Political Animal
Blog
David Brooks’ latest critique of the conservative movement (which reads an awful lot like the first draft of a post-election thumb-sucker on What Went Wrong) covers a lot of familiar ground for anyone familiar with intra-conservative debate over the years. Used to be, to paraphrase what Jesse Jackson once said about the Democratic Party, conservatives understood you needed “two wings to fly:”
On the one side, there were the economic conservatives. These were people that anybody following contemporary Republican politics would be familiar with. They spent a lot of time worrying about the way government intrudes upon economic liberty. They upheld freedom as their highest political value. They admired risk-takers. They worried that excessive government would create a sclerotic nation with a dependent populace.
But there was another sort of conservative, who would be less familiar now. This was the traditional conservative, intellectual heir to Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter and Catholic social teaching. This sort of conservative didn’t see society as a battleground between government and the private sector. Instead, the traditionalist wanted to preserve a society that functioned as a harmonious ecosystem, in which the different layers were nestled upon each other: individual, family, company, neighborhood, religion, city government and national government.
So, to boil down the rest of Brooks’ argument, the conservative movement is (temporarily?) just out of balance, and needs some of that fine Burkean/Kirkean communitarian ballast to keep the Good Ship Reaction from following the wild winds of libertarianism through the Straits of Delirium to Galt’s Gulch and electoral disaster.
It’s an elegant argument that mainly suffers from a pretty striking misunderstanding of the actual nature of the actual conservative movement for much of the last half-century. Check out this planted axiom from Brooks about the good old days when “traditionalists” lived in harmony with “economic conservatives”:
Ronald Reagan embodied both sides of this fusion, and George W. Bush tried to recreate it with his compassionate conservatism. But that effort was doomed because in the ensuing years, conservatism changed.
In the polarized political conflict with liberalism, shrinking government has become the organizing conservative principle. Economic conservatives have the money and the institutions. They have taken control. Traditional conservatism has gone into eclipse. These days, speakers at Republican gatherings almost always use the language of market conservatism — getting government off our backs, enhancing economic freedom. Even Mitt Romney, who subscribes to a faith that knows a lot about social capital, relies exclusively on the language of market conservatism.
With all due allowance for the selective memories of Reagan that are so prevalent among conservatives, the actual Reagan stood for exactly as much “market conservatism” as the political marketplace would accommodate. Yes, he compromised with Democrats in a way that seems alien today, and sure, he did express some interest in buttressing the slim economic prospects of the working poor on “family policy” grounds. But he was also the man who coined the eternal phrase “Government isn’t the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” And there’s a reason Grover Norquist, the epitome of the tyrannical economic conservative Brooks is excoriating, spent a decade of his life roaming around the country badgering state and local governments into naming things after St. Ronald.
And anyone familiar with the actual nature of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”—in practice, a small program aimed at buying votes and cooperation from a highly targeted group of evangelical ministers, especially African-Americans—would be a little shy about treating it as the latter-day incarnation of the traditionalist impulse in Anglo-American conservatism.
But putting all that aside for a moment, Brooks’ portrait of the conservative movement has a rather glaring omission: a rather large and powerful group of self-identified “traditionalists” who are fully aligned with the “market conservatives” on a common agenda: the Christian Right. And the Christian Right in turn has its roots in an ancient southern authoritarian tradition that began to join the conservative movement in the Goldwater campaign of 1964, the true precursor to today’s GOP.
You wouldn’t know this from reading Brooks, but this “economic/traditionalist” alliance is alive and well, and merges almost seamlessly in the Tea Party Movement. All those “economic conservative” politicians Brooks frets about, with extremely few exceptions, are fully committed to an activist agenda to restore the “social order” of “traditionalist” sexual ethics, patriarchal family and community structure, and ecclesiastical privilege. And the actual “traditionalists” of American conservatism—not the tweedy Burkeans of Brooks’ imagination, but the vast grassroots machine of the Christian Right—have happily cooperated in baptizing laissez-faire capitalism as a divinely ordained, ideal system of organizing economic life.
Yes, there are some “traditionalist” Catholic thinkers and leaders who are half-in, half-out of the contemporary conservative movement. But more and more, they seem inclined to subordinate their broader social vision to the categorical imperative of maintaining Church privileges and fighting feminism, contraception and abortion.
All in all, it’s not the conservative movement that’s lost its ballast and balance; it’s that Brooks has missed the boat. Reading his column, I’m reminded of the great postwar “traditional conservative” Peter Viereck, who claimed Franklin D. Roosevelt (or the “Squire of Hyde Park” as he was prone to calling him) as the great twentieth-century American conservative figure.
David seems to think an electoral defeat (or some sort of post-election coup executed by Mitt Romney) could fundamentally change American conservatism from the direction he’s deploring. And that’s the biggest misunderstanding of all.
