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[w:88]What Happened to American Conservatism?

Most of them decided to start worshiping a fat real estate guy.
 
In the latest edition of the Atlantic, David Brooks has produced a thoughtful and thought-provoking essay on the roots and perils to American conservatism, What Happened to American Conservatism? This is a call from inside the house.

I'm starting this here, and hoping it can stay up in the Loft, free of easy, flip, unenlightened bon mots and cynical, dismissive put downs and ad hominems. Let's talk about the ideas.

I disagree with David Brooks and George Will on a lot of things, but I thoroughly respect their thinking, and patriotism. They genuinely want what is best for the country, and come from a strong tradition of Americanism. Brooks' conservative view is explicitly and unabashedly American:

"American conservatism descends from Burkean conservatism, but is hopped up on steroids and adrenaline. Three features set our conservatism apart from the British and continental kinds. First, the American Revolution. Because that war was fought partly on behalf of abstract liberal ideals and universal principles, the tradition that American conservatism seeks to preserve is liberal. Second, while Burkean conservatism puts a lot of emphasis on stable communities, America, as a nation of immigrants and pioneers, has always emphasized freedom, social mobility, the Horatio Alger myth—the idea that it is possible to transform your condition through hard work. Finally, American conservatives have been more unabashedly devoted to capitalism—and to entrepreneurialism and to business generally—than conservatives almost anywhere else. Perpetual dynamism and creative destruction are big parts of the American tradition that conservatism defends."

In this approach, we are of a mind, and my political views have always been informed, and formed, by our uniquely American traditions. What is particularly refreshing about Brooks' essay, and critical to rational, compassionate, conservatism, is his willingness to acknowledge faults and dangers. Too often such discussions devolve into tribal defenses, something he takes on directly.

A central motif in his view of conservative thought is this, "This is one of the core conservative principles: epistemological modesty, or humility in the face of what we don’t know about a complex world, and a conviction that social change should be steady but cautious and incremental. Down the centuries, conservatives have always stood against the arrogance of those who believe they have the ability to plan history: the French revolutionaries who thought they could destroy a society and rebuild it from scratch, but who ended up with the guillotine; the Russian and Chinese Communists who tried to create a centrally controlled society, but who ended up with the gulag and the Cultural Revolution; the Western government planners who thought they could fine-tune an economy from the top, but who ended up with stagflation and sclerosis; the European elites who thought they could unify their continent by administrative fiat and arrogate power to unelected technocrats in Brussels, but who ended up with a monetary crisis and populist backlash."

With that in mind, I recommend the essay and look forward to discussing it.
I just want to thank you for sharing a Brooks' essay. I love his thoughtfulness and deep sense of moral right and wrong, although I question if "conservatism" has a monopoly on wisdom and good intentions. But I've never read any of the philosphers he refers to; I don't even know that I've read anything by George Will. So I can 't intelligently add to the discussion here.

David Brooks has so repudiated the Republican party as it now stands that there is little daylight between him and moderate Democrats on a lot of topics, like Covid mandates, which he admits. It's ironic that his Christian values play a big part in that. If only more people could be influenced by his sense of fairness and his quiet rejection of partisan hyperbole.

Thanks again.
 
In the latest edition of the Atlantic, David Brooks has produced a thoughtful and thought-provoking essay on the roots and perils to American conservatism, What Happened to American Conservatism? This is a call from inside the house.

I'm starting this here, and hoping it can stay up in the Loft, free of easy, flip, unenlightened bon mots and cynical, dismissive put downs and ad hominems. Let's talk about the ideas.

