Thanks to the recent obvious failures of conservative policies when played out on the national scale, progressives now have an opportunity to win over many to their cause and redefine the political spectrum for generations to come. However, their potential will not be realized unless they move quickly. David Brooks’ new piece, The Republican Collapse, signals some of the tactics the conservative movement will use in defending itself and undermining the progressive advantage.
Brooks harkens back to the 18th Century philosopher, Edmund Burke in redefining and defending conservatism:
Modern conservatism begins with Edmund Burke. What Burke articulated was not an ideology or a creed, but a disposition, a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change.When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.
Over the years, the voice of Burke has been submerged beneath the clamoring creeds. In fact, over the past few decades the conservative ideologies have been magnified, while the temperamental conservatism of Burke has largely been abandoned in the political arena.
Brooks goes on to criticize the Republican Party, "free market conservatives", "religious conservatives", "creedal conservatism", and Bush. But he seeks to retain the idea that there's something good about conservatives and conservatism, expressing positive sentiments toward what he calls "dispositional conservatives" and "Burkean conservatives".
Parenthetically, I notice that Brooks does not indicate an awareness of the role that the modern "conservative movement" and its backers have played in the USA since the early 1970s, driving our nation's political agenda in a regressive direction. It is movement conservatives who have gradually infiltrated the Republican Party and marginalized the more traditional or moderate conservatives (those that Brooks would probably call "Burkean" or "dispositional").
Given his writings in the past, one can speculate on why Brooks is writing this now. Why is he harkening back to the 18th Century philosopher, Edmund Burke? In many of his previous pieces, Brooks would start out sounding very moderate, then end up by his final paragraphs supporting whatever Bush and the neocons were doing. In this new piece, he appears to be moving away from that position, perhaps looking at them as having been false idols. Maybe his philosophy is maturing? He's seeing the light?
This article represents an attempt on Brooks' part to deal with cognitive dissonance--the state of discomfort that arises when one's beliefs are out of sync with reality. One either has to adjust one's beliefs or one's actions in order to restore a sense of internal consistency. In this case, it appears that Brooks wants to keep the label "conservative", but distance himself from what those labeled as "conservatives" (and who label themselves that way) have been doing--and from the bad image they have developed. The tension inside Brooks is between "I'm a conservative and I'm good" and "They're conservatives and everybody can see conservatives are bad." So Brooks reframes it by splitting the universe of conservatives into his kind--dispositional, good--and that other kind--creedal, not good. He's rewriting the script to keep himself on the good side (and I'll bet he won't be out there calling attention to some of his earlier articles that supported creedal conservatives and their positions).
This desire to keep one’s internal identity as a conservative is not unique to Brooks, of course. There are likely millions in this country who have thought of themselves as conservatives and are now feeling distinctly uncomfortable about the unpleasant realities of what movement conservatism, played out on a grand scale, has done to our nation. [From the cognitive linguistic perspective (Rockridge Institute & George Lakoff), these folks are predominantly “biconceptuals”—their minds use both liberal and conservative frames.]
So Brooks, who is an proficient strategic communicator for the Right, is also seeking to repair the damage that has been done to the label “conservative” by redefining it in benevolent manner. Consistent denigration of the “liberal” label by the Right has driven politicians and the public away from self-identifying themselves as liberal. Brooks doesn’t want the same thing to happen to self-identified conservatives—that they would abandon the conservative identifier rather than have to see themselves as part of the enormous mess the conservative movement has made.
At the same time, Brooks is seeking to undercut one of the pillars of the growing progressive movement, the recognition that there is value in community, that “we are all in it together.” To read Brooks’ definition of "temperamental conservatism", it is likely that even many of us who think of ourselves progressive would be classified as temperamental conservatives:
Over the past few decades, the Republican Party has championed a series of reforms designed to devolve power to the individual, through tax cuts, private pensions and medical accounts. The temperamental conservative does not see a nation composed of individuals who should be given maximum liberty to make choices. Instead, the individual is a part of a social organism and thrives only within the attachments to family, community and nation that precede choice. Therefore, the temperamental conservative values social cohesion alongside individual freedom and worries that too much individualism, too much segmentation, too much tension between races and groups will tear the underlying unity on which all else depends.
The progressive movement had better get going on putting its values out there and defining itself clearly, before its values are co-opted by Brooks and his fellow redefined “dispositional conservatives.” This is not a time to dally around. It is precisely among those dispositional conservatives that progressive values have the greatest potential to win people over to the progressive movement.