Facebook
Twitter
gregor on September 25, 2012 11:53 AM:
The basic premise that conservatives care about freedom is fraudulent.
The main problem with the GOP is the dissonance between what it loudly proclaims as its basic philosophy on the one hand, and, on the other, the actual concrete objectives and the policy prescriptions to achieve them that it proposes.
Gene O'Grady on September 25, 2012 11:58 AM:
Brooks seems to have no idea of what "Catholic social teaching" was, at least before the Wojtyla revolution from within. And even the unsainted JP II hardly fits in with the conservative agenda.
Anonymous on September 25, 2012 11:59 AM:
Poor Dour Mr. Brooks, musing on what happened to Conservatism...
And he does it while tap-dancing around the herd of elephants in the room – open racism, and the institutional changes made by Evangelical Christians, who brought misogyny, homophobia, and fear and hatred of “The Others.”
Instead, it’s like David Brooks doing a cover version of Barbara Streisand’s “The Way We Were.”
"Mem’ries,
Light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were…"
GET A ROOM, DAVIE!!!
And you won't need twin beds, even.
paul on September 25, 2012 12:01 PM:
What Gregor said. When it comes to government intruding on the economic liberty of poor people by making it harder to form unions, or capping court awards for damages, soi-disant economic conservatives are all for it. Same as when the government interferes with the peerless logic of the marketplace (yeah, right) by bailing out big companies and their executives.
Brooks starts from bullsh*t and moves on.
Memekiller on September 25, 2012 12:01 PM:
We don't want them to "get it." We want them to stubbornly beat their head against the wall and rationalize loss after loss after loss.
Peter C on September 25, 2012 12:21 PM:
Old propagandists never die, they just babble about a golden age that no one else remembers.
JM917 on September 25, 2012 12:26 PM:
Thanks for mentioning Peter Viereck. He was indeed a powerful thinker, and a wonderful writer (and poet) too. He had FDR pegged exactly right. Today Viereck would be classed as a flaming liberal, perhaps a bit to the left of Obama. His books are still worth reading: Conservatism Revisited (1949, with its 1962 postscript The New Conservatism--What Went Wrong?) and The Unadjusted Man (1956). There's nothing of that sort in Buckley, Kirk--or David Brooks.
Ronald on September 25, 2012 12:27 PM:
I read this article earlier this morning and was equally confused as to WTF he was talking about.
Your point that he totally discounted the Christian Right was well made. He also seems to miss the point that it was the 'traditional right' and not the 'economic right' that propelled the Republicans in 2010, which is why they are so aggrieved now that they have to hold their noses for (yet another) 'economic right' candidate.
The issue with the Republicans isn't on either 'side' of their con- it is simply that their beliefs and platforms have totally moved out of the American mainstream and they've missed the boat. All of them.
Back in the 'good old days', Media was easier to control. Now there's MSM, but there's also Facebook, Twitter and the internet echo chamber as a whole to bring things out into the light.
It is why things like 'Gay Marriage' (what used to be a significant wedge issue) no longer is a potent force. (as an example)
R on September 25, 2012 12:34 PM:
I have several progressive friends who think that Brooks is smart and insightful. I just don't get it. "Harmonious ecosystem"? When did that ever happen? When the governor of Arkansas brought in the National Guard prevent black students from going in to Little Rock Central High School? When women were defined by law as men's "property"? I guess it was pretty harmonious for Dick and Mitt and W. to have less well-connected peers go to Vietnam so that they could stay home. And isn't "ecosystem" an interesting word to choose just as we're recalling conservative reactions to Rachel Carson 50 years ago? Brooks puts pretty words together to put forward ideas that just don't stand up to scrutiny.
TCinLA on September 25, 2012 12:36 PM:
Finally, someone has noticed the "Southernist" takeover of the Republican Party. "Southernist" is my term for that "ancient southern authoritarian system" Ed mentioned. The thing that a lot of people don't get (particularly Brooks here) is that there are actually three political parties in America: the national progressive party, the national conservative party (which used to look a lot like what Brooks describes) and the southernist party, which used to be primarily regional but is now more identified with ideology than location. The two national parties are pretty evenly divided, so the southernists have traditionally thrown their support to whichever party would respect their "peculiar institutions" (not just limited to slavery, but rather an economic-social system rooted in aristocratic authoritarianism). That was the national progressive party until the 1960s when they committed "treason" with civil rights. The southernist party, which is a parasite, then went to the national conservative party, this time determined there would be no betrayal, by taking it over. We all know what happens when the parasite takes over the host.
mb on September 25, 2012 12:37 PM:
What is aggravating to me is that there are many voices on the Left that will join Brooks in wringing their hands over where all the "true" conservatives have gone. So-called "progressives" who apparently wish 2012 cons were more like 1980 cons. All this "Reagan wasn't conservative enough for these teapartiers" talk is silly. If Reagan was alive (and in his right mind) today, I think he'd be thrilled with where his party is. RR was as rightwing as the times would allow -- and these times allow for pretty extreme positions.
