today's Republican party who will belly up to the taxpayer's trough and feed until it's dry. They could care less about the American family or they would advocate for healthcare for all so we have a productive, healthy workforce who gets a decent living wage. Instead they elected a porn star loving con man to lead our country.
4
As much as charity has virtually no chance to fix economic injustice, public policy is the only thing that may advance more equal and just society.
FDR proved that with New Deal and LBJ proved that with Medicare and Medicaid.
Case closed.
4
Carlson asks what no other host has the courage to, and seldom gets answers from either party. What statistics prove undocumented aliens are more lawful than natural born citizens? Where has a border barrier been built that hasn't improved security? How many people are in this country illegally, or where are they from? Carlson uses statistics constantly, quoting the source. Generalities or unsupported statement are not left unchallenged. Usually, talking points without support is all that are left. I wish both parties would address Carlson's concerns that he supports with his facts, with alternate positions supported with counter facts. As for now, he speaks his mind without sourced pushback from either party.
2
@Jay
People come to US through the southern border because they find jobs. Enforce e-verify and you have 3-4 millions of “illegal aliens” leaving this country voluntary. No more money on the wall necessary.
Why is Tucker not saying this?
2
Well written though I'm certain space limited even more that needs to be considered by Republicans. What about a party that embraces racism and the embrace of forms of Christianity that rely on intolerance and fear all while behaving in ways that in no way reflect the teachings and words of Christ? The hypocrisy of Trump's Republican party is as disgusting as is the support by the party of a man who is clearly amoral and very, very likely (Occam's Razor) a criminal. Leadership requires that an organization police its own at least as strongly as it polices anyone else. Anything else is hypocrisy and lies. The Republican party has become a racist, misogynistic, lying party and will remain so as long as its leaders do not do their jobs. I am deeply troubled to live in a country where it is ok for the president to spout hatred and lies and for his party to be ok with it. As things stand now there is nothing, for Republican leadership, that is not out of bounds so long as they get some of the things they want for their well-heeled donors. Disgusting, disappointing, and depressing.
4
Incoherent gibberish right there, NYT. Let's stop pretending that there is any true conservatism remaining to be salvaged in the Republican Party. There's plenty of cold nativism and crass corporatism to go around, but the handful of true conservatives I know are beside themselves with the GOP's full-scale plunge into Trumpism and have thrown up their hands altogether. If true conservative values are to find a home again, it's not going to be in the Republican Party.
4
I think the only argument I have with many of the comments is that the relationship between Fox and the SCP goes both ways. He is a creation of Fox, not the other way around, and now Fox is his Izvestia and Pravda rolled into one.
1
It's so fun to watch the Right finally tie itself into knots over the hypocritical contradictions of their "philosophies" and "policies."
And the fact that Carlson (one of the biggest hypocrites of them all) unleashed the torrent by contradicting his own conveniently chameleon-esque "reinvention" into a "Trump populist" clearly demonstrates that Conservative "philosophies" and "policies" are nothing but vacuous sloganeering, shifting with whatever winds are blowing.
Suddenly, things that we evil elitist Socialists have been saying and doing all these years don't sound so bad after all. (Just never admit that Hillary or Obama or Nancy or that crazy dancing lady (or whoever your Devil du Jour is) said them before you did!)
So, where does this leave Douthat? Lost in the murk, just like all the rest of them.
Maybe this will be the final stake driven through your non-existent hearts....
3
@Paul-A
When was the last time Hillary, Obama or Nancy didn't act like elitists. When did they last get on a normal plane or live like all of us. They ride around in their limousines and live in these beautiful big homes and lecture us on our energy footprint and how we should live. Nancy refused to have the congress sign up for Obamacare b/c the congress has an amazing health plan that they don't want to give up.
When they live like the rest of the country then maybe I'll pay attention to what they say is good for us.
1
@runner6460
Oh yeah, I forgot that Trump's not an elitist. He flies normal planes, right? He drives his own car, right? Oh, and he's on Obamacare, right?
And neither Bush I or Bush II were elitists, right? We all go to Yale; we all have mansions on the coast of Maine, right?
And the Carlson and the rest of the Rightwing never lectures us on "how we should live?"
You folks denigrated Obama for being a community organizer; for not acting presidential; etc; now you call him elitist?
Yup, just more hypocrisy....
4
@Paul-A
Hear, hear. Bam. Here endeth the lesson.
1
Tucker was very upset that women can earn more than men, and so doing, cause an upset in the NATURAL order of things. Women do not want to marry men who earn less. He failed to mention that his father married way, way up...to the heiress of the Swanson Foods fortune.
5
Carlson's angry countenance is his signature mark. Whatever comes from this guy's mouth is contentious, acrid, inflammable. Not a guy to have at dinner table.
2
Mr Carlson is just a pusher of fake porn. He is a liar who attempts to discredit women through false pictures. He attempts to destroy women by publishing fake nudes.
Even if he didn't know they were fake, which at best he never bothered to check, cause truth doesn't matter to him. It was the political equivalent of revenge porn.
His morality is that of slander.
The crucial conservative insight is that, in addressing Mr Carlson, Mr Douthat doesn't care how Mr Carlson actually made real news this week.
But it is women, and women don't matter to any Conservative. Misogyny is the one thing that Conservatives can agree on.
2
When poverty, drugs, and single-parent families were considered the exclusive province of blacks, nobody cared. Now, whites are following the same trajectory in hordes, for the same reasons, and the hand-wringing has begun. One obstacle to finding solutions are the poor whites themselves, who would be forced to admit they are no better or different than their black neighbors and have much in common. It's the job of conservative media to divide and conquer by keeping poor whites and poor blacks from ever identifying. Well, it worked well enough during the Civil War.
2
Is it possible the 'trickle down' has reached its Wile E. Coyote moment?
3
When conservatives like Tucker Carlsen or Ross Douthat criticize the glorification of the free-market, they are either incredibly naive or disingenuous or both. Let’s be honest here: the free-market, lower taxes and smaller government have always been excuses for the mega-wealthy to continue tilting the system in the favor, politically and financially. “Family values” has always been the other pillar of that scheme, namely that the poor (mostly, but not limited to, minorities) are poor because the lack those values (ie “they have kids out of wedlock”, “they do drugs”, “they listen to gangsta music”, and on and on).
It is this unfettered capitalism that produces these mega-wealthy, leaving vast populations in poverty. Any rhetorical contortion claiming otherwise is, again, either incredibly naive or disingenuous or both.
1
This whole piece is nonsense on stilts. First of all, any attempt to attribute intellectual gravitas to Tucker Carlson is obviously a fools errand by definition, but if you need to find a motive behind Carlson's recent TV rant, I'll give it to you in one word -- careerism. I mean, if you're wondering why one of the leading conservative racists is trying to class up his act, it's because he sees that, while white supremacy sells pretty good now, November's blue wave suggests limited growth opportunities for his franchise by going on and on about drug-ridden terrorist brown people at our border. Hence, the grand manner: He adopts an anti-crony-capitalist angle, and suddenly he's he's a Big Thinker, and when Trump implodes he'll be well-positioned to climb as a Voice of the Respectable Right.
Its a scam, in other words, and its hilarious that Douthat is falling for it.
2
There are at least 4 major philosophical currents in what's called 'conservatism', but no space to mention them adequately. Despite dabbling with AynRandism, Tucker seems to close to what the 1920s called a religious corporatist (technically, he's part of the High Episcopalian Church). Did he tell you he opposes mandatory seat belts and the ban on smoking in offices and cafes? Oh, but let the victims of that largesse pay their own way! In this Tucker-Papal pronuncio, he concentrates on labor and family, so it appears he's supporting social corporatism a la 1930s Nazism, a mix of Lutheran devotions and Aryan nationalism. By implication, far fewer women in the work force. Plop as many white spawn as you can (or bring them in from Norway). Labor serves the State and the Leader, not vice-versa. Archbishop-elect Tucker knows that not a single developed country in the world renews its own population, but relies on immigration. A Scandal!! Henceforward, citizens wouldn't be allowed to convert or adopt "colored" offspring, but would be required to explain why they haven't plopped 8-10 Anglo youth for the workforce. Secular education is a big if. Women? Anne Coulter had best get ready to retire to kitchen, confinement, and nursery and never raise her voice to any man. Say, now there's an idea...
1
Ross - you had me buying into your line a bit until you unraveled it with a censorious comment about pornography and marijuana, both of which are "cats out of the bag" so to speak and have nothing to do with the much more important questions such as the living wage and income inequality. The fact is that many in the GOP would like nothing better than to target porn and pot full time, as they both are "culture war" style issues that distract from the main problem - the long-standing economic debasement of middle and working class Americans.
2
John Karl ABC Chief WH correspondent, shocked This Week George Stephanopoulos when responding to a NYT story on Trump being a Russian agent. Karl said: "When Mueller issues his final report it will be anti-climatic." He continued "my sources indicate that there has not been any evidence of collusion nor obstruction."
Then when commenting on the WAPO story on Trump-Putin transcripts missing, Karl indicated "Trump has had many similar meetings with other world leaders." He downplayed any suggestion of wrong doing.
1
Ross, you’ve put your finger on the problem with so-called conservatism: they have no interest in solving real problems. Instead, they expect the world to work according to an ideology rather than how it actually works. It’s a version of intellectual laziness. Why solve problems with hard work, discussion, legitimate debate and compromise (aka, policy-making) when you can “let the market decide?”
4
Ross Douthat, are you now advocating for government intervention in our personal lives? Hahaha!!! What a turnaround. It might be a good idea for you to look at naked capitalism as the source of much of the problems you're concerned about -- loss of union representation for the American worker for one, the shipment of good manufacturing jobs overseas for cheap labor, for another, reduced government revenue through tax cuts, another, decreased spending for public education . . . there is not enough space here for the losses "normal families" have lost during the past 30 or 40 years. Your years of conservative policy have not worked. The left is not seeking an "overcorrection" but a correction of failed conservative policy. Please.
1
All of this column is a clear indication the Republicans and Conservatives and especially your and Carlson know very little about families (especially working class and poor ones) and nothing, nothing at all about children and childhood in the contemporary global perspective. This criticism comes from someone who has studied children and childhood all his life and knows what he is talking about. Reading a column like this or listening to Carlson's entitlement whining is very depressing. Talk about snowflakes on the left, you guys would melt in a minute in the real world of the lives of working class and poor children in the US and much of the rest of the world except for certain social democracies in Europe primarily Scandinavia.
3
Who shall be the regulator, and who regul ated? What are the regulators goals?
See the twilight zone episode, to serve man.
The Republican party is a Russian style oligarchy with a king like immoral oligarch on top. They oppress votes. Manipulate votes. It's a dictatorial machine. America must destroy it or will be destroyed. A more moral republican party is not in sight.
2
What ever happened to the idea that when adversity comes your way you figure out how to overcome it while maintaining fairness, dignity, and gratitude? Nothing conservative. Nothing liberal. Nothing libertarian. No “isms” necessary.
Conservatism is a complete fraud
Conservatives today are about maintaining power and tax breaks to the wealthy. They distract us with culture wars while they rob us blind and neglect our infrastructure and abandon our children
When someone tells me they are conservative and they are not wealthy, I know what they are really saying is “I am a racist and fearful”.
4
Tucker Carlson is where the Democratic Party was 100 years ago with William Jennings Bryan at the helm. The populist base of rabid fundamentalists with their targets of xenophobia, racism and anti Semitism only now instead of a socialist at the helm they have Donald J Trump who understands populism but believes in nothing but himself.
I hope America will remember its history and understand its greatness has been the march towards democracy which was ever more inclusion, accommodation, and tolerance.
Tucker Carlson is a drug dealer dispensing all the medication that is pulling your nation apart.
103
@Montreal Moe
I was just looking up WJB and do bear a resemblance to each other.
2
@Montreal Moe
John Karl, ABC Chief WH correspondent, shocked "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos this AM, when responding to a NYT story on Trump being a Russian agent. Karl said: "My sources indicate when Mueller issues his final report it will be anti-climatic." He continued "these sources also indicate that there has not been any evidence of collusion nor obstruction."
Then when George asked him to comment on the WAPO story on Trump-Putin transcripts missing, Karl indicated "Trump has had many similar meetings with other world leaders, giving examples." He distrusts leaders so Karl dismissed any wrong doing, again surprising host Stephanopoulos.
This is the FIRST TIME I've heard a MSM correspondent make such a positive and declarative statement about Trump's future. It should be noted that Karl has the reputation of being a very objective and respected reporter and member of the WH press corps.
@Frank Leibold Got echolalia Frank?
13
Tucker is right. Establishment Republicans have been fools, and they still don't seem to understand that the election of Donald Trump proves that they have been doing it wrong.
How could someone as awful as Trump have ever become our president? It was because a huge swath of Republican voters -- and many Democrats as well -- were desperate for a candidate who would repudiate the politically correct, identity obsessed Left, but who at the same time wasn't determined to terminate social programs and hand Social Security over to Wall Street. Trump, if you squinted, kinda, sorta looked like such a candidate, and that was enough. For years, Republican gatekeepers, acting in the interests of the Republican donor class, had prevented anyone who questioned conservative orthodoxy from getting anywhere near the Republican nomination. But Trump used his money and celebrity to bull past them, and once that happened it was all over.
The tragedy is that it was Trump who walked through that door. A better candidate, someone smart, articulate, disciplined -- someone like Tucker Carlson! -- would have taken this historic opportunity and used it not merely to smash the Democrats, but to engineer a realignment in American politics. The Democrats still do not seem to understand how grateful they should be that it was Trump! And the Republican establishment still does not seem to understand that Carlson's brand of America First populism is the only road to the future that they have.
55
@JohnB
"Identity-obsessed Left"?? I guess you're one of those that enjoys blaming the victims of societal abuse and political disenfranchisement at the hands of a manipulated electorate? Where else are they supposed to go in our 2 party system? It's easy to demonize, using dime-store slogans, but unless you know what it's like to be relegated to 2nd class status in a land that sells itself with "freedom for all", you have no idea what you're talking about.
Those "identity-obsessed" fighting for their rights under the Democratic banner are more authentically American than those hiding behind professional whiners like Tucker Carlson in order to protect their ill-gotten, indefensible privilege.
Being American means welcoming a challenge, something the Republican party tries to avoid at all costs, by cheating voters, spouting lies, and calling human beings fighting for their rights "identity-obsessed".
40
@JohnB Carlson's brand!!! The road to fascism would be fast and furious ...
10
@JohnB
Tucker Carlson? Surely you jest!
His whacko, retrograde thinking is harming the USA. He looks like a clean-cut young man from the 1950s in a way some find charming.
He is a racist bomb-thrower who has parlayed his looks into an audience that will listen to his right-wing rhetoric.
That is a shrinking percentage of America.
14
Why anyone would care what Tucker thinks is beyond me. And the same for Rush and Ann. Don't forget they're responsible for the shutdown.
5
I'm not sure conservative republicans get it yet. Your day is done, your ideas are no longer deemed of value, be gone witch, you have no power here. The day Tucker Carlson set up his tent next to the Trump circus, he made himself irrelevant to the conversation about America's future. You can't be taken seriously after you have pledged fealty to the type of governing that gave us Donald Trump. It would be like Goebbels trying to rehabilitate his image by taking over the 10 o'clock hour of FOX and Frauds. I don't argue anymore with conservatives because they have shown no obligation to core ideas, or long held principals or even this mornings rantings. Like Trump himself, they have shown themselves to be empty vessels, only good at echoing what has been shoved down their throats.
4
@Rick Gage
I guess we’ll just have to have a civil war to resolve our differences. You don’t seem to see any other alternative.
1
Ross and Tucker are condemning capitalism because the shareholding elites have gotten so fat and disconnected that they have forgotten "the deal" - they are supposed to make it possible, via corporate and/or government policy, for white working and middle class guys to have their own little kingdoms. Wives at home with babies, no competition for jobs by people of color, good wages to afford manly dignities, etc. This is what Trump was selling, that deal.
If kingdoms are basically intact and feminist and anti-racist threats under control, those guys and the women who go along with them will support capitalism until the end of days, while it grinds up everyone else and the planet. You can't have it both ways,. Capitalism is bad for humanity, and so is patriarchy and racism and homophobia. We need to critique and move beyond ALL of those awful systemic evils!
2
If the rich don't voluntarily act to promote more economic opportunity for more of their fellows and less inequality among citizens of the U.S. and the earth, they will find their backs against walls, being shot like the Romanovs were.
3
So we should allow Tucker Carlson a platform to spew his racist tirades because he is also prompting a real discussion conservatives should be having about the ethics of capitalism?
Ok...
Ross, surely you realize this is fallacious. Conservatives can have this discussion and still shame and otherwise call out Mr. Carlson and the rest of his noxious views.
4
Unfortunately the basic premise of this column---that Tucker Carlson and Fox News are anything more than actors playing their "journalist" roles in Infotainment---is utterly false.
And don't get me going on "normal families" and "paternalistic" anything. Being female, I know what THAT means, and it means nothing good for women.
2
Tucker Carlson is an entertainer. If conservatives are to find their way back to rationalism, they're going to have to break their addiction to FOX television hosts. These shows are ratings driven and present "news" and commentary created to serve their audience. For the New York Times to give any credibility to FOX and company is a waste of reader's time.
3
Chipper Jones played a kids' game, played it well, made it into the MLB Hall of Fame, and thus had ample excuse for wearing that kid's name. But a grown man, especially one now so stout of face yet with wrinkles of contrived concern on his nose, who still goes by the name "Tucker" -- is laughable and, for the hateful drivel he mouths to earn his keep, odious as well.
Not being one who can tolerate Fox News...or too many of their friends...I couldn't say I was a regular viewer of any of their programming.Though occasionally I find the topics of interest..the venomous style of the commenters is really annoying to me. Laura Ingraham and Judge J are a bit much for me to deal with. Tucker I find to be especially annoying! I can't understand why anyone would agree to be on his show and subject themselves to his venomous questioning and put downs. Many times he interrupts his guests to mock them and get's so animated it looks like he occasionally seems to spit! Or he rages on and on with a silly grin and the edges of his mouth have what appears to be foam !Reminds me of a rabid dog ! Who in their right mind would go near a rabid Fox? At the end of the torment of his guests he'll calm down...smile and say ...Thanks For Coming On! Of course that's if he doesn't cut the guest off and abruptly end the interview!! Though some of the commentators opinions may be valid I think they are attempting to appeal to the viewers that enjoy the drama and hysteria ! The shows seem to have a WrestleMania atmosphere about them where the audience knows it's all fake but they enjoy the body slamming and fake blood !! I for one am not interested in Tucker's opinion about anything.Unless one day he apologizes and admits....perhaps he's been a bit too abrasive towards his guests and tones things down !!
1
Two Santa Clause theory - read about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski - THIS is republican approach to the economy. Thom Hartmann discusses it often on his show. It is well worth educating yourselves about how it works. It is not about helping people - it is about ensuring republican power (and making them rich of course).
I am 62 and still waiting to hear of a good conservative idea....good for the majority of our citizens, that is.
1
More desperate striving for intellectual respectability. The conservative base, as exemplified by Fox News and Breitbart, has become a Trumpian cauldron of conspiracy theories, anger, and general unreality. Commentators working outside the wingnut bubblesphere--- conservative refugees like Ross Douthat and David Brooks--- are daily forced to confront and explain the unreality of their colleagues. And worse, they have to struggle to find an audience willing to listen to their desperate optimism.
Not interested. Conservatism as a fertile intellectual movement died a long time ago. When the best new source of challenging conservative thought is Tucker Carlson, it's just pathetic.
3
Hey, we' ALL like to ignore 'capitalism's fruits' . . . but they're all sitting in the Senate . . .
1
lol, did Douhat say "conservative economic policy?" I don't believe I've ever seen the GOP advance any "policy" other than "gimme gimme gimme."
Also, I don't believe my subscription fees should pay for discussion of anything Carlson says. He may have been "right" this time, but he's a racist rabble-rousing airbag whose ideas deserve no more serious consideration than those of Limbaugh or Coulter.
2
“If there is to be a healthy American right...” Good luck with that, amigo. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear ought to know by now there is nothing “healthy” about the right wing in American politics. “Conservatives” have declared war on the vast majority of the American public; and they aren’t going to relent unless and until they have been run out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered, taken for a long walk on a very short pier.
No rational human being could watch the spectacle of a demented, malevolent con artist, pretending to act as “President” on behalf 330 million Americans, willing to bring the entire house down around our ears to pander to a benighted minority, all in the service of a pointless publicity stunt “wall” that will supposedly end an “emergency” that is a complete fabrication; and not conclude that “conservatives” have gone raving mad.
Hundreds of those ”conservatives” in both houses of Congress will do absolutely nothing for the good of the country. NOTHING. They got their tax cut for the rich. They’ve got their lax gun regulation, their rollback of consumer protection and financial safeguards, their access to public lands for plunder — we’ve stepped into a time machine headed back to the Gilded Age and the reign of the robber barons.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell has washed his hands of responsibility. Shutdown? Who cares? Why get sideways with the guy who does a fan dance while the kleptocrats rob us blind?
A pox on your “American right.”
2
As a conservative, I will not listen to liberals telling the right to have a debate. The Democratic party is no less fractured and also not dealing its own internal fissures.
Since Trump's election all we've heard is other Republicans need to stand up to Trump, disavow him, and say what you want us to say. As if anyone stood up to Obama's divisiveness, flouting of democratic norms, and lies. You liked your President and chose to keep him, because the media loved him too we weren't serenaded with parallel hysteria over his abuse of executive power.
Today's Democrats are touting a bizarre fake victimhood narrative in which Warren is a native American even though she isn't, Robert O'Rourke is a Mexican even though he's not, and AOC is poor even though her father is an architect and she grew up wealthy in upstate New York.
They're supporting a women's movement which is so virulently anti-Semitic rallies have to be cancelled while blaming Trump for the murder of Jews by a man who hated him. How dare anyone blame him for terror when the left empowers vicious anti-Semitism cloaked as criticism of Israel.
9 "progressive socialists" ran in purple races and all 9 lost including FL, GA, and O'Rourke. There are exciting new Democrats like Spanberger of VA and Sinema of AZ but AOC steals the attention.
So don't tell me the right needs to have a debate. I despise Trump but I despise opportunistic accusations of anti-Semitism and fake victimhood more. Look in the mirror.
Jesus Christ of Nazareth was a liberal leff-wing socialist community organizer. A man who promised eternal salvation to the stranger, the poor, the sick, the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless and the imprisoned. See Matthew 25:31-46
While one of the disciples of Jesus betrayed him, the others fled and hid in fear following his arrest. But the three Marys were present at the crucifixion, the empty tomb and the risen Christ the events that are the essence of Christianity.
The Christian church is a malign monument to misogyny and patriarchy. Along with being a corrupt crony capitalist corporate plutocrat oligarchy bent on colonialism, enslavement and imperialism in the name of white European Judeo- Christian exploitation and supremacy.
Right-wing conservativism is the essence of the pride and the love of money that got Lucifer cast from Heaven and tempted Adam, Eve and Judas. Judging others is the well paced road to Hades. A rich man going to Heaven is an oxymoron.
2
This odd deconstruction of the bow-tied, self-important Mr. Tucker Carlson does great injustice to those concerned with integrity and authenticity.
Mr. Carlson lacks both, and in some measure, is significantly inadequate in anything that should make for someone being taken seriously.
The lad is cloying, smarmy, inauthentic, fake, self-promoting - about as serious as a school yard (and an tiny, isolated one at that) bully with a rich daddy who employs the parents of all other kids. His huffing and puffing is revisionist in the extreme, and self-serving - always.
He has gotten your attention, Mr. Douthat, because he was aiming for precisely that; gaining attention. Because the ideologies Mr. Carlson supposedly champions are make-believe (i.e., right wing self-righteousness). It is true that Mr. Carlson has not yet advocated, in full throat - for slavery. But he seems to argue unabashedly for the cultural, political, and social mores associated with the reality in which the Scotch-Irish get to dominate everything, and enslave everyone.
I.e., Tucker Carlson should be ignored in polite society, and laughed out of the room in which serious discussions about our great republic occur. He is free to find and roam in high-school cafeterias - in full bow-tied splendor - making snide comments at everyone because he did not get to sit on the cool-kids table.
In other words, he is unworthy of the deconstruction you have awarded him.
2
Carlson continues to search for meaning in his life, at the expense of those around him.
There is a reason Catholics go to Confession.
And, still, non-Catholics mock them.
My “dream” is that both Liberals and Conservatives would confess their failings together.
Call responsible, humanitarian civic and social responsibility "paternalism" with you like (seems a bit sexist/biblical – but, whatever). Call it “democratic socialism” or just plain “socialism” or anything else you like but good public policy is not the evil, nameless, faceless “government” trying to destroy our freedoms or control our lives. Public policy (“correctives”) or now “paternalism” is “we the people” taking care of ourselves and each other is a thoughtful, planned, civilized manner. It corrects for the lust and greed that emanate from unregulated capitalism (regulated capitalism is – mostly - good and powerful).
1
Treating Tucker Carlson of Shox News like he's worthy of this number of column inches is like getting out the telescope to observe the UFO that was on the cover of Star Magazine - not exactly dangerous, but frightfully boring.
2
Somebody hand me my smelling salts: Did Ross just admit that Paul Krugman was -gasp - right about the Fed, tight money, and inflation?
1
Mr. Douthat doesn't seem to feel that because Mr. Carlson makes bigoted, sexist statements, he may deserve a little less attention. But Mr. Douthat, like every other republican, is willing to turn the other cheek if it comes to that sort of thing. That's the only way he resembles the savior he claims to believe in.
Come, Mr. Douthat. Speak plainly! Don’t you know being politically correct is out of favor these days? “Conservative gender norms” is just pc for unpaid labor by women. Conservatives, ever worshipping wealth, have been livid over women wanting monetary compensation for their work. Back in the good old days, a “family wage” presupposed a woman doing full time childcare, housework, and meal planning and preparation; all without a paycheck. Not coming back, guys. Women are in the work force and they will stay there. Also, what in the world do you mean, “public paternalism can encourage private virtue”? You mean the “public paternalism” exhibited by such luminaries as Harvey Weinstein? Bill O'Reilly, he of the many multi million dollar pay offs to women that he sexually harassed? How about the many priests of the Catholic Church, definitely paternalistic! who abused so many children over the years? Really, there isn’t enough space to list all the financial, political, and sexual chicanery perpetrated by “proudly paternalistic” conservatives. Or maybe Mr. Douthat approves of a “virtue for thee, but not for me” philosophy? Because that is what comes to mind when he touts “proud paternalism” as a societal cure. Finally, just what is a left-wing overcorrection? Universal health coverage? Higher minimum wage? Paid family leave for both men and women? Or is it just the higher taxes required to fix the wounds paternalistic conservatism have wreaked on society?
2
Really, an entire article debating the utterances of Tucker Carlson? Must not be much a conservative writer can write about. Guess shutdown, a proposed massive outlay of the nation's wealth for a 10th century public works project building a wall isn't enough to go after.
1
Carlson and the 'new conservatives' have not addressed is their own racism and that of their party.
Carlson is often characterized as a brave, tell it like it is conservative who you might not always agree with, but should at least listen to. While this may be true on political economy, it's not true on race.
Carlson has not only been an apologist for Trump's racist rants, but has added a few of his own. And this is not a new issue. The father of conservatism, Barry Goldwater opposed the Brown decision and the civil Rights Act.
He argued that the structure of racism in America would simply fade away if you just removed any act of government, whether to eliminate Jim Crow or have court imposed desegregation.
He was joined by Ronald Reagan, H. W. Bush and his Willie Horton campaign and of course now Trump with his avalanche of racial animosity pouring from the White House.
Carlson is not only silent on many of these Trump rants, he has on more than a few occasions supported them.
This is not just a 'rational opinion that one may agree or disagree with.' Hate crimes are up across the board even as overall crime is down. Full blown Nazi's and white supremacists brazenly advocate their ideology while some, even in congress support them.
And the police, now militarized, both on our streets and at our border feel embolden to "teach those others a lesson."
Carlson's new conservatism for people of color looks a lot like the old one and that's the debate we need to have.
William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater were conservatives. Tucker Carlson is no conservative. He's an overpaid shill for the leading faux conservative, Donald Trump. True conservatives are for small government, family values, free trade, and zero national debt. Which of those elements has Trump not blown to smithereens?