I disagree with David Brooks and George Will on a lot of things, but I thoroughly respect their thinking, and patriotism. They genuinely want what is best for the country, and come from a strong tradition of Americanism. Brooks' conservative view is explicitly and unabashedly American:

"American conservatism descends from Burkean conservatism, but is hopped up on steroids and adrenaline. Three features set our conservatism apart from the British and continental kinds. First, the American Revolution. Because that war was fought partly on behalf of abstract liberal ideals and universal principles, the tradition that American conservatism seeks to preserve is liberal. Second, while Burkean conservatism puts a lot of emphasis on stable communities, America, as a nation of immigrants and pioneers, has always emphasized freedom, social mobility, the Horatio Alger myth—the idea that it is possible to transform your condition through hard work. Finally, American conservatives have been more unabashedly devoted to capitalism—and to entrepreneurialism and to business generally—than conservatives almost anywhere else. Perpetual dynamism and creative destruction are big parts of the American tradition that conservatism defends."

In this approach, we are of a mind, and my political views have always been informed, and formed, by our uniquely American traditions. What is particularly refreshing about Brooks' essay, and critical to rational, compassionate, conservatism, is his willingness to acknowledge faults and dangers. Too often such discussions devolve into tribal defenses, something he takes on directly.

A central motif in his view of conservative thought is this, "This is one of the core conservative principles: epistemological modesty, or humility in the face of what we don’t know about a complex world, and a conviction that social change should be steady but cautious and incremental. Down the centuries, conservatives have always stood against the arrogance of those who believe they have the ability to plan history: the French revolutionaries who thought they could destroy a society and rebuild it from scratch, but who ended up with the guillotine; the Russian and Chinese Communists who tried to create a centrally controlled society, but who ended up with the gulag and the Cultural Revolution; the Western government planners who thought they could fine-tune an economy from the top, but who ended up with stagflation and sclerosis; the European elites who thought they could unify their continent by administrative fiat and arrogate power to unelected technocrats in Brussels, but who ended up with a monetary crisis and populist backlash."

With that in mind, I recommend the essay and look forward to discussing it.
My take is that there is a common affliction affecting many Americans, including conservatives. A great many people have been reared in a culture that takes away the basic lesson of personal responsibility and accountability, and replaces it with a spoon-fed diet of reality television that causes people to disconnect somewhat from their own reality and their own decision making. I personally think the net result is that people are largely unlikely to blame their lot in life on their own actions. Liberals point the finger at social inequity, conservatives point the finger at immigrants (for example) and neither has much of a "pull oneself up by the bootstraps" ethos.

Once that "I'm responsible for myself and therefore prefer caution and only slow change" mindset dissipates, The American Conservative can throw caution to the wind just as quickly as his or her liberal counterpart.

That's my take on the essay, as I understood it.
 
One of the things from the piece that I can't seem to get liberals to understand is this: I would LOVE to have a choice of political parties to vote for.

However, the way it stands, I either vote Democratic Party or I simply don't vote. I can't get next to the hate that comes from the right. Renewable energy is the best example. As you may have heard; earlier this year during a pretty mild cold snap, the Texas power grid froze up. It was simply a matter of regulators not ordering the fortifying the power grid. When it happened, they blamed renewables. And this was after the brown/black outs in California were lampooned by Ted Cruz.

I too would love to have a choice of political parties... but I'm in the opposite boat. I can't vote Democrat anymore; every time I have they have gravely disappointed me to the point I felt betrayed.

The Republican party does not thrill me either; far from it. It's been mostly downhill since the late 80s.

Frankly I despise both, but I hold my nose and vote R because I can't vote D.
 
I think it is slightly more complicated than that.

For starters, the phrase is "enlightened self-interest". Meaning not merely selfishness but an understanding that what is best for others, or for the community, will often result in better outcomes for one's self-interest as well.


For another: while it is true that appealing to a person's self-interest is more consistently reliable than appealing to his altruism, we do in fact respect and even idolize those who act (or are perceived to act) in a selfLESS manner. We revere the soldier who dies for his country; the religious figure who lives a self-denying life of service to others; the giver who helps those in need and asks nothing in return... do we not?

This aspect of our culture asserts that we value acts of selfless generosity. Probably we value them because we recognize that they are more rare than acts of self-interest.

