Tonight, in his op-ed column, David Brooks made a startling admission:
Goldwater’s vision was highly individualistic and celebrated a certain sort of person — the stout pioneer crossing the West, the risk-taking entrepreneur with a vision, the stalwart hero fighting the collectivist foe.
The problem is, this individualist description of human nature seems to be wrong.
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Amazing. The entire basis of modern conservatism is wrong. In the past, Brooks has argued that the Bush administration wasn't "really" conservative. He talked a little about going back to Burke for inspiration. But the tone of these seemed to be that there was nothing basically wrong with conservatism, the Bush admin just didn't get it right.
In this article, he finally seems to be giving up on that argument. Yes, he dredges up Burke, and talks about the new English Conservatism, but for the first time (at least as far as I know) admits that the basic intellectual underpinnings of the modern American Conservative movement were just plain wrong.
Of course, we always knew that there was a large amount of myth in the "rugged individual" story. Alaska, the land of the individual, gets more in federal earmarksper capita than any other state. In general, red states (like Idaho) have gotten more tax dollars than they send to Washington, while blue states have tended to get less.
But even though it was a myth, it was a powerful one. The idea of the rugged American individual is deeply embedded in our subconscious. The only problem is that when you look at the result of 30 years of conservative policies, you can see that they just don't work.
And yet locked in the old framework, the Republican Party’s knee-jerk response to many problems is: "Throw a voucher at it." Schools are bad. Throw a voucher. Health care system’s a mess. Replace it with federally funded individual choice. Economic anxiety? Lower some tax rate.
Brooks wants the Republican party to
project a conservatism that emphasizes society as well as individuals, security as well as freedom, a social revival and not just an economic one and the community as opposed to the state.
The problem I see is that the Republican party is likely to fracture before they can look that deeply into themselves. The "economic" conservatives don't really mind things the way they are. These are the very rich, and their concern is growing richer, screw the rest of the country. Remember, these past 8 years while disastrous for the middle class, have been great for the top 1%
On the other side, you have the social conservatives. They tend to believe in community, but it is community entirely focused on church. As long as the church has its power, who cares about anything else.
So the pillars of modern conservatism see no need to change, they are doing fine.