1
"Carlson’s monologue was an expansion of themes that have dominated his reinvention as a Trump-era populist — the general folly of elites,"
The Tucker irony is uniquely fetid. Here is our wealthy son of a California wealthy family, schooled in the elite atmosphere of La Jolla Country Day, St. George's, and Trinity, basking beside the pool of his multi, multi figure income, and hobnobbing in his up scale DC neighborhood of fellow elites, of course, which Tucker is certainly not. According to Tucker.
In the real world outside of FOX, Tucker is merely the apparatchik he would never ever claim to be. A willing part of the elite/GOP/monied apparat he revels in denouncing. But assuredly not that part of this system that nurtures him and ilk. Of course not.
Ross's column displays a fundamental point: conservatism is floundering because it continues to wed itself to a capitalist economic ideology.
in fact, the two have no policy agendas inherently in common: a socialist state too might decide to support middle income families and raise the standard of living for all. and -- duh -- capitalism just doesn't seem to have eyes to see and ears to hear the complaints of workers.
as for censorship, oh dear. i'm free to buy guns, but not to enjoy pornography? what part of conservatism, without scholastic contortions, draws that distinction?
the sad fact is that conservatism in an enlightened age is a relic. sad, but conservatism is not in a "debate" but a schism -- between those who can see how the world works, and those who have bright, shiny ideas about nonsense.
but i'm open to persuasion. let's see conservatism solve the opioid crisis, and i'll listen to more about your love of ayn rand.
There has been no useful conservative platform for the middle class for a couple of decades now. Just empty words and wishful thinking of markets “doing its thing”. This economic fantasy hit the wall, the only beneficiary has been the wealthy. It exposed itself as a biggest American con job. Maybe this has been by design, Ross?
Sadly, the significant portion of poor and middle class still buy into this deception while using government largess as much as they can. Hopefully, government shutdown will help them understand who is on their side.
1
Douthat says that conservative politics has given up on helping ordinary Americans because of "despair."
I call it greed.
2
Wow - the first two thirds of Mr. Douthat’s column could have been written by Mr. Krugman. The last section highlights the gulf I have with Ross and whatever fractured tribes count themselves as post-Trump conservatism. What is “a normal family” at this point anyway?
I give Ross a lot of credit for an honest reckoning with his own over the last two years. I also think that until there is room at the table for all - until the backlash we’re seeing against the beauty of the diverse immigrant nation we are is truly swept away - the promise of America will remain a mirage on the horizon for too many.
1
Frank Bruni and Ross Douthat seem to both be operating in alternative universes this morning. In Frank's, the media has been too easy on Trump. In Ross', conservative economic policies were present during the Obama Administration. Frank's alternative universe is the topic of another comment, but memo to Ross: no conservative polices were in place from 2008 to 2016. The Fed embarked on the most radical experiment in central banking ever seen, with negative real interest rates and manipulation of the Treasury and mortgage market financed by a printing press put into hyperdrive. This, combined with a Obama's vast expansion of the regulatory state and tax increases, led to the slowest economic recovery on record. Conservatism had nothing to do with this. Tucker may or may not have a point with his comments on conservatism, but blaming the slow growth of the Obama years on conservatism is something from the Bizarro world Ross seems to be inhabiting this morning. Also, kudos to the Times' headline writer for today's Douthat column: I am sure he or she has been waiting for years to write that, even though Ross' column is far from that headline.
@Achilles
Slowest economic recovery on record?
Trump’s recovery has not been any faster, except for two quarters after trillions were borrowed for useless tax cuts, jobs growth has been overall slower, and trade deficits are growing despite all the Trump’s hoopla.
Don’t stray from facts, Achilles!
"Well, you see, we already cut corporate taxes, so there's nothing we can do."
Exactly. The policy of Republicans is tax cuts, deregulation, privatization of assistance programs, white nationalism, voter suppression and gerrymandering, and wealth accumulation. Funded by the Koch Brothers and their ilk.
Its the policy of greed, that has no view of a democratic view of the good of the whole. Much less the policy to implement, its too hard and complicated to think of others.
And it is a policy of basic ignorance. Trickle down doesn't work. So what, say the Republicans. Government actual does something that we didn't know about until it is shut down? Ooops. But we're not sorry, after all, we are cutting costs. Except for that deficit monster we created.
1
Douthat, a sincere architect of Trump and today, by enabling, condoning, overlooking, is now trying to recreate "compassionate conservatism". Don't be fooled, he and is entire party want to gut what we have as far as protections for the little guy, then 'compassionately' dole out charity to the wretched. Don't let Republicans take the high ground that is rightfully Liberal: unions, worker pay, regulations on heaalth care cost growth-- all LIBERAL. This is intentional rewrite. Is it just so abortion becomes illegal? If that comes about, then abortions and unwanted pregnancies- both, will increase dramatically. Douthat has such superficial arguments. He enables those that would take what's left: healthcare, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, infrastructure, non monopolistic non AmazonAppleFacebookSinclairGroupkoch brothers. No room for mom and pop business anymore.
When a white guy talks about the breakdown in family, he likely means no one is bringing him his slippers and a sandwich.
For centuries white men benefited from underpaid and unpaid work of women and minorities. Free ride is now over. Social mores are not a business cycle of booms and busts, only the pace of change changes not the direction. Sorry to disappoint, but the patriarch is not coming back! (See Pelosi, 2019)
On the macro front, republicans have woken up to easy money 10 years too late, just in time so they may actually provoke inflation. Hope dems and dumb luck will hold them in check so we see increased real wages for men and women and the related greater participation.
2
Way too late for conservatives or anyone else to be thinking about what Donald Trump means to our country.
With this government shutdown, the work of anti-Federal government conservatives proceeds apace.
What they hate about America is now on the way out: conservation in general, National Parks in particular (what do you think those louts who cut down the Joshua trees were celebrating?); clean water, clean air, and clean food at the expense of multi-billion dollar corporations; programs that help small businesses; subsidies to our cities. And that's only a start.
So Republicans, who've been fighting to shrink the government, are very happy right now.
Happy, too, is Russia's Mr. Putin. When everything falls apart in the United States, he'll step into countries he's long been eyeballing.
Including ours.
And Donald, happy as a fat pig in mud, having done what he set out to do, will build all the hotels he wants, wherever he wants. And lots in the Soviet Union.
Douthat's solution to censor pornography, stop the spread of casino gambling, block the spread of the commercialization of marijuana and ending the internet’s influence on childhood and adolescence all miss the main point. What conservatives should be espousing is support for a strong public school system that teaches civics, personal responsibility and sacrifice for one's country. And conservatives should be opposed to home schooling which helps breed racism. We need to intermingle our children with all kinds of races from an early age so that they don't come to believe that people of color or people of different religions are the enemy. Prevent racist tendencies before they become ingrained in people. But after a dose of Trump's "winning," can conservatives have the necessary epiphany? Don't count on it. It's too late for them.
1
Carlson's embrace of "the general folly of elites" reeks of hypocrisy. Carlson is the son of a news anchor and former ambassador, the stepson of a Swanson frozen food heiress, and was educated exclusively at private schools.
1
@Liz Turner by the same token an admirable public servant like john kerry might not make the wall of worthies simply because of a background checklist like your... maybe one could knock out obama for his post presidential extension of celebrity loin girding too .. some of carlosn's points might be closer to reality even if one doesn't like how he got there...
Tucker Carlson is a chameleon. He'll happily change colors to blend in with whatever strain of "conservatism" happens to be dominant in the moment.
1
“the right’s elites have despaired of censoring pornography, acquiesced to the spread of casino gambling, made peace with the creeping commercialization of marijuana, and accepted the internet’s conquest of childhood and adolescence.”
These are all big profit enterprises. Job killing reulation might interfere with those profits and besides the invisible hand of the market will take care of it.
Remember the big money behind the Republicans are the Kochs and the Kochs are libertarians not Republicans. They don’t want government regulation, government help for anyone but them, taxes to fund anything but military protection for their empire. They are just using the Republicans to achieve their ends. They fund a web of fake organizations which funnel huge amounts of money to Republican candidates who are more than glad to accept (“Our donors have told us if we don’t get this done they won’t contribute anymore.”)
And, yes, the Republicans have lost their way. They are the party of nastiness, cheating, white supremacy, voter suppression among other things, which is why I am no longer a Republican.
Capitalism is based on greed. I can do this, I can make all the money I want, I can do what I want with it. Government’s job is control that and make it work for everyone. Remember “We the people...?” At this point it is failing thanks largely to the Republicans.
1
Well, we've reached a new low when the too cute, bow tied, patrician wannabee Tucker Carlson is the conservative "intellectual" who can lead the GOP out of the rank sewage where it wallows.
Because of family obligations, I had to decline a chance to be on Tucker's show a few months ago, but my salivary glands worked overtime thinking of the fun I could have had. Carlson is like an aging frat boy with just enough panache to avoid being Stephen Miller.
As to the central argument in the comments section - who's to blame for the mess of 2008 and the general tidal wave of plutocracy: Assigning primary blame to either party is a fool's errand. The system is corrupt, made more so by Citizens United. And philosophically, the nation was taken in by the "aw shucks" pabulum spewed by the genial Saint Ronald, who made everyone feel truly exceptional as they Made Racism Great Again and allowed corporations to drown democracy in the bathtub.
1
Oxymoron of the century:
"Just about every conservative worth reading was provoked into responding."
1
The last frontier for the version of capitalism supported by the Mulvaneys’, DeVos’s and Rick Scotts’, Wilbur Ross’s and most of the Republican party is to privatize the functions of government, (the VA, Public Schools, Medicare, Defense and Social Security.
Under the phony rubric of Small Government writ large, privatization is major growth opportunity for entrepreneurs like Erik Prince (who would like our wars turned over to private contractors,for example). Imagine the vets who need healthcare being given vouchers for private healthcare feeding that profit beast? How can a bunch of healthcare providers enhance the care vets recieve when they’ll be in a race to the bottom to cut tgeir costs?
We’ve already witnessed scandal after scandal where students saddle themselves with thousands of dollars in debt for job training for jobs that can’t support them. Then there are the for-profit prisons. Todays “Conservatism” is merely a call for a profit-free-for-all with no rules or oversight.
When will I hear a full-throated condemnation of the policies wrought by the GOP by Tucker Carlson, a consistently reliable supporter of them? His weak-kneed alligator tears are hardly a “Come to Jesus” moment. Its a nice re-positioning of his brand, though.
1
Policy thinkers from all shades of the political spectrum need to get to grips with an inconvenient truth: massive immigration has made life significantly worse for the white working class.
I expect the republicans to express more and more concern for the working class, as long as they continue to see their man trump dragging the party into oblivion! We already have a political party that focuses on middle-of-the-road policy solutions to our common problems - they are called Democrats.
David Brooks has been pointing out the power of capitalism to destroy traditional values.
The conservative notion that government can't solve all problems is not the same thing as government can improved the lives of most people.
Thank you Mr. Douthat for a column which both conservatives and liberals could learn some useful lessons.
There can, and needs to be, a balance between too much government direction in citizen's lives, and a government which is indifferent to the welfare of the vast majority of the population.
Republicans and Democrats seem to avoid actual policy discussions as though to talk about how they would address crucial issues were similar to discussing religion or sex at a social function.
1
As a middle-aged white male, I realize that this debate between various wings of the Republican party is being conducted almost entirely by white middle-aged males.
Case-in-point: in the 40s and 50s, Douthat claims, a combination of good governance, unions, and general moral uprightness established a "family wage" supporting single breadwinners and strong, traditional families. Of course, this post-war social "enlightenment" was reserved for the families and progeny of those like me (and the intra-party debators) - white and male. As always, black families are left eating our dust.
3
Excellent point!!! Let’s not forget that African Americans have always been categorically excluded from so many programs that helped whites like FHA and even the GI bill. It’s our shame and must be corrected. Voter suppression continues and the voting rights law is being eviscerated. This must be changed.
1
I agree that governments can/at least should attempt to affect economic forces that make family life harder.
But I think culture and attitude have had a bigger impact on family than has the economy. My highly educated wife stayed home with our three kids. We did without stuff most other people "had to have." One of our daughters said, "It was more important for you to spend time with us than money on us."
And either my wife or I could have said, "Kids don't need a mother and father in their lives every day."
But neither one of us believed that.
1
Like so many false choices people seem to think you are either a socialist or capitalist. Unfortunately these words get in the way of many policy choices that combine the best of these economic theories.
We know capitalism is a great creator of wealth but a poor distributor. We know Sweden is a 'socialist' country with socialized education and health care but the largest stock exchange in Scandinavia. Most international mutual funds love holding Swedish stocks because of their stability and profitability.
There may be woulds that public policy can't heal but certainly public values and tone of public speaking can help shift the direction of human dignity, respect, fair play, community and social justice. Combined with good policy this can move us towards an improving society. Public policy can't cure everything as it needs to be combine with public behavior.
It's not a debate between socialism and capitalism but instead a debate about making good choices to help improve people's lives in this country and around the world.
3
Doesn't need to be overthought.
America has always been, and will always be, a blend of capitalism and socialism. Sometimes an uncomfortable one, but overall, one that has worked exceptionally well.
If we fashion policy around the fundamental tenet America is a place where all are guaranteed equal opportunity - one with both capitalist and socialist overtones - it would prevent a lot of the lurching back and forth between the two ideologies, and help to bring the country back together. IMHBO (In My Humble, Brilliant Opinion).
"in the 1940s and 1950s, a mix of government policy, union strength and conservative gender norms established a 'family wage' — an income level that enabled a single breadwinner to support a family."
More importantly, Europe and Asia were bombed to the ground with countless millions of casualties after WWII. We had few global competitors. It was not a normal time by any means.
4
Ross Douthat's personality pulls him toward authoritarian solutions. But even he is beginning to feel the horror of what Republican "governance" is doing to America. David Brooks was feeling it two years ago.
The Republicans have become monstrous. Mitch McConnell, not Donald Trump, is their totem.
14
Tucker Carlson is right. And he is wrong. And a lot of it depends on where a person is situated socially.
I think a problem is that in our polarized climate, everyone immediately goes into their ideological camps for simplistic explanations. But reality is complex.
Yes, the opening of opportunities to women has been a good thing for many. It allows smart women to maximize their talents in professions. It has delayed marriage and created more mature, equal, and enjoyable "companiate" marriages.
It is also true that these benefits have accumulated almost entirely to the college educated and affluent, while working class women have suffered disproportionately from disintegration, divorce, and out of wedlock childbearing. This might be why there is deep resentment among many lower class white women for the sexual revolution.
It is true that capitalism has reduced poverty in some places and driven growth and innovation.
It is also true that it drives inequality, poverty in other places, and destabilizes communities.
It is true that cultural diversity and cosmopolitan, "do-your-own-thing" mores can be beneficial for urbanites, creatives, and those who struggle to fit into traditional family life.
It is also true that cultural diversity reduces social trust and compromises the integrity of shared social norms, especially in tight knit communities.
If we want to deal honestly with these issues, we need to acknowledge the truths on both sides.
2
@A F: This utterly exploitative system, rooted in slavery, is completely obtuse to the need to distribute the leisure time created by automation with income to support economic demand.
It's refreshing to read a critique of conservativism from a conservative. To my surprise, I find myself in agreement with much of what Douthat says.
But on one point, Douthat misses the boat. He refers to "a less unionized age" as if unions collapsed of their own weight, rather than by conservatives' systematic efforts to destroy them.
FDR's New Deal legislation fostered the strong unions that gave us the middle class prosperity of the 1940s and 1950s that Douthat hails. But conservatives immediately mounted a counterattack with anti-union measures like "right-to-work" laws that had the sole purpose of weakening unions.
Conservatives have sustained the counterattack for 80 years - witness Scott Walker's successful dismemberment of public employee unions in Wisconsin. And the greatest conservative success has been to convince the American working class that unionization is socialism, and that unions are anti-freedom.
So yes, there are public policy solutions to the problems that Douthat highlights. For starters, if conservatives are serious about the economic plight of today's workers, they must end their anti-union campaign.
Of course, the reason this will never happen is that strong unions are effective. Strong unions would alter the distribution of profits between shareholders and workers, and that is something that conservative politicians' key contributors will never allow.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
10
Is this Douthat defending conservatism? There is nothing cautious or responsible about political conservatism. These people will lock the doors while the house is burning.
There is nothing good about the inability to embrace change at a time when human life is changing more rapidly every year due to the Pandora's Box of technology.
This is no time for old traditions. Better to discover the fundamental values that should guide us. The idolatry of ancient book worship is not that. Distill the important essence of the Bible. Then burn it for fear that it could lead you astray. For it is most certainly NOT the words of the living lord.
The Republican Party has been on the wrong track for the entire modern era. It needs to go.
3
"But in hindsight this was wrong, the feared inflation never came, and the economic recovery was slowed because of the Republican fixation on tight money."
No. Actually it was because McConnell had decided to block Obama on absolutely everything. McConnell put party (big donors) before country, just as he continues to do today.
7
"conservatism has given up — once again, in unwarranted despair — on earlier assumptions about how public paternalism can encourage private virtue."
No, the problem is that Reducto-Reactionary "Conservatism" has not given up on public paternalism, which by the way never misses an opportunity to hypocritically undermine itself. Instead, Conservative ideologues desperately cling to public paternalism and its absurdist demogogues even as its failures become increasingly overwhelming.
2
@pbh51: The Trump presidenccy represents a total abrogation of any floor whatsoever under public conduct.
I'm getting a little tired of the notion that any rebalancing by government is the horror of "socialism".
For example, many years ago, we invested in education, so people could pay college tuition with minimum-wage or summer jobs. Is looking for a way to return to that patter "socialism"?
And I used to be able to afford medical insurance and medical care. Now I can't. Is there no way to bring full medical care (not catastrophic only!) back to middle-class people that the right would NOT call socialism?
Can we please stop with the scare labels and simply look for something that works?
13
Wow - family breakdown, "two-income trap"
for what kind of family exactly? In the 70s or in 2019
First, the "two-income trap" always seems to center on the dear wife (hetero couple of course) staying home with the kids because you know, well, her income is really just used for childcare and such.
Second, tax law is not fair. While childcare (including camps) and even housekeeping and eating out are all part of the different dynamics of a two-income family, little to none is tax deductible. The second income is taxed more than the first. And then you add the recent SALT tax deduction which makes the second earners SALT taxes non-deductible.
Third, families need to be right sized and properly spaced for both the sanity of stay at home moms and the viability of a career for both parents. So birth control is a need not a dangerous idea.
And using Elizabeth Warren's 2003 comments as "more reactionary times" ignores that it is 15 years old. Women have more education and are more career driven than ever. Many women have blazed the trail in high income career fields that do pay enough to be much larger than childcare, to provide financial security, to provide fulfilling work for both mom and dad.
And .. how easy would it be to improve childcare and school hours so mom and dad could both work. Why 40 hours x 2 which is difficult for young families? Why not 30 x 2 ? Why is health care contingent on full-time employment ? Why discriminate against moms in the workplace ?
7
It needs to be said: the right is completely invested in the social philosophy that government CANNOT do anything well, and therefore must not be allowed to do anything. "Tax cuts only" thinking is completely contiguous with this for obvious reasons: defunded government is toothless government. The increasing libertarian drift of the GOP is based upon the funders of the party wanting to live in a country where no one makes rules that limit their behavior, either environmental rules, rules about harassing and limiting minorities, rules about gambling or anything else. If that rule-free philosophy also means few restrictions on gambling, pornography, financial fraud, etc., well that is the price we have to pay for their freedom (or perception thereof).
Will there be a Republican who seeks national office and who is brave enough to to stand up and say "Government has a crucial and important role to play to create opportunity and a level playing field that serves all Americans, and that role must be explored and funded?" Right now, that is unimaginable. The entire party is being kept on a very tight leash by unrelentingly selfish people.
10
@Brian Prioleau: Little is more stupid than voting for people who claim that government is inherently incompetent. They are the psychopaths who make it so.
2
Policy aside, an ideological debate, any debate is what conservatives need to forge a path forward. As a liberal, it does not serve the interests of our country to have one party in an ideological black hole. There was a time when I wished for the left to vanquish the right. I have come to see that this only leads to turmoil. Please have this debate so that leaders in the Democratic Party will have Republicans to provide honest and thoughtful debate for the future of our nation. In turn, it will produce better leaders in our own party to meet the challenge. What ever you need to debate on your side, have at it. Just please go with haste, I don’t know how much longer we have under the current state of conservatism.
2
@John A strong Democratic party needs a strong Republican party. Both parties need to do their job. Since the tea party movement and the "Freedom" caucus came to be, the Senate GOP have completely abdicated their responsibility and governed by refusing to do their job.
3
It’s at least somewhat heartening to see Ross admit that perhaps conservatives were wrong with their economic prognostications. Krugman must finally feel a small bit of vindication.
However, Ross falls right back to the typical strawman argument that is the conservative go to, that all democrats think that government policy can solve everything. As a very progressive democrat I don’t know a single person who thinks this. As many comments have pointed out progressives are all for family friendly policies we just have a broader definition of what a family is. We don’t promote “socialism” as the cure all. But maybe we can start with slightly more progressive taxation. If 70% top rate is too high how about we start at 45% and see if that in fact doesn’t lead to a communist dystopia that Republicans like to scare people about.
4
@Jeff: There is absolutely no floor under disgraceful public and political conduct under the regime of the most spoiled brat ever elevated to power by a sick system rooted in liberty to enslave.
Dear Mr. Douthat, thank you for one of the better columns on conservatism that I have seen in a long time. If conservatives would really enter a debate as you suggest, they might develop an agenda that could actually help the country rather than tear it apart. I was once a dedicated ticket splitter, but I have been driven to vote a straight Democrat ticket-which I actually detest. Conservatives: get serious about real policy instead of slogans so that I can have a choice once again.
1
Always good to see a real conservative debunk the far right with facts and logic, even when I disagree strongly with some of the interpretations. Untill the real crisis in this country is resolved, everyone opposed to Trump's march (or stumble) toward autocracy has to maintain an alliance for democracy. Then we can get back to productive discussions and debates about the real world.
2
I think Ross serves up a big nothing-burger here. The bedrock of today’s conservatism is serial deregulation and slashing of upper tier taxes while tolerating denial of obscene income inequality, expansive social net programs, global warming measures, unchecked gun sales and the like. None of which promotes or protects family life for tens of millions. Today’s conservatism remains an agenda of class division and democratic ruin, no matter how you slice it, and, ironically, it’s being propped up by playing to the worst instincts of a “base” that will turn against it sooner or later.
5
Bravo, Mr. Douthat for this column. The public policy piece missing in Carlson's arguments is the idea of externalities. Market Capitalism regards environmentally degrading consequences as "externalities" (property termed "negative externalities") rather than as definite economic costs to the global economy that should appear on a balance sheet as losses to every society's economic well-being.
4
Conservatives have taken the Koch money and lined up to destroy America.
3
Let's bottom line it Ross, your article a bit esoteric and using intellectualization.
Trump has demagogued some legit issues, some of which you bring up.
However what Carlson forgets is that first and foremost Trump is a bigot, rabble rouser, pathological liar, philanderer, admitted sexual predator, de facto Russian spy, ego maniac demagogue.
For any legit issue he brings up, he is the wrong messenger.
Trump is the biggest threat to our democracy since the Civil War imo.
Carlson has put three nails in his media analysis coffin imo for embracing this treat Trump,
2
@Paul--typo at end, threat not treat.
1
Hold up the normal families will look for socialsm, last time i checked socialism has done worse lets have a look
North korea-people are starving
China-people are starving
USSR- people are starving
Venezuala - people are starving
I dont see any trend here
1
@Keanan
Those are not socialist countries. Those are dictatorships.
Democratic socialists are the people in Scandinavia, the happiest people in the world.
2
This is the more important question: when will House and Senate Republicans stop letting an insane, lying, man-child run America. Once that gets solved, then Republicans can worry about theoretical questions of how they will go back to destroying the lives of the poverty-stricken and minorities like they always have.
2
Ross never fails to be who he always is. Just when I think he might pen a column that makes a bit of sense, he reveals himself, just as Carlson did. Please explain just what constitutes a normal family?
There is no need to waste time in "debate."
Just call a spade a spade.
Carlson is an opportunistic and hypocritical fake conservative. Period.
Like most neo-cons and most Fox News talking heads.
1
Or, maybe it’s just time to admit “ modern conservatism “ is a scam, a fraud perpetrated upon the gullible and uneducated. Much like organized “ Religion “. Nah, that couldn’t possibly be true. Right, Ross ???
2
The claim to represent the thinking of God is the fakest feature of America's fake conservatism.
3
Please stop the nonsense.
Carlson is afraid his on air race bating will lose him so many advertisers that his show will be canceled.
So now he throws capitalism and libertarians under the bus in the hopes guys like Douthat don't notice.
2
Perhaps Mr. Carlson looked up from his script for a moment.
You know the rest. Ugly, vulgar, self serving, murderous. Not talking about Trump.He just happened to be the one in the limo when it broke down.
Differentiate between the political philosophy of Conservatism and the Republic Party. The former is reasonable and necessary in our nation's politics. The later is nihilistic and wedded to oligarchy. There is no logical way a true conservative can support the current president.
Tucker Carlson is a vacuous, race-baiting windbag, but I give him credit for seeing what's been obvious to many of us for a long time: the Republican Party views its voters as useful idiots. Cry "Jesus!Guns!Flags!" then steal the jobs and health care of its suffering base to enrich the plutocrats. Turn cultural capital into political capital, then spend the political capital on the needs and greeds of the wealthy.
Welcome to America, Tucker. It's not personal; it's just your turn.
3
It's official: Douthat is no longer a conservative.
This column comes dangerously close to uttering the nine most terrifying words in the English language: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Why is Douthat labeling Warren a reactionary and linking to another article rather than her book? Wouldn't it be better to read her book and review it than link to a mischaracterization? Times Editors should have far higher standards than this.
So he's the new Glenn Beck, except even more of a racist demagogue. Wow.
1
Here's ONE public policy that would make a true, positive difference in our kids' lives: Ban cellphone usage during the school day, as France just did. The result will surely be in increase in focus, a decline in cheating and porn-watching
(anyone who has taught recently knows that these are serious issues tied to cellphone usage in schools). Even if parents are unwilling or unable to set boundaries, schools can unite to increase focus and personal responsibility in class.
Employers could set similar boundaries in the work place.
We all know that this is not an effort to control people, but to set boundaries on tech addiction for the sake of saving our own attention spans and leading more purposeful lives at school and in the work place.
Ross, as a knee-jerk liberal progressive, I have actually started to warm up to you. I listen to the podcast, The Argument, and enjoy the reasoned interchange among three pundits from dramatically divergent points of view.
My point here is that, in an ideal America, the focus on those policies that promote the good for all people—with the specific understanding that no one is going to get everything they want—our lawmakers should be able to improve our lot. No one said it would be easy.
Draining the swamp has to mean, on the one hand, identifying the self-seeking the power-grabbing grifting and corrupt, and on the other, voting in reasonable politicians who know how to listen as well as rant, and compromise. The world is too complex to allow narcissists and ideologues to reign.
My mindset as a liberal, is that it is important to be able to undergo the thought experiments that put me in someone else’s shoes. Examples: a couple unable to have children imagining the plight of a woman suffering the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy; an upper middle class family hit with monthly copays of thousands of dollars for the life-saving chemo treatments for the major breadwinner. Whatever happened to “compassionate conservatism”? Our public education sure doesn’t foster this kind of analytical compassionate thinking. Maybe a new wave of reality TV series can jumpstart it.
Dear Mr. Douthat; You are giving a bit-player much unwarranted exposure, well beyond his actual significance. I thought by now US journalists have learned their lesson.
This article could come back and bit you, Mr. Douthat in an unpleasant way a few years from now where Mr. Carlson chooses to run for the House, Senate, or even WH! You probably agree that, with all his shallowness and ignorance, he is still more qualified than Trump to be the POTUS!
1
Sounds like Ross has been reading Krugman.
Okay, got it:
Capitalism is the greatest! Except when Fox News says it isn't.
Ayn Rand & Milton Friedman must be twisting in their graves.
Dear God, give these taking heads an once of humility so they can stop the rhetoric of who is the holiest conservative.
Somebody must be in charge and run the country.
Do you care if your pilot is a conservative or not? How about you surgeon? You only pray they know what they are doing so you wont die shortly because of their incompetence.
Amen.
1
What do you call a moderate conservative who really wants to help families, is centrist on the economy, and is hawkish on foreign policy? I would call her Hilary Clinton. Ross, how about you?
The real problem is that as stupid as they are, the alt right has become the cognitive elite of the right side of the political spectrum. Trump understands this. Ross does not.
1
How is what you’re describing not simply the Democratic Puarty?
