Fresh Start Conservatism
David Brooks is the columnist who passes for a pro-capitalist on the New York Times. A column by Mr. Brooks on February 15th is so utterly wrong, in so many different directions that I’d like to—but can’t—believe it was written while he was “tripping” on LSD. His theme is that conservatism needs a “fresh start.”
How to achieve it? “Doing that would … mean stealing ideas from both the right and the left.”
How will we know which ideas to take from which camp? Well, we take the good ones from each, leaving aside the bad.
How do we determine which ideas are good and which bad, when we are deliberately avoiding such principles as individual rights and a standard of morality? His implicit answer is: “Just ask me, I’ll tell you.”
For instance, from the left, we take the idea that government should be more heavily involved in education and in preparing children more generally for a successful life. From the right, we take the idea that the two-parent family is important. Put them together and you get this astonishing statement: “There could be nurse-home visits for children in chaotic homes so that they have some authority in their lives.”
Mind you, this is to be a “policy”—i.e., a government program. So, presumably, the government is going to send its agents into every home to determine if little Jason and Jennifer are running around yelling too much. If they are, then the government will dispatch Nurse Ratched, from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” to institute order. And the reason why this needs to be done, is so that Jason and Jennifer can learn to submit to authority. The Hitler Youth was nothing compared to this.
From both left and right we take the moral code of altruism, which we implement, for example, in the idea of enslaving young people at the time when they would otherwise start out on their careers: “National service should be a rite of passage for 20-somethings.” What service? To “mentor students through high school and college years.” So instead of going to law school, taking a first job..