To paraphrase Forest Gump's mom, conservatism is as conservatism does. Time for Brooks, et al. to accept that Hayek and Burke are dead. Ronald Reagan hitched his party to the southern evangelical movement and where they are now is where they were always headed.
And no, losing the election is not going to make them see the error of their ways. Other than the Holy Spirit, Christ really only promised Christians one thing in life -- persecution. Therefore, while winning the election would be proof positive of the rightness of their views, losing the election would also be proof positive of the rightness of their views. Can't really lose when your whole life is a rolling martyrdom.
Neil Bates on September 25, 2012 12:41 PM:
Ed, Reagan was better than you say since his full quote (let's not quote Mittstaker style ;-) was ~"In the current crisis, government is the problem not the solution." Well that is not such a great relief so this is better: his tax plan reduced taxes, cut exemptions and loopholes, etc. Yet one of the most important distinctions between Reagan and R-Ayn is that Reagan said that actual workers should not pay a higher rate than financiers. IOW, he ensured that the capital gains tax rate was the same as that for regular income. (Fill us in if that was pushed more by Congress, but it fits his own statement which basically supported today's proposed "Buffet Rule.")
Find minds make find distinctions
T2 on September 25, 2012 12:47 PM:
the great thing about the Bible is that if you look hard enough, you can always find a passage that says whatever you want to do is right or good. Thus the Evangelicals find that their way of doing things is always the "right" way, God's will, so to speak. It's a charade.
RMcD on September 25, 2012 12:57 PM:
One of the great ironies of intellectual conservatism, from its origins in Kirk, Weaver, Meyer, etc., is that they coupled an attack on liberal "abstractions" (natural rights, equal liberty, social justice) with their own deeply abstract and conceptional vision, one that had little connection to politics as actually practiced and American society as lived reality. Kirk's famous claim that school lunch was a totalitarian threat or Rand's view that high marginal tax rates were akin to the gas chambers. No wonder that so many of those writers got their start as fantasy novelists.
Brooks, for all his self-styled pragmatism is no different. I'm reminded of the elegant essay he once wrote about Walt Whitman (I think for the Atlantic), using the poet's Democratic Vistas to justify the Iraq War, without much recognition of Whitman's own passionately Democratic politics (both bog and little "D"). I'd feel bad for old Brooksy if he didn't make such a good living peddling his pernicious illusions.
Shane Taylor on September 25, 2012 1:06 PM:
In the mid 1990s, John Gray argued that the "undoing of conservatism" came about as an "unintended consequence of Hayekian policy." Gray said:
"The social and cultural effects of market liberalism are, virtually without exception, inimical to the values that traditional conservatives hold dear. Communities are scattered to the winds by the gale of creative destruction. Endless 'downsizing' and 'flattening' of enterprises fosters ubiquitous insecurity and makes loyalty to the company a cruel joke. The celebration of consumer choice, as the only undisputed value in market societies, devalues commitment and stability in personal relationships and encourages the view of marriage and the family as vehicles of self-realization. The dynamism of market processes dissolves social hierarchies and overturns established expectations. Status is ephemeral, trust frail and contract sovereign."
http://www.georgescialabba.net/mtgs/1996/09/enlightenments-wake-politics-a.html
Shane Taylor on September 25, 2012 1:26 PM:
I should clarify that by "traditional," Gray meant the likes of Peter Viereck. Elsewhere, Gray seems to recognize that the Christian Right in America is something darker.
SelfimposedExileSwede on September 25, 2012 1:54 PM:
One wonders whether Brooks has had anything original to say about anything ever. He's the epitome of the smug pundit class that gets everything wrong yet continues to be influential, proving once again that merit is useless in corporate journalism.
schtick on September 25, 2012 1:54 PM:
The teapubs are promoting lies, lies, and more lies and when their lies cause any kind of blowback, they blame the dems. It's all about winning and nothing to do with country. Their flag waving and support of the Constitution is nothing but lies. In the last thirty years they have found that they can't get into office honestly, so they lie, cheat and steal and that's the bottom line. Win at all costs, the country and people be damned. The worse part is they are proud of it.