When an intellectual wannabe takes his cue from the juvenile Tucker Carlson, we are assured that there is no hope for conservatives. Rest in Pieces.
3
That Tucker Carlson has a prime slot on Fox shows how far Fox has fallen since O’reilly and Kelly.
He was washed up years ago when he was humiliated by Stewart on CNN.
Dear Mr Douthat,
I love reading your columns when you flirt with hard left anti-capitalist territory. From real atheism to the family to work. BTW I bought Michel Houllebecq's new novel in the original and it's great!
1
What a melodramatic picture Douthat paints of Republicans! Douthat asks us to believe that conservative elites are “in despair.” They have “leaped to despair without even trying policy.” The discontented rich men are in thrall to a “wrongheaded right-wing counsel of despair.” “The right’s elites” are simply flummoxed by porn, pot, and poker, and “have despaired of censoring” them. The poor paternalists weep over our outcast state, as if they were Parisian existentialists hovering over the abyss! Don’t worry Mr. Douthat, on the smoldering ruins, you can always fall back on stand-up.
1
This is the problem - a legitimate ideological struggle raised despite it coming from a bonafide racist. It speaks to the normalization of bigotry in American politics and the success of the Republican Party.
1
Do you really think Tucker believed that nonesense? It butters his bread, he has no as in zero beli efa. Empty vessel.
1
I come from a family that had voted Republican since before the Civil War, and had a cultural memory of the failure of free-market policies under Herbert Hoover. As a young Republican in the early 1980s, I concluded that the party was simply a sham; it was in reality nothing more than a social contract between the business elite and neo-confederates, with outreach to blue-collar hard-hats. Nothing has changed with the party since then; from Newt Gingrich's Contract with America to the present, what has happened is simply fermentation.
The denouement of such a movement will ultimately be authoritarian plutocracy; Business and the elite get excused from taxation. The government gets used to bust unions. Corporations are free to defraud consumers and sell them faulty or unsafe goods, made in hazardous working conditions. The common people get increasingly squeezed to produce in a rentier and monopolistic economic system.
In an increasingly repressive society, the Republicans would lean upon the white nationalist voting base as an enforcer class. Religions that extol the free market would be imposed (sorry Ross, the Catholic Church isn't one of them), with the others suppressed.
Despite what Republicans proclaim about 'market freedom,' this will come at the loss of basic freedoms for employees.
3
I am still waiting to hear Tucker Carlson or this author to take the honest step of criticizing the 2018 Republican tax scam that exacerbates income inequality and, with the continued attacks on the Affordable Care Act, tells the entire bottom 95% of the income distribution that we are on our own. Our government no longer is willing to invest in us or support us in times of great need.
Remember Paul Ryan bemoaning the low fertility rate? Republicans are clueless - if individual families know that they must bear every single risk of parenting (including the risk of bearing a child who may be unable to ever support herself and will be uninsurable as an adult...well, DUH. Fertility will continue to fall. It is not ALL about wages.
And please stop elevating Tucker Carlson based on one insight that he says has JUST now come to him, that "culture" is influenced by economics. Remember he still blames "feminists" (a term he uses very loosely, much like a dog whistle) for the breakdown of the American family. Good lord.
9
Perhaps the despair follows on from decades of republican mythology declaring small government and low taxes as the only possible solution for social problems. Lo and behold, when after awhile it is clear that is rigid and narrow ideology is nonsense and in service to the super elite, coupled with a diminished conservative intellectual class lacking the capacity to actually think outside of orthodoxy, plus a commitment to make sure government actually fails (lest the mythology be proven false), well, despair makes sense.
1
Apparently, it's back to the future for conservatives. In a column last week David Brooks rehearsed an argument mildly critical of free markets that was first made almost four decades ago by neoconservative intellectual Irving Kristol. Kristol's book was called Two Cheers for Capitalism --only two and not three cheers on account of the free market's subversion of traditional values. Now Ross Douthat picks up on the same theme, inspired by Fox News savant Tucker Carlson.
Douthat, an old fashioned social conservative, has his claws out for the libertarian right, which he accuses (not unfairly) of loving free markets more than family values. He would have his conservative brethren remember that state power can be a force for good, so long as it's wielded by right-wing paternalists and not left-wing social justice warriors. No doubt he dreams of reinstating the sort of morals legislation disavowed by civil libertarians on both sides of the partisan divide.
But Douthat gives a populist tinge to his defense of paternalism. Free markets (read cosmopolitan globalists and financiers) have pursued profit where it was to be found, without regard for the common weal of the nation. As a result, ordinary working men and women were left hung out to dry --until they found a faux champion in Donald Trump. Douthat plays the populist economic card only to gain ground in the culture war, indulging in a little trash talk about free markets in order push his traditionalist agenda.
3
Ross apparently thinks that the billionaires running the GOP: Mercers, the Kochs, the Uihleins, the Spencers, the Adelsons, the DeVos, ... suffer from a lack of understanding of conservative principles. Maybe they do, but these are not their principles, not what they are pursuing. They are aiming for an Oligarchy to replace Democracy and install a privately run, extremely self-centered dictatorship.
5
Conservatives problem is not merely their incoherent attitude towards monetary policy. Instead it’s the complete and utter lack of anything remotely conservative in anything they stand for. In fact they don’t really stand for anything much at all, and in the absence of ideas there is only the long con left.
In the absence of any actual ideas, they approach everything as raw politics of the moment. Keep evangelicals on board by convincing them liberals are godless atheists while using prosperity gospel to equate wealth with godliness. Keep working class whites on board by telling scary tales of brown people coming for their jobs and to kill them in their sleep. Ravage the environment for short term profit and leave the mess to your grandchildren. When was the last time conservatives actually had any new ideas?
We made fun of the first president Bush about being prudent, but where did that conservative value go? Read Reagan’s words at the Berlin Wall, all of them. It was a long fall from Reagan to Ryan as ideas man and visionary. Today conservatives only remember Reagan’s daft ideas like supply side economics and have long forgotten his embrace of freedom, liberty, and the welcoming shining city on the hill.
2
Tucker Carlson's ideas - to the extent they can be called that - cannot be separated from his white nationalism. This underlies everything he says and does. If you're struggling to understand one of his hateful rants, just think to yourself "how does this advantage white people?" It's his lodestar.
3
How interesting. Decades of conservative thinking abetting greed, racism, bigotry, and inequality are embarrassing a few men who have felt the national zeitgeist shift away from them. Misogyny is still okay, though.
Will things change?
Will Fox stop pushing either vacuous or radical populism, as Douthat puts it? Unlikely on the face of it. It would be enough if they quit chasing conspiracy theories, distorting and ignoring factual news, and giving airtime to liars.
What about those legions of Republican voters who've grown old on a rich diet of lies and slander about people of color and immigrants, who've been taught to fatuously mimic GOP talking points about small government while they live on federal dollars (e.g., farmers). How will they unlearn the grievance politics of white-ness?
Can evangelicals go back to god after they've sold their souls to Trump? Yeah, their god is plastic when they need him to be, just not for women and gays.
And the thinkers. Many get their funding from the corporations and billionaires for whom modern conservatism is structured. How will the oil and gas boys respond? Or will "new" conservatives just fool around with family life and remain anti-climate change and hostile to the environment?
"Reformcons" once tried to change thinking without much success. But now there's fear of being booted into the chill of political irrelevance, so, my goodness, the "conservatives" are thinking hard.
3
Oh. I thought Ross was going to write about Carlson saying immigrants of color were dirty people. Or the FBI persecutes conservatives that criticizes them, so fear the FBI. No, Ross takes the easy way out. No surprise.
2
He’s a no nothing bobble head on the fake news network. Listening to anything he says makes no more sense than trying to discern the secrets of particle physics by going to the newborn nursery.
The article started interesting and then ended weirdly talking about cultural matters (casinos, porn, etc.). What made the Fox guy’s comments interesting was the discussion on the issue of living wage, and economic stress which is breaking the back of the working class in the U.S.
I think it’s probably too early to think of a genuine working class political movement, but the potential is there....The current populist trend has to much of a racialist element attached to it.
Douthat, Carlson...vaudeville clowns bickering backstage at a closing show. Cheesy actors one gig away from infomercials for Amway.
All that's amusing is that the conservatives who failed to conserve conservatism still presume that they speak for it.
1
"But in hindsight this was wrong, the feared inflation never came, and the economic recovery was slowed because of the Republican fixation on tight money. "
You've forgotten: the president at that time was black. Don't pretend it was 'tight money,' Mr. Douthat, Republican money only gets tight when it seems someone not white or male might benefit. Republicans gush tax money when it will end up in their own or donors' pockets.
The notion that the GOP has beliefs, ideas or convictions is utter nonsense. That myth suffered a mortal blow in November of 2016 and died as craven Republicans flipped on every single stand they'd ever taken, excepting only their racism, homophobia, xenophobia and misogyny.
Tight money. Spare us, huh? Just stop it, we know what the Republican Party is, we know what conservatives are, and unlike Trump voters we don't swallow lies.
4
Conspiratorial socialism? That's the false name given by the powerful owners and managers of the political economy to the factually true reality that it is they who own and control the political economy.
How is it we the people can pull ourselves up by the bootstraps when the oligarchs and plutocrats retain the resources by which to accomplish such a feat? Self reliance indeed!
Forever is how long the lie has been told by these powerful bosses that we the people exaggerate our misery, and they say we blow it out of proportion to deny how bad it is and thereby justify doing little or nothing about it. They also know they are the haves, and don't want us blaming them for our having not. What Gall!
What is it with these mean minority few who in lieu of Noblesse Oblige, blame us over and over for being lazy, reckless and responsible for our poor welfare. How is it such vast numbers of the citizenry can be such utter losers? Really, is America comprised of the lamest stock on earth, because that is exactly what they are and have been saying for a very long time.
Oh, but who can deny capitalism's fruits? Capitalism is the world's greatest invention ever, it's the most efficient system for sluicing the wealth off our backs and pooling that wealth into the holdings of the very few <1%. There can be no doubt that capitalism is a great success for taking the ecology, turning it into the economy hammer and tong, then scatting the waste out onto the earth for the benefit of the few.
3
Tucker Carlson should be regarded as a conservative intellect whose opinions are worthy of discussion only if you actually believe that FOX "News" was ever "fair and balanced".
Mr. Carlson headlines for a propaganda machine that has been producing bile, nonsense and conservative tripe for its gullible viewership since the late 90's. FOX is materially complicit in the intellectual and ethical rot pervading the U.S. political system and personified by president Donald Trump.
When the insanity of the Trump era finally passes, the "conservative" talking heads who enabled this disaster will reside in history's dumpster where they belong.
4
The right has "despaired of censoring pornography...casino gambling...and commercialization of marijuana?"
The "right" - Republicans now, Dixiecrats earlier - are a collection of Confederates, rubes and thieves. In 1919 they succeeded in criminalizing a far larger moral failing of the public: the Volstead Act, which outlawed alcohol and made the word safe for organized crime.
Maybe, as good libertarians, they should just leave us all alone.
4
So Douthat is now willing to offer up, say, subsidized day-care in return for outlawing abortion or banning medical marijuana?
In what other industrial democracies are such bargains even conceived of?
Is doing the decent so hard, you need to take a hostage?
3
What "left-wing overcorrection" are you talking about? How about an example. (And no cherry picking absolutely marginal notions.)
Your critique of "conservatism" is everything we Dems have been saying since Reagan. I'm shocked, but you and Tucker seem finally to be catching on. Why don't you just come over to the light and become a Democrat already?
The word "Conservative" corresponds to no platonic form.
"Conservatism" is a word; it's meaning is its use in the language; its use is part of a form of life; and the form of life it supports is one where the born wealthy have all the power, and all wealth beyond mere subsistence for the labor force . . . to the detriment of the families "conservatives" pretend to care so much about.
Just admit you have been wrong about nearly everything your entire life and confess the damage you have done to your country. and to the country's children. Meditate on the Gospel of Matthew regarding children. That should be penance enough!
3
Douthat makes the same mistake over and over again in his columns.
He talks about conservatism and economics and its "failure" to portect the "working class." There are many "working classes" in America...white, brown, black, Asian...Douthat of course uses the umbrella "working class" to mean white working class.
The vast majority of the other working classes have overwhelmingly rejected the Republican agenda.
So, Ross, from here on out please make a note to be more specific and targeted when writing columns such as these. And understand that the elephant in the room for the white working class is often, sadly, not economics, but a barely veiled racism.
Thus you have Steve King supporters...white, working class, anti-coastal liberalism.
1
Ross, this would be an easier read to embrace if Tucker Carlson had a shred of credibility in the real world, but he doesn't, which really undercuts the thesis of your piece. There are better broadcast media personalities to make your point. Carlson is Exhibit A of what's wrong with the country.
2
If anyone believes that conservatives and the Republican party care about the working class, I know a DT casino you can invest in.
3
Thank God the US interstate highway system was built before the Tea Party and their spawn came to the fore in GOP politics.
I saw a tea party personalized “Dont tread on me”tag on a car driving up interstate 95 the other day with “Guv Out”. I was thinking, if you feel that way be consistent and don’t drive your car on a highway funded by the federal governments largest infrastructure project ever.
Tea party folks like Carlson talk the talk but won’t drive the drive
4
One last time (or one more time), what is a "conservative"?
Here's what conservatism has never recovered from -- Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner on an electric guitar. The symbolism of that eye-opening performance (e.g., Woodstock, a black man, electric guitar, national anthem, etc.) said so, so much about the coming shift in the historical, traditional views of America.
3
The modern GOP is a disgrace. I disagree with conservatism generally but once had respect for where conservatives were coming from. Modern conservatism, at heart, is all about selfishness and bigotry of one form or another. Republicans need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
4
Aside from the fact that I generally despise HOW conservative policy attempts to influence outcomes, I was following Ross for most of the way. Republicans were absolutely wrong on tight money. They were also wrong to deny Obama an infrastructure spending package. Even a compromised one.
I generally agree a family wage is a desirable outcome. The 21st century nuclear family isn't going to resemble "Leave it to Beaver" but the idea is sound. "Family wage" is essentially a conservative euphemism for a functional middle class of any variety. A middle class neo-politicos on both sides have spent 40 destroying.
Coherent family organization is a function of economics, not culture. All cultures have certain familial structures. However, economic security and stability are responsible for keeping these structures intact. A point conservatives have consistently ignored. I could write you an essay on this subject alone.
I really came off the rails when Ross started talking about private virtues though. Cultural puritanism flies directly in the face of the economic liberty conservatives have spent decades defending at the cost of average American prosperity. If you ban internet freedom, internet users will simply abandon the American internet for Europe. As we've seen for a century, black market marijuana isn't going anywhere either.
These are ideas public policy can't heal and government shouldn't even try. It's not your place. Stick to family wages and the family will deal with it.
1
As a former Republican, I often wonder what the party now represents. I'm not sure what 'family values' means when you acquiesce to the creep of vices of all forms. And I'm not sure what 'fiscal responsibility' or 'small government' mean when Republicans get in power and blow an even bigger hole in the budget than the Democrats.
I guess the party stands for tax cuts, nativism and deregulation. But these three political pillars do not tend to help working class people. Broad-based tax cuts tend to help people who pay the most tax. If you're in the bottom half of wage earners, you pay little to no federal income tax. Since that figure is the headline-grabber, politicians focus on it, but reductions in that rate do little to aid the poor.
Protectionism disguised as nativism is distinctly un-Republican. Republicans used to know that free trade creates jobs, that increased trade is good for the economy, and that a strong economy is good for workers. But those principles rely on companies and economies looking after all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
This is why regulation is required for a healthy economy. Regulations are necessary taxes on the system to ensure market participants don't gain so much power that they monopolize it and stymie innovation and competition. Competition is the lifeblood of progress.
The current conservative platform seems to be predicated on parochial understandings of these issues which is why their policies so often fail the poor.
355
@Souvient I had to file a pay income tax even when I earned minimum wage in the 1970s. I've never married or had kids; I did not get any earned income credit. I won't argue that I paid "little" income tax, but I didn't bring home $100 a week in those days and I could not afford my own apartment until I got another job that paid 60 or 70 cents more an hour.
I'm still working-poor, I still do not get any earned income credit and I still pay taxes.
17
@Souvient thanks for coming over to the side of the good and forsaking the side of the evil.
13
@Souvient. I have made these points and others to my friend, who describes himself as economically Republican and socially Libertarian, to no avail. He continues to respond with comments that come to no conclusion, that remain in the sphere of ambiguity and that remain morally and ethically “above the fray.” I know this person for many decades and on a person to person basis he has literally been supportive of more individuals than I have been, but on a national policy basis the philosophy of the Right is destroying the economy and the democracy and yet he cannot bring himself to utter the words that show he understands.. And my friendship now is strictly intellectual and at a distance.
17
Can we stop the nonsense about populism.
While some on the right may now say that it was elites who sold the working man down the road, they don’t advocate for unions. Nor were they saying this when it mattered. So no one in the mid 1970s said that the closing of machine shops along the Great Lakes was the sign of a disaster for the working man. Nor did they say much in the 1980s as manufactures began to close factories in the US in favor of production in Mexico or elsewhere. If anyone said anything, it was Democrats.
Carlson certainly was too young to have spoken in the 1970s but he is well educated and given that he pretends to be interested in policy one would think he would do some reading about the history behind policy.
In fact, it is hard to control the forces that move an economy, so the present may have been inevitable. But if so, what policies would make it easier for workers? Well, one idea that would help would be subsidized day care for the children of workers - especially poorly paid shift workers from diner waitresses to stock clerks at Walmart to house painters and maids. Then they need health care and post secondary school for the kids willing to attend such schools. All of this takes revenue and that means taxes.
But from Tucker we get nothing. Nor from Hannity or Anne Coulter.
Oh, yes they give us a wall along the border with Mexico.
298
@Terry McKenna Very good comments. You should be writing columns for the NYT in place of some like Mr. Douthat who I seldom read.
In your third paragraph, you say "it is hard to control the forces that move an economy." That is true but most people don't or won't admit it. Much of our economy is the way it is because of economic forces and technology. Shipping and communications are easier and cheaper than ever; computers and robots are getting smarter everyday. These factors head us in the direction of globalization and automation. We can't stop these changes but we should do what we can to help the people affected. You give some examples with day care, health care, education. We could do a lot to help people in poorly paid jobs and help the laid off and left behind who need retraining or more education. Why can't the worlds richest country have a rational, affordable health care system that covers everyone?
You are also correct that we won't get anything useful from Hannity or Coulter. The right is afflicted with grifters who have found an honest grift. Good examples are Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh, Newt, and others who have made fortunes telling the Fox and trump faithful what they want to hear. They have no ideas or insights about real problems and don't care about finding any solutions. They just want the viewers to keep viewing and buying books, etc. They want to keep having a good payday.
84
@Aubrey
The country is being run by a quartet of right wing nonsense. The members of this quartet are:
Limbaugh, Coulter, Ingraham, and Hannity.
20
@Terry McKenna
Very well said!
7
If there are any genuine conservatives in America, they sure are keeping a low profile.
Many people who call themselves conservatives do not espouse traditional conservative values such as the centrality of family and community, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, equality, protection of our environment, fairness, respect for others, sustainable living, personal responsibility and so on.
Instead "conservatism" has become a flag of convenience for a plutocracy with all of the nasty consequences we are now witnessing. No genuine conservative would have countenanced the destruction and hollowing out of the working and middle classes that has occurred since 1970.
It would be good to have a genuine conservative party in the USA again, now that the Republicans have gone rogue.
322
@Frank Bannister: Watch MSNBC if you want to see what real conservatives and ex-Republicans are saying every day.
11
@Frank Bannister
"Many people who call themselves conservatives do not espouse traditional conservative values such as the centrality of family and community, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, equality, protection of our environment, fairness, respect for others, sustainable living, personal responsibility and so on."
From where I sit, you seem to be describing Democrats. We all want the same things. Sadly, some folks want to keep it all for themselves; others want to share some of the wealth with others.
12
@Frank Bannister Quite honestly the identity politics and "kill em" if they don't observe political correctness keeps most conservatives quiet.
Modern conservatism was not formed in the 70s as response to inflation. It was formed in the late 50s and early 60s as a violent reaction to the civil rights movement. Barry Goldwater worked in the backwaters of the Senate until the South rallied around his 'conservative principles' of States rights and Individual liberties. The GOP codified the outright racist messages until they got people like David Brooks and Ross Douthat to think that there really is a unifying set of lofty principles that define their party. But the truth is ugly and belies the mythology of the self deluded.
No Republican can speak of economic freedom when they vote for policies that push the majority of Americans toward poverty while spinning the debt out of control.
10
@GP...wish I could like this a hundred times.
2
Exactly right. You would need to be a good 60 years old to understand this, or at least a dedicated, objective student of American history. I guess it’s normal for Carlson, born in ‘69, and Douthat, born in ‘79, to focus on their periods of political awakening as the most important, but race is still at the very root of the Republican party. No one is differentiating between “true Conservatism” and Republicanism anymore, as much as Douthat, Brooks, Will, Carlson, etc, wish it were so.
“But in recent decades, the right’s elites have despaired of censoring pornography, acquiesced to the spread of casino gambling, made peace with the creeping commercialization of marijuana, and accepted the internet’s conquest of childhood and adolescence.”
In recent decades, the right’s elites so demonized government and its resources, i.e. taxes, “vice” became the go-to funding source. That way, the “virtuous” go unscathed, while promoting actions of which they don’t approve to save a buck.
2
A conservative saying something good about unions? Be still my heart. And here I thought right-to-work laws were intended to destroy unions. Conservatives promoted them for decades. They're not just some recent aberration.
“There are wounds that public policy can’t heal.” True, but they don't include the wounds produced by cancer or heart disease. So how about a word in favor of universal healthcare? Few things are so effective at permanently wrecking a family's finances than overwhelming medical debts. Mr. Douthat wants to preserve families? Here's his chance.
Mr. Carlson is concerned about "protecting normal families." Normal families. I wonder what kind of abnormal families he thinks don't deserve protecting. (Actually, I'm pretty sure I know.) Does Mr. Douthat want a return to "proudly paternalistic" conservatism? Conservatives are as paternalistic as ever when it comes to gender norms and the rights of women.
"Is there really nothing conservatives can do to address the costs of child care,.. " Why there is. It's nothing mysterious. You pay for it. But you can't have a strong social and safety net and have vast tax cuts for the wealthy at the same time.
Mr. Douthat is certainly right about restoring an economic foundation for families. But to finance that will require massive redistribution of wealth, a reversal of what has been happening at least since Reagan took office. And that conservatives of any stripe are unwilling to do.
490
@writeon1
We desperately need redistribution in tax policies and public services, but also in the kind of policies proposed by Elizabeth Warren to allow people currently on a downward trajectory to earn living wages and live in housing they can afford.
28
Can you find one example of redistribution of already existing wealth that has made society better and people happier? The theory of Robin Hood sounds appealing, but once the huge percentage of people who find that they are considered rich and have to part with their earned wealth, the cry goes out to hang Robin Hood. It certainly will help to set up rules so that future income is improved for those with little wealth (and union wages would help here), but taking it from "the rich" to give to "the poor" can only be done in a totalitarian society, and always leads to mass resentment and failure (Venezuela) @Betsy S
1
@writeon1
"Does Mr. Douthat want to return to a proudly paternalistic conservatism?" Yes he does.
11
Carlson is channeling Pat Buchanan. Buchanan believed strongly in the traditional family and understood that in order for Dad to be the breadwinner-patriarch, and Mom to stay home, run the household, and raise the kids, Dad had to earn what we call a "family wage." Carlson has arrived at the same point. Economics is the servant of a religous vision of family structure and male authority. The theory behind Reaganite conservatism (what a European leftist would more accurately call neo-liberalism) is that the unfettered market would produce that family wage. It doesn't because in a global economy the American and European working man is competing with people who will do exactly what he does for much less money, and the free market is moving the work there and driving wages down to global levels.
The populist reaction, I'm afraid, is what should be called "national socialism" except that someone has already used the term. The difference between the populists of left and right is in who the social community consists of. The left is color blind; the right demands the same kind of communal solidarity, but only within the chosen community. In the American context, it means protection for the white working man and his family only.
9
Mr. Douthat implicitly concedes an important point. Republicans don't really believe that their sole policy objectives, tax cuts and deregulation, benefit everyone, despite rhetoric to the contrary. They pursue these objectives because they don't think that more obviously egalitarian policies will be effective. Stated another way, if the house is burning down, take what you can and get out. Or, if you can't save others, then save yourself.
The problem is that this approach amounts to anarchy. No one wants to preach anarchy, and therefore those who hold these views, including many of our wealthiest and most powerful individuals, need to lie and distract continuously. And thus you have the Trump presidency and the modern Republican party, which is barely more than an organization committed to the exploitation of the majority and the pillaging of society.
Republicans have given up on the promise of the American experiment. The only question is whether their nihilism will lead to their self-destruction. Watching the party rally around the inhumane monster in the White House, I really wonder.
11
@CD In Maine...I agree and many of us share this view...the implications are terrifying unless enough of us vote to hold to replace with lawmakers committed to pursuit of happiness for all. These are cynical times.
1
In the late 1970's and early 1980's I was a left wing activist working on utility bill issues and winter-time shutoff policies. I worked directly with a group of Christian-based people who were directly involved in helping poor people get food and clothing so they could use their meager income to pay utility bills. As a secularist I could see that direct help to the poor from small religious groups was admirable but ultimately it let PSE&G off the hook for changing anything about the way it did business.
We met with the local PSE&G management and were listened to with a sympathetic ear. Ultimately, with a combination of non-political sincerity, an appeal to their better angels, and, yes, legislation from the statehouse, PSE&G adopted a no-shutoff policy in winter.
The lesson I learned is that a two-pronged approach is the most effective means to create social and economic change: 1- local community action which directly deals with social problems and 2- legislative action that addresses policy issues. It was both a conservative and liberal approach to solving a social problem.
13
My guess is this is another Fox smokescreen. Has Tucker or Mr. Douthat actually suggested any actual policy change that could help or are these just platitudes? Until these conversations include real steps that could curb the power of oligarchs, (like moving back to a progressive structure, robust antitrust enforcement, campaign finance reform, climate change-environmental policy) I have to stay with the democratic wing even though I am dismayed that the democrats waste so much energy wearing out identity politics.
2
The right hates government (excepting military/war spending and tax breaks for the rich) so the current shutdown is perfect for these guys. As rational as day following night. Packaged cleverly, one can sell anything to the rubes. I.E. Fox Noise. And who is going to pay for it?! I guess NOT Mexico. What a surprise.
1
Sorry, not buying it.
Fox is merely being opportunistic.
Trumps policies, which are Republicans policies, are finally hurting their voters in real time, instead of later, when a Democrat is back in office and they can be blamed.
Fox and other conservatives know the pitchforks are coming for them and they are simply trying to get out in front of the mob.
And seeing Tucker Carlson trying to do an end run around Elizabeth Warren us a joke!
7
Lindsay Graham may be almost as madcap flip-floppy as Trump, but he was lucid on Fox News, February 17, 2016, when he said of Agent Orange: "I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy. I think he's unfit for office. And I'm a Republican and he's not. He's not a conservative Republican. He's an opportunist."
Trump has consistently demeaned Americans and American interests in favor of hostile authoritarian regimes in Russia, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. And he's given no verifiable reasons for his preferences. Does that sound like any conservative in our history?
Since Ronald Reagan, the hallmarks of American conservatism, as exemplified by the Republican party, have been cutting taxes, reducing spending (which the former makes necessary) and "smaller government." Never mind that, beginning with Reagan, our biggest deficit spenders have all been Republicans. At least they talked the talk. Trump manages to speak out of both sides of his mouth simultaneously, cutting taxes only for the ultra-rich, spending money unnecessarily and at a profligate rate, running up the deficit when the stock market is doing well (albeit at workers' expense), and making costly and impulsive Big Government power grabs, whether it's proposing to seize private property from Texas landowners or building border walls where they were previously deemed inefficient. (We do have about 700 miles of barriers, in locations that were chosen for good reasons.)
Conservative? That's laughable.
5
Ross why would you or any other respected journalist analyze and/or compare Tucker Carlson's diatribe on conservation? He's essentially a realty tv host talking up right wing propaganda and in the process lining his pockets with gobs of money. The farther right and outlandish his remarks, the bigger his ratings, and then more money.
I just don't have any respect for people like that, and sadly we have one in the White House.
4
Now Mr. Carlson provides us with the Vichy alternative of "Travail, Famille, Patrie" as the cure for the misery inflicted on the working class by unbridled and unsustainable capitalism. I see Leon Trotsky laughing from the grave.