Yet most of us do a lot of things in our personal life that isn't self-interest. We have children and take care of them and raise them, and help them get a good start in life if we can. When we were agrarian, it could be self-interest... children could work on the farm. In the modern age, children are a financial liability whose upside, if any, is entirely personal and spiritual.
Many of us take care of elderly parents. There's little self-interest in that, unless it is serving our own self-love for our own self-image. There's certainly no financial upside.

No offense intended, but I think you are confusing self-interest with selfishness. It is in my self-interest to take care of the people I love. Selfishness, however, excludes other people.

My examples are, admittedly, mainly about personal expressions of non-self-interest, rather than public policy. But recognizing that there are a number of things we do collectively, like national defense for instance, because they work better that way than done as individuals... we could at least consider that things other than self-interest have a place in national issues.

National defense is a public good, which means people will get it whether they pay for it or not. Healthcare, education, housing, transportation are all private goods, and it is always better to have private goods provided by the market instead of the state. I also feel this is inaccurate:

My examples are, admittedly, mainly about personal expressions of non-self-interest, rather than public policy. But recognizing that there are a number of things we do collectively, like national defense for instance, because they work better that way than done as

In my opinion, the state doing something is not equal to the population of the country doing something collectively. Every government on the planet routinely does things that the population would not support if it were put to a vote.
 
I just want to thank you for sharing a Brooks' essay. I love his thoughtfulness and deep sense of moral right and wrong, although I question if "conservatism" has a monopoly on wisdom and good intentions. But I've never read any of the philosphers he refers to; I don't even know that I've read anything by George Will. So I can 't intelligently add to the discussion here.

David Brooks has so repudiated the Republican party as it now stands that there is little daylight between him and moderate Democrats on a lot of topics, like Covid mandates, which he admits. It's ironic that his Christian values play a big part in that. If only more people could be influenced by his sense of fairness and his quiet rejection of partisan hyperbole.

Thanks again.
Thanks. I do think that there is a great deal of agreement within the population on many major issues - environmental issues, gun control, voting rights, etc. - but those views have very little currency within the parties. I love the discussions between Brooks and E.J. Dionne on NPR. Rational voices on both sides of the spectrum.
 
I too would love to have a choice of political parties... but I'm in the opposite boat. I can't vote Democrat anymore; every time I have they have gravely disappointed me to the point I felt betrayed.

The Republican party does not thrill me either; far from it. It's been mostly downhill since the late 80s.

Frankly I despise both, but I hold my nose and vote R because I can't vote D.

I hear you. I often say that the only thing worse than Democrats not being in power are Democrats actaually being in power. Our whole system is broken and the only way you can get into the ring to fix it by getting elected is to drink the Kool Aid and pledge not to fix it.
 
I love the Loft.

Do you think there is any validity to possibly categorizing Trump as not being Conservative or Liberal? To me, he was essentially an anarchist who ran as a Republican, and had some conservative views. But, unlike someone like Reagan (just to name one of hundreds) who had a philosophy, did the hard work of getting a constituency, shaped his views into an electable package, etc.... Trump wanted to be president because he thought it was a cool gig. If Hillary had been a Republican, Trump would have run as a Democrat. In other words, he did whatever he had to do to get applause. I could name a few times when he said some things that were traditionally very non-conservative. So I'm not too sure that Trump fits comfortably into the box that Books puts him in. I won't go into the details here on the loft but he had some incredibly child-like views on everything from trade to immigration to simply what soldiers do and what they don't do.

If you buy into my assessment, it really paints the congress and the GOP party leadership as much worse than the already dubious coloring of red. Because the "conservatives" in the GOP who routinely run up trillions in debt are all too happy to line up behind Trump because he has some popularity--meaning they are even less principled than one would suspect.

Also, this isn't to say that liberalism and the Democratic party are always right. Far from it.
 
Just for the record, this thread is about conservatism - the philosophy - not party. I just wanted to make that point.

