January 13, 2014
David Brooks: An Echo, not a Choice
Gary North
In 1964, Phyllis Schlafly became a major spokesman for political conservatism with her Goldwater campaign book, A Choice, Not an Echo. That was fifty years ago. It is time for an assessment of where we are today.
Let us begin with David Brooks. He is known as a conservative. He is a New York Times columnist. He is a weekly commentator on the PBS NewsHour. That is to say, he is the #1 conservative inside the American liberal media. He is a big-government conservative.
He used to be on the staff of The Weekly Standard, a neoconservative journal.
Last Friday, he said this on the PBS NewsHour.
- Marco Rubio had a speech today, or this week, which was, I thought, a
quite impressive speech, much more affirmatively using the power of
government to address poverty problems, whether it's wage subsidies,
whether it's through direct grants, much -- for a party that has become
instinctively anti-government, we are beginning to see Paul Ryan and
Marco Rubio and some others wanting to affirmatively use government, I
think, in targeted, but limited and conservative ways to really address
practical problems.
In 1997, he wrote an essay The Weekly Standard, " A Return to National Greatness: A Manifesto for a Lost Creed." It was a cheerleading piece for the American Empire.
It was not simply a cry for big-government foreign policy. It was a naïve piece that assumed that the foreign policy of the United States has in some fundamental way changed since the entry of the United States into the war in Europe in 1917. It hasn't.
Brooks wrote this:
- America is a more dominant power in the world than Americans a
century ago could ever have imagined. Yet we have almost none of the
sense of global purpose that Americans had when they only dreamed of
enjoying the stature we possess today. Domestically, we have a president
and a Congress whose major common purpose is . . . balancing the
budget.
- For much of this century, liberals possessed high aspirations and a
spirit of historical purpose. Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the New
Deal, John F. Kennedy's New Frontier -- these were efforts to aim high,
to accomplish some grand national endeavor. Liberals tried to use
American preeminence as a way to shape the world, fight communism, put a
man on the moon. But then came the 1970s, and suddenly liberalism became
a creed emphasizing limits. Small became beautiful. A radical
egalitarianism transformed liberalism, destroying hierarchies and
discrediting elitist aspirations. An easygoing nihilism swept through
academia, carrying away any sense of a transcendent order. The
civil-rights era turned into the affirmative-action era, and what had
been a great national crusade for justice devolved into a series of petty
squabbles over spoils.
As for petty squabbles over spoils, this has been the major concern of American politics ever since 1788. This was stated best by multimillionaire (in 1905 dollars) Tammany Hall hack George Washington Plunkett: "I seen my opportunities, and I took 'em."
- Thus has our America neglected the sphere of issues that transcends
the desires of a single generation. As a nation, we have realized
Tocqueville's worst fears; we have replaced high public aspiration with
the narrower concerns of private life. These days in politics it is more
important to be seen possessing the private virtues -- compassion and
caring -- than it is to be seen possessing the public virtues like
courage and integrity.
Tocqueville was concerned about the rhetoric of equality. He saw this as a threat to liberty.
In any case, when has courage and integrity been basic to political life? Mark Twain wrote: "There is no distinctly American criminal class -- except Congress." Americans nodded their heads in agreement. They have always known this.
- But it is primarily the fault of conservatives that America has lost
a sense of national mission and national greatness. After all, this is a
conservative era, and one shouldn't expect the Democrats to come up with
the energy that animates a conservative era. But since Ronald Reagan
returned to California, conservatism has shrunk.
- Conservatives have taken two sensible ideas and ballooned them to the
point of elephantiasis. The first is anti-statism. They took a truth --
that government often causes suffering when it interferes in the free
market -- and stretched it into a blanket hostility to government.
Instead of arguing that government should be limited but energetic,
slender but strong, they have often argued that government is itself
evil.
- In so doing, conservatives have introduced their own version of the
liberal sin by allowing the private to eclipse the public. Many
conservatives argue simply that the private realm is good and the public
realm is bad, that private endeavor is moral and public endeavor is
corrupt. They saw that many of the public policies that emerged during
the 60 years of liberal dominance had nightmarish consequences. Now many
can't conceive of a public realm that would affirm any of the virtues
they hold dear. Instead, they have concluded that the public policy
issuing from the public realm is the problem. They want to free the
private sector from big government, which is a worthy goal, but you can't
lead a great nation if you don't have an affirmative view of the public
realm.
Brooks was battling a shadow.
- Without vigorous national vision, we are plagued by anxiety and
disquiet. The great questions of the age are, Why do we feel so bad when
we are doing so well materially? And why do we feel the nation is doing
so badly if we ourselves are doing so well? The common answer is that we
don't have a clear sense of what America is for, what we, as a nation,
should achieve with all our wealth. As our public realm collapses into
the private, our public morality becomes confused with matters of public
health, from smoking to the distribution of free needles. We try to curb
bad behavior by scolding and political correctness, but we have no way to
inspire good behavior by holding up lofty goals.
- It almost doesn't matter what great task government sets for itself,
as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness. The
first task of government is to convey a spirit of confidence and vigor
that can then spill across the life of the nation. Stagnant government
drains national morale. A government that fails to offer any vision
merely feeds public cynicism and disenchantment.
- But energetic government is good for its own sake. It raises the sights of the individual. It strengthens common bonds. It boosts national pride. It continues the great national project. It allows each generation to join the work of their parents. The quest for national greatness defines the word "American" and makes it new for every generation.
- But energetic government is good for its own sake. It raises the sights of the individual. It strengthens common bonds. It boosts national pride. It continues the great national project. It allows each generation to join the work of their parents. The quest for national greatness defines the word "American" and makes it new for every generation.
CONCLUSION
Chris Christie. Marco Rubio. Paul Ryan. We have been told by media liberals that these are the likely front-runners for the Republican Party in 2016. We are told that this is a move to the Right. To the neoconservative Right, yes. To the Tea Party Right, or the Old Right, or the Jeffersonian Right, no.
Chris Christie may have gone a bridge too far. This leaves Rubio and Ryan, says Brooks.
I still hear an echo. I still see no choice.
http://www.garynorth.com/public/11992.cfm --
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