Tue Dec 16, 2003 (Politics) Comments

[An e-mail to my father.]

I enjoyed both essays. But I think that David Brooks gives George Bush too much credit. If I had read Brooks exclusively, and had not seen or heard George Bush speak for himself, I'd come away with the impression that George W. is a deep thinker embattled in a war of ideas with America's liberal legacy. He's not. He's a cultural and moral simpleton. He means well, but he doesn't understand the arguments of his adversaries, nor is he interested in them.

David Brooks' portrait of George Bush is not reconciled to this reality. I get the impression, when reading David Brooks, that he is writing about the man the Republican party should have to offer. I think that David Brooks is frustrated that conservatives in America have so few men or women of any intellectual heft to engage the other side in an intelligent debate of ideas. The Republican party has a surfeit of blowhards, but few intelligent leaders. Lacking such a leader, Mr. Brooks is inventing one in George W. Bush. I find it a little absurd.

I think that David