5
Everyone should be supportive of effective regulation that actually works, and against poor regulation that either doesn't work and/or is otherwise destructive or counter-productive. But unfortunately, for some, particularly on the right, regulation per se is an ideological issue. Removal of regulation becomes inherently a good thing, and introduction of any regulation must therefore be bad. The sainted Ronald Reagan can carry much of the blame for popularising this particularly persistent and insidious form of mass stupidity, I suspect.
1
Conservatives are too trusting of their own instincts to prevent their invariable downfall into hypocrisy and national disaster, which come about when their worst instincts rush to the fore. Thus, we see the bible thumpers and moralistic politicians being exposed for sexual shenanigans and financial malfeasance. Eliminating strict and tough banking regulations lead to the savings-and-loans-type frauds that wipe out people's savings and livelihoods, and the taxpayer foots the bill and nobody goes to jail for it. Its good that conservatives, some of them, are thinking about these things, but I'm afraid the limits of conservative thinking will not allow them to see that conservatism in itself is just a flip side of a socialist utopia.
1
Carlson is 100% correct (usually I think his show is garbage). If Republicans can stop worshipping the financiers and Chicago school economists, they could do some real good.
The Democrats are too much of a mess. They claim they want to help regular Americans, but they’re too conflicted by opposing priorities like global warming and race and gender warfare.
1
@Greg, last time I looked "regular Americans"come in all races and genders and all are in danger if global warming is not addressed. I don't want to make the same mistake you just made by generalizing but I'm gonna take a wild guess and assume you're a white, straight, male who doesn't believe global warming is real.
@Rick Gage
Yeah, because demonizing the straight white man is a surefire way to make society better for everyone. Oh, wait...no it’s not.
And you’re right. I (and millions of other voters like me) don’t believe global warming is real...because it isn’t.
A Fox News personality gets to establish a political platform? The GOP really is hopeless!
3
Very good. If you can’t or won’t try corrective measures, you ought not to be in government. Really, we don’t elect people to cushy jobs only to hear them say there’s nothing we can do. How idiotic! Economic good and bad times come and go in succession and are influenced by K-waves, 50-60 year economic cycles of boom and bust based on disruptive innovation. Our not-so-good times are direct consequence of being at the end of a K-wave that began in the 1970’s. If you want to smooth out K-waves’ effects on society, public policy must be tuned to where we are in the cycle. Neither conservatism nor liberalism are the right solutions all the time.
Ross has become a liberal.
Also shown why we need an honest Republican Party instead of the fraud that controls the Senate and the White House.
1
Carlson wastes a lot of ink disparaging the way Romney made his money; but not a peep about Trump's inherited wealth, multiple bankruptcies, business failures, callous treatment of women and tax evasion. Because Carlson can't bring himself to admit that despite all that, Trump is a hero to him and to other conservatives only because he is the anti-Christ to the holy Democratic triumvirate of Clinton, Obama and Pelosi. Cares about working families? Wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near em'.
5
It sounds like the right has no ideas outside mess with taxes and watch. What public policies will they support, have they ever supported? Last I heard they were all taking a vow to drown government in the bathtub while signing some Norquist petition while making it their mission to make Obama a one term president. All wide-eyed and filled with rage and disgust. Over what? So much for "the family", so much for policy -- just blow stuff up, shutdown, down vote, and dig up dirt on HRC. The last policy the right supported -- in full-throated fist in the air solidarity was "lock her up" Benghazi delirium. I can still see the Trey Gowdy going into a frenzied rage over HRC. No passion about schools, no passion about healthcare, no passion about green space, climate change, clean water, infrastructure -- just get Hillary and the Iranians are bad. Trey Gowdy and that whole crew of hardcores. What's the plan GOP? Just to privatize all public policy and sit back and watch the oligarchs dominate? Some public policy. Lazy too. The market will solve it. Really? This lack of leadership and dysfunctional non-policy has been going on for decades.
5
@PE
thank you!
2
Your leadership hasn’t just given up: they sold out.
2
Ross, you wrote: "policies championed by both parties have failed to promote the interests of the working class" ..
As a matter of evidence-based discourse, do you ever submit your assertions to empirical validation? Have you ever compared annual growth in real GDP p/capita .. or private sector job growth .. or .. recession propensity .. or .. real wage growth for Dem vs GOP tenures, let's say over the post war era since Ike?
Do it .. and when your epiphany strikes you, let us know ..
4
@JH yeah, those assertions of his is to keep his "conservative" credentials, and it's easy to agree with but as you suggest empirically WRONG; the two parties are not the same
1
It’s hard to sort out all of the silly notions that seem to be the underlying power sources of Douthat, but the set that always make me see red concern his notions of family. He appears lost in some 1950s parallel halluciverse where men worked and were paid a living wage, while the women folk stayed home and took care of their 12 kids to the benefit and happiness of all. Sorry, but while it was different, your halcyon days of yore were not better for the vast majority. That’s why we had a Women’s Rights movement, a Civil Rights movement in general and a push to lower birth rates. I wonder what the Ross Douthats of the world think the ideal population of the world is...50 billion? Is stewardship of our planet of no importance to you? When you lean out so far for support that you’re seeing any value at all in anything Tucker Carlson mumbles on Fox News, between his anti-immigrant and other rants, you’re standing on thin air.
2
"Instead it’s an ideological battle over Tucker Carlson’s recent Fox News soliloquy, in which he accused his fellow Republicans of building an anti-family, finance-dominated economic system that might be “the enemy of a healthy society.”
I agree with Tucker Carlson 100% on this account but leaving out equal blame on the Democrats is Tuckers only mistake.
No one should accuse Tucker Carlson of deep thought. Instead, he should be accused of attempting to drive ratings. Unfortunately, Mr. Douthat, you have given credibility where none is due.
2
Who cares what Tucker thinks? He's an unbalanced conspiracy theorist and flagrant racist. He may stumble across some reasonable positions from time to time in the way that an myopic marksman can sometimes hit the target, but this is not a mind that can be said to have strong critical thinking qualities. He's selling Fox brand snake oil that helps fuel the anger and resentment of people who feel left behind by a country that is changing, as is the rest of the world, because of the global stresses of resource depletion, automation and overpopulation. That snake oil has made him a very wealthy man.
1
“Instead it’s an ideological battle over Tucker Carlson’s recent Fox News soliloquy, in which he accused his fellow Republicans of building an anti-family, finance-dominated economic system that might be ‘the enemy of a healthy society.’”
A system, by the way, that Cucker Tarlson relentlessly shilled for. Even now, he won’t dare to admit his own complicity in creating the monster over which he now wrings his hands.
2
My partner, who has taught Social Policy at the graduate level, asked me to take a look at this article, saying she can't make heads or tails of it. I explained that it's just like teenage boys in their personal relations: when caught with your pants down (see first paragraph about the absolute moral and intellectual collapse of anything resembling conservative thought) throw as much pseudo-intellectual dust as feasible at the catcher, in the hope that you can move forward toward at least to an appearance of maturity and responsibility.
Paging Nancy and Chuck.
2
You did not address how the Republicans and should address the racism that is endemic in their party.
2
Tucker Carlson says so much he is bound to hit on a good thought once in a while.
As they say, a stopped clock has the correct time two times a day.
2
I frequently watch Tucker Carlson's program and am a fan. I am also a Republican. He often speaks about the breakdown of the family where few dare to go. He will speak on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage which he thinks has had a negative impact on our society today. Many of his viewers strongly agree. He will have guests from both sides of the aisle and gives each equal airing time. He lets both sides speak and will voice his opposition when necessary.
We like what Mr. Carlson has to say and he is not afraid to speak his mind. His ratings on Fox are some of the highest on television. He says what many of us are thinking but are unwilling or unable to say in public. But some of us do say these things in private. He is our advocate and we are most grateful that someone like him has the courage to speak the truth. He does not care what the liberals think of him and he keeps on telling it like it is. He still has his show and will not be silenced by those who are vehemently opposed to his views.
The left has gone after him with a vengeance. Antifa attacked his home and tried to knock in his door. And yet he still speaks. You cannot keep a good man down. Tucker Carlson will not be defeated no matter how hard his enemies try.
33
@WPLMMT
While I agree it takes a person of courage to speak their principles even when threatened, I have to ask why someone like Mr. Tucker uses his huge platform to attack personal issues that the majority of Americans believe should be protected, but for the most part stays mute on the immorality of Donald Trump.
77
@WPLMMT: Your comment is a good example of what's wrong in America. We have a population of about 350 million. Yet only about 2 million watch Fox and, depending on the night, maybe 2 million watch MSNBC. These are not "News" networks. They are sources of entertainment by Sophists who find a way to gin up their audience without offering solutions----and without acknowledging the reality of American politics: The Founders created a system to foster moderation and compromise. Several of the Founders warned against political parties. And clearly they had no idea about mass communication in the electronic age and how it may impact politics. All "pundits", even Tucker Carlson, can make good points from time-to-time---but there is no "silver bullet" or "left/right solution" to America's problems. Until we turn off our televisions and start talking with one another and our politicians develop a moral backbone, shed their naked self-interest, and value listening and compromise, the America as envisioned by the Founders will continue to suffer. To me, it's that simple.
57
@WPLMMT I still have to wonder how Fox operates as a news station when their license is for entertainment. What is the difference in licensing?
34
As a liberal minded guy from the Midwest I feel encouraged by this article.
Getting both parties focused on rebuilding an economy that supports basic family needs whether or not the “bread winner” is male, female or both is a fundamental foundation for keeping our country strong and moving forward.
I’m personally a “conservative progressive” I believe in the core values of our country and strong families, but don’t want to live in the past.
As Atlas Shrugged reading her other works, Ayn Rand wove a fictional mistopia where a few brilliant men are the essence of all that is Great in the world, the Ring Bearers of her mythos. (Oh, and one or two women, too.) Oddly, here and there in AS and her other Fountains there are minor appearances by a "Good Worker" as momentary hero, someone who suffers the collectivist onslaught but continues to do their job despite all, the rare brave knight among orcs. That is how she views the working class.
The Right misunderstands working Americans just as much as the Left! Workers understand the value of the work they do when it is good, and know when it is being devalued by higher-ups, Right or Left elites, or government officials. Leaders give lip service to "American Heros", not just soldiers, but police, firemen, and teachers. They tend to overlook mill workers, bricklayers, social workers, IT people, and the multitude of hard-working, frustrated, lower paid but often highly skilled workers who built and are building America every day. These "Good Workers" who make America better.
If your policies and economic models do not help them, in the end they do not help you either. People need a home, food, clothing, education, health, and a health planet,not just endless struggle. Society can do better than 'The Law of the Jungle' if we use our minds to make a better society together, workers and all.
2
The Republicans blocked additional government action to stabilize the economy because they wanted President Obama to fail and be a one term President. Mitch McConnell said so the day of Obama’s first inauguration. With Trump, McConnell returned to traditional Republican policies of big borrowing, big spending, big tax cuts for the moneyed-elite, and big deficits. Historically, one of the early signs of an empire going into decline is when the elite pillages the treasury. MAGA is just another con.
1
How fearless of Carlson to say public policy can be a "corrective". But in the end he can't help himself, and has to offer that the only alternative is socialism. Doubtful that this one new adjective, which Ross seems to like, will reverse years of convincing Fox viewers that most government is bad, even as they collect their social security checks and medicare treatments.
4
The explanation for why the GOP hasn't pursued any of these policies is simple: the party's no longer interested in policy - merely power for power's sake.
3
Just for the record:
The first example you site that conservatives were so afraid of inflation that they worked to enforce austerity in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse is a ruse.
They were hateful of an African-American president and were willing to throw the entire country under the bus in order to undermine him - as Mitch Mcconnell promised- that republicans focus on making Obama a one-term president.
The proof is in a later sentence where you admit their "dovishness toward inflation". Yeah, they're dovish toward inflation when their rich donors are getting a colossal tax break, but when it comes to helping the average working man and woman in this nation they have nothing but contempt.
American conservatism is intellectually bankrupt!
6
"Modern conservatism was forged in the crucible of the 1970s inflation crisis, and in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash many conservatives were convinced that there was nothing the Federal Reserve could do about the vast army of the unemployed without touching off a similar inflationary spiral."
This is a bad faith arguement. "Conservatives" (really partisan Republicans) made a strategic decision to oppose everything President Obama tried to do, whether it was good for the country or not, in an admitted attempt to make him a one-term president. For the author to pretend otherwise, that their actions were driven by policy, is a disgrace.
8
Carlson's critics say he "ignores capitalisms fruits?" Working class Americans don't get capitalisms fruits save for the putrid rotting heap at the bottom of the barrel.
Stop pretending, Ross. Movement conservatives are not only without compassion they aim to destroy democracy. If you want a better country build a better party. Tucker Carlson? Please.
3
My criticism of this article and Tucker Carlson first ask the question how do you watch Donald Trump mouth nonsense without breaking into laughter? Second, GOP conservatives including Evangelicals foisted Trump off on this nation and the world as the best of an elite field of candidates. And finally, Trumpism based on nativism, xenophobia, misogyny, white supremacy, trade wars and rewarding the donor class destroyed the party of Lincoln.
Policies like healthcare, immigration and infrastructure found the GOP controlled Congress and unwilling or incompetent partner. Center right Republicans left the party along with their voters in 2018. The weed in the garden grew into a virulent all consuming strain choking the life out its host.
Carlson, a member of always Trump choir, views reality and facts as malleable, the Conway view of alternative facts. Revival of conservatism and the GOP relies on leadership that is nowhere to be found. No one focused on a positive vision of the future based on the facts on the ground.
Simply repudiating Trump does not address how his followers find a new home. As a clue, it is not Mitt or Ryan.
2
"...the feared inflation never came, and the economic recovery was slowed because of the Republican fixation on tight money."
So, Paul Krugman had it right all along?
C'mon, you can say it. A little louder, please.
3
Fox News is merely a business to monetize Middle America angst. Till now, the angst was cultural and FN was a good culture warrior. On the flip side, they sold pure Capitalism and hands off government as panacea. “The scariest thing is someone saying, ‘I am from the government and I am there to help’”. So fantastic was this propaganda that even the first-responders, the very backbone of the government, was buying this nonsense.
The problem was the Republican Congress driven austerity of the Obama years led to this “Middle America” being squeezed. The usual tack - used to paint Blacks in inner cities - of being lazy and lack personal discipline, cannot be be used to paint white rural Republican voters. They would leave Republican party en masse.
Fox News understands they need to reverberate the middle America angst. They are taking baby steps in questioning the economic model sold by Republicans. They want Middle America tune in. It is a pure business decision.
4
I'm a liberal, but I agree with most of what Douthat has written here. I had hoped that Trump's victory was sparked by working class outrage over New Right and neoliberal policies that favored big donors and corporations over most Americans. Unfortunately, this is what I've seen from Trump's so-called base, which appears to be about 1/3 of America: ignorance, intolerance, anger, evangelical Christianity masquerading as righteousness, and the willingness to believe every lie Trump tells. I'm frightened more by Trump's supporters than by Trump, who's always been an unethical, self-aggrandizing buffoon, but now, he's in a position to destroy our nation, and the Republican Party acquiesces to his every madness. Are there any intellectual conservatives who matter anymore? Are you calling Tucker Carlson an intellectual? I've watched him as much as I could stomach, and from what I saw, he's a hate-monger, too. How can conservatives reconstitute themselves into something not hateful? A good start would be if Fox News went off the air. Mr. Douthat, I wish you had some influence over whatever conservative thought is these days, but I am afraid, truly afraid that you don't.
1
Cutting taxes is a cure all for all ills.
I guess this matters on the right... surprises me slightly that anyone thinks anything he says is worth debating.
1
You give this right wing talking head from an ultra privileged upbringing a lot of credit for being a brilliant thinker, yet when I've seen him on TV his mouth is often agape, like he's at a loss for words or just doesn't get it.
2
One example of how public paternalism could have encouraged private virtue is the ginormous missed opportunity in the corporate tax cut. We the People could have laid a new set of ground rules for corporate pay and governance, with only those corporations satisfying the new standards granted the 21 percent rate. We could have limited maximum compensation to a few hundred times minimum compensation, as one example. Labor could have had a place on public corporations’ boards, as another.
My only other comment on an otherwise thought-provoking column is that Tucker Carlson’s “normal family” is a dog whistle — a clear message of discrimination that should have been called out as such.
2
Tucker is just Reagan conservatism extrapolated to its inevitable conclusion.
Kudos to Douthat for finally keeping the debate within the confines of the right rather than eloquently straining to rationalize its faults while projecting its worst transgressions upon the left.
This is one of the oddest opinion pieces I have read in the NYT. It seems oblivious to the fact that the Republican Party is now fully and completely the Party of Trump. No one cares a whit about "principled" conservatives debating the fine points of internet porn censorship or the legalization of marijuana. The only "conservative" cause that matters now is the vicious struggle to preserve a post-War, White, working-class lifestyle that is quickly crumbling under the pressure of relentless economic and demographic changes.
Tucker isn't fighting conservatism. He IS conservatism.
Tucker Carlson is an opportunist, first and foremost. His move further to the Right over the years was a result of his more moderate Conservative persona wasn't drawing much attention his way. Basically, he is recycling the scam of "Compassionate Conservatism." It didn't happen under Bush and it won't happen in practice in any Republican Administration. The GOP is in tatters. It might very well disappear in the next decade.
In the first place, Carlson has a lot of nerve kvetching about the laissez-faire capitalism that got him raised as an heir to the Swanson frozen foods fortune and established his current net worth at around $16 million buckadingdongs.
In the more important second, what neither he nor Douthat can seem to bring themselves to notice is that capitalism is inherently corrosive of every...single...human...value. Marx was right; Schumpeter was right; Jesus was right, if you prefer that guy.
You cannot tweak capitalism and get this or that moral society. What you get is capitalism.
These guys always try the same move: somewhere around 1938, we got off track, and them Family Values started declinin’.
Were they there in the beginning? During the Depression? During the development of industrial society? When we smished Indian societies? Back in slavery?
Come on, already. And after WW2, things didn’t mutate because of the New Deal. They mutated because capitalism, like any good virus, blew out of its cellular home and started converting new territories.
I’m not even sure I disapprove, and I certainly haven’t got a practical alternative. But these right-wing have and eat cake fantasies....
Well duhh. As the conservatives dismantled FDR’s New Deal and eliminated the progressive tax structure, dismantled unions and destroyed the very idea that government can help, the middle class crumbled. Tinker around the edges all you want, but there’s still that elephant (GOP) in the room.
2
Though not as thoroughly contemptible as Hannity, Tucker is no bargain.
He invites opponents on his show, only to scream over them and cut them off before they can complete their arguments. Amazingly, many of them smile and say, "Thank you, Tucker."
1
God help we Conservatives if the future is being suggested by this FOX shrill for Trump.
Reality: The government will not have enough money to stimulate spending in the private economy when the next recession hits because the triumvirate of Trump, Ryan, and McConnell passed a .1% tax cut for the rich that ate that future Keynesian remedy up. The next recession will be the equivalent of an economic kill shot that sends most families into financial oblivion. Some Republicans are seeing this and trying to rebrand so they aren't held to account for their greed inspired propaganda. The shape shifting frenzy ahead will be quite a spectacle.
2
Please note that Tucker Carlson has an abnormality.
The average person blinks their eyes every 5 to 7 seconds. Tucker Carlson often goes 60 seconds or longer without blinking once. The extent of this slow blink rate depends on the subject at hand. It's especially noticeable when he is debating a recruited stooge or strawman.
Go to the video tapes.
He's not alone in this abnormality, but his cohorts share some similar characteristics. See for yourself.
Neurologists and other experts, please weigh in on this abnormality.
It’s ALL about the money.
You may have a conscious but most “conservatives” only care about their wallet.
Makeitfair.us; The American Anticorruption Act
Everyone on this comment section seems to understand the problem. The oligarchs have taken over the government. We’re not talking about capitalism or conservatism. We are talking about government by and for rich people.
The answer is to get money out of politics. If rich people can’t bribe the politicians than regular people can make laws that are fair. We need to do away with “campaign contributions” and stop lobbyists from paying off legislatures. It can be done. Come join us.
We understand the problem. Now we need a solution. Take a look at makeitfair.us. Sign on to the American anticorruption act. Become a force for change.
2
Our public policies will not change until we do two things: reduce the excessive amount of money in politics and implement term limits in every branch of our federal, state and local governments. While not the only answers, they address the root cause of many of the issues described by liberals, conservatives and everyone in between.
2
Since the Reagan Revolution, conservatives haven't reflected on much of anything. Instead, they've become captivated by a few simple ideas, especially the notion that taxes are bad. They are also terrified to abandon what they rightly believe is their only possible winning platform: anti-tax hysteria, anti-abortion fundamentalism, a fixation on stacking the Supreme Court, veiled racism, and nostalgia for an America that never really existed.
Mr. Douthat is surely right to reflect on conservative abandonment of real thinking in favor of a fixed ideology, as is Mr. Carlson. But there won't be any movement from this pattern until conservatives lose enough elections to realize their political irrelevance. Those losses may have begun this last midterm election. We'll know for sure in 2020 whether today's conservatism has worn out its utility. If so, conservatives will have to rebuild on top of the wreckage wrought by Trump, no easy task.
2
Tucker Carlson is a Trump-era populist and I'm Marie of Romania.
Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump are not for the common people, Mr. Douthat.
Trump is for Trump.
The few times I've watched Carlson I've noticed that he has a dazed, empty, slightly stupid look in his eyes.
But, don't be fooled. These people on the Right pretend to be for the 99% and continue to pretend that cutting taxes for the 1% will benefit all of us.
As far as the left not doing anything for the 99%, sure, Mr. Douthat.
If it were up to Republicans, every single American would have their Social Security and Medicare cut. Republicans already have voted to repeal the ACA again and again.
Democrats have fought singlehandedly on behalf of all Americans to maintain the social safety net.
Stop with the whataboutism, Mr. Douthat.
1
@V democrats fighting single handed sounds as though they eschew lobbyists or corporate money as street fighters... but its more like they are kind of hand in hand with wall street in their own way...it is not as though this one party has dropped all prepossessions to seek common ground on "behalf of all Americans"... last i checked republicans spent decades prioritizing local/ state politics and the supreme courts while democrats claimed something other... i don't one should be fooled by democrats either...
1
Tucker, Tucker, Tucker...
He showed such promise years ago with that preppy bow tie.
Now he lies in bed with Miss Alex Jones, and all the white supremacist conspiracy cultist, bad mouthing the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice.
Vladimir Putin and all his GRU trolls must be so proud of the Fox News Tucker!
Tucker makes the Soviet Union Great Again.
1
Good grief, first Carlson now you. Hades must be frozen over. About time.
1
"Just about every conservative worth reading..."
... said one elite to another...
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I never watched Fox before Trump was elected, and stumbled across it clicking a link a commenter on an international financial news website posted to show how right wing they are.
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Carlson and The Five are, to put it simply, hilarious in the way they mock liberals. And liberals want to take them down -- badly! -- because the worst thing your ideological opponent can do to you is make your audience think you're silly.
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Like Acosta at the wall this week. Hilarious. Or calling Avenatti "creepy porn lawyer" while he was a hero of the left. How's that going.
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His piece on Comey made me howl.
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If TDS-addled Democrats think TV star Trump, who can't piece two words together coherently, is a horror as a president, just wait until Carlson runs.
Hell yes, Carlson has a point!
The Republican Party has always ignored working people's concerns, and the Democratic Party at the national level has been forced to play the money game in the aftermath of Citizens United.
Trump was and is a huckster, but he won the presidency by at least paying lip-service to "the carnage" experienced by working people across this land. (Well, that and racist fear-mongering.)
The whole country will thrive again when our millionaire representatives start serving the interests of the majority instead of the 1%.
3
Conservatives are the scariest people around these days. "...in the 1940s and 1950s, a mix of government policy, union strength and conservative gender norms established a “family wage” " . Ahhh, another women should be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, no rights, chattel like a mortgage; gays should be in the closet or dead, conservative. By the way Mr Stephen, to quote AOC, you spelled it wrong, it's not "racialized", it's "racist". Some of your points have merit, but the overlay of sexism, misogyny, racism and homophobia is just vile. Quit that talk now.
1
During my 64 year lifetime, the ship has headed away from the good of the people toward the good of the wealth. The argument has been government is the problem and social programs hurt society. Well if that is the case, why doesn't the private sector fix the problem? How can a society that creates the likes of Buffett, Gates, Bezos, and Cook always argue that good times for everyone else are right around the corner? And then when that doesn't happen, the argument is always more for the Buffetts, Gateses, Bezoses, and Cooks. While, as everyone else gets further and further away from where they SHOULD be, any effort at preventing the bottom from falling out is maligned as not helpful. So in light of that fact, the prevailing philosophy is to do what is best for me, the rest be damned, I ask is the way of the Conservative working? When will the yachts lift all the other boats? If all the wealth that society demanded be shared for many years, now is allowed to rise to the top, what do we do to make sure the system is fair? For to give Bezos a dollar and to give everyone else a penny,doesn't seem to be the path to success. If you argue we need more time, I ask if any other aspect of your life, say like an illness, progressed that way...."keep taking this new medicine, I know you are still very ill and feel awful. You need to give it more time", would you just sit there and take it? Eventually you would demand a return to the tried and true remedies of the past.
1
But , hold it the leftist liberals from New York & LA are NOT America ! They disregard and totally marginalize 43 states. Thank God for the Senate and the Electoral College.
You write: If marriages ... and birthrates declined as the family wage crumbled..." You know, if true, this is the first acceptable argument I have met for giving up on a decent family wage.
That is, population growth, say from a million to pushing ten billion, a growth factor of ten thousand, is what drove global warming.
A much smaller population, even with cars, gas, coal-fired power, and other stupidities, would enjoy enduring lower seas, cooler days, and probably fewer hurricanes, droughts, and forest fires.
Our policies should aim for less than two children per parent, accomplished with market and tax-subsidy policy, not with Maoist One Child authoritarianism.
Of course we should give single mothers subsidies to reach a decent living standard. And likewise for traditional and non-traditional families.
However, we need to discourage more than two children by taxing the three-plus parent enough to make the birth decision or better contraceptive behavior a seriously considered concern of lovers.
At the same time, we need to have subsidies to maintain all children, including the third and subsequent offspring, at a reasonable standard of living.
****
PS. You say that the right has given up on censoring pornography, suppressing more casinos, and has accepted grass and the internet's conquest of childhood and adolescence.
So we need some more laws? Weren't you once a kid? Evading legislated purity was one of our main pleasures.
Ditto for adults.
The Tucker Carlson’s concern of failure of family system in Western society is a valid concern in the new global reality. Family is the building block of any society and preservation of the family structure should be the number one policy priority of the government. The elitist policy in the Western liberal democracy supported by both conservative and liberal parties ignored this priority by pursuing market economy that used individual as the element of economic forces. Too much emphasis of individualism created a society where the family support structure collapsed and state became the only support system. This made state to create huge social support system that is inefficient and full of waste and the corporations are taking advantage of this wasteful system to maximize their profits. As a result, the mix of service and manufacturing economy got screwed - today America has 84% service economy. The service economy is always suffered from productivity growth and as a result, workers are paid low and there is no income growth. What we need is rapid shift of of our service, manufacturing mix - change to 60% - 35%. This change will gradually restore the savings and family structure. Let us try to restore American Family to its historic status.
@Kalyan Basu
You make some good points, but your equivalency re individualism of liberals and conservatives is false. However, importantly, it is not totally false.
I'm amazed that Douthat missed that the slide away from 1970s conservatism is actually a hijacking of liberalism in the name of popularism (as Steve Bannon would have us believe). The middle class will succeed when Douthat and Carlson stop preaching as to who is "normal", and rather, help sculpt policies that put more hard-earned tax dollars into tangible public projects that benefit the middle-class, rather than the corporate elite.
1
Definition of Conservative: holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion. Synonyms: traditionalist, traditional, conventional, orthodox, stable, old-fashioned
Definition of Radical: advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social change; representing or supporting an extreme section of a political party. Synonyms: sweeping, far-reaching, wide-ranging, extensive, profound, drastic, severe, serious, major, desperate, stringent, violent, forceful, rigorous, draconian
American conservatives are radicals. We sure jump all over AOC and Bernie, but the GOP has shut down the government, separated families, coordinated with Russians and blown out the deficit - those are sweeping, destabilizing acts.