Having said that, I have voted - and even campaigned for - members of both parties, and have been registered at various times for both as well - so I could participate in primaries. That's how "centrist" my views are. Also, I think it also fair to point out that what passes for pragmatism in the present political environment is often derided as partisanship by... well, the most partisan of participants on either side. But, I do not want to deviate too far from the actual topic, so I will leave that there.

It is probably appropriate from a personal standpoint to also note that I often bash "conservatism" as generally intellectually faulty, in the same way that I criticize capitalism as inherently flawed as an economic system. But, the fact that I include "marketeer" in my profile also indicates that I don't reject it (for which I get a great deal of flack both online and at home), and I still understand, fundamentally, the goal of conservatism as an outlook. As Brooks points out in his essay, sometimes that includes some pretty ugly views within its rubric (e.g., racism, xenophobia). In both cases - conservatism and capitalism - it is sometimes difficult to separate the ugly elements from the common views, especially when they are aligned.
 
Do you think there is any validity to possibly categorizing Trump as not being Conservative or Liberal? To me, he was essentially an anarchist who ran as a Republican, and had some conservative views. But, unlike someone like Reagan (just to name one of hundreds) who had a philosophy, did the hard work of getting a constituency, shaped his views into an electable package, etc.... Trump wanted to be president because he thought it was a cool gig. If Hillary had been a Republican, Trump would have run as a Democrat. In other words, he did whatever he had to do to get applause. I could name a few times when he said some things that were traditionally very non-conservative. So I'm not too sure that Trump fits comfortably into the box that Books puts him in. I won't go into the details here on the loft but he had some incredibly child-like views on everything from trade to immigration to simply what soldiers do and what they don't do.

If you buy into my assessment, it really paints the congress and the GOP party leadership as much worse than the already dubious coloring of red. Because the "conservatives" in the GOP who routinely run up trillions in debt are all too happy to line up behind Trump because he has some popularity--meaning they are even less principled than one would suspect.

Also, this isn't to say that liberalism and the Democratic party are always right. Far from it.
I don't think that Trump is a conservative at all, but an opportunist. I don't think your analysis is wrong at all. But, in my view, Trump's rise is a symptom, not an aberration. I don't want to get too far into party politics or labels, but the overlap between "Republican" and "conservative" has been getting more and more tenuous - which does get back to Brooks' analysis: the Reagan "revolution" and, even more so, the Gingrich years, then the TEA party, took the Republican party far from its conservative roots (although the connection has always been imperfect). As Brooks notes:

"American conservatism has always been in tension with itself. In its prime—the half century from 1964 to 2012—it was divided among libertarians, religious conservatives, small-town agrarians, urban neoconservatives, foreign-policy hawks, and so on. And for a time, this fractiousness seemed to work.

American conservatives were united, during this era, by their opposition to communism and socialism, to state planning and amoral technocracy. In those days I assumed that this vibrant, forward-looking conservatism was the future, and that the Enoch Powells of the world were the receding roar of a sick reaction. I was wrong. And I confess that I’ve come to wonder if the tension between “America” and “conservatism” is just too great. Maybe it’s impossible to hold together a movement that is both backward-looking and forward-looking, both in love with stability and addicted to change, both go-go materialist and morally rooted. Maybe the postwar American conservatism we all knew—a collection of intellectuals, activists, politicians, journalists, and others aligned with the Republican Party—was just a parenthesis in history, a parenthesis that is now closing." I think this analysis is spot on.

The mantle of "conservatism" has, I believe, been hijacked by reactionaries, fantasists, chauvinists. It is a movement of revanchism, not conservatism in the traditional sense. Some want, quite literally, to relitigate the meaning of the Civil War, and its causes, US history, and resuscitate the "Lost Cause" mythology. As Brooks points out, those elements have always been there (the Enoch Powells), but respectable conservatives have always rejected them. Not so today.
 
