David Brooks: "What happened to American conservatism?"

[pecksniff]

If you think about it, there is common ground between extreme right and left on some issues. Single-sex education, for example - VERY popular among womyn-with-a-y feminists and MRAs alike. So it's not too surprising that some people make that leap.

See horseshoe theory.

The neoconservatives were people who changed their radical socialist politics while retaining their extremism -- they simply changed its direction, turning it first against the Soviet Union, then against the Islamists. People who see the U.S. as having a mission to spread capitalism and democracy throughout the world, by military force if necessary, are as extremist as any unreconstructed Communist.

 

[pecksniff]

There are very important differences between what William Buckley stood for and what Trump stands for.

But somehow I don't expect any of this board's self-ID'd conservatives to discuss that, or even to think about it very much. Most of them are not even mentally capable of understanding what Brooks had to say in Atlantic, let alone Heer's reply in The Nation.

I have seen no reason so far, in this thread, to revise the above judgment. Nobody at all addresses the content of what Brooks said, let alone Heer.

 

[pecksniff]

Donald trump is the near-opposite of the Burkean conservatism I’ve described here. How did a movement built on sympathy and wisdom lead to a man who possesses neither? How did a movement that put such importance on the moral formation of the individual end up elevating an unashamed moral degenerate? How did a movement built on an image of society as a complex organism give rise to the simplistic dichotomies of manipulative populism? How did a movement based on respect for the wisdom of the past end up with Trump’s authoritarian campaign boast “I alone can fix it,” perhaps the least conservative sentence it is possible to utter?

The reasons conservatism devolved into Trumpism are many. First, race. Conservatism makes sense only when it is trying to preserve social conditions that are basically healthy. America’s racial arrangements are fundamentally unjust. To be conservative on racial matters is a moral crime. American conservatives never wrapped their mind around this. My beloved mentor, William F. Buckley Jr., made an ass of himself in his 1965 Cambridge debate against James Baldwin. By the time I worked at National Review, 20 years later, explicit racism was not evident in the office, but racial issues were generally overlooked and the GOP’s flirtation with racist dog whistles was casually tolerated. When you ignore a cancer, it tends to metastasize.

Second, economics. Conservatism is essentially an explanation of how communities produce wisdom and virtue. During the late 20th century, both the left and the right valorized the liberated individual over the enmeshed community. On the right, that meant less Edmund Burke, more Milton Friedman. The right’s focus shifted from wisdom and ethics to self-interest and economic growth. As George F. Will noted in 1984, an imbalance emerged between the “political order’s meticulous concern for material well-being and its fastidious withdrawal from concern for the inner lives and moral character of citizens.” The purpose of the right became maximum individual freedom, and especially economic freedom, without much of a view of what that freedom was for, nor much concern for what held societies together.

I would have thought this would at least have drawn some RWs' attention, if only to refute it.

 

[JohnnySavage]

I would have thought this would at least have drawn some RWs' attention, if only to refute it.

Nobody reads your long-winded cut and paste jobs.

 

[pecksniff]

Nobody reads your long-winded cut and paste jobs.

This one deserves attention, a lot of attention, from the board RWs.

 

[YDB95]

This one deserves attention, a lot of attention, from the board RWs.

Too many big words for them to make any sense of it.

 

[pecksniff]

Too many big words for them to make any sense of it.

How supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

 

[JohnnySavage]

If you can't say something simply and concisely, then you really have nothing to say.

 

[renard_ruse]

We took it back from globalist conspirator frauds like Brooks.

 

[pecksniff]

We took it back from globalist conspirator frauds like Brooks.

Why is "globalist" a snarl-word now?

 

[Fuzzy1975]

I can explain it, but a lot of the people here would lose their minds.

Bumping a thread that's been dead for 18 months is not a good sign of cognitive awareness.

 

[zipman]

Ahhh, yes Brooks. The "token" conservative that the left keeps around like a pet and point's to as the 'real thing.'

Lol, go post another Thomas Sowell quote, you hypocrite.

 

[ll74]

Jan '22

 

[Dribble]