10
Here we go again with the " gender norms", which to me is newspeak that says women with kids belong at home. I grew up in the "gender norm" 50's Ross, and what that really meant to a lot of families is that the abusive breadwinner (male) ruled like a tyrant and mothers and kids just had to take it or starve. Here is some news for you Ross, working mothers are not going away. We need policies that help support families in the world we live in now, not some supposed golden age that you weren't even alive for.
9
Sorry, a shallow "Tucker the Earnest Bowtied Talker" internal debate is just more manipulation from a party of greedy thieves. And Trump's ascent to leadership of the Republican Party has finally pushed it more quickly toward the dustbin of history. Since government was created by man, the single easiest way for a politician to get a vote was always to promise to lower some ones taxes. Until a large and sustainable majority of American voters stop being conned by that simplistic substitution for governing, the Republican Party will still persist in a view darks pockets of America. However, as the last midterms revealed, Trump, the most transparent Republican con man in modern history, finally awakened a growing majority of voters to the oligarchs simplistic self-serving policy game that has been channelled through mindless Republicans for decades. As these facts continue to flow into the mainstream, coupled with Trump's historically unprecedented levels of traitorous corruption, 2020 promises to be an even bigger Blue Wave for the one authentic political party that has always understood the need to balance the ruthlessness of the free market with common sense compassionate governing, the Democrats. Tucker, Trump, McConnell, and the Paul Ryans of the world have had their 15 minutes of play, the adults are on their way home.
2
The problem with pornography is that conservatives cannot admit they like it as much as everyone else.
No policy can heal that wound.
1
It seems, perhaps looking through rose-colored glasses, that true (i.e. thinking) conservatives, unlike the current crop of mobster / oligarchs running the country, are looking clear-eyed at policies and programs long espoused by the so-called liberal establishment and not becoming apocalyptic. It would be easy to name a quick dozen previously self-declared Republican conservatives who now seem to have had their eyes pried open to the fact that their conservatism has gradually been co-opted by a form of fascism that is underpinned by racism, fearmongering, scapegoating and authoritarian-loving apparatchiks whose economic policies are purposely designed to benefit the fewest people possible. So these neo-liberals seem ready to look squarely at how economic policies, unions, national safety nets, and government oversight of capitalistic overreach can be used to bring about a more “healthy society.” Wow, imagine that! All well and good, until Douthat implies that we need some self-appointed purveyors of morality to “encourage private decency” by passing laws that control private behavior. First of all such laws have been shown to encourage criminal activity - drugs, gambling, and pornography when outlawed go underground and make criminals wealthy. Secondly, we simply don’t need paternalistic, God-fearing, censors to control what we see, hear and think.
4
There's a large space between the policy views of progressives and the policy views of the libertarian/conservative axis. Rather than explore that space for a middle ground, Carlson leaps across the space. For what purpose? Does he actually believe we should adopt polices on the other side of the space? Probably not. I suspect Carlson is telling Trump to return to the populist message of his campaign. No, Carlson isn't telling Trump to actually adopt populist policies; rather, he is telling Trump to talk the talk, not walk the walk. Is that too cynical? Carlson is cynical, his show a nightly exercise in fear, telling the poor souls who watch that America is a scary place and needs an authoritarian to protect them. Carlson is scared alright, scared that Trump can't get re-elected with less than 40% approval, approval by the poor souls who have been watching Carlson's fright night.
2
Conservatives don't give up in "despair." They persistently impose their ideology of economic deregulation and moral overregulation.
1
Nail on the head commentary, and for the first time ever I find myself agreeing with Tucker Carlson. Let’s not get into an argument about normal or all families, that someone on the right is at least acknowledging that public policy, or dare I say it, regulation, should be used to promote a “family wage” is something we can all work with.
2
"Historically conservatism has been proudly paternalist, favorable to forms of censorship and prohibition...paternalism can encourage private virtue."
Really? A return to paternalism (ie the white patriarchy) and the social wars is all that conservatism needs to be relevant again? Society is better off when censorship, prohibition and misogyny rule?
Conservatism, because of the Republican embrace of Trump, is so lost in the wilderness it is reduced to lamenting the likes of Tucker Carlson, an opportunist headlining a mostly fake news network. The populist destruction of the GOP as a conservative party is complete. They are exposed as nothing but political opportunists with their embrace of soft money and exploding deficits.
Conservatism is done. Conservatives just don't know it yet. Trump just accelerated a process already underway before his anarchic administration. Sorry, madmen, the party is over.
3
The Republican Party has made demonizing government their central political strategy for decades. This political strategy was forged during years of suffering as the minority in congress. In power, they roll back regulation, cut taxes, gut departments, and appoint incompetent cronies at every level. This self fulfilling disaster has now left us with a society reeling from tribal resentment and economic inequality of epic proportion. The great irony is the resentment found its champion in DJT and it devoured the party. No doubt they are rethinking themselves.
4
If this were real conservatism - compassion, ethics, strong communities, strong and sensible regulation that focuses on quality of life, fighting for more time with my family - it might actually contend for my vote.
There is no real conservative option like that, because Republicans are the party of hate and greed right now - but maybe someday.
1
So, let me get this straight: maybe the GOP’s decades long war on the main defender of the middle class—labor unions—wasn’t a great idea?
9
Douthat regularly loses me when he says bald intellectually dishonest things like: "...many conservatives were convinced that there was nothing the Federal Reserve could do about the vast army of the unemployed without touching off a similar inflationary spiral."
Conservatives didn't choose inaction out of concern about inflation. They chose inaction because they are genetically opposed to any demonstration that government can be a force for the public good. And that's why this column is gas.
Conservative string-pullers know that if gov't starts displaying its beneficial powers to the masses in one benign area, the masses'll start wondering if gov't efforts where the Cons make their money (like single-payer health care and a government-run green WPA) might also be a good idea after all...
4
Conservatives have taken a sledgehammer to everything that protects people from the ravages of the market. (In fact, you can tell how much an institution tries to help workers and struggling families by the level of hatred it engenders from conservatives. Unions. U.S. Labor Department regulators. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Class action lawyers. Planned Parenthood. ACORN. You name it, if it helps people who desperately need help, conservatives despise it.)
Sometimes conservatives get help from Democrats like Bill Clinton, but usually they do it all by themselves. It's the lying Republican "populists" of the Trump administration that aim to liberate for-profit colleges and payday lenders to ravage American workers; that unleash global financial services giants from the minimal shackles of Dodd-Frank while claiming they're helping community banks; that generate huge deficits by cutting taxes for billionaires and instantly start planning cuts to everyone else's healthcare benefits to pay for it.
And that's what you get whether you choose "Romney conservatives" or "Trump conservatives": all that differs is the style and civility of the lies.
7
What disjointed stuff. First lets get straight that conservative doesn't mean Republican. Republican is two things now, populism and conservatism. Without defining populism (everyone knows what love is but won't accept other's definition), conservatism was political philosophy. Republican is a coalition of sentiments, but mainly represented small business, farmers, fiscal restraint, law, small government etc. The latter has morphed into anti-safety net policy and resentment of affirmative action etc. Populism in the Trump Republican party is all about religion, racist or xenophobic fear for white privilege or fear itself.
So example 1, is about fiscal policy which was technical in 1970 and not so controversial today. Example 2 was about relative change in income disparity between 1960 (union gains) vs today (loss of good jobs) a big problem that needs technical not partisan solutions. Example 3, censorship?
This is a big problem for the Republican party; it no longer has a philosophical basis (small government, anti-socialism) and can no longer ignore the xenophobia etc that it has fostered for votes since Nixon (Southern strategy, anti-union, fear of Muslims) nor the promise to religious (moral majority, anti-abortion). Conservatism should not give up, the voice is needed, but not as a major party, and not as an illegitimate partner with white supremacy populism.
"The most interesting thing in conservative politics right now is not the government shutdown and Donald Trump’s flailing attempt to claim victory while being defeated on all fronts. Instead it’s an ideological battle over Tucker Carlson’s recent Fox News soliloquy...".
Really? That is what's uppermost in mind among the conservative cognoscenti? The nation is being ripped apart by a suspected Russian dupe to whom all Republicans have abjectly prostrated themselves. And right wing chatter is focused on Tucker's contrarian gambit?
Is this an effort to hide Trump and his wreckage in plain sight? Shouldn't the debate begin and end with how Trump turned all Republicans into zombies? Did Carlson have a political lobotomy? Does he have any sense of what working class means? Carlson is out to lunch if he thinks Republicans can even imagine not eating everyone's lunch.
Remember when Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire with Paul Begala and a bow tied Tucker? He gutted both but particularly Tucker for turning politics into a theater of hyper-partisan spin, which got the loudest applause from the audience.
Crossfire was cancelled shortly afterwards.
Tucker continues his political theatrics on his new Fox show. This isn't a debate he's started, Republicans don't debate, they connive and hoard.
Just like his appearance on Dancing with the Stars, Tucker likes showing off his fancy footwork. But it isn't dance. And his rant isn't debate.
3
Look, actions speak louder than words. Every debate about 'Conservatism' or 'Liberalism' breaks down the first time someone acts. Clearly modern conservatism is every person for themselves. It is zero sum, dog eat dog, survival-ism. When President Trump says 'Every nation for themselves.' He does so only because he is the Executive of the chief nation. He advocates every person for themselves because he is in the most upper economic bracket. The fact that Federal employees will 'make adjustments, they always do' shows how Darwinian Trump actually is. So debate away, because all your words are being swept away.
1
The biggest problem with conservatives is the desire for power that completely dominates all their thoughts. The desire to win elections no matter what leads to things like pandering to racists. It leads to pandering to the wealthy. It leads to positions on health care that are completely dictated by the needs of the next election cycle. Maybe worst of all, it makes them all want to speak with one voice - the better to be heard. It is difficult to really seriously consider the issues facing us as a people and a country when working under pressure to win the next election.
American Conservatism is a tug-of-war between its more Libertarian side and its stranglehold by evangelical Christians. You can't hold a discussion about Conservatism without talking about Evangelicalism and how its insularism and rigid social views have turned mainstream people off of the Republican Party. Its impact has literally created a rural, white, regional party and that can't empathize or even talk to 70% of the population. Evangelical Christianity has destroyed the American Conservative movement and the emptiness of its so-called values has been exposed by their rapturous acceptance of the monstrosity currently in the White House.
1
Both parties throw tons of deficit spending at the military industrial complex and no one ever says a word about it.
One conservative pundit moots the idea that maybe some social spending is in the best interests of the country and suddenly all heck breaks loose among the Establishment.
Wake up, people - financialized capitalism is just a dead end.
2
These occasional pre-deathbed confessions by a few members of the world's leading irresponsible political party don't account for much if they don't address the pink elephant in the room - pandering/enabling 24/7 conservative news. Indeed, conservative news is what has this country immersed in its longest government shutdown due to Republican apprehension to dare cross any line in the sand drawn by the likes of Ann Coulter...of all people. Carlson is a card carrying member and equally at fault as the Megyn Kelly's, Bill O'Reilly's and Ann Coulter's. Their brand of fact lacking news that solely panders to personal demons for selfish gain as opposed to the greater good of a properly conducted government has this nation on the brink.
1
What Messrsr Douthat and Carlson now consider to be the ills of public policy or neo-liberalism, they ascribed to moral deficiency of blacks. Beginning in the 1970's through to the 1990's conservatives blamed the breakdown of family structures in black communities on unwed young mothers motivated by welfare checks and the hyper masculinity of the black male not susceptible to constraint. Books like the Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray employed science as justification for the deserved underclass status of African Americans.
It is fascinating to see that fissures in the idealized white family are considered failings of the political economy which can be addressed through other means than mass incarceration and reduced public transfers.
Lest we rest our focus on conservatives, consider the reporting of the New York Times on opioid usage and overdosage. These are rightfully seen as public health concerns, while crack cocaine usage was seen as a public safety concern.
Perhaps the debate within conservative circles and America in general should focus on why when suffering wears a white face it elicits compassionate responses that seek a solution and when the visage is black, the condemnation of the sufferer .
2
@Duzi
And to what can we reasonably attribute the seeming preference of African-American "culture" towards a repudiation of the 2-parent family structure? I think we have 2 choices - the "it-takes-a-village-to-raise-a-child" parenting philosophy supposedly prevalent in African tribal societies; OR the slave markets and other divide-and-conquer programs of pre-Emancipation Proclamation America. Talk about your child separation policies!! And their lasting effect!!
Either way, conservatives and liberals alike have a lot to learn about the "idea" of the family. Again, there are 2 choices of curriculum - Let in as many immigrant families - intact! - as possible from the Catholic countries to our south (and Asian nations as well) and hope that their old world notions of family values can re-inform our jaded society's thinking on the matter; OR adopt the humanistic view, admitting the existence of spirituality but disavowing that spirituality can be organized into hard and fast rules of human behavior.
“There are wounds that public policy can’t heal”, you say.
A lesson many Conservatives, so called, are unable even to contemplate since the tragic Days of Reagan is: "There are many wounds (social, institutional, personal) that only public policy can heal".
The Right, rabid in every sense of the word, full of themselves, contemptuous of everyone who isn't them, has no ability to distinguish between the two and zero interest in trying.
Your bizarre absolutism on issues of personal responsibility being an excellent example, especially if you buy the SCOTUS insanity that corporations are people.
1
Tucker Carlson seems like a complete phony "out for the money" by being whatever FOX wants him to be. When I observe him interviewing others on his show, both his verbal and non-verbal behavior lack sincerity -- and he appears to be staged to insult the interviewees rather than engage in substantive conversation. Tucker Carlson is losing advertisers because he honestly is now so myopic that not even he knows how he appears in this "persona" he has cultivated on tv. I honestly don't know if he ever was a genuine journalist, or not, but at this point, he seems to have sold out any real talent in that area, a long time ago. I think he needs to leave FOX and go into another business. I do not have any respect for Tucker Carlson as either a journalist or as an intellect. I will not miss him. I applaud the advertisers who have left his show. As a viewer, I left a very long time ago.
1
Unfortunately, there's ample precedent for what Tucker Carlson is doing.
Republicans and Conservatives have been undermining and impoverishing working people for over a century. Some now dare to say what everyone else has said forever; that market economies are inevitably shaped by public policy. It's a joke. Republican public policy is defined by exploiting racism to obtain economic benefit for the wealthiest at the expense of everyone else. (The Southern Strategy is one example). However, Carlson isn't promoting "a kind of conspiratorial socialism," he's promoting National Socialism.
Any of Carlson's economic grievances against the wealthy are as inseparable from his xenophobia and racism as the grievances of National Socialists of the past were. Carlson tells his followers that fact-based news on mainstream media is all fake, and he hates the "world's poor," insisting that they make America "poorer and dirtier and more divided." The "world's poor" describes almost everyone who has come to America over the last 200 years.
The only people Carlson regards as clean and unifying are those who arrived wealthy, white, European, and Christian, meaning almost no one.
Carlson's is preaching National Socialism because his economics are inseparable from the same revisionist lies of White Supremacists defining the "Pure American." White Supremacists arrived here as poor and dirty as all other immigrants. They're the most divisive force in the country, but Carlson loves them.
1
Oh Mr. Douthat. How I long for "the middle of the road." Where is it nowadays? Where are the moderates? The moderate Republicans? Are there any left? Or do I find myself an orphan, crying aloud in a wilderness. Surrounded by--by what exactly?
Wild men (and women) on the LEFT.
Wild men (and women) on the RIGHT.
I don't like these people. I don't trust them. But the moderates?
They've gone the way of the pterodactyl.
I'll be frank, Mr. Douthat. I detest the self-proclaimed conservatives more than the so-called liberals.
And I don't propose to cite chapter and verse. But over the past ten or twenty years or more, I have become convinced--
--SOME of these people (some, mind you, not ALL)--
--are as pitiless and uncaring a bunch of human beings as I could find if I searched half a year.
Acolytes of Ayn Rand many of them. You recognize their master's voice in their words. That stony indifference to the plight of the poor--the ailing--the helpless--the disadvantaged--the neglected.
When you talk about "private virtue"--when you talk about the blessings of a sound "family structure"--I'm with you one hundred percent.
But so often, when I read SOME (some, mind you, not ALL) conservative writings, I seem to glimpse behind their fair words--
--the bared teeth of corporate America--
--longing to devour us all--
--and "family values" and "private virtue" be hanged!
Which is why, Mr. Douthat--
--I vote for Democrats.
Sorry!
3
Mr. Douthat has ultimately only feared for our souls. But he’s even more afraid that the Universe’s definition of soul is more encompassing than his own.
2
Holy Moley, Mr, Douthat. "the right’s elites have despaired of censoring pornography, acquiesced to the spread of casino gambling, made peace with the creeping commercialization of marijuana, and accepted the internet’s conquest of childhood and adolescence." Except for the marijuana bit, which has nothing to do with him, and represents reason coming to end that part of the War on (people who use) Drugs, you could be describing the habits and profiteering of DJ Trump. Pornography: Stormy Daniels, check; Casino gambling: Atlantic City, check; the internet and kids: see "the apprentice" streaming now, check. (I guess you forgot TV but its on all media). So... this article explains that it's despair which motivates the continued support of your fellow "conservatives" for Trump.
Tucker Carlson is an arsonist who angers and distracts viewers while the corporatists outsource and automate our jobs while holding down all wages and giving the spoils to their executives and shareholders - trickle down for the people and monsoons for the leaders
1
I see your point, but maybe I can sum it up quicker. There is a disconnect between greed and religious conservatism.
At first I was confused, as it seemed like the writer was operating on the assumption that conservative pundits sincerely want to help the common people, and are not simply purveyors of propaganda intended to reinforce the existing power structure. Which is a cute conceit, but come on, you really would be a fool to think these arguments are being made entirely in good faith.
I had to scroll up and check who I was reading and then, oh, it all makes sense. We're on Planet Douthat.
The decline of working and middle class America isn’t a complicated affair. Americans of all stripes and backgrounds are the primary culprits of it, in their voracious appetite for foreign goods.
The biggest contributor has been the WallMart-ization of the mentality of the majority of American consumers. The overriding concern of these folks is price. They demand that everything be CHEAP. No problem! Everything will be manufactured for you by low cost labor in China. No worries about annoyances like labor or environmental laws, we’ll fill your house with cheap goods at rock bottom prices.
The other mentality displayed is by that of more elite shoppers. Their belief is that little made in America, at least by American manufacturers, is of any quality and certainly lacks any caché as a status symbol. If you ain’t driving a Lexus, you ain’t much.
The bottom line is never ending trade deficits and a huge chunk of American manufacturing and those good paying, middle class jobs gone perhaps forever. The cheap and elite crowds vote with their dollars and their votes aren’t cast for the abandoned American working class.
3
The real point is that ideology does not equal policy. Ideologues can afford to be permanently tied to their philosophies because they have no responsibility to solve an issue and no consequence for the ideology's failures. Policy should be a dynamic amalgam of ideologies, a little of this and a little of that, with some kind of feedback mechanism to promote what seems to be helping. Being all liberal or all conservative is like trying to drive a car by only using the gas or the break.
2
Western civilization's arrogance involves the belief that we are exempt from the cycle of human history: the inevitable decline of the dominant civilization. And what do all fallen civilizations have in common? The arrogant cultural leaders become oblivious to the needs of common citizen. Power and the accumulation of material goods become more and more concentrated in the ruling class while the commoners progress from apathy, to resentment, to anger, to rage.
Capitalism compounds the dominance of the ruling class more than any other economic system in history. The media coverage of Jeff Bezo's divorce involves the discussion of how many billions his wife will get. Billions, not the millions that your common person hopes for when they buy a Power Ball ticket.
So it is not the "finance-dominated economic system" that is "the enemy of a healthy society." Capitalism is just a better system to elevate the ruling class beyond even the dreams of the common person. Rather the enemy of Western society, just like all societies throughout history, is the arrogance and oblivion of the Western ruling class.
5
If one paid attention over the last 11 years (since the crisis of 2008), one would have seen the joining of the populist cause between the right and left populists. They come to it from different ideological roots, but their basic set of goals are aligning over time. This trend is also happening worldwide. One can already coin the new credo: "Populists of the world, unite!".
The problem, of course, is that populism, just like socialism inevitably ends in tears. And for many of the same reasons. And the evil capitalism still ends up succeeding in betterment of the human condition.
Because 100,000 years of sapiens evolution has conditioned us to respond to the basic tenets of capitalism, and fail to respond with human constructed ideologies.
2
Carlson has always struck me as an extremely frail reed in whom to repose any degree of hope or trust. He happened to be short of a good topic for a required essay, & stumbled onto this critique. He will not return to it.
5
"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help"
As Evangelicalism morphs more and more into a political action group, the head will display all the vices of power, and the members will begin looking elsewhere. Traditionally, the comforts of the Gospel ("come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy laden") were attended by harsh warnings not to dismiss poor members without "giving them those things that are needful to the body" (James 2). Now, the rich buy protection from their poorer members by funding a new seminary building, or adding a wing to the church--an old ploy of the Pharisees, who would allow the rich to declare their wealth "donated to the Temple" (for a fat fee) and thus shield their wealth from the poor. Then there is the latest incarnation of hypocrisy: the Megachurch, no more than a religious corporation with mega-salaried presidents, managers, board members, etc., and to protect the Brand: campuses. The orientation and momentum are entirely upward to burnish the Brand, even the "widow's mite." Carlson is unto something. The houses of God have become annexed to the White House, gleaming monuments among piles of human wreckage. The government is here to help, because the Church obviously cannot.
7
No, modern conservatism was formed in the head of Herbert Hoover, in his determined opposition to the New Deal, to any deal in fact in which government would attempt to ameliorate the worst excesses of capital.
If you are against one thing it becomes easy to be against other things until, finally, you are defined by all the things you are against and so that is what has become of American conservatism as expressed by the Republican Party, the party of no and no and no.
The remarkable thing is that so many without education, without resources, without hope of every having anything because they represent generations cemented in place in all ways -- that so many of them buy what the Republicans are selling.
But then mostly that has morphed from being against to blame, to blaming everyone else under the sun for their own failures.
Nope Mr. Douthat, this goes back to Hoover, on to Buckley and then to Goldwater. It did not begin because there were high interest rates in the 1970s. It began and continues in fear, ignorance and a primordial set of beliefs from muck and mirk of reactionary views of history and economics.
18
Interesting ... even fascinating. What emerged to me while reading this piece is that Conservative philosophy is almost wholly constructed around some notion of financial prosperity. In contrast, Progressive philosophy finds its origins in social well-being. Unfortunately, Conservatives and Progressives live in such narrow, mean-spirited, self-righteous worlds that they fail utterly to see that social and financial health are inseparable conditions. They would rather battle each other to the death than find common ground, the only terrain where most of us live.
16
Yes it seems like a catch 22. If you want to believe that government "is the problem" and cannot do anything right - then all those problems that refuse to solve themselves can only be lamented (not solved). That is why so many conservatives simply run around complaining about how all these "other people" are not doing what they should (or doing things they shouldn't).
12
A corrective that "protects normal families"??? Here is the problem with many conservative "solutions." They are aimed squarely at a 1950s vision of a family, one which was never much more than an illusion.
There are no "normal" families. Families only look normal until you get to know them. Real families tend to be messy, they include divorces, and alcoholism, and people who have stopped speaking to each other, and folks that have difficulty keeping jobs, and funerals that not everyone goes to, and children with serious illness, and holidays that don't look like Normal Rockwell. If you're lucky, your family only has a few of these problems, and only now and again.
How about a policy that protects *all* families, in the hard times as well as the good times?
44
"In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash many conservatives were convinced that there was nothing the Federal Reserve could do about the vast army of the unemployed without touching off a similar inflationary spiral."
Ross, please don't insult your readers by adding a gloss of legitimacy to Republican intransigence on the 2008 financial crisis. They knew perfectly well that without quantitative easing and a substantial stimulus, the economy would crater; but they fought it tooth and nail because they knew that if the economy cratered under Barack Obama, it would help their electoral prospects. "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Ringing any bells?
This column, like the soliloquy that inspired it, takes as a given that Republican politicians are acting in good faith, despite 25 years of evidence to the contrary. The singular principle that guides this party was elucidated in 2011, by Mike Lofgren: "By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government come[s] out the relative winner."
54
And even before 2008 we saw this front-and-center. Brownie was no accident - but rather part of a pattern.
If you would eliminate a function of government, you need only:
1. Decapitate - put incompetents in charge and induce the good people to leave.
2. Discredit - use the resulting failures to make your larger what's-the-use point.
3. Defund.
4. Dismantle.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
The root of the problem with "conservatism" is that it not longer exists, a least not in mainstream thought. What is referred to as conservatism is actually the neo-conservatism of jingo-enthralled people. They tend not to understand its roots as Bill Buckley did. American conservatism goes back to the original conservative document, the Constitution. It was based on a contract between the people and the government to whom it gave certain powers, as well as a belief in creating a just and good society. The latter in particular allowed conservatism to craft some careful answers for the social issues so properly raised by Carlson. We have strayed (liberals, conservatives, Democrats & Republicans) far away from those ideals. May I suggest a read as to how we did so: Democracy's Discontent by Sandel.
5
The Carlson debate highlights the impressive, baffling hypocrisy of modern Republicanism. How have they managed to, all at the same time, convince coal miners in West Virginia, evangelicals in Alabama, uber rich elites in New York and suburban parents that they represent each of their respective best interests?
What it demonstrates is that the Republican Party has long ago stopped standing for what used to be “conservative” principles. Instead, it stands for the principle of self-preservation in the face of changing demographics.
You have to give them credit. How they convinced blue collar union workers and poor, rural evangelicals, on the one hand, and Steven Schwartzman, Rand Paul and Sheldon Adelson, on the other, that they are the best choice for each of them is a mystery to me.
24
They became the Party Of Spite, that's how.
Pro tip: If you're looking for an abbreviation to replace the branding statement "GOP," you could do worse.
1
It is nice to hear some of conservatism thinking of trying to build a financial system that is equitable and made to work for people so they can get on with living a life worth living. However I will wait to see if they can do it while also respecting the evolution of the human mind and the post modern and post-post modern consciousness and culture that is inevitably becoming. Or if they will continue to acquiesce to the standard culture war hot air demagoguery that seems to be the life-blood of conservatism now. Something tells me that conservatism will not be able to handle the intellectual and creative rigor needed to live together as families and communities while also respecting and allowing the differences between us. B/c up to now, and especially of late, conservatives have relied on keeping all those different them down and out.
6
I listened to Carlson. It was fascinating seeing Carlson describe the demise of America, how conservatives snapped to attention when it was learned up to and following the 2016 presidential election that there was plight among the middle American, rural voters. (Everyone should listen to Carlson's narrative and listen critically. For example, when Carlson says "normal", he means "white.") What is interesting both here and in Carslon's commentary is the complete absence of any policy idea, unifying or otherwise. Here as it is there, it's just, "middle America is suffering... now we need to pay attention... culture and economics are related... but don't, please, let's do anything that looks like socialism." But kudos to Mr. Douthat for granting that maybe, maybe unions are not not needed. And for granting that republican monetary policies of austerity due to fears of inflation were misguided. I suggest next time he and they listen to a few of the elites. They may know a few things we don't know out here in middle America. And they could start by abandoning once and for all supply-side theories.
12
@Paul
A very cynical and expected response: Carlson is one of them (eyes roll).
1
Just hearing conservatives admit to past mistakes is definitely refreshing. Now what are you going to do about that mistake in the White House?
20
What an article! Bravo Ross! (and bravo David Brooks for his similar column and even Bravo Tucker Carlson for having some guts!).
But why is it that NONE of the conservatives who find themselves agreeing with this conservative revelation that markets are not always perfect offering any actual policy ideas?
Because if they did, they would suddenly sound exactly like a Democrat! (the horror!)
Why can't they draw on their "religious commitment to helping society" and point to the very programs everyone knows would begin to address the hollowing out of the middle class: Increase taxes on the rich and corporations to fund early childcare, provide tax-supported public options for healthcare, and make college education tuition/fees commensurate with low-income family salaries?
(These should be Conservative ideas! They will help people have babies and decrease divorce rates!)
8
"But in recent decades, the right’s elites have despaired of censoring pornography, acquiesced to the spread of casino gambling, made peace with the creeping commercialization of marijuana, and accepted the internet’s conquest of childhood and adolescence." The "right's elites" always acquiesce to capitalism...period. Pro Life is nothing more than a cover for non profits with exorbitant salaries and expenses. Only the contributors "believe".
8
As a NeverTrump columnist, Douthat entirely fails to understand that voters rejected his definition of conservative and his themes of establishment virtue.
He writes about Carlson's, "reinvention as a Trump-era populist — the general folly of elites, the unwisdom of the bipartisan consensus on immigration and foreign policy, the failure of Republican leaders"
Yes, that is exactly what Trump's voters think of elites generally and specifically of Republican leaders that Douthat likes.