I don't think that Trump is a conservative at all, but an opportunist. I don't think your analysis is wrong at all. But, in my view, Trump's rise is a symptom, not an aberration. I don't want to get too far into party politics or labels, but the overlap between "Republican" and "conservative" has been getting more and more tenuous - which does get back to Brooks' analysis: the Reagan "revolution" and, even more so, the Gingrich years, then the TEA party, took the Republican party far from its conservative roots (although the connection has always been imperfect). As Brooks notes:

"American conservatism has always been in tension with itself. In its prime—the half century from 1964 to 2012—it was divided among libertarians, religious conservatives, small-town agrarians, urban neoconservatives, foreign-policy hawks, and so on. And for a time, this fractiousness seemed to work.

American conservatives were united, during this era, by their opposition to communism and socialism, to state planning and amoral technocracy. In those days I assumed that this vibrant, forward-looking conservatism was the future, and that the Enoch Powells of the world were the receding roar of a sick reaction. I was wrong. And I confess that I’ve come to wonder if the tension between “America” and “conservatism” is just too great. Maybe it’s impossible to hold together a movement that is both backward-looking and forward-looking, both in love with stability and addicted to change, both go-go materialist and morally rooted. Maybe the postwar American conservatism we all knew—a collection of intellectuals, activists, politicians, journalists, and others aligned with the Republican Party—was just a parenthesis in history, a parenthesis that is now closing." I think this analysis is spot on.

The mantle of "conservatism" has, I believe, been hijacked by reactionaries, fantasists, chauvinists. It is a movement of revanchism, not conservatism in the traditional sense. Some want, quite literally, to relitigate the meaning of the Civil War, and its causes, US history, and resuscitate the "Lost Cause" mythology. As Brooks points out, those elements have always been there (the Enoch Powells), but respectable conservatives have always rejected them. Not so today.
Opportunist is a better word.

I'd add in to the reactionaries, fantasists, chauvinists the word "lazy". I don't mean lazy as in freeloader or someone who doesn't put in a day. I'd add in someone who rejects whose default position is "no". Not because it is better or worse (sometimes saying "no" is the right thing) but because it's easier. Its easier to just keep pulling coal and oil out of the ground (because it has worked for a long time) than it is to concede that the pollutants caused by burning coal and oil is detrimental to the environment and finding new technologies that don't rely on brute strength and primitive extraction somehow calls into question a society's manhood.
 
Maybe we should start a new thread, "What happened to liberals?", because something went wrong since this man was the liberal leader:

R.fd038c7872978294a1a25a727befb93a


I think it would be worthwhile to examine in similar fashion. As I've mentioned, I don't find either party embracing rational, pragmatic policy or rhetoric.
 
I've seen a lot of references to Reagan in the article, and hints in the posts, as a marker for when things began to go wrong with Conservatism.

I don't see it that way. Reagan wasn't perfect, no... he did some things I questioned, and a few I opposed. But to understand Reagan and why people loved him so, you must understand the late 70s... and that is very hard unless you lived through them and were old enough to understand what was going on.

The late 70s were a dark time. Dark to a degree you won't understand unless you were there.

Russians in Afghanistan, hostages in Iraq. Energy crisis, gas lines, people thought the oil was nearly gone. Three Mile Island, Panama Canal. The country still reeling from the Kennedy assassination, the Nixon scandal, Vietnam and the counterculture revolution, and now this.

Our leaders appeared on TV with their heads down, shoulders slumped, and grim faced: defeated looking. The pundits said we'd soon surrender to the Soviets without a shot fired. Oil was nearly gone, many thought, soon the wheels would stop turning for good. Mile-long lines at the gas station and rationing of fuel reinforced that idea. Everywhere it seemed our strength was gone and our national interests in a Kipling-esque recessional.

Many preachers said the End was nigh, and many people believed it. The attitudes of our leaders seemed to confirm it: America was doomed to go the way of Ninevah and Tyre, of Ozymandias and Rome.

