If you’re looking for a good introduction to the Red Tories, David Brooks’ column does a much better job of explaining Philip Blond’s philosophy than my muddled post. Blond is also is speaking at Villanova next week. He’s an engaging guy, and any readers in the area are encouraged to attend.

In his column today, David Brooks makes an error which I think is pretty common of conservative commentators who look to Great Britain for political inspiration.  But first, Brooks:

The Conservatives have treated British voters as adults for a year now, with a string of serious economic positions. The Conservatives supported the Labour government bank bailout, even though it was against their political interest to do so. Last November, Osborne opposed a cut in the value-added taxes on the grounds that the cuts were unaffordable and would not produce growth. It is not easy for any conservative party to oppose tax cuts, but this one did it. [...]

Osborne and David Cameron, the party leader, argue that Labour’s decision to centralize power has undermined personal and social responsibility. They are offering a responsibility agenda from top to bottom. Decentralize power so local elected bodies have responsibility. Structure social support to encourage responsible behavior and responsible spending.

If any Republican is looking for a way forward, start by doing what they’re doing across the Atlantic.

What Brooks doesn’t seem to get in his analysis - and what Matt Yglesias does seem to get in his - is that even with the considerable differences between the Conservative and Labour parties, there still exists a fair amount of consensus in British politics, especially regarding first-order concerns over the role of government.  That is, on a foundational level, British liberals and British conservatives still agree on the basics: government can serve the better the welfare of its citizens, the state is empowered to provide a minimum level of safety and security, etc.  Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are usually grouped together as contemporaries, but for all of her reactionary rhetoric, Thatcher wasn’t on a crusade to undermine the welfare state.

Reagan, however, was.  This might be boilerplate for most everyone here, but it’s worth reemphasizing: the Reagan Revolution didn’t just herald the end of the New Deal coalition, it also heralded the end of the New Deal consensus.  Reagan’s rise and victory signalled the end of a Republican Party that was – at core – in broad agreement with the Democratic Party about the role government.  With Reagan at its helm, the GOP transformed into a conservative movement dedicated to doing as much as it could to undermine and dismantle the welfare state.

Now, on some level, this was a necessary correction to the excesses of the 1970s.  But, when thinking about contemporary politics, it leaves the GOP in a much different place vis a vis the Democratic Party than the Conservative Party is vis a vis Labour.  Osborne and Cameron can use government to pursue conservative policy ends because the Tories never abandoned the idea that government can serve to improve the lives of its citizens.  The real disagreement between British liberals and conservatives is in the extent to which government should.  By contrast, Republicans have explicitly rejected the idea that government can be a force for good.  Which, policy wise, leaves them in a bit of a bind: not only does it encourage an almost criminal negligence to the operation of government (see: Bush Administration), but it virtually eliminates the space for certain kinds of policymaking.  For instance, Yglesias mentions that the Conservative Party fully signed on to the idea that climate and energy are issues which Britain must tackle (the same is true of center-right parties on the continent).  From there, he suggests that the GOP would have a bit more success electorally if it could do the same.  And I think that’s true.  But when you have a near-resolute opposition to government, it’s a little difficult to tackle problems which require government intervention (I’m oversimplifying a bit, but you get the picture).

The problem with Brooks’ recommendation then isn’t that it is a bad one, because it isn’t.  The Republican Party – and the country – would be better off if it adopted a pragmatic, flexible and mature approach towards governing.  No, the problem with Brooks’ suggestion is that it ignores the reality of the contemporary conservative movement, its near-death grip on the Republican Party, and its absolute opposition to the idea of government.  The GOP can’t build a Cameronite consensus with the Democratic Party because, at this point in time, there really isn’t much of a consensus.

David Brooks’ latest column better as a book.

I have been very glad to read the many arguments against David Brooks’ column announcing the end of moral philosophy. My own problems with what seems like the cyclical and predictable tendency for new scientific discoveries to signal the end of other modalities of knowing are reasonably well documented on this site. Insofar as I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to what I often can’t help but see as the aggressive imperial tendencies of some strong science proponents — somewhat ironically, it occurs to me that the most aggressive amongst the proponents are often not themselves members of the scientific community — that is not to say that I question the power of science’s explanatory model. It’s just to say that I think that as powerful as science happens to be that it has certain limits that ought not to crowd out other modalities of knowing. Mark had an excellent post on this point some time back when we were batting about the existence of God.