As a Harvard Law School lawyer, I'm pretty much in the elite they don't like. I don't agree with them about that. However, I do understand what is happening with them.
Douthat seems to fail to understand, and since he is quite bright, I think his failure to acknowledge reality is knowing and deliberate.
9
@Mark Thomason
It´s not only that he fails to understand what you have quoted. (He certainly does.)
He also fails to understand that main issues of Mr. Carsons speech as dwindling wealth of ordinary people both in rural America and in inner cities without regard of colours in effect, the allegation of "bipartisan no-care" of politicians, the overestimation of investment business as fact of national wealth, especially the neglicence of families (the last point soundsvery close to Mr.Brooks favourite issues) and the bipartisan ignorance of these substantial problems. The central qouteof Mr.Douthat is nothing but a small part of this speech, only some kind of "meta-level".
Main issues addressed are tangible everyday life issues to fix Mr. Douthat seems to ignore. The mentioned "family wage" issue this nothing but one subordinated specific problem. No miracle he is absolutely clueless in his last paragraph.
Yes, Mr. Douthat, it´s certainly the "deeper point" that public policy is rarely a cure-all, but it can often be a corrective."
But please note: Mr. Carson has addressed this in the first minutes of his tirade as his starting point for further 13-14 minutes in the aftermath when he tried to give reasons what happened, why this had happened, what´s wrong with this and what should be done. Maybe he he didn´t make so much progress but he certainly made more than you when you are closing the analysis of his speech with the starting point instead of possible solutions.
1
I am really sick of the coddling of the 30 per cent or so of the electorate that supposedly forms the core of Trump's base. They are for the most part the undereducated that Trump claims to love. If they believe in Creation over science, among other things, they are just plain ignorant. If they are stupid, too, so be it. They are mindless lemmings, pure suckers, ripe for manipulation by one elite or another, as if Trump himself, with his privileged upbringing and his Wharton School diploma, is not part of the elite. Hopefully enough of them will suffer some consequence from this government shutdown to reject this new hero, this ignoramus in chief, and with him the improbable team of Limbaugh and Hannity (college dropouts), Coulter and Ingraham (each with a law degree), and their ilk,spewing their snake oil of hate and retrograde policies, which somehow, without examination or explanation (but perhaps accurately from a historical perspective), has been given the appealing label of Populism.
I think the key issue here is that there are a number of identifiable forms of conservatism in the United States. There are national security intellectuals closely aligned with the military community, national security intellectuals who are broadly pro-military and multilateralist; then there are economic internationalists most closely identified with free trade ideology and other forms of market economy including low tax regimes; there are libertarian economic conservatives who focus exclusively on lowering taxes and deregulation; and there are social conservatives, who support traditional families, are militantly pro-life, pro-church, including parochial and home schooling, pro-gun rights, anti-LGBTQ, pornography and drug culture.
These groups sometimes or most of the time coalesce, but other times they divide. Clearly, the divide between economic internationalists or corporate internationalists and social conservatives will often clash severely.
This is because American conservatives are a political coalition and not a unified ideological movement. This is true unless one defines conservative ideology according to a standardized list of principles. But all ideologies are group related and all represent divergent interests. Walmart conservatives will never agree with Wall Street conservatives. National security intellectuals, many of whom have now rejected the conservative movement, are a lost cause. Such is life.
4
Family is important to regular people, and they will translate family values into action on their own.
They don’t need help from the Republican Party for this.
The Republican Party lies, in plain sight, and masquerades it’s capitulation to the religious right as authority on family values.
12
No, the real problem with conservatism that conservatives need to face is that it's become the party of no ideology-whatsoever. And no longer just the party of no, it's become the party of anything to stay in power, which is why it so instantly abandoned its core fiscal concerns along with law and order. Carlson's tangent, along with Douthat's flagging of it, is just another attempt, (albeit, likely unconscious) to distract from this appalling fact.
19
Any conclusion the right and the left reaches about what to do about policy is that first they must be allowed to think about ideas and discuss ideas and reach solutions that are data based rather than ideology based.
At the height of the repeal-and-replace furor, the Koch Brothers threatened the Republican Congress that donations would be withheld if they failed to repeal the ACA and to pass a tax cut.
A billionaire Democrat donor threatened Democrats with a withholding of donations if they became too progressive.
Progressive ideas are summarily dismissed by many as not even worth talking about, even though they are pro-family and pro-worker. Centrist Democrats have some ideas but seemingly hesitate to give progressive the thinking it is due. Progressives resist centrist ideas.
By there actions and words, Republicans reject all ideas that people from which people may benefit. Maybe in private they think otherwise. If so, they, as well as progressive and centrist Democrats must be allowed to think about and discuss ideas and policy without the interference of donors and threats of being primaried based on non-adherence to some ideology.
6
Yes, the great political/societal divide begins with individual wealth and how it drives individual world picture.
The world picture of the wealthy is essentially the same across race, nationality, and creed. So, too, are the attitudes and views of those with less individual wealth.
This becomes problematic in a world where there are more people with decreasing access to wealth. Wealth is not unlimited...on this planet at least.
So, the real questions facing all of us are: How much is enough? Are we in this together or not?
Our response, to date, has been greed driven trade agreements that left working class citizens high and dry; and, tax reform that starves government of revenue and fills the pockets of the the already rich.
You worried about family/community values and individual well-being? Let's start with something simple and that we can all agree on. How about a national initiative for world class day care, 24/7, in every American community with an elementary school?
In the meantime, make no mistake, This is very a bipartisan affair to which we have all contributed.
How much is enough and are we in this together or not...
Trump and the freak show in Congress was/is no accident.
8
If there were such a thing as a truly "free market" Wall Street would be the first to be begging for relief from it. But conservatives love raw, economic determinism it's victims being invisible and its direction favoring conservatism. Tucker Carlson has a good point but if he hears me saying that, he'll take it back
7
What conservatives can't accept is that women do not want to be unappreciated,unpaid drudges in the home under the control of some man.
The 1950s created drug-addicted angry stay-at-home moms who created the feminist movement.Apparently you have never talked to these women.They knew they were as intelligent &morally capable as men both to raise children & serve in other professions as well.
If you really want to create happy families,pass legislation where the parents must share the income they jointly make. Mothers would get the respect & reward they deserve .As in any profession, if you are shown that you are valued in your work,you dedicate yourself to it even more.The professionalism of motherhood could lead to groups sharing information & developing standards.
Men would be concerned that women who work outside the home too would be given their worth.
The equality of income would give men as much incentive to remain in a family grouping as it would the women. It would induce the parents to come to mutually agreed upon decisions about children so they speak with one definitive voice to them.
Should there still be a divorce the bitterness would be greatly reduced.Neither party would feel that they had unfairly been sacrificed to a bad end.
The answer is very simple to making stronger families:see that mothers or fathers who stay at home to take care of children are paid,with benefits.And equalize the income, responsibility & the parental rewards between the partners.
16
Come on now....the real problem is modern conservatives in America — Most of the ones holding elected office — No longer believe in democracy or the American constitution. They’ve spent, and continue to spend, enormous amounts of time, money, and gerrymandering efforts to destroy iy, up to and including stacking the supreme court with partisans, not intelligent defenders of rights or dispensers of genuinely wise justice.
20
Really nice piece, that avoids the topics of gun rights, abortion, religious tolerance, and reproductive/sexual self-determination. My sense is that conservatism cannot unify and self-rationalize without major modifications to the dominant messages it spreads around these four or five domains. The process of assembling messages and supporters of sensible conservative approaches to government in the presence of natural cultural and moral diversification would take a completely different approach to civic engagement than modern american conservatism seems capable of. But this article is a definite step towards composing some goals and an attitude worth looking at.
6
Moral diversification. Moral diversity. Morals are deeply personal convictions, subject to no compromise. I fail to see how a society can stay together without a set of common morals, unless it is done by force and coercion to bend the morality of some. And that is not sustainable. If you have time, please clarify what you mean by moral diversity.
"But in hindsight this was wrong, the feared inflation never came, and the economic recovery was slowed because of the Republican fixation on tight money."
The slow recovery was the point, not a side effect, which you know perfectly well since even as you were writing columns in favor of their austerity you were going around telling anyone who would listen that the bad economy was going to make Obama a one term president. And then the instant Trump took office all your concerns about the deficit disappeared as quickly as they'd come.
19
The major problem facing US society is it's increasing inequality which is principally the result of globalization, technological change and the increasing financialization of the economy. This process needed to be mitigated by government policy but Republicans have resisted this, indeed have encouraged it. We have now reached the stage where this process is actually undermining the open capitalist system in the US. Intelligent super capitalists like Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg recognize this. This potential long term problem for capitalism was recognized by Keynes as long ago as the 1930's as these two quotes indicate.
"If the accretions of vested interests were to grow without mitigation, half the population would be no better than slaves to the other half"
"If the new problem is not solved the existing order of society will become so discredited that wild, foolish and destructive changes will become inevitable"
11
I do not think that the increasing inequality is "principally the result of globalization, technological change and the increasing financialization of the economy," but is the result of decreasing tax rates for the rich. Technological improvements to productivity should have resulted in decreased hours and higher wages for workers, but instead that money went into the pockets of the investors.
2
@GetSerious
Oh decreasing taxes on the rich has caused the movement of manufacturing out of the US and the collapse of industrial employment has it? And it seems to have escaped your notice that large numbers of Americans are indirect investors through pension funds, insurers, and IRA's. Tax reductions have exacerbated the problems of inequality, they are not the principal cause of it. Cart...horse...?
1
@John, you are misstating my argument and making assumptions about what I have "noticed." I never stated that decreasing tax rates caused the movement of manufacturing out of the US or that they are the principal cause of inequality. Only you used the word "principal."
As usual Mr. Douthat is spot on. Conservatives don't agree on much and simply lack clarity. They could use more thoughtful spokesmen, something beyond Trump's wild stories. Much of the truth is actually on their side if they would bother to claim it. Fox could be a star network if they were a little less Trump and more like Chris Wallace. But, Trump is a money maker for all the news outlets. We are going to have to wait for boredom to set in. Not sure how long it will take, but we all can't stay outraged forever.
3
Modern conservatives aren't pro free market, they are pro business. There is a big difference.
18
I want to thank Ross for listening to the monologue so that I did not have to. I am amazed that anything worth of debate came out of Tuckers mouth. That said I want to know the conservative mindset and where it stands intelligently compared to my own. It sounds here like the conservatives are waking up to the fact that democrats are way ahead of the curve on economics, I think both sides can agree that responsibility is partial the job of government.
4
Birthrates have not declined due to the collapse of the family. Birthrates have declined in post industrialized nations because children, especially male children, for much of human history were not only an asset to their parents/families, but often necessary for survival. Less than 150 years ago we were still a nation of farmers where the bulk of the farm labor was performed by humans.
The fact is that having children today is not only economically unnecessary to survival of the parents, children have become a luxury due to their cost through secondary, post secondary education and well into adulthood in many cases. The fact is that from an economic standpoint traditional families just are not necessary, and may in fact be counterproductive. But, social conservatives like Ross and Tucker cannot conceive of a society where the "Leave It To Beaver" family structure is from a bygone era never to be revived, which it is. So, Wake Up, already and embrace the new social norms. After all, nostalgia is way overrated.
9
@Sparky
Feel free to go childless. Our kids will take up the slack, pave your roads, build your homes, grow your food, wait on you at dinner, build your car, make your latte, and maintain civil order.
Don’t you worry about a thing.
We breeders got this. We have your back.
1
Two points:
1. Did Carlson say his past conservative positions were wrong and he has evolved? Or is he just blowing with the Trump wind?
2. Instead of waiting for conservatives to change so as to have better public and economic policy, why not just vote Democratic instead? It would be a lot easier!
22
@Jonathan Sanders
Carlson has admitted that the RNC was a party catering to the country club set for a good many years. But what he is primarily drawing attention to is that today's DNC is, to a large extent, catering to the same demographic, while spurning the working class people they used to represent. Carlson deserved it back in 2004 when Jon Stewart insulted him on air and told him (and Paul Begala on CNN's Crossfire) that their regular exchanges of soundbites were simplifying debate and "hurting America." But Carlson nowadays is largely representing what the Democrats of my youth (1970s and 80s) would have supported. Sadly, that party no longer exists.
1
What conservatives will never admit is that it is their trickle-down tax scheme and their attack on organized labor which have decimated the middle class.
Republicans have constructed tax laws which favor the wealthy over people who actually have to work for a living. An investor can pay a lower tax rate on his $10 million portfolio than a husband and wife working four jobs to put food on their table.
At the same time Republicans have demonized labor unions which protect the economic interests of workers and regulations which protect the health and safety of workers.
Add to these policy abominations the Republicans' relentless attacks on healthcare, who controls a woman's body and who is permitted to love whom.
The end result is a Republican Party which is anti-labor, anti-care, anti-caring, anti-love, anti-American.
The way forward for conservatives is to disappear from public policy making. Stop lying to voters. Just keep your me-first thoughts to yourself and leave the rest of us to do what is best for the rest of us.
27
@JABarry
This is excellent. When are you running for office?!
Ross,
I don’t know when conservatives lost their way, but I know they did...long ago. The conservatives I used to know had a deep love of country and community. They put family first, but in a context of place. Work was noble and a persons measure was not their personal wealth, but their good character. There was an honor of the natural world that boardered on the sacred. Hunting was a spiritual endeavor with a deep gratefulness for the beauty and wonder of nature. The suffering of an animal was was suffering felt by all.
How we moved from the deep love I felt from conservatives to the base motivations I hear espoused today, I can only speculate. But what I do believe is that as a whole, they might be well served by wondering fourth years in the wilderness.
10
The twin pillars of conservatism are free market capitalism and traditional moral values. Lets call them Nevada and Utah. They are of course in conflict. The free market is amoral. Sin sells. Reconciling these two opposing values is an important debate
10
@Bob
well - no actually - the foundation is individual responsibility - rightly or wrongly.
Everything else springs form that mandate.
Which probably explains why Wendel, Nevada, the closest Nevada point to Salt Lake City is its own kind of boom town.
1
Strongly recommend the book, The Once and Future Worker' by Oren Cass, which offers a number of conservative approaches to "correcting" the hollowing out of the middle class. I must admit, as someone with liberal leanings I started the book ready to argue with his policy recommendations, particularly on topics like climate, minimum wage---however, he made a good case for several societal problems that would be well worth examining. The same could be said about Bryan Caplan's book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time, which offers several policy recommendations on how, for example, the college for all policy suggestion, would the absolute wrong policy to help the middle class. What frustrates me, is that there are many very good policy ideas---both conservative and liberal---that deserve examination---Yet, instead of Congress delving deeply into contemporary problems and looking a various solutions across the conservative/liberal continuum, we have a Senate stymied by arcane McConnell rule structures and a House consumed with Trump payback time.
11
One of the things that I dislike about conservatives (among many) is their readiness to impose their own value judgements upon others. " It’s just that conservatism has given up — once again, in unwarranted despair — on earlier assumptions about how public paternalism can encourage private virtue." In other words, we (the conservatives) should be able and willing to impose our prejudices upon others.
5
Since the modern GOP does not believe in compromise or bipartisanship, since it views competent government as the enemy, and since it views science itself as the tool of socialism, I have no hope for these latest musings from Douthat and Carlson. I realize Mr. Douthat is sincere but I fear his role in history will be to furnish the GOP donor machine with mere window-dressing. But thanks for the effort! If the GOP offers innovative ideas for a Green New Deal, and works with the Dems on it, I’ll know this latest eruption wasn’t just talk.
19
I agree that there's a good faith argument to be had about this, that people like David French, Douthat, and maybe some other intellectuals are interested in having.
But I suggest Carlson is not one of those parties. In the mid-2010's, we now know, some conservatives looked to Putin with admiration. They decided that, instead of being a conservative party in a democratic system, they would be a strong-man authoritarian party. That's the sense in which they want to be conservative. Carlson is the spokesperson for that kind of conservatism.
Though you can certainly oppose unrestrained capitalism for non-authoritarian reasons, one side-effect of being a strong-man authoritarian is that you can't embrace free market ideology to the same extent that the modern conservative movement and libertarians have. Markets do unexpected and politically inexpedient things. If you're a strong-man authoritarian, you want to partition political spoils to your supporters, and as is well-known, Whites without a college degree are not particularly benefited by market outcomes.
As a liberal, I'd say that this is exactly the wrong way to restrain markets. It's not the government's job to decide what a good human life is for us, except what is needed to robustly exercise our capacity as citizens. Conservatives once thought market succeed was a comprehensive good for individuals to strive for; now some don't. I think neither are good bases for policy-making.
2
Practically all social commentators overlook the physical forces that underpin the economy and our lives. The one-income middle class family thrived only when energy and other resources were very cheap. Energy is the economy, as Robert Ayres put it, which does not mean that social policy and technology are not also important in distributing the wealth that results from energy and resource use. For this reason alone, we cannot go back to the economy or social order of "Happy Days" and the 1950s. The real challenge is building an equitable society as the energy return on investment diminishes with fracking, tar sands, deep water, and Arctic exploration (all very energy intensive) as well as "renewables" in comparison to the cheap, conventional oil and gas on which the global petroleum economy was built.
2
If conservatism is going to survive and thrive into the future, it must above all be based on truth and objective facts. Much of our political divide now is because people like Tucker Carlson and most others at Fox News and similar outlets have been lying to half the country for so long that 35-40 percent of the country cannot recognize an objective truth when it is presented to them by anyone outside their bubble and conservative politicians must pander to severely misinformed people. Until that changes, it is hard to have a reasonable debate in which rank and file conservatives can participate.
18
**Modern conservatism was forged in the crucible of the 1970s inflation crisis, and in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash many conservatives were convinced that there was nothing the Federal Reserve could do about the vast army of the unemployed without touching off a similar inflationary spiral.
But in hindsight this was wrong, the feared inflation never came, and the economic recovery was slowed because of the Republican fixation on tight money ...in the preceding eight years, wage-earning Americans suffered unnecessarily because of a wrongheaded right-wing counsel of despair. **
So in other words, "modern conservatism" got it all wrong at the outset and continues even now to miss the point?
Ok, got it. Thank you for the explanation Mr Douthat.
The other points you make in the article seem to me to support more "gasp" liberal (NOT left-wing) solutions such as to "try rebuilding that economic foundation before we declare the crisis of the family a wound that policy can’t heal" or "public policy is rarely a cure-all, but it can often be a corrective". Hardly a suggestion of making government so small (by starving it of funding to make it totally dysfunctional) so as to strangle it in the bathtub - a goal most conservatives appear to continue to think is laudable.
I guess what you write about it is all in the interpretation and the degree.
4
What Conservatives do not seem to understand is that no one aspires to poverty. They have the overriding opinion that poor people are lazy. Would rather live from day to day figuring out where their next meal is coming from. And it is not just the poor they think that about. It is the lower economic class in general.
In my opinion this is a boot strap mentality. The kind of mentality that does not allow them to look at their own circumstances and realize that they got where they are because they were born in the right basket.
It is why that on the whole, Conservatives lack a moral compass. Every thing is black or white to them, no shades of gray.
Social safety nets are what help families stay together. They can allow one person to work and the other stay home and be the glue that binds the family together. But this is almost impossible in today's world. Two incomes are needed just to keep your head above water, let alone support children.
Until Conservatives realize that it is not okay to keep giving the goods away, in the form of Corporate Welfare, nothing will change. The Conservative Republicans have proven this over and over. This last Tax Reform Bill proved that.
The only hope that that we have is that the new Congress will push and pull until there is Medicare for All, Voting Rights for All. Education for All and leveling the playing field for all. This is what Government is supposed to do. Do not blame it on "a more feminist age". That is baloney.
8
Perhaps if the GOP didn’t excoriate the very idea of government, it might have an easier time convincing its rank and file to get behind family friendly policies. Also - there is a readily available alternative for promotion of policies designed to help the working class - it’s called the Democratic Party.
16
Thanks, Mr. Douthat. In my regulatory and policy-making experience, the formulation and implementation of any sound public policy must be based on agreed reasons and goals for the establishing that policy. Such agreement must be based on a thorough and comprehensive vetting of ideas from all potentially affected constituent classes, not only from political or corporate elites. Just as ideological differences complicate policy-making; so do the more mundane, but critical, processes required to formulate and implement policies.
Perhaps we are failing at policy-making in government precisely because the work is so hard and requires so much time. As a nation, we no longer seem to be willing or interested in doing the long-term work necessary to produce these policy-driven outcomes, regardless of the topic. With an electoral horse race every two years, our political system doesn’t support long-term thinking or policy consideration.
4
At some point Republicans are going to need to come to grips with the fact that it is not immigrants who are decimating their hometowns, but it is corporations that are taking their money, and then buying Senators and Congresspersons who will pass tax laws that give them even more money. And instead of building a "wall," the money should be used to build internet service to rural areas, and bridges so people can get good jobs, etc.
Carlson is right: Every decision that our government makes should follow from one simple question: Will this new law help families be stable places for raising children?
13
@Dan
How wil building “bridges” and “internet service” help people get good jobs?
"that policies championed by both parties have failed to promote the interests of the working class"
Except that's not true. Under the last two Democratic presidents the country created 30,000,000 private sector jobs, were the only periods in the last 40 years of positive wage growth for the middle class, and oversaw massive reductions in budget deficits, all while digging out of horrendous economic circumstances left them by their predecessor (and leaving wonderful economic conditions for the next Republican president, who promptly gave huge tax cuts to the rich).
34
@Mike
Very well said. I'll also say any columnist who is espousing the virtues and aligning the tirades of Tucker Carlson into some argument that "both sides" of the government are responsible for the absolute vacancy of thought and action we are now dealing with, needs not to be taken seriously. And I don't.
5
Since the 1960’s, I have perceived Republican rhetoric and policy as one would lectures and rules devised by a mean, controlling father. One could never be a grownup enough, self-reliant enough, responsible enough, independent enough to satisfy this authoritarian figure. Ignoring or fearing the changes bubbling up naturally from the core of free society, conservatism was born as a backlash.
Conservatism strives to regulate the wrong things. Instead of regulating polluting industries that harm families and neighborhoods, instead of regulating corrupt financial institutions and businesses that con working people out of their hard-earned wages, conservatives have concentrated of cutting local, state, and federal taxes that have destroyed society’s public “neighborhood” and the souls of community conservatives claim to cherish, and controlling humanity that stunt its growth as responsible, independent and free.
A town suffering economically due to a factory closing is subjected to an unforgiving ideology that then closes their public schools and poisons their water.
In the past several years, conservatism has demonstrated it cannot govern. It is inconceivable even those conservatives in power today redefine cherished democratic “norms” to justify the harm they inflict and the purposeful ignorance of problems that can be solved.
25
Carlson has struck a nerve with my party, the GOP, because conservatives must be for something rather than for nothing. For example, the GOP must embrace global warming in order to shape the government's policy. There are many ways to accomplish the same goals and some of those ways are more conservative by their very nature. Conservatives must be part of the dialogue on providing a conservative based safety net. Presently, the left controls policy on issues the right has abandoned. Both parties can agree that a strong family structure is the basis for a strong America and the social aim of building strong families is good for anyone of any party.
6
I don't know if Tucker Carlson will join the ranks of those conservatives who have abandoned conservatism -- Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, George Will -- because Donald Trump has become conservatism's new avatar.
Conservatism had better re-examine its premises before those on the right start pointing to the Trump Shutdown as an (admirable) example of how to shrink government.
4
I don’t often agree with you Ross, but on this one, I think you’ve hit the dart in the bullseye.
I was born in 1938. My dad was a school teacher and considered one of the best in South Jersey. He went to Syracuse in his freshman year and Graduated from Georgetown. He loved teaching and coaching. By today’s standards, we were poor, but back then, we never considered ourselves different from anyone else economically. Like Ross pointed out, the vast majority of homes had one bread winner.
Today, unless you came from wealth, it really takes two breadwinners just to survive. I don’t suggest returning to the past, but can’t we at least go forward with better ideas and ideals on how our society can and should function with regards to family?
4
Interesting argument here--but one both Carlson and Douthat could have made long ago by merely polling the electorate (and not just in the US).
It's been known for a long time now that the aggregate average socially conservative person polls considerably more liberal on economic policy. Even those who ascribe to a religious morality, who do not support gay marriage, etc., tend to be open to higher minimum wages, union protections, and even (gasp) government run and regulated health care systems.
The problem for conservative theorists is that they have often championed libertarian economic ideas without paying much attention to the consequences of their logical extension, forgetting, for example, than one person's freedom to make a fortune will generally violate many other people's freedom not to be exploited by that person's attempt to make a fortune.
"Ordinary" people grasp, on some intuitive level, grasp these contradictions better than the pundits do. But, given the oligarchic nature of modern conservatism, such people often have no place, politically, to go--mostly because these oligarchs tend to be Calvinist/Social Darwinist, and "ordinary" people, interested in community, not so much. The only way for those oligarchs to keep their power, as they are not the majority, is to invoke tribal competition--"divide and conquer".
One wonders if a real third party, integrative position is possible here--or only in less Calvinist, "personal responsibility" societies.
7
Conservatism and capitalism don't go together. Market forces undermine tradition in favor of what people really want to do! Liberals are more comfortable with the dynamism of capitalism and also more sensitive to its limitations. The golden age of the 40s and 50s were a time when liberalism reigned supreme in America, before the conservative 'resurgence'. Honest conservatives should realize that their 'movement' has hit a dead end and that liberalism (big tent) is the answer!
6
At the direction of his employer, Tucker Carlson is making reasonable-sounding pronouncements for the purpose of offsetting his disgraceful remarks of the recent past. His bosses at Fox News also control Trump's base and thereby the GOP. When Fox calculates that Carlson has sufficiently (for their purposes) expiated his sins, he will rejoin his Fox confederates in the scorched-earth conservatism which now defines the Republican party. There will never be a "debate" within the GOP about what government might do to help a majority of Americans while Fox holds sway.
12
Thank you. There should be more media coverage of Fox's pivotal role in this madness. Clearly the gullible and uniformed Trump tribalists love Fox's sensationalist nihilistic rhetoric. How can they call themselves "conservatives" when they have not an ounce of understanding of policy. It seems the liberal media is too chicken to tackle Fox head on.
1
Could someone please tell me how exactly feminism and gender norms have anything to do with a "family wage?" Is the argument that adding people to the workforce decreased wages? Did Mr. Douthat notice that when women started entering the workforce they did not compete for men's jobs, not really? And wages didn't stagnate until the 80's, well after women had been in the job market. As for government policy, the only one which had any effect on wages was not killing unions.
1
@Jeff M Well, I'll try. So long as a family is able to make it with one bread winner, the other can remain at home to raise the children and manage the home. And let's not kid ourselves: men bring home the bread and women butter it, and that is the gender norm Mr. Carlson is asserting. Along comes feminism in the 1960s and '70s and asserts that women can have fulfilling careers, and poof. There goes gender norms and the "family" wage. The Republican Party used to be pro choice, precisely until the early '80's when they figured out that now able to control their lives, women were entering the job market in such numbers the competition scared them to death and so they discovered they were the party of "family" values, if by family you mean a patriarchy.
1
What Mr. Douthat says about public policy being a corrective also applies to gun control, another hands-off issue of the right.
10
Ross, you are talking about Roosevelt here. Teddy Roosevelt.
Conservatives have been working to reverse policy and direction to back before Teddy Roosevelt, from labor protections to land conservation.
Conservatives have been working against conserving everything except the continued path of income inequality. Tucker Carlson - years after Elizabeth Warren - finally noticed.
Of course we can improve the life of working families. We could promote education without excoriating teachers and taxes; we could find ways to fund childcare; we could find ways to assure employment to part-time parents of very young children; we could find ways to keep people in the workforce once they hit 50 and are either paying for college or recovering from it. We could promote healthcare, and a less volatile market for retirement savings.
But we don't. And that is because we have policies that play to individualism, making anyone who needs help a "taker" unless that person is a giant conglomerate receiving farm aid, or a banker, a vulture capitalist or a guy selling indentured servitude to people living paycheck to paycheck.
You want conservatives to pony up? They need to find their souls again.
44
@Cathy "You want conservatives to pony up? They need to find their souls again." That is priceless. Like Tucker, most have sold theirs long ago and have become stone throwers rather than doers.
1
Carlson’s monologue was interesting and seems to differ quite a bit from what we currently have. I am traditionally very conservative and find the current GOP abhorrent. The current GOP is not conservative - I don’t know what it is, but it’s not conservative.
