David Brooks – The Long Voyage Home
Unlike Brooks, I’m not rooting for the rising-again of the GOP so much as I dread what politics might look like should the Libertarians become the foil of the DNC.? I think that’s what Brooks has in mind when he calls on his fellow Republicans to pull out of the nose-dive that is free-market fundamentalism:
Republicans are so much the party of individualism and freedom these days that they are no longer the party of community and order. This puts them out of touch with the young, who are exceptionally community-oriented. It gives them nothing to say to the lower middle class, who fear that capitalism has gone haywire. It gives them little to say to the upper middle class, who are interested in the environment and other common concerns.
The Republicans talk more about the market than about society, more about income than quality of life. They celebrate capitalism, which is a means, and are inarticulate about the good life, which is the end. They take things like tax cuts, which are tactics that are good in some circumstances, and elevate them to holy principle, to be pursued in all circumstances.
I’ve been reading some Russell Kirk on the side lately, and what strikes me most about his essays is that his praise for markets, so long as they stay in their place, and his cautions about letting buyers and sellers become the constituent elements of a republic, lest oligarchic interests replace reasoned and traditional common goods, reminds me far more of Plato than of Milton Friedman.? I’ll likely write a post or two about Kirk this summer, but Brooks here seems to be tapping into what I’d call (at this point in my reading) the Kirk impulse in conservatism.? I think that’s why someone like James K.A. Smith, who has little interest in American-style free market ideology, can still refer to himself mainly as a conservative.