SecularAnimist on September 25, 2012 1:57 PM:
David Brooks is a bought-and-paid-for corporate stooge and a cynical bullshit artist who specializes in spoon-feeding smarmy, pseudo-intellectual "conservative" pabulum to "liberals". I have no idea why anyone takes him seriously.
boatboy_srq on September 25, 2012 2:08 PM:
@SelfimposedExileSwede:
One of the reasons Brooks gets everything wrong, as you mention, is that he continually advocates for something he doesn't truly understand, and is then mystified at the appalling circumstances which occur when he gets exactly what he said he wanted.
biggerbox on September 25, 2012 2:15 PM:
Just because Brooks is now willing to criticize Republicans, it doesn't make him a better thinker, or more worth reading. He's just as clueless and insipid as before, he's just obsessed with a slightly different set of ideas lately.
SadOldVet on September 25, 2012 2:34 PM:
David Brooks did not MISS the boat.
He got on the wrong one a damn long time ago.
T. Halkowski on September 25, 2012 2:54 PM:
What Brooks completely misses (& what Garry Wills brilliantly described way back in the 70's in his book _Nixon Agonistes_), is that the repub party, for quite a while now has consisted of economic libertarians & social authoritarians. They're of course antithetical to each other philosophically, but for the most part both 'wings' try to ignore this in order to win elections. When they lose elections they throw rocks at each other. The species of 'Conservative' Brooks talks about died, probably, when Nelson Rockefeller did. Some one probably should tell Brooks this.
realoldguy on September 25, 2012 5:04 PM:
When Mittens loses on November 6, he'll retire into obscurity and devote the rest of his life to tax evasion and watching Ann groom the dancing horse. Since he's so rich, I doubt we'll be seeing him along with the rest of that losers club for old Republicans on Fox News. On November 7, the battle royale to determine who's the most conservative will begin. Will the winner be... the Frothy Mixture? Ayn Rand's Intellectual Heir? the Failed Academic? the Pizza Mogul? the Congresswoman with the Weird (Ex)Gay Husband? the Witch from Delaware? Dear, Dear Dr. Paul? Maybe even America's Favorite MILF will take the crown! And how they all just love that lil baby fetus! Everything about conservatism is just so... so mediocre.
RMcD on September 25, 2012 5:38 PM:
T.H., good points, but I would contest the notion that economic libertarianism and social authoritarianism are antithetical. Libertarianism, by its very nature, serves such a small slice of wealthy interests that it can only be implemented by authoritarian (ant-democratic) means. That's the history of American libertarians, from Gilded Age Social Darwinists like Carnegie and Field to modern economists like Hayek and Friedman, who eagerly embraced Chilean fascism as long as it promoted marketization.
The key is that libertarians routinely deny any connection between "freedom" and notions like "democracy" or the "common good," ideas they consider to be vague and dangerous abstractions. For them, freedom really means heroic, individualistic exertions of power, and that meshes much more closely with dictatorial control than with pluralistic popular government. Scratch a libertarian and you'll usually find a fascist underneath.
Robert Waldmann on September 25, 2012 6:57 PM:
You are very very right. Brooks pretends that most US conservatives just don't exist. Does he really think he's fooling anyone ?
The thing about traditionalism is that there isn't just one tradition. Brooks lists an Irishman as the key figure in the US traditionalist conservative tradition (and an Irish whig at that).
I don't think he recently missed a boat. I think he has had never had much to do with a significant tendency really existing US conservatism. He is the embodiment of the US conservative that US liberals wish we had not one we have.
Sure I'd prefer a debate between Obama and Brooks to the US debate (and I would prefer a debate between Obama and Jane Hamsher to that debate) but I don't thank the New York Times for trying to hide the true face of US conservatism.
Robert Waldmann on September 25, 2012 7:04 PM:
Furthermore, what about the neo imperialist ultra hawk warmonger wing of the Republican party. The type of Conservatism (which confuses the concepts of conserving and bombing) is also somehow stronger in the South than in the rest of the country and somehow (don't ask me) reconciled with outspoken Christianity (as Christ said "he who lives by the sword has my vote anytime he runs against one of those wimp post LBJ Democrats") but it sadly extends beyond the ultra evangelical religious right.
Too many people people just want to bomb Moslems for the fun of it and not because they think it will hasten the second coming of Christ.
smartalek on September 25, 2012 7:48 PM:
"Brooks puts pretty words together to put forward ideas that just don't stand up to scrutiny."
That's not just Brooks.
That's almost every national Publican candidate for at least a full generation -- certainly back to Reagan, and probably further.
If Publicans ever told the truth about what they really believe and stand for, and the policies they'd actually implement, they'd get at most about 27% of the national vote: the top 1%; the next 19% who -- rationally or otherwise -- believe themselves destined for the top 1% (or already in it); and a good slice of the Christianists. (Even among them, there are still some who would recognise that the Publicans give them far more lip-service than service.)
Not co-incidentally, this is, IIRC, about the same %age of the electorate who still favored GWB after Katrina, the obvious failure of Iraq, and the start of the housing / credit bubble-burst of 2007-8 (but before it became the near-total collapse).