Back in the good old days when he worked for the Wall Street Journal in Europe, writes David Brooks, there was nothing but good news. German unification, fall of the Soviet Union, etc. But now we see
So let's tell the story of the last half century in another way. Back in the 1980s we conservatives felt that the Reagan revolution had established the idea that the market system ought to prevail because theory and because practice. Theory said that socialism and the administrative state could not work and the record of the Reagan years proved it in practice. But then came Bill Clinton saying he was a New Democrat but then immediately setting his wife to legislate a total administrative state solution to health care. Then came left-wing race and gender politics -- after the Civil Rights Acts supposedly solved the problem of government discrimination -- that encouraged Americans to think of themselves as clan members rather than Americans. Well, voters taught Clinton a lesson in 1994, and then elected George W. Bush who promised a "compassionate conservatism" that would square the circle between conservatism and liberalism. Wonderful! Everybody would live happily ever after. Except that liberals hated George W. Bush and everything he stood for.
Then came Barack Obama and a determination to fundamentally transform America with good old administrative state solutions to health care in Obamacare and to finance with Dodd-Frank. Plus left-wing race and gender politics and climate change politics.
Conservatives realized that we were chumps. If we behaved like good guys then what Margaret Thatcher called the "ratchet" would continue to inch America to the left, with bigger and bigger government and more powerful regulators and race-and-gender liberalism bullying us and stigmatizing us as racists, sexists, homophobes, and wave upon wave of immigrants to swamp our inheritance of Anglo-American law and democracy. We realized that conservatism wasn't working. We realized we had to fight back.
Now let us make clear what we mean by conservatism and liberalism. Today, conservatism means the nation state as the imaginary clan of all the people living in a nation state, understanding that we are all Americans first, fellow citizens of a city on a hill, the last best hope of mankind on Earth. But today liberalism means a global elite organizing its supporters into sub-national clans: the clan of African Americans, the clan of feminists, the clan of gays. And these clans are represented as helpless victims of the dominant white male hegemony.
Now I would say that the conservative notion is a good one. It builds upon the most successful script for organizing people into a political community, the completely fanciful and confused notion of a national people with a glorious history and language and culture that goes back into the dawn of history. And conservatism holds high the astonishing Great Enrichment of the market system, allowing economic relations to develop into astonishing prosperity without too much bullying and economic repression from the government.
I would also say that the liberal notion is a bad one. It starts with the notion of a global elite of educated, evolved people that know best, and uses identity politics to stir up and exploit the race and gender resentments of its supporters to make war upon the ordinary people that identify with the nation. There is, of course, an evil genius in this strategy that comes down to us straight from Philip of Macedonia and Julius Caesar: divide and conquer.
There is an honorable reason for the global elite/identity politics model. After World War II the global elite decided that it had to step in and excise the cancer that produced the poisonous nationalism of Adolf Hitler. The solution was to combine the nations in supra-national organizations that would be controlled by the global elite. So far so good. But politics didn't just go away. If nationalism and the nation state was to go away, something would need to replace it. And what replaced it was identity politics. Political leaders would not advance the cause of the nation; instead they would cater to the cause of the minority.
In other words, the educated and evolved elite encouraged what David Brooks now calls "clan warriors" because in politics you have to appeal to some common denominator, and if you are not going to play to patriotism, the clan of the nation, then you play to other clan: race or gender or class.
Now, ideally, we humans would all rally to the notion of humanity, the notion of humans as one global clan. But that time is not yet, primarily because of the fact that humans speak different languages. So politicians are going to rally us to some lesser group, to a nation or to a lesser tribe.
In my view the nation is still the best way to rally people into some kind of unity.
So here we were in the election campaign of 2016, and the top two Republican candidates were Ted Cruz, that proposed to rally conservatives against liberals, and Donald Trump, that proposed to rally all Americans to Make America Great Again, with walls and less immigration that would put America First.
Do you see the brilliance of the Trump notion? He does not set American against American. He puts Americans against non-Americans. And he fights for ordinary Americans and celebrates them as he did in his State of the Union speech.
In a way it is encouraging that David Brooks doesn't get this. One assumes that none of his liberal friends get it either.
You see the really dirty secret of what President Trump is doing is that he is speaking to the folks that liberals want to hive off into resentful identity politics silos. He is encouraging them to think of themselves first of all as Americans, as in E Pluribus Unum, in a glorious effort to Make America Great Again. Imagine if he succeeds!
Now, in my view, the global elite agenda is utter folly. Just because you stop rallying people to their nations, it doesn't alter the fact that in politics you always rally the people towards something. Since you cannot rally ordinary people to the idea of global humanity, not yet, you have a choice. You can rally them to the nation or rally them to something smaller.
And when you rally people to something smaller you are likely to break up the nation states of the world into something smaller and meaner. As in a Scotland independent of Britain, or Catalonia independent of Span, or California independent of the US.
But hey, as long as David Brooks does not get it, then Donald Trump gets to celebrate the notion of America with all of us normals while the liberal globalists wander around scratching their heads wondering what went wrong.
the return of ethnic separatism, the rise of authoritarian populism, the retreat of liberal democracy, the elevation of a warrior ethos that reduces politics to friend/enemy, zero-sum conflicts.Back in the good old days we had the Wall Street Journal celebrating "dynamic entrepreneurs and America’s heroic missions." Now we have FoxNews "with its daily gospel of resentments" and President Trump's "warrior mentality" and "constant race baiting." We have descended into clan warfare.
