I’ve got to say, I may disagree with David Brooks the great majority of the time but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more thoughtful, intellectually rigorous, and visionary conservative in America today. Below are some ideas he expressed recently at Yeshiva University:
“The problem with the Republican party is that it’s still essentially a Goldwater free-market party oriented around maximum personal freedom. Well that was fine if you were fighting the Soviet Union. It was fine is you were combating socialism. But it’s not fine if you are combating an economic crisis that was, in large part, created by mistakes made by capitalists. It’s not fine if you’re combating inequality. So the Republican party really has no voice on a lot of the most germane issues of the day.”
“To me, the one part of global conservatism that does have a voice is the British Conservative party which decided: ‘We are not going to be a radical free-market, individualistic party. We are going to be a communitarian, socially-oriented party. We’re not going to put economics first. We are going to put society first. And we are going to work on shoring up the institutions of society. We’ll make the Labour party be the State and we’ll be the more community-oriented party.’ That’s a viable way forward because it gives you something to supplement the free market with.”
“I take the maximalist view, the Republican party is three election defeats away from that kind of view.”