Wrote Mark,

Indeed, in insisting otherwise, both sides insure the continued conflation of science and religion, and both science and religion get demeaned in the process.  For instance, when religion gets up in arms over the teaching of evolution in science class and demands that intelligent design theory be given equal time – also in science class – it must pretend to be something it is not, and was never intended to be.  Religion is not science, and in attempting to gain acceptance as a science, it allows itself to be treated on the same terms as science.  In other words, it begs to be treated as if it were falsifiable, when the entire point in faith is that it is something that is unfalsifiable.  Worse, it forces religion to get tied up in arguments that have precious little to do with the elements of faith that are so very important: things like morality, conscience, meaning, etc.  And so it loses the forest for the trees, to use a cliche.

But similarly, science demeans itself when it used as a proof of the non-existence of god.  Science is not meant to provide unfalsifiable answers, nor is it intended to answer questions that can only admit of unfalsifiable answers.  To do so is to turn the scientific method on its head.  And in so doing, science demeans itself because it loses part of its very essence.

In all honesty, I think that my own cautionary tendencies around the reach of science are at least in part based on a cultural bug. Canada simply doesn’t house the same degree of religiosity as the US and so I don’t perceive myself to operate day-in-day-out within an environment that houses the same degree of antipathy towards science as many of our commenters here at the League do. To my own mind, and in the minds of most of those with whom I interact, the power and position of science in interpreting the world is largely unassailable, so the more pressing exercise is to stand up for those other, less buttressed but, I would argue, equally valuable modalities of knowing.

Post teaser: discussion of torture memos after the jump. [Read more →]

“Ah, Wall Street’s incredibly stupid. You know, a couple of weeks ago we had the same plan and they hated it. Now, the guy’s the second coming of Adam Smith.” – David Brooks on the Geithner Plan on All Things Considered Now that’s well played snark.

David Brooks has received mostly taunting for his trouble in writing a New York Times op-ed last week lamenting Obama’s failure to govern from the center. Most of taunts have come from the right, deriding Brooks for failing to recognize earlier that Obama is a classic, dyed-in-the-wool, tax and spend, big government liberal. That taunting may be fair all told, but I think it misses the more intriguing element of Brooks’ piece: that moderate on both the left and the right band together to influence the political process.

I can’t help but think that Brooks dead-on when he writes,

Those of us in the moderate tradition — the Hamiltonian tradition that believes in limited but energetic government — thus find ourselves facing a void. We moderates are going to have to assert ourselves. We’re going to have to take a centrist tendency that has been politically feckless and intellectually vapid and turn it into an influential force.

What Brooks; however, fails to do is to outline what step number one in the moderate resurrection project must be. Namely, Brooks goes on to talk about all the things that moderates must do before first articulating what it is that has led the majority of Americans to see moderates as “politically feckless and intellectually vapid” and how moderates can effectively seek to overcome that barrier. [Read more →]

D. Brooks for me is hot/cold–when he’s on he’s on, when he’s off he’s off.  Here he is dead-on.  I’m sure the Limbaugh/Happy Meal Cons won’t love this, but they need to move from denial to some kind of reality.  Listening to what David has to say here would be a good start.

Apparently John Huntsman, (R) Gov of Utah (of Utah!!!) is waking up and smelling some coffee on this one.

–

Update I: Check out this Larison post for some (slight) disagreement.  Daniel’s point is that the Republicans believe in something (just something pretty small bore and mono-explanatory in this case) hence they are not nihilists.  Obviously he’s got a point.  (And being against earmarks isn’t all bad, just in this case basically by itself laughable).

But to defend Brooks for a second, I took nihlist more in The Big Lebowski tradition of “We are Nihilists, we Believe in Nothin’ Lebowski.”  Obviously they are driven by something (in that case, greed/money) but put on this front which is ludicrous and hence deserve to be mocked.

If we want to get really semiotic here, Brooks’ exact words were “it’s a form of nihilism.”  It being a policy of tax cuts, earmarks reform, and charges that federal gov’t is the problem relative to what he refers to us as “this moment in history.”  There must I guess then be other forms of nihilism and what I take him to mean is that such a meagre response (and to be clear, Brooks says he opposed the stimulus package as drafted, so he’s not totally against corruption charges nor for the idea that bigger government is always better) would presumably in Brooks’ mind lead to absolute disaster and hence a kind of nothingness, certainly for the GOP and perhaps even (I’m extending here) for the country as a whole.  It would lead to a kind of implosion into an abyss and hence has a kind of nihilistic turn–even if not formally nihilistic as understood say as a philosophical worldview.