Then came Ronald Reagan, standing tall and smiling. Smiling! What was there to smile about, everyone asked. Weren't we doomed?

Then he gave his "Morning in America/Shining City on a Hill" speech, and we were astonished. You mean it might not be sunset for America after all? Only morning?

He gave us hope in a time when hope was in very short supply, and we loved him for it. He was bold and decisive in a time when our leaders seemed weak and weary and defeated. We found some pride in being American again, and began to believe in a brighter future again.

I was there, and I remember those dark days, and the moment we saw the dawn again. That is why I honor the memory of Ronald Reagan all my days. Not as a perfect man, but as the man we needed.
 
I will dive into that, as soon as you tell me what happened to the liberal left.

It is as if you think there are easy answers to both questions....there isnt

We have become more polarized, more bombastic, and more willing to let the nation fail as a whole just to make sure the other side doesnt get a win

No one wants to compromise....no one wants to make deals and actually govern anymore

It is "my way or the highway" attitudes on both sides of the aisles

It started before Obama, and then when he got elected, it got 100x worse

And now....DC is broken beyond repair....and all anyone cares about is retaining power

And all i see day after day on this site is thread after thread from the same 4-5 posters attacking something else the "conservatives" just did or didnt do

Well, the conservatives arent in power.....the democrats and liberals are....and maybe, just maybe it is time for someone to be an adult in DC and try to change what is broken

Regardless of which party temporarily holds majority power in DC, the power and expense of the federal government continues to increase.
 
Regardless of which party temporarily holds majority power in DC, the power and expense of the federal government continues to increase.


Truth. Gov is spending nearly twice the revenue income, and it never decreases in any administration.
 
Maybe we should start a new thread, "What happened to liberals?", because something went wrong since this man was the liberal leader:

R.fd038c7872978294a1a25a727befb93a


I think it would be worthwhile to examine in similar fashion. As I've mentioned, I don't find either party embracing rational, pragmatic policy or rhetoric.
Feel free to start it, but you have a defect in your premise. Kennedy was conservative, just not as conservative as his predecessor. :)
 
It costs a lot to make stuff “free”.i
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Feel free to start it, but you have a defect in your premise. Kennedy was conservative, just not as conservative as his predecessor. :)

Mm. I will grant you that in modern terms Kennedy was more of a conservative than any president this century. In his day, though, he wasn't seen that way that I recall.
 
Democrats started winning hearts and minds by offering presents to everyone, knowing full well that many people will usually go for presents over conviction.

Republicans fell into that trap.
 
Maybe we should start a new thread, "What happened to liberals?", because something went wrong since this man was the liberal leader:

R.fd038c7872978294a1a25a727befb93a


I think it would be worthwhile to examine in similar fashion. As I've mentioned, I don't find either party embracing rational, pragmatic policy or rhetoric.

I believe there are many who would not understand the question.

They conflate liberalism with the left. They are not anything close.
 
I believe there are many who would not understand the question.

They conflate liberalism with the left. They are not anything close.
I think one of the things that Brooks does well is separate those out, and recognize that some of the values "conserved" are "liberal" - as in "liber"=free, "liberties." I'd be interested in what your take on the distinction between liberal and "the left" is. For me, there is a vast territory covered by the term "left". I think I reside solidly in both the liberal tradition and the left, but I'm no communist.
 
I'm a little frustrated. What is readily apparent is that none of the "responses" so far are related to the essay or the thoughts it contains. I brought this here, to the Loft, to get into those ideas. If I wanted the typical rote recitations of partisan talking points - from either side - I'd have started it downstairs. I expect better here.

I'm willing to dive into relevant tangents, but I was genuinely hoping someone else would read the OP reference, and discuss that.

I recall reading part of this before I stepped away.

Brooks and Will are both named as RINO's by the very people they decry. I only mention that because while I like Will, Brooks was a little to general in his attacks on the party once he decided his voice would carry a different message.

It is interesting to read his description of the philosophy (or maybe the aggregate philosophy he fell in love with).