Focusing on improving the lives of all Americans through public policy is essential. No one is doing that now.
22
@Chris "Focusing on improving the lives of all Americans through public policy is essential. No one is doing that now."
Are you kidding me? There is an entire wing of the Democratic party that spends much of its energies analyzing and debating how best to do this. For all its flaws regarding political correctness, liberals are the adults in the room who look to improve the lives of all (except perhaps the few at the top, who need no corrective measures - quite the opposite of today's Republican party).
3
This bipartisan nostalgia for the past is completely unfounded. Today’s wages, inflation-adjusted, and more than double what wages were in 1950. The reason some people find it harder to support a family is that our expectations for living standards have gone way up. If you want to support your family to a 1950 standard of living—that means a small house, no enrichment activities for kids, no modern electronics or appliances, no modern medicine, etc.—you can easily do so on an unskilled wage today.
Similarly, more people may have been married back then, but many of those marriages were not happy. The divorce rate skyrocketed as soon as divorce was liberalized. Today, the marriage rate is lower but so is the divorce rate. Families today are stronger because people can take their time to pick someone they are really compatible with. And people can now marry others of a different race, different nationality, or same sex, if that is who they are compatible with.
Speaking of which, even in the past, family values were reserved for whites. Black slave family were separated when sold. The Chinese Exclusion Act caused a 50% fall in the Chinese-American population by destroying their families and fertility. Even today, the biggest anti-family policies our government has are immigration restrictions that keep international families separated and limit who Americans can meet or marry. If you really want to support the family, the best thing to do is oppose racism and nationalism.
20
@Aoy
The only places I've ever found options for buying housing the same size as what a 1950's family bought fall into one of two categories.
Places where the land the houses are sitting on is so valuable that you're shelling out $350k or more for 1000 square feet in today's dollars or places that are so run down with crime that re-development hasn't happened.
What your grandparents got for their money when they bought a smaller house (safety, neighborhood, versus cash outlay) was a far better deal than anything I've seen in my lifetime in 3 different metro areas.
4
@Aoy Um....okay, wages are more than double. But the cost of college is up 400%. The cost of housing has at least increased ten times. The comments here all say we help the family by increasing benefits for education, health care, child care. All this confirms douthat's argument: this incarnation of the USA is the most child-hostile culture yet, and with robotics and globalization, that will only increase. So GLAD I chose to remain childless, as I saw too much hardship even for my generation, much less the ones coming behind. So yes, as natives strain in this society and find it too hard to invest in marriage and child-rearing, then immigration becomes so important. Fresh meat! Those poor suckers don't know what they're getting into yet.
1
@Aoy
When was the last time you shopped for groceries or priced the rental markets where there are still jobs?
No one can provide a family's shelter and food, much less buy a house in the suburbs and go on vacation once a year (yes, they did that in the 1950s), on an unskilled wage.
Sheer ignorant fantasy.
1
The electorate is hungry for fairness. That feeling was enough to sever the ties that working people have had to the Democratic Party since the days of Hoover vs. FDR and elect a faux-populist. Would a true "patriot populist" be able to succeed?
4
Liberalism screams at Conservatism to “lighten up”, and Conservatism screams back to “buck up—every person for themselves”.
Our politics overlooks two important facts. First, a libertine society eventually pays for every incremental freedom, because eventually your rights become my responsibilities. When your transgression of freedom harms me or my neighbor, I am asked to step in and pick up the cost. Second, the world is not divided into workaholics and slackers. Economic dislocations occur, leaving untrained workers a drift. Capitalist investments fail, resulting in greater harm to the stakeholders than the limited number of shareholders and executives.
A functioning society is mutually respectful. That does not mean it condones all, but it tolerates differences that do not excessively cost or encroach. It is hard. Some choose to demand more attention or more support from society, and pushing back on the excessively needful cannot be always considered cruel/selfish.
We have lost the notion of self-concept. Now, people are exhorted to be as unique an individual as possible, crouching into their status for the ensuing reparations and benefits the society owes to them.
What if we addressed ourselves as Americans, Americans with responsibilities to admit that all human beings are flawed; and we are grateful to one another that we each forgive each other. And we stand erect, work hard, sacrifice for each other, and act utterly inhuman-like.
No government required.
5
@Stuart
Well said, though I'm not sure acting "utterly inhuman-like" is the answer. I think you mean you want people to act "humanely," which has been a problem throughout history.
American life has gone from being a nation of people pursuing high ideals to a competition where only the fittest survive. We compete for life's necessities like healthcare, food, housing, education and the ability to retire with dignity.
For years the conventional wisdom of both parties has been to restrict government and free business to thrive and create more "well-paying" jobs. This didn't work out as envisioned. The rich got richer and the middle class fell further behind.
At least for a while, the answer isn't "no government required." Ayn Rand was a fool. We've already tried less government. No government is only going to make matters worse. All out competition hasn't worked and will never work.
The goal of America should not be that middle class people become richer, pursuing that goal has made them poorer--unable to afford the necessities of life. The goal should be to ensure no American suffers an inability to obtain healthcare, have a healthy diet, be properly housed, receive a good education or live their retirement years in comfort.
These days most individuals can't achieve that on their own. The purpose of government is to step in where they can't. Until systems are developed to deliver the necessities of life to all, government will remain a necessary evil.
3
@Robert C. Hinkley
I have no issue with government involvement, as long as it is self-conscious and self-limiting.
When I know the government will help you, I am less inclined to feel that human pull to help you myself. That is the line, and it is a mysterious one, to which I always devote my question.
This is no Randian. Nor am I a social constructionist who believes we need to delegate to others that which we are too busy to do ourselves. We adopted children after having our own. It was expensive, time-consuming, and occasionally exhausting. But I dare say the product of that sacrifice was far greater than the abandoned children who are left to fend for themselves or get passed around institutions.
Thanks for your comment. I think most Americans are closer together than we believe. I think many of the commenters, unlike yourself, are so partisan here that I become hopeless that the world is locked in bitterness and unable to free itself.
1
@Stuart Interesting. I agree and I'm an adoptive parent myself.
Douthat has written many columns that leave me as a centrist shaking my head. So frequently he sets out to destroy potential allies on the left. This one makes a lot of sense. It is a conservative contribution that combats the infuriating mindlessness of the sort of Republican politics epitomized by Mitch McConnell: the belief that it is worth destroying the political system to win, in the narrowest possible sense. It is hard to imagine the Republican party crawling back out of the hole it has dug itself into. But kudos to Douthat for trying to find a path out.
24
The breakdown of the family is an effort by capitalism to break workers into efficient self standing units with no loyalty.
16
If conservatives want to keep families in tact, pay them more money. Economic insecurity is the cause of almost all that ails America today.
25
@Ronny
They don't really care about THOSE families, because :conservatives" ( who really aren't that either) have convinced themselves that those families are immoral, or lazy, or illegal, or ungodly, and thus deserve their fate. Thus, too, those "conservatives" need waste no time worrying about others.
Should it really be so difficult for a thinking person to accept that government of the super-rich, by the super-rich and for the super-rich is probably not a winner long term? How many Republicans go through life knowing they're on the wrong side, simply due to party loyalty and having too much pride to admit they've been hoodwinked by the conservative propaganda-machine?
45
@Frank Roseavelt The same can be said for people who mindlessly vote Democratic. I'm an independent voter who craves a third (or a fourth party) option...it's the only way to destroy this "corporations are people" representative government. We need a political system that's too costly to be sold to the highest bidder...and where some party representatives can't be bought.
The two largest recipients of taxpayer cash to fund the Military Industrial Complex are Virginia and California, both Democratic strongholds.
3
@Frank Roseav (elt
Breaking it down to fundamentals, it's still guns, gays and god (abortion). IMHO about 20% of self identified "conservatives" are completely obsessive compulsive pro-life and could give a whit about any other issue.
If anything, conservatives put too much stock in the Fed's ability to stimulate the economy by keeping interest rates low. Instead, this thinking and these people's generally anti government bias has led the nation into its current malaise. Private investment has never been adequate in meeting the needs of all of a nation's citizens. It's a lesson conservatives never seem to learn.
7
One of the most massive social and economic changes in America over the last 50 years is the need to have two workers in the family to have a decent, sustainable middle class existence. When the cause of this change is fully addressed and understood, then equally important alterations of the way economic and political matters are discussed and handled would follow. Because the question has never been fully addressed and certainly not understood, we live and act in igorance, pushing around small ideas when a very large one lies beneath the surface.
4
It used to seem ironic to me that "conservatives" wanted to regulate private behavior like sexual relationships, but wanted "freedom" in the public economic sphere. Libertarian thinking has changed that and made "conservatives" less dedicated to changing private behavior.
I think that's a good thing, but there has to be a next step where we recognize that individual responsibility is not going to solve our problems. If people can't or won't attempt to make "good choices" or pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and that is the reality for many, we are stuck.
Even draconian "incentives" that produce mass suffering won't motivate people who are unable or unwilling to fix themselves.
2
After reading this I'm thinking..."This is what keeps conservatives awake at night?" It seems they always fail to understand that immigration is a key factor in "rebuilding that economic foundation", in keeping communities vibrant, and keeping the economy humming when birthrates drop. They also seem to always overlook the fact that there are socialist policies entrenched in the US way of life (like the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners). Very selective in their criticism of socialist healthcare but not of socialist home ownership. Why is that?
17
Compared to people in the highest income bracket, people in the lowest income bracket were 17 percent more likely to view economic inequality as necessary. And when asked whether they would support laws that limit the rights of citizens and the press to criticize the government if enacting such legislation was necessary to solve our nation’s problems, twice as many people in the lowest income bracket were willing to give up the right to free speech as those in the highest income bracket. After finding that disadvantaged groups consistently support the status quo more than advantaged groups, Jost and his colleagues concluded: “People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it.”
Originals, Adam Grant
7
Unfortunately, while Carlson makes a great point- and using Elizabeth Warren's words and research to drive it home was eye opening- too many NYTimes readers will only see the words "Fox," "Carlson," "Populism," and "Conservatism" and never get to the point that Tucker makes.
Elizabeth Warren, he quotes, lists the ways in which the maintenance of the two-income family lifestyle, "have taken these women out of the home and away from their children and simultaneously made family life less, not more, financially secure. Today’s middle-class mother is trapped: She can't afford to work, and she can't afford not to.”
The Black family has fallen apart with out-of-wedlock births and the lack of fathers. The White family is racing to catch up. Boys have been left behind, and now medically stigmatized.
And all we hear about is a Wall and Russia.
15
@profwilliams - The wall is political posturing, the Russia investigation is uncovering serious criminal activity at the highest levels of our government. Income inequality is right up there on my list of important issues, but it's important in this age of toxic misinformation to keep those points clear.
11
@profwilliams
Why are we assuming that it is the woman who will stay home in a two parent couple with children?
@karrie You just made my point!
Conservatives would benefit from governing skill building exercises. The first ....Create a health care plan that provides citizens quality care that matches the level of care provided in France.
The second.....Create an educational system for Mississippi that provides students there the same opportunity students have in California.
19
@JohnP Agreed, with one 'edit': Create a health care plan that provides citizens quality care that matches the level of care provided to our Congress.
It’s nice that our representative from the right concedes that there may be a role for the government to play to prevent the society from becoming a free for fall with most of the political and economic power only going to its richest members.
However, what strikes me as disengenuous is this. When confronted with a real program that can help the “working class” , like the ACA, the right lies and instead portrays it as something that in fact will harm people.
19
@Matt
ACA?
Wrong example!
Would it be wrong for me to surmise that you are not in the independent market for an ACA plan whilst making just a bit too much to be eligible for a subsidy?
Being in that position myself, my premiums have tripled since the ACA took effect, and I (single, male, 64, on NO medication) am $15,000 out of pocket before I get anything more than a flu shot from my "insurer," Kaiser Permanente, which has centralized its facilities and demands that I drive an hour across town in Baltimorean rush hour traffic even for simple services. As with many companies, even a colonoscopy, recommended every decade, is redefined as "diagnostic" rather than "screening" and cost me several thousand dollars against my outrageously high deductible. And if I travel outside of the middle-Atlantic, for that I have NO coverage at all except for certain emergency services and urgent care!!!
Yammering on about how wonderful the ACA is a performative exercise in moral self-regard for progressives, notwithstanding that it is financially ruinous for those of us who worked hard enough not to be subsidized by what we used to call "welfare."
Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Obama walked straight into the trap of the insurance companies who now feed at the government trough AND beggar the independent citizen!
Tucker Carlson says many things I consider unfortunate, but on the shortcomings of market economics, he is drifting in the right direction.
1
Insightful to be sure, but you neglected to address the Conservative tilt toward an anti-government (thus anti policy), Libertarian perspective. Could this not be the influence of the donor class which has so richly funded conservative think tanks?
9
Dear Ross, one of your best columns ever. It not only should foster debate among conservative but with liberals as well. This is a Senate worthy debate and should be the focal point of the next local, state and national elections. Why did Dems do well in the last election? Focus on health care and education policy viewed as essential and problematic by the majority of Americans and I would venture to say many conservative Americans. How many conservatives supported Social Security, Medicare and the ACA? Very few and yet how many Americans and their families have been helped by the policies? How many conservatives admit the benefits of these policies. How many true conservatives supported the tax reduction of 2017? I think many honestly did. Yet how many Americans and their families are being helped? Perhaps too soon to tell but it seems very few. Both liberals and conservatives need to not only champion policy in line with their core values but also look at the results of the policies and unintended consequences. A good example is the recent bi-partisan rollback of the bi-partisan 1990s federal sentencing policy. The current government shut down is an opportunity for debate to relaunch thoughtful governance by both liberals and conservatives. If left to Democrats and Republicans we will continue the partisan gridlock that George Washington foretold.
7
So the key to the future of conservatism is for its leaders to become liberals. Where shall we start? Citizens United? Like many commenters I find my admiration for Ross' columns increasing by the month. But it took 30 years or so to create the monstrosity that brought us the 2008 crash and then the COMPLETE rejection by the Republican establishment (and a healthy percentage of the Democratic establishment) of reasonable government interventions to address the damage. What passes for Republican "reform" is now residing in the White House and, even more, in the hands of the Mitch McConnells and tea-partiers that control the Republican agenda. It is a fool's errand to think that Rush, Fox news and Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio can fix what they have wrought. At least the Dems have some capacity to be ashamed of their complicity, not proud of its creation.
13
Tucker Carlson has been on a book tour since last autumn. He has given multiple speeches and interviews which are available on youtube. His thesis has generally been, from the point of view of his class of well-connected insiders, to try to get at some answers as to what message the country was trying to send in electing someone that his class considered abhorrent and absurd. His comments recently on his show are drawn from portion of his speeches. He throws in a bunch of sometimes amusing anecdotes and observations.
1
Conservative policy is as interested in addressing the problems of the family as it is in balancing the national budget. Both are self-marketing campaigns that have little to do with what they intend to do. In reality, they want to raise the deficit until it compels cuts in social programs, so that the recipients of entitlements will have to take personal responsibility and stop being takers. This will help them reach their overall goal of shifting income upwards, so that the very top achieves the greater percentage of income and wealth that are naturally theirs, and weakening governments so they will not get in the way of the shifting.
These two goals explain the opposition to increasing government spending on the unemployed, the disappearance of well-paid, unionized jobs , and the embrace of such money-making businesses as pornography, gambling, and pot.
Republicans need to pretend to want to balance the budget and help families, but the policies that they actually pursue and want to pursue blow up the deficit and allow the Rust Belt to rust. They pretend there is nothing they can do because there is nothing they want to do; a small, inexpensive, low-tax government can do little, but doing more requires money and power, which are reserved for the private sector.
The corrective that protects normal families is a move towards the leftist programs of Democrats and RINOs and other countries. A left-wing overcorrection is not even on the horizon right now.
11
"If marriages and intact families and birthrates declined as the family wage crumbled, perhaps we should try rebuilding that economic foundation before we declare the crisis of the family a wound that policy can’t heal."
Why in the heck (read more emphatic word) would we want to implement a system that increases the population. With sea level rise, half the population of the United States is going to have to move inland. I'm sure our fellow Americans will welcome us with open arms. We are already seeing immigration from the consequences of population and global warming as well as violence. Look how those people are being welcomed with open arms.
5
The Presidential candidate who comes up with a good solution to the Tucker Carlson's concerns about the future of the working class and by extension the future of America will win.
For openers (as a conservative Trump voter), I would be up for a mandated living family wage, universal health care, control over pornography and other pernicious cultural maladies. To pay for this a higher tax on large corporations and wealthy individuals would be appropriate.
Maybe Tucker Carlson should run for President to make sure his program gets the quality of articulation it demands.
1
@Michael Dowd, If you truly value the policies that you list, I am mystified why you would be a Trump voter or a Republican. Some that you list are aligned with the Democratic Party. As to your wish for government to exert more “control over cultural maladies,” rather than resort to measures that would violate the First Amendment, if we had true living wages, common sense parental leave, and universal health care, we would likely find that people would have the energy and better mental health to redirect their impulses to more positive ones.
10
@Michael Dowd ...After all the chaos and confusion unleashed on America by the Trump campaign and now Presidency. After all the indictments ...hirings ,firings ,resignations, and confusion of this administration. I don't see how anyone could profess allegiance to support of this President! Perhaps maybe Mr. Cohen's testimony or Mr. Mueller's report will change your opinion? Maybe?
@Michael Dowd
'For openers (as a conservative Trump voter), I would be up for a mandated living family wage, universal health care, control over pornography and other pernicious cultural maladies. To pay for this a higher tax on large corporations and wealthy individuals would be appropriate.'
But ... that's literally the Democratic Party platform more-or-less (absent regulating pornography).
I've lived in worked in Switzerland for the past 14 years. It's country that doesn't fall neatly into the basket of stereotypes Americans hold about European countries. It's a very interesting mix of cultural and fiscal conservatism, highly regulated but respectful of market capitalism, and by American standards, progressive on health care and many other social programs.
It's amazing how often my wife and I wonder outloud how many Swiss would be Republican had they lived in the states. Yet they all have a basic belief in the wellfare of the citizenry and have devised an economic system that supports that.
This is seen throughout political policy here. They are supportive of family values without being dogmatically religious, have a regulated healthcare system that is private but disallows waste and ridiculous provider profits from distorting the system and driving up costs.
Interesting fact: I support a family of 4 on a teacher's salary. Not super well, and my wife will need to start working more and more. but I can do it. Imagine that.
As I read this article it made me consider the comparisons I regularly make between my home country and my adopted country. I miss the US, but it is so much more poorly run. You ask a Swiss about US politics and there is always a variation on the same theme, they "love and admire the US" but; "American political values are absurd, disconnected from what's important, and highly disfunctional." This is a problem of the left and right.
32
@ETC. switzerland is not burdened by a massive military budget. If the US cut military spending by 30%, lots of policy objectives could be achieved
6
@George M. No question, but this is not the only factor. And I would argue that the US could continue to spend at or near the same money on military and still do much more for its people. The biggest difference I think is the poor organization and, at worst, the corruption of government. One of the key themes of the Carlson essay and this article is that the priorities of those who lead in the US are out of touch with the needs of the people. That is far less true in Switzerland and it is terribly obvious when I compare the two countries.
3
@George M., The U.S. isn't "burdened" by a military welfare system. It volunteers to be the policeman of the world. Also, even if the U.S. stopped spending on the military, Americans don't believe in "populist" benefits. You can bet that they would rail against spending on things their neighbors actually need. What makes you think they would spend on things they don't spend on now?
2
I follow Mr. Douthat's reasoning, except for his third example. The trends he describes are not being acquiesced in by a desperate Right because "nothing can be done about them". They are actively advanced as they are sources of income, often for mega-corporations. In other words, they are interests of the GOP donor class. And that explains the "laissez faire" approach much more than any desperation.
12
I am a practical liberal but I found his article fascinating and would like to make several points. (1) Economic liberalism vs conservatism are just extremes along a policy spectrum. The correct "setting" for different countries and for different times must be different. If you won't drive a car at a constant 30 mph everywhere, why choose one extreme and fixated on these labels? (2) Why zero interest rate and free money did not have any inflationary pressure since 2008? Inflation is driven by consumption in the United States. Why consumption did not increase with free money? My view is that too much wealth is now distributed into too few hands and consumption of the few cannot be comparable with consumption of the many. It is clearly a result of unhealthy economic inequality and the Trump tax cut will just exaggerate it. (3) The GOP does not have anything to do with economic conservatism for a long time. This is evident from the disappearance of any concern for national debt. GOP is now just an opportunistic group of politicians who has delivered a big tax cut for their billionaire sponsors while covering its negative consequences by pitting one disadvantaged groups against each other with populist/racist rhetoric. (4) Finally, if we want to restore rational policy-based debates to the nation, true conservatives needs to reclaim their parties from the opportunists or start a new one. The current GOP party will fall sooner or later because you can't fool people indefinitely.
23
@Peter
Rational policy debates? A forlorn hope. But I like your comment.
Ross we have to keep in mind is twice a religious convert, and converts, given the chance, preach conversion. Herein we would convert to moral robots. I like this column because it so very often well written and interesting. I'm just noting here that weird is actually a thing, and it does have roots.
Crazed ideas like censorship is necessary or good so that people have families (to prevent that freewheel into degeneracy I suppose?) is exactly akin the AA member who wants booze illegal or what gets the religious cultist out on the corner with pamphlets - in the rain.
Weird is a very smart mind with great writing skill is still worth reading, here he's right the problem with family creation is economics. Moral people who'd like a family are resistant because it's pretty clear the upper crust has a stranglehold on al the money. You can't depend on a job, you can't earn safe interest on your savings if you could get some. You can't buy a house. I don't watch Tucker Carlson, but I might start.
7
A surprisingly good column from Mr. Douthat, but is sad that we think it newsworthy for any conservative voice to express even tepid support for regulation and government.
The rest of us have never lost sight of the fact that government has an important positive role to play in our future.
18
I am a centrist who is starting to love what is happening among thinking conservatives. Here is a seed that can grow into something great, something we need. Unfortunately, the same kind of spring cleaning is not happening on the left.
I'd add that conservatives on the street need to be challenged to admit that some "wounds" are not as critical as others. Wounds need to be prioritized. Conservatives need to pick their fights and learn to accept compromise on the others. My brother nearly dying because medicine costs so much in the US - now that could be a serious wound. I am gay and I have raised 2 sons in what looks to the outside world like a normal family. I was a soccer coach, a Sunday school teacher and all that. My Christianity is obviously not the same as some more conservative kinds, but I could easily live in the neighborhood Ross describes and I would not "wound" anybody. I could even help you shovel your snow! Can conservatives accept me as a citizen and human?
4
Not Carlson’s sort, and not Douthat’s.
It is interesting that "the family" was apparently something that happened only in the 1950s. It is as if American conservatism was born at that moment and, unable to recall any earlier times or places, assumes this to be the Creation. A longer perspective would reveal that the family is very much alive and well, although it continues to change as it has throughout the human past. Difference is not necessarily lack of something.
I'm also be fascinated to hear exactly what measures Mr. Douthat would suggest to deal with the decline of the family wage. Repeal of right-to-work legislation? Socialized healthcare? Improved parental leave policies? I am not going to hold my breath while I wait for the GOP to embrace anything outside of tax cuts for the rich.
17
@Captain Useless Well stated. All the Repubs have had to offer is tax cuts for the rich, mindless defense spending and "Willie Horton" type race baiting. Fearmongering against the other.
If the Repubs had anything of substance that would actually make life better for brown-skinned citizens and working class people of all stripes, then the black guy wouldn't have one the first time, let alone twice by butt-kickin' landslides. You remember the black guy, right?
What’s missing from this analysis is consideration of the impact that high marginal tax rates had on the society that Carlson wants to emulate.
When ownership is limited to 10 - 30% of each marginal dollar its willingness to say yes to employee wage demands is far greater than when it keeps 65 - 70%.
That inequality soared after Reagan’s tax cuts was not a coincidence.
Unless Carlson and others can come up with a viable alternative to high marginal rates their efforts will be fruitless.
12
@Paul '52: The US is essentially clueless about the need for negative feedback in complex systems to prevent them from becoming chaotic.
David French: "There are wounds that public policy can’t heal." Conservatives identify climate change as one of those wounds, when they admit it exists at all. But the climate crisis is completely the fault of conservatives, who won the debate in the public mind about whether it was worth doing anything about (granted: they won it with oodles of fossil propaganda money). Now, after 40 years of denial, we've entered the 'Age of Consequences'. For example, 20% of coral worldwide has died in the last three years. At the present time, some things, like coral, are clearly going to go away and never come back again, and we should blame conservatives, and conservatives alone, for that accomplishment.
Here's the problem: "There are wounds that public policy can’t heal" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When it consists of a small infection on a finger, a little action can heal a wound. But if your philosophy prevents you from taking that action, then by weeks end you might lose the arm, and a week after that, your life. Climate change is a wound conservatives have claimed for 40 years cannot be healed. Now, thanks to their counsel, they are on the cusp of being right.
33
@Phil Well stated. I'm so glad I'm 62 and don't have kids of my own, though there are many that I care about. The Age of Consequences. I like that and I'm going to steal it.
9
@Jed Wing
THE AGE OF CONSEQUENCES a 2016 documentary investigates the impacts of climate change on increased resource scarcity, ...
Good boy, Ross! I want to give you a cookie. You kept the bothsidesism, whataboutism, and patronizing to a minimum and evaluated an important debate going on in conservatism right now. It feels like I woke up in an alternate world where it's a legitimate political movement (I am NOT keeping the patronizing down, sorry not sorry).
I feel like you're recognizing, implicitly, that even though we can't and shouldn't turn back the clock on social revolutions, we can and should turn back the clock on the terribly regressive economic policies people enacted when those social revolutions made them stop caring about society. We can look out for the little guy again.
13
For decades the GOP has promoted the ideas of less government intrusion, lower taxes, more personal liberty. They've gotten exactly that, and now they are complaining about the results? Shocking.
15
@B. Tip jar and raucous applause. Thanks for this summation. Please send it to the Democratic Party as a slogan to go to again and again.
Wow. Excellent piece. Ross is really coming along in the Trump era. I’ve liked a few pieces of his lately. He’s progressing from the “loyal opposition” to something of an ally. For a conservative of today to propose that government, through laws and regulations, can have a positive effect on society is pretty big. Up until now I’ve agreed with Al Franken who years ago said that “republicans believe government doesn’t work, and when they have power they work to make sure it’s true.”
12
I appreciate that Ross is coming clean with his first example by arguing that Republican economic policy WAS wrong after the financial crisis of 2008. Basically what he wrote here is the same thing that Paul Krugmann has argued all along--though he doesn't go as far as him in advocating more massive public spending.
But to align himself in the main point with one of economic conservativism's enemies was the right thing to do, even if he gets flack for it.
So, thank you Ross!
9
At least conservtives are asking questions with many uncomfortable (for them) answers; capitalism is in the dock where it premanently belongs.
The questions are more important than the answers, only partly because today's answers will be wrong in 20 or 10 years, or maybe in 6 months. Today's questions will be outdated too.
We can't and should not however, make the market humane or moral because then it's no longer a market, not a thing to be idolized or ideologized, but a useful amoral device that creates efficiencies and punishes humans.
5
On the best assumptions about Mr Carlson's declaration of independence from, apparently, a goodly number of conservatives keenly interested in the basic tenets of their philosophy, does not pointing out the failure of both major parties "to promote the interests of the working class" and the need of "social conservatives especially...[for] a framework of political economy to promote the institutions — family, work, neighborhood — upon which civil society depends," constitute but the debate's opening salvo requiring a wealth of detail defining these goals and the differences from previous methods conservatives have employed unsuccessfully? And all of such detail acknowledging the correctness of Mr French's observation that “There are wounds that public policy can’t heal” and suggesting how those wounds too will be dealt with or somehow accommodated. Otherwise it seems that while Mr Carlson may have gotten our attention, he's otherwise just left us hanging.
2
Ross - thank you for this thoughtful column. But please consider this: we cannot re-create the attitudes around family that we enjoyed in past decades and centuries. Our Earth cannot sustain everyone raising families any more. Going forward, most of us must choose instead to help raise our extended family. We are too many.
9
Like most of Mr. Douthat's work, this is empty babbling. For example, "The economic recovery was slowed because of the Republican fixation on tight money." Republicans fought all efforts to speed the recovery from the super recession they had created because Barack Obama was president. If I recall correctly, Mitch McConnell. whose stated goal was to make Obama a one term president, led more filibusters in Obama's first term than all filibusters in history added up. Once Trump was elected, the deficit was no longer an issue. Three large tax cuts for the wealthy since 1980 have produced over $21 trillion of debt and a trillion dollar structural deficit. That's "a fixation on tight money"? There is no "conservative" party in America. Republicans have destroyed the political process in their efforts to promote the interests of the economic elite.
