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.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.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.
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.
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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.
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.
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
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 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.
I love the Loft.
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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 love the Loft.
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: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.
Opportunist is a better word.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 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.
Truth. Gov is spending nearly twice the revenue income, and it never decreases in any administration.
Feel free to start it, but you have a defect in your premise. Kennedy was conservative, just not as conservative as his predecessor.Maybe we should start a new thread, "What happened to liberals?", because something went wrong since this man was the liberal leader:
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.
hIt costs a lot to make stuff “free”.i
Feel free to start it, but you have a defect in your premise. Kennedy was conservative, just not as conservative as his predecessor.
Maybe we should start a new thread, "What happened to liberals?", because something went wrong since this man was the liberal leader:
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 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 believe there are many who would not understand the question.
They conflate liberalism with the left. They are not anything close.
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.