And I hope to revisit the article in more depth to delve deeper into some of what he referenced.

As I've stated in other places, I would not be so sure that what he describes has happened as fully as he thinks it has. While Trump was a disaster in many ways, his time in office wasn't that bad until the virus. When we really needed him, he failed. People make a big deal out of how many voted for him....but, like myself, they chose the option they felt was best (even if they didn't like it....which isn't to excuse the choice).

I am really enjoying this forum. I am trying to stay out of the politics forum (a.k.a. the light beer commercial forum).
 
And herein is a statement that would need to be further clarified. This is the final paragraph of the article:

There is nothing intrinsically anti-government in Burkean conservatism. “It is perhaps marvelous that people who preach disdain for government can consider themselves the intellectual descendants of Burke, the author of a celebration of the state,” George F. Will once wrote. To reduce the economic chasm that separates class from class, to ease the financial anxiety that renders life unstable for many people, to support parenting so that children can grow up with more stability—these are the goals of a party committed to ameliorating, not exploiting, a growing sense of hopelessness and alienation, of vanishing opportunity. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s brilliant dictum—which builds on a Burkean wisdom forged in a world of animosity and corrosive flux—has never been more worth heeding than it is now: The central conservative truth is that culture matters most; the central liberal truth is that politics can change culture.

1. His first sentence is a misapplication of the problem he perceives but not might exist as he states it. Burke was Irish and existed in a time when the population of the U.K. was about 15 million. While London was a large population center, much of the rest of the island was agricultural in nature. And so government wasn't as important in their lives. As a conservative, I am not anti-government. In fact, I totally agree with John Jay who said in Federalist number 2 that....Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government.....

What conservatives are for is a very focused and specific federal government as defined by the U.S. Constitution. There ARE other levels of government more suited to carrying out the proposed objectives that George Will defines.

Conservatives of this day (and it is the reason Trump exists) see a tide of power flowing from local entities to the federal government. They also see society changing at an incredible rate with many of our "traditional values" being lost at an alarming rate. Consequently, they've (we've) become reactionary and Donald Trump is a prime example of that reactionary frame of mind.

I would also go on to challenge Will if he actually thinks that government is going to reduce that economic chasm he says exists (and I totally agree with him). In fact, I can no longer tell where government ends and big business begins. The lines are to blurred and the wealthy use that to their advantage to continue to concentrate wealth. It was big government that thwarted the natural demise of GM and took away from other the opportunities that that demise would created had it been allowed to happen. I have worked for two large multi-nationals and I know that they have large "government affairs" departments and that they tend to hire top government officials into their ranks to gain access and maintain influence.

His last statement again assumes a connection that does not necessarily exist in my mind if he is making reference to our "United States". The "culture" that matters is actually many cultures. And the U.S. Government does not do well at adapting to that concept. Again....state and local governments better reflect the more immediate culture they serve. Not someone like Chuck Schumer making decisions for us in the SouthWest.

Finally, Will unknowingly points to something that is neither conservative or left wing at it's base. He talks of children growing up with more stability. Government can't change the fact that we are throwing the traditional family away. I am not talking about gay marriage....I am talking about divorce. Marriage is not and never has been easy. But a child being raised by two parents is still probably their best bet for that stability he says is a goal. Divorce is a choice two people make. Our divorce rate is astronomical. How does government change that ? I am not sure they can influence it through legislation to any great degree. I'd point out other basic changes that I don't believe are conducive to that stability that Will says he (and the rest of us) wants.

Overall, I simply think that the conversation is to focused on what can't do much for us....the Federal Government.

What isn't stated much is that there are other forms of government where the outlined goals have a better chance of being achieved.

At the same time, if we are going to toss traditional norms such as marriage and stay-at-home moms (a huge discussion in and of itself) I have to wonder if we really have any right to expect (or think we are smart enough to actually generate) the kinds of outcomes the author thinks are worthy of consideration.
 
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