65
@rawebb1 I hope that someday a sociologist does a study of Trump's supporters. I'm still shocked that the religious right support him so strongly. I feel that I'd like to tap a mother or father on the shoulder and ask them if they'd feel comfortable leaving their daughter alone in room with him. I would not leave my daughter alone with him for 5 minute. I mean how do they justify their moral religious beliefs and Trump's very immoral behaviour toward every one and everything.
1
Remember the compassion felt by conservatives is best expressed in the following: "We don't think there's anything we can or should do to help you, but we do feel bad for your fate."
17
You missed the critical failure of conservatism: sabotage of environmental regulation. Start with the bipartisan Clean Air Act starting in 1970. As a result of bipartisan regulation, life expectancy in the US has lengthened as particulate pollution has been reduced. Now so-called conservatives are trying to gut these regulations by declaring the science upon which they are based to be illegitimate and making rules to exclude any science that describes the health effects of pollution. Conservatives argued that asbestos was framed and stratospheric ozone depletion was a fraud. Their scientific arguments were so bad that they were not even wrong. But they delayed regulation for their patrons. Now they have stopped US efforts to protect climate. We are approaching a tipping point, not a physical tipping point like release of methane from permafrost or the collapse of Antarctic ice sheets, but the policy tipping point of too little time to counter the emissions of Green House gases (GHGs). The likely consequences of this sabotage have been described in detail and cheerfully denied by the conservative foot soldiers of climate denial. They will be recognized by future generations as the people who knowingly placed obstacles in the path of progress, obstacles as large as any placed in the first half of the last century. "Trade you the Conservative Movement for two Stalins, a Mao and one and a half Hitlers" will be a losing move in the future's board game: Game of Villains.
26
@James Wilson-Eloquently summarized, with one addition: what the short-sighted Trump/Republican/big business policies are doing today is criminal in terms of the costs our children's children and the future's children will pay.
15
The vital issue that Mr. Carlson raises is less about government policy rather than changing cultural norms, basic economics, and, of course, the dramatic and civilization-altering introduction of reliable birth control. As a result, in the 1970s it became increasingly the norm for women to pursue careers and, gradually, for married women with children to continue to participate in the workforce. What seems matter-of-fact now was actually quite radical for that era. However, for better or worse this dramatic increase in the labor supply enabled employers to redefine a “living wage” from a single male supporting a family to the rather unfortunate situation we have today. And the only difference between progressivism and conservatism that I perceive is what, if anything, government should do to accommodate the “new normal.”
5
@William Johnson
If Mr Carlson cared so much about women, the website he founded would not publish fake nudes in an attempt to discredit them politically. But, then maybe that is a cultural norm that conservatives would wish approval for.
Why promote women when you can slander them.
What the country needs are values. Hard work, meritocracy, respect for the rule of law, honesty, self-discipline and self-reliance (there are certainly others). I find it unfathomable that liberals (as understood in the year 2019) cannot endorse these basic truths. If you want to question my premise, see the dictate that the chancellor of the University of California system, Janet Napolitano, sent out to the schools under her jurisdiction. It strongly discouraged teaching these concepts.
3
@Tim Lewis
I am a liberal. I take issue with your opinion that you describe as a definition of what liberals endorse or do not endorse. IMO it is the way that both liberals and conservatives are raised and taught by parents and society in general.
8
@Tim Lewis "What the country needs are values. Hard work, meritocracy, respect for the rule of law, honesty, self-discipline and self-reliance (there are certainly others). " If conservative is what you claim, then you must not have voted for Trump as he does not share these values. Thus, the country needs less of Trump and the Republican party which enables him.
10
@Tim Lewis
Janet Napolitano as President -- not chancellor -- of the UC System has no role in determining the curriculum or pedagogical methodology of University faculty. That's the province of the Provost. The closest thing I can think of is a memorandum outlining the Principles of Community the UC System supports -- concepts like ethics, openness, diversity, inclusiveness, respect, scholarship, etc..
I have no idea where you got your definition of liberal other than possibly the National Review but the classic political meaning of liberal is the assumption of the essential goodness of humankind, with conservative meaning the opposite, which is that human nature is intrinsically bad and must be governed harshly.
What the country needs is less militant ignorance and small mindedness that stems from living in sheltered arrogance.
1
"acquiesced to the spread casino gambling"
Geez, the I don't think acquiesced goes quite far enough, considering the party head's business interests.
18
@Erik Williams, that is for sure, although Trump was a Democrat back then. But it's fair to say both parties have always been happy to embrace it. GOP wanted to invade Cuba for years on behalf of the mob to reestablish casino gambling down there. GOPers Eisenhower, Nixon, Dulles Brothers, etc. hatched the Bay of Pigs invasion plans, thinking Nixon would win in 1960.
And more recently Democrats have "acquiesced to the spread of casino gambling" as well. Harry Reid played the game in Nevada, in terms of who controls politics there. For Pennsylvania, more recently, Democrats Ed Rendell and Vince Fumo come to mind. They worked across the aisle with PA GOP in 2004 to legalize gambling.
Fortunately the Trump branded casino with Pat Croce and Boyz II Men that they tried to jam into East Falls and Nicetown got rejected. Gaming Control Board made the right decision on that one. But unfortunately PA Democrats like Rendell and Fumo had already let the race-to-the-bottom casino as economic development cat out of the bag.
1
It's been a constant refrain from Republicans that "Businesses need certainty." Have you ever once heard these corporate boot lickers say "American families need certainty." Of course not because that would actually require them to repair the safety net they have spent the last fifty years shredding.
FDR said in 1936 of his New Deal programs "Remember, too, that the first essential of doing a job well is to want to see the job done. Make no mistake about this: the Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job. The Republican leadership is against the job's being done."
29
I realize this is just a side point in Douthat's article, but I felt like weighing in on the following passage: "But in recent decades, the right’s elites have despaired of censoring pornography"
Can't be done anymore.
"acquiesced to the spread of casino gambling"
I'm with you, let's find common ground.
"made peace with the creeping commercialization of marijuana"
I favor the commercialization of marijuana.
"and accepted the internet’s conquest of childhood and adolescence"
I'm tempted to say it can't be curtailed, but maybe we can talk about this one. What do you have in mind?
In a better world, we could agree to work on (or at least discuss) the things we agree upon and not make every other issue into a wedge.
9
"Well, you see, we already cut corporate taxes, so there's nothing we can do."
Far more likely that the "conservatives" now in positions of power with the Republican party will say "we've done all we can do - we cut taxes for the wealthy - you just have to be patient." We saw the feeble prediction that Trump's "Tax Reform" would result in corporations repatriating Trillions from offshore, then using it to raise wages "4,000 to $9,000". What kind of fool believed that would happen? Predictably, corporations have grudgingly raised wages at a feeble pace, while furiously buying back stock, and paying big bonuses to executives. To hear Trump's minions tell it now, the wages will grow, but it may be years. Failed economic theories, repeatedly tried, are not now the new savior of traditional family values, or the American family. Until Carlson advocates for expanding health care for poor families, or raising taxes on the wealthy to educate children of the working class, he's doing little but blowing smoke. His Fox "News" colleagues are actively spreading plutocratic propaganda, for policies that have already directly contributed to the destruction of conservative "traditional family values" due to economic necessity.
17
Democrats believe that government can be a force for good in American life and that it can help our citizens solve problems that are bigger than themselves, while most Republicans still cling to the Reagan axiom that government "is the problem." It's a welcome sign that some thoughtful Republicans are beginning to understand the limits of libertarianism and the damaging social impact of Republican orthodoxy. Welcome to the Democratic Party, Ross.
19
How can you have a lucid conversation when the plain meaning of words isn't shared by interlocutors?
Many comments reveal awareness that many of the historic terms used in political conversations have lost most or all meaning: 'conservative' and 'liberal' are two of the most prominent.
The root of 'conservative' is 'conserve' - so just like your grandmother's conserved fruit jars, a conservative ultimately aims to retain what is best of traditional society (norms, conventions, etc), but doesn't preclude scenarios where new ideas are welcome. Cautious but willing to try something new occasionally - when the need is clear and a solution to hand.
The original 19th century meaning of 'liberal' - in Britain, where it came from - was almost the opposite of how the term is used in the USA over the past 50 years. Liberals in Britain supported free markets and the rule of law (meaning impartial application of law without favoring landowners and aristocrats - the heredity principle, etc), opposing conservatives who wanted to preserve the favored landowner/privilege of birth class and legal structure.
A liberal in the USA ought to be proud to stand for the rule of law, in the sense that it applies to all and protects all, without caveat, exclusion or exception. Likewise, a conservative ought not be myopic that some things certainly require a change, while they cherish all those things that are good.
15
@Fred Clark
Look here, Mate. In Australia, the Red Queen must be the definer. The Australian Liberal Party is actually the most reactionary one. How's that for turning things up side down, down under.
I rarely agree with Carlson and I’m not sure about his truest, ever changing beliefs. I do agree that the resources allocated to the family unit have been stripped bare and sacrificed at the altar of trickle down economics. The support of the family by our government, critical to the core of a healthy society, is not a Democratic or Republican imperative. It is a moral and human one.
Thanks for giving the thought a more credible and wider audience.
25
What about starting with public policy that cuts prescription drug costs? When Bush implemented medicare part D for seniors prescription drug costs were nowhere what they are now because we now have so many better drug options than 15-20 years ago. Don't minimize corrective public policies that will save countless lives. In days past there was only so much government could do but we're not living in those times. It is hard to imagine why a political party so steeped in religious conservatism is so lacking in compassion for their fellow man.
17
@Marty As an octogenarian Internist I must dispute Marty's comment that "we have so many better drug options than 15-20 years ago." We do not. I challenge you to name one new drug that is useful to many people which has been released in the past two decades. There are a few which help small numbers of cancer and neurology patients. All of the rest have been ever more expensive variations of existing medications.
9
@Mike Murray MD
First don't minimize drugs that help cancer or neurology patients. Cancer drugs that help activate the immune system such that T cells recognize cancer cells have great potential. These checkpoint inhibitor drugs will save countless lives. No small innovation. And it's not about small numbers. These drugs will save countless lives and will certainly reduce cancer deaths. Think about the drug cocktails that allow HIV patients to live normal lives. Drugs like Eliquis are much safer than warfarin for those suffering from A-fib. To suggest that drugs today have no more efficacy that drugs of two decades ago is absurd. How about ezetia which may replace statins and the side effects of such drugs? New drugs to reduce triglycerides? Drugs that absolutely cure HepC? I expect that drugs to delay PK and ALZ will be forthcoming in just a few years.
6
@Marty and Mike
The point is to reduce the outrageous price gauging of Big Pharma. Take one simple example. Colchicine ( gout) has been around since 1500 BC and used fully since 1820. 4 years ago Walmart sold it for $5 for 30 pills. Now it's $90. Except that in New Zealand I get it for $4 for 180 pills because the generic is still generic.
On the subject of over-the-top Pharmaceutical profit see the work of Marcia Angell former editor NEJM.
For action See the new bill by Sanders-Cummings to allow the govt to negotiate drug costs with Big Pharma which other governments (like New Zealand and Australia) already do.
6
American Conservatism - which grew out of Locke's and others' classical liberalism, represents the thinking of the writers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Any other system fails its citizens; you could ask the Swedes who experimented with HIGH taxation and realized that it was stifling their nation's culture as much as it was damaging their economy.
Progressives and socialists adore a huge government exerting power and control over people.
Thanks to similar people in ages past, we received millions of achievers ready to do anything to make it in America, and they made us the world's TOP island of freedom AND reciever of immigrants for two centuries.
4
@L'osservatore How about just having a government big enough to deliver services to people in an efficient and humane way and regulate industries and activities so that people don't die of pollution or go bankrupt because of medical bills? Every time I hear someone decry government "exerting power and control" I wonder if they're not an apologist for the no-controls, drill-baby-drill plutocrats who care nothing for their fellow citizens' health and prosperity.
6
@L'osservatore Hmmmm. It's not progressives and socialists who want "to exert power and control" over women's bodies, people's sexual choices, whom people marry, people's religious or nonreligious behaviors, etc.
1
@L'osservatore - I never knew that waves of immigrants coming to America were fleeing the welfare state. Were they trying to escape from healthcare?
2
Work as we know it is headed to zero, replaced by automation one step up the ladder at a time. Today it's repetitive manufacturing jobs and fast food kiosks, but tomorrow it’s going to be coders and lawyers and the list goes on. Big data is driving artificial intelligence at a breathtaking pace, and some jobs like redistriciting may even today be best done without any human input. The point being that the elite class and the working class may soon be an in the same class and conservatives and liberals alike will be aching for public policies that keep them in groceries, provide health care, and generally meet all their day to day needs.
4
@Mark HOGDEN
Not only artificial intelligence but the UK now allows genetic engineering on human embryos.
Just think how it will be when the genetically engineered post humans will be competing for jobs with the old fashioned regular kind of humans.
In a nation that sends all economic gains to the 1 percent and starves everyone else of public goods, the paths to a healthier society are blindingly obvious. But conservatives prefer to focus on whether anyone should be allowed to smoke pot.
77
@phillygirl
Or choose how, when and if they wish to bring a new life into this world.
1
What we've got going right now is:
Representation
WITHOUT
Taxation
12
Conservatism as an ideology or philosophy is, itself, a mistaken path.
Note: It should not be confused with cautious pessimism, which is an attitude or lifestyle.
Douthat says: "If there is to be a healthy American right, ... this is the argument that conservatives should be having."
Conservative want to preserve a past that never was -- a fiction they have written.
Whatever "right" or "left" may mean, "conservatives" aren't going to argue over any of it because they have their (hi)story and they will stick to it because, well, they're conservatives..
I fully agree with Douthat that "They’ve leaped to despair without even trying policy" but what-on-Earth did he expect from people who are living in fantasies?
12
Since we are finally acknowledging that unions were good for working people, will you now support efforts to reverse the Republican's anti-union policies? If not, then this is all just rhetoric without any policy "meat."
36
Why did you have to ruin a good article with that nonsense about paternalism? No, Ross, we don’t need the government to tell us that we can’t use pot. We’ve had that for a long time, and it hasn’t worked. (In fact, the failed “War on Drugs” is easily the most destructive example of the “general folly of elites.”) We need a government that respects individual liberty, while doing everything that it can effectively and sustainably do to maximize collective wellbeing. That’s a tough balancing act, perhaps, but it’s a balancing act worth attempting.
22
I am frequently baffled when people complain that wages need to be dramatically higher, because this would trigger, often from the same writers, fears that various forms of automation are killing all the jobs.
Someone is sitting in many proverbial "back offices" periodically updating a spreadsheet comparing the cost to operate as is and the cost to convert to an automated store/factory/warehouse/whatever. When automation looks like a reliably better deal, odds are we will know about it in short order.
Policy interventions should make it easier to raise children and escape from college debt and fears of medical bills, but these changes are unlikely to come in the form of wage increases for most workers.
I find this commentary interesting and perplexing. Particularly your "deeper point here is that public policy is rarely a cure-all.." American Conservatism has a history of protecting the privileged- Southern slavery and later Jim Crow Laws, child labor in factories and mines, resistance to and violence against laborers who insisted upon a living wage and safe working conditions- and ignoring or belittling the plight of the unprivileged. Today Conservatives favor deregulation. Polluted air, toxic water, and contaminated land are valued by Conservatives? Conservative economics that insisted business is only beholden to its stockholders has created wealth and income inequality, the Great Recession, and corporations too big to fail. Public policy is not a cure-all, it is the realization of democracy, of we the people addressing problems together to insure our inalienable rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Public policy is neither liberal nor conservative, but democracy in action.
29
Much, if not most, of our current problem with “...family economics....” also known as the two income trap, stems from the 50 year plot to destroy unions and ship manufacturing jobs elsewhere, first to the Seth and then overseas.
Another huge problem is the cost of childcare.
Things could be done about that. Most civilized countries provide support for young families.
24
This totally ignores the roots of our the present pseudo-Republican party revealed in the book Democracy in Chains. The ascendant Republican party got much of its energy from anti-integrationists and industrialists who did not (and do not) want to waste their money on the common citizen. These Republicans are advancing their aims of weakening Social Security, Medicare, public education, environmental protections, consumer protections, and access to affordable healthcare. They have worked to undermine Americans' faith in government and have worked to disenfranchise voters.
53
This is a good essay. It helps to remind us that even for conservatives, who tend to favor minimal government involvement in people's lives, government can nonetheless be a positive force that goes beyond merely cutting taxes and regulation. If you think about it, it doesn't require much imagination to do those two things.
15
"Normal families?" What the heck are normal families, Mr. Douthat? Robert Young and Jane Wyatt in 'Father Knows Best' from the tenor of this column. You know, separate beds instead of birth control. We're not going back there. Paternalism isn't going to solve the problems created by the patriarchal good ol' boys club.
52
@Vanessa Hall
Watch the show. Carlson uses the term "normal families" really to refer to families who are middle class and whose incomes only go so far. People (unlike Carlson himself) who send their children to public schools, and who are affected by the prices of gasoline, groceries, electricity etc.
4
@Vanessa Hall
Vanessa, when I read "normal families" I pictured exactly that, the fiction of "Father Knows Best."
Thank you, no, Ross, your dream is actually a nightmare for a vast number of people.
2
@Middleman MD
So why Tucker supported the tax cut, which did nothing for the middle class?
2
Well, Mr. Douthat, you actually sound sensible. Public policy can, and has been, corrective. My only objection is your ending, where you agree with and reference Carlson: “even the normal will eventually turn to socialism — choosing a left-wing overcorrection over a right that just says, Well, you see, we already cut corporate taxes, so there's nothing we can do.”
The vast majority of the “left-wing”, and most likely the vast majority of the country, would like a living wage with one job, universal health care, and more affordable childcare. Some would like access to a college education that doesn’t burden them financially for 20 or more years. As long as the right wing – including you – continues to frame these items as “socialist”, nothing will change.
We are a capitalist country, with numerous socialist programs. These programs serve individuals, corporations, all sorts of farmers, and everything in-between. They are provided because, ideally, they help with the greater good. The most abuse of them, in terms of dollars, comes from the corporate sector.
Language is critical. Providing a social safety net and support for working folks should not be demonized.
94
My sense is that the bulk of today's elite conservatives, of which Carlson is one, take French's notion that “There are wounds that public policy can’t heal" and they immediately segue to Reagan's "The most feared words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Carlson and his ilk are all extensions of Grover Norquist who wants a government so mall he can drown it in the bathtub, so those with plenty of power can have plenty more. Conservatives could stop pushing bogus "right to work (for less)" laws, they could stop hindering union efforts. The only reason they push against such workplace movements is based on the false mantra of needing to serve the shareholders above all, hosing the people creating the wealth through labor.
44
Didn't know Carlson had it in him. However, his conclusion that it will have to be the Republicans who fix the situation, still smacks of his partisanship. Perhaps he should take some of his own advice and reevaluate. Then again, maybe he was trying to save his job.
10
How about conservatives stop narrowly defining, or even referring to "normal families?" From there recognize giving huge tax cuts to the wealthy does nothing to promote the economic foundation of American families.
39
In a society where technology has segregated people more than ever before, a political movement that has a social component that brings people together could dominate. From Tucker's perspective, a libertarian economy provides the framework for a free society but absent those things that knit families and communities together, what's the point of being free?
7
A recurring theme of this essay is that "paternalism" is a Conservative virtue that must be put into public policy through "regulation". That is deeply disturbing to me.
27
@Pat
Especially when we know he means Christian, specifically Catholic, patriarchy as that conservative paternalism.
3
Maybe we don't need 20 billion people on the planet and we should be thankful that we correct ourselves before we are collectively doomed?
13
The right will be fine as soon as it learns to avoid disguising its economics as morals and the other way around.
35
What would a "left-wing overcorrection" look like? Healthcare for all, parental leave, widely-available family planning options, pay equity, lower wealth disparities, reasonable gun controls? Sounds good to me.
961
@Evelyn
Thanks for that Evelyn. Whether or not people agree with the democrats they do have a vision for America. The things you mentioned.
What exactly is the republican vision these days? Really, what is it?
75
@Evelyn- here is where the left is going:
Stifling of free speech, criminalization of gun ownership, elimination of the concept of merit, confiscatory tax rates, open borders, abolition of freedom of association, non-enforcement of misdemeanors, legalization of all drugs, one world government.
Sounds pretty awful to me.
5
@Evelyn Spoken like a fellow Canadian, eh? And yes, it sounds good to me, too.
26
"It’s just that conservatism has given up — once again, in unwarranted despair"-Douthat.
When conservatives abandon the notion that government is not the solution, it is the problem; when conservatives stop undercutting organized labor; when Eisenhower Republicans lead their party, then they might be able to face some of society's ills. Until then, they are satisfied to be led by POTUS in pursuit of tax cuts, starving public education, circumventing voting rights and shredding the social safety net.
I was pleased to read that Douthat recognized the importance of labor unions. I am pleased that he recognized how clueless of economics were hard money conservative but conveniently became advocates of soft money. Perhaps he has been reading Dr. Krugman's columns. To reach enlightenment he has to recognize that his movement has bowed to the interests and to the power of oligarchs and plutocrats in corroding democracy and in the lives of most Americans
67
Um, public policy that advances the interests of a class of people who are losing out as a result of a capitalist competitive society IS socialism. It seems to me Tucker is becoming a socialist in his demand for government to fix society. BTW, many Western European countries have implemented policies that provide significant support to middle class families. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
41
"Maybe it isn’t possible to recreate a family wage for a less unionized and more feminist age — but are we sure?"
It is possible, because it is actual. Its name is Germany. In Germany investors' interests do not completely trounce workers' interests, as they do in the U.S. Take notice of the fact that the vast majority of Republicans politicians, who represent investors' interests with an enthusiasm that borders on savagery, rarely if ever even mention Germany. It's as if it doesn't exist.
117
@Greg Weis
In Trump's mind, the US has to choose between becoming Venezuela and emulating Putin's Russia.
3
It's amazing how, in the nearly 40 years since St. Ronnie of Reagan administration, the Republicant's orthodoxy of trickle down economics and free trade have eviscerated the middle class.
"Free trade" seems to be synonymous with "destroy the unions" that brought many people a living wage and fueled the economy.
There is only one party that has failed to promote the interests of the working class and it is the conservative one.
136
There seem to be a couple points in this piece which are rather mixed up, the idea that feminism contributed to the necessity of a two wage earning family, and that a breakdown of gender norms resulted in a breakdown of families.
I am not sure how feminism would have contributed to the two wage earner trend, I think it is more likely an adjustment of what people expect. When you had single wage earners the choices consumers had for what they considered the basic necessities of life were much more limited. People owned one car, the family had one phone, there weren't garage door openers, or microwaves. I believe it is still possible for many families for get by on one income if they adjust all the things they expect out of life. For that matter now the economy needs all those workers, and more.
In terms of gender norms affecting the stability of families I would actually blame the downfall of men more than the breakdown of traditional gender roles. Women haven't just risen in the economic ranks because they have demanded that ability, they have also done so by out competing men through much of the economy. Even in cases were women are the breadwinners men have often failed to support their wage earners through domestic contributions. If men had shown sufficient flexibility as gender norms changed and the roles of women expanded then families would be far more stable than they are.
18
@erhoades, Somewhere I read that most men in the US come from single-parent (usually mother) families or knew their step-father (well) but not their biological father.
"Feminism" is the other side of machismo -- and machismo is a worldwide social ill.
It's amazing how mr. Douthat reacts single-handedly blaming the lack of policy-makers imagination to the right, amazing and historical untrue, since the Democrats did govern as much as the Republicans, recently, and they share common responsibility for the state of art of social and cultural milieu.
What mr. Carlson said into his monologue was in part a reaction to a recent article on nytimes about the impossibility of taking back rural life, of living in rural cities. And his critique distributed blame among all the principal actors of policies. He mentioned very rich people interested in exotic idealistic humanitarian battle very far from the problems at home (marriage in the case, but we can easily swap it for any other domestic problem).
Above all, i praise his stark assertion that Trump will pass, but the country will stay, and, i add, so will the void left during these years by newspapers and culture, so absorbed by politics, as a stain on the basic duty of inform and to educate people to their possible best. Many people are going to pay the price for this void, in terms of relationships, upbringing of children and many other related issue.
These years of trump presidency will be marked as the cultural "freeze-and-holding-back" years.
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I'm delighted that Mr. Carlson is presenting this critique on the right and I agree its desperately needed. In fact I'm warmed by it. This is a potent topic that Liberals should be able to get behind too. Can you imagine, shared goals? For those interested in the topic and looking for a deeper read, a very interesting book, published in 2003:
Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200-1800 by Kathrerine A. Lynch.
As for the free market system, it has decimated extended families and social networks, because individuals need to be on the move in order to find work. The result is a certain loss of identity and support. In addition, bureaucratic institutions are left to pick up the slack with care for the elderly, or physically or mentally ill, care that previously was shared by extended families and familiar neighbors. Its a mistake to assumed the ill were not cared for before we had large hospitals, large institutions, and so-called not-for-profits.
Mr. Carlson is tapping into some deeply interesting social shifts that have occurred, shifts that we may benefit from re-examining. Surely we may not all want to be tethered to our families but that's another discussion.
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An excellent essay with good points. There are some issues on which I am in disagreement, but on those Douthat has laid a foundation for discussion.
It should be clearly understood that Tucker Carlson has decided to be neither a populist nor a conservative. He only plays one (or the other) on television.
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Why should very rich people get even another solitary penny of tax relief? What have they done to demonstrate a use or a need for this?
I number among my nodding acquaintances one billionaire (real estate and shopping centers) and at least five millionaires (law and medicine primarily).
These four men and two women will tell you that on an any given day they have hardly a clue as to what their net worth will be on the very next day.
Their money is primarily kept in real estate and the stock market, so how could they?
Up 40 or 50 thousand dollars one day, down by 2 or 3 hundred thousand the next.
Really not a bad way to live, when you consider the millions of Americans who live their lives with virtually nothing. and still will after Trump’s bogus promises of tax relief and better jobs are just a distant memory.
I say let’s make a law that says all the people with a net worth over five or ten million dollars who don’t really know on January 1 how much money they will be worth on January 10 don’t ever get another tax cut of any kind.
And while we’re at this, let’s make the law permanent. How much could this hurt them?
The question before us at the moment is how can we provide some meaningful help to the millions of Americans who presently have nothing?
This, of course, is precisely the question that Trump and McConnell have absolutely no intention of asking, now or ever.
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@A. Stanton, this was part of Tucker Carlson's critique, pointing out the differential in tax rates between capital and labor.
Trump was not able to deliver because of the Paul Ryan wing of the GOP but, in contrast to what one normally sees from the GOP, at least Trump brought up the issue of the carried interest loophole.
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@GRH - Trump brought up the issue of carried interest ONLY on the campaign trail. Once elected, he quickly learned that this topic was never mentioned in polite GOP society.
Trump did sign the 2017 tax bill that gave very substantial tax breaks to real estate developers, such as himself. Explain to me how that is not self-dealing and to the detriment of the US taxpayers / voters.
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@GRH---"at least Trump brought up the issue" BUT he did nothing! It was all talk and both he and the wealthy knew that. And so do we.
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Where is the money coming from to promote the interests of the working class? The recent Republican tax cut for the 1% and corporations will increase the deficit by at least two trillion dollars.
What exactly do you perceive the interests of the working class are?
My suggestions would be affordable and guaranteed health insurance, subsidized excellent child care, affordable medicines including contraception. close to free good secondary education, clean water and safe food just to mention a few.
Name me one Republican leader that will send bills to be voted on with those policies.
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@Edward Blau-These are the exact policies promoted by progressive Western democracies--with a few more quality-of-life protections added in.
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We are way out of balance in both our politics and society. We no longer have functioning balance between our tripartite government between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. And similarly, between Big Business, Big Government, and Big Labor. Our government is partially shuttered as the Legislative branch is incapable of exercising their Constitutional requirement to be a "check and balance" against Executive overreach of authority. Similarly, Big Business and Big Government have crippled Big Labor leading to social unrest and instability caused by growing income inequality. As Marx long ago pointed out, Big Business (aka capitalism) seeks to exploit and suppress Big Labor. The solution was not communism or socialism, but Big labor that created a countervailing force and balance essential to a vibrant democracy. Until we restore this balance we will have an oligarchy rather than a democracy.
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