Thoughts on ‘Whatever happened to American conservatism?’

David Brooks wrote a piece in the Atlantic last month entitled, ‘Whatever happened to American Conservatism‘. It started out well, but it seemed to me it lost the plot as it concluded. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Brooks over the years, so wasn’t surprised. The following are some observations I shared in December with colleagues from a course I took in 2021

I had only a few quibbles in the first two thirds of the piece. For example:

Big corporations suck the vitality out of local economies.

I think that is the exception rather than the rule. Redmond pre-Microsoft was much less “vital” than it is today, for instance. Same could be said for the Seattle area more generally pre-Boeing.

On this subject, I recommend Tyler Cowen’s book: ‘Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero’.

I agree with Brooks’s observation:

Conservatism’s profound insight is that it’s impossible to build a healthy society strictly on the principle of self-interest. 

That’s, of course, why conservatives and proponents of the free-market support limited government.

But I strongly disagree with the sentence that follows:

It’s an illusion, as T. S. Eliot put it, to think that a society in which people don’t have to be good can thrive.

But who argues for a society where people don’t have to be good? It’s in people’s self-interest to be good if they want to get ahead in society. Being good is a virtue that others generally prize.

I also take issue with this sentence:

Conservatives are supposed to prize local community—but this orientation can turn into narrow parochialism, can produce xenophobic and racist animosity toward immigrants, a tribal hostility toward outsiders, and a paranoid response when confronted with even a hint of diversity and pluralism.

That suggests that ‘diversity’ is always good. It ignores the fact that American conservatives seek to preserve the moral values and institutions built up over time in America that Brooks trumpets in this essay. A true conservative, I would argue, supports the idea of the fabled melting pot that is America. The metaphor, of course, implies that new citizens bring their skills and backgrounds, but adopt and support the country’s core moral values and support its institutions. Diversity and multiculturalism suggest that other values and institutions are just as good as ours and deserve equal weight.    

On the other hand, I think Brooks makes a good point here:

Conservatives are supposed to cherish moral formation—but this emphasis can turn into a rigid and self-righteous moralism, a tendency to see all social change as evidence of moral decline and social menace.

When Brooks gets to the section on Trump he falsely, I think, suggests that conservatism here has devolved into Trumpism. My view is that the standard bearers of conservatism in the Republican party had been failing for years to make a compelling case for conservative ideas, with two failed nominees in a row. That provided an opening for Trump, who prior to his running no one would ever have called a conservative and who shows no evidence of having any grounding in conservative thought or principles. 

His ascent is not dissimilar to how Chavez came to lead Venezuela. The two main parties had exchanged power for decades and largely failed the country, so the disenchanted voting populace decided to give Chavez, who had years earlier attempted to lead a military coup and been imprisoned, a chance. “How could he be worse than these other clowns we’ve been electing”, they thought. 

American voters weren’t voting for Trump’s version of conservatism. Rather, they figured they didn’t like Clinton and they might as well give this other guy a shot because at least he wasn’t another Washington Republican insider whose positions on issues blow in the wind.

The final third of Brooks’s essay seems to me to have lots of straw men. I can see why he’s “skeptical that the GOP is going to be home to the kind of conservatism I admire anytime soon.” But it’s laughable to think he’s going to find that in “the more promising soil of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party.” The ranks of the moderate Democratic wing are now vanishingly small and on present course are likely to become even smaller. Moreover, the things he’s concerned about, such as family and community breakdown, are the direct result of policies enacted by the Democratic Party when it was far more moderate than it is today. It’s wishful thinking that making a home with them is going to result in policies being enacted that solve any of the problems Brooks professes to be concerned about.

Overall, I Iike the framework he develops in the first part of the essay, but I disagree with the conclusions he reaches in the second half.

Related commentary from others on the web:

David Brooks’ Requiem for Conservatism’s Most Recent Death

What David Brooks Is Most Wrong About

Why David Brooks Is Wrong to Give Up on Today’s American Conservatism