Eventually, conservatives will realize: If we want to preserve conservatism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors. Liberals will realize: If we want to preserve liberalism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors.OK. So what is David Brooks missing? He writes as if the agenda of the left doesn't exist; he writes as though conservatives have no warrant for resentment and warriordom. But, enquiring minds want to know, how come conservatives got all mad and warriorly?
So let's tell the story of the last half century in another way. Back in the 1980s we conservatives felt that the Reagan revolution had established the idea that the market system ought to prevail because theory and because practice. Theory said that socialism and the administrative state could not work and the record of the Reagan years proved it in practice. But then came Bill Clinton saying he was a New Democrat but then immediately setting his wife to legislate a total administrative state solution to health care. Then came left-wing race and gender politics -- after the Civil Rights Acts supposedly solved the problem of government discrimination -- that encouraged Americans to think of themselves as clan members rather than Americans. Well, voters taught Clinton a lesson in 1994, and then elected George W. Bush who promised a "compassionate conservatism" that would square the circle between conservatism and liberalism. Wonderful! Everybody would live happily ever after. Except that liberals hated George W. Bush and everything he stood for.
Then came Barack Obama and a determination to fundamentally transform America with good old administrative state solutions to health care in Obamacare and to finance with Dodd-Frank. Plus left-wing race and gender politics and climate change politics.
Conservatives realized that we were chumps. If we behaved like good guys then what Margaret Thatcher called the "ratchet" would continue to inch America to the left, with bigger and bigger government and more powerful regulators and race-and-gender liberalism bullying us and stigmatizing us as racists, sexists, homophobes, and wave upon wave of immigrants to swamp our inheritance of Anglo-American law and democracy. We realized that conservatism wasn't working. We realized we had to fight back.
Now let us make clear what we mean by conservatism and liberalism. Today, conservatism means the nation state as the imaginary clan of all the people living in a nation state, understanding that we are all Americans first, fellow citizens of a city on a hill, the last best hope of mankind on Earth. But today liberalism means a global elite organizing its supporters into sub-national clans: the clan of African Americans, the clan of feminists, the clan of gays. And these clans are represented as helpless victims of the dominant white male hegemony.
Now I would say that the conservative notion is a good one. It builds upon the most successful script for organizing people into a political community, the completely fanciful and confused notion of a national people with a glorious history and language and culture that goes back into the dawn of history. And conservatism holds high the astonishing Great Enrichment of the market system, allowing economic relations to develop into astonishing prosperity without too much bullying and economic repression from the government.
I would also say that the liberal notion is a bad one. It starts with the notion of a global elite of educated, evolved people that know best, and uses identity politics to stir up and exploit the race and gender resentments of its supporters to make war upon the ordinary people that identify with the nation. There is, of course, an evil genius in this strategy that comes down to us straight from Philip of Macedonia and Julius Caesar: divide and conquer.
There is an honorable reason for the global elite/identity politics model. After World War II the global elite decided that it had to step in and excise the cancer that produced the poisonous nationalism of Adolf Hitler. The solution was to combine the nations in supra-national organizations that would be controlled by the global elite. So far so good. But politics didn't just go away. If nationalism and the nation state was to go away, something would need to replace it. And what replaced it was identity politics. Political leaders would not advance the cause of the nation; instead they would cater to the cause of the minority.
In other words, the educated and evolved elite encouraged what David Brooks now calls "clan warriors" because in politics you have to appeal to some common denominator, and if you are not going to play to patriotism, the clan of the nation, then you play to other clan: race or gender or class.
Now, ideally, we humans would all rally to the notion of humanity, the notion of humans as one global clan. But that time is not yet, primarily because of the fact that humans speak different languages. So politicians are going to rally us to some lesser group, to a nation or to a lesser tribe.
In my view the nation is still the best way to rally people into some kind of unity.
So here we were in the election campaign of 2016, and the top two Republican candidates were Ted Cruz, that proposed to rally conservatives against liberals, and Donald Trump, that proposed to rally all Americans to Make America Great Again, with walls and less immigration that would put America First.
Do you see the brilliance of the Trump notion? He does not set American against American. He puts Americans against non-Americans. And he fights for ordinary Americans and celebrates them as he did in his State of the Union speech.
In a way it is encouraging that David Brooks doesn't get this. One assumes that none of his liberal friends get it either.
You see the really dirty secret of what President Trump is doing is that he is speaking to the folks that liberals want to hive off into resentful identity politics silos. He is encouraging them to think of themselves first of all as Americans, as in E Pluribus Unum, in a glorious effort to Make America Great Again. Imagine if he succeeds!
Now, in my view, the global elite agenda is utter folly. Just because you stop rallying people to their nations, it doesn't alter the fact that in politics you always rally the people towards something. Since you cannot rally ordinary people to the idea of global humanity, not yet, you have a choice. You can rally them to the nation or rally them to something smaller.
And when you rally people to something smaller you are likely to break up the nation states of the world into something smaller and meaner. As in a Scotland independent of Britain, or Catalonia independent of Span, or California independent of the US.
But hey, as long as David Brooks does not get it, then Donald Trump gets to celebrate the notion of America with all of us normals while the liberal globalists wander around scratching their heads wondering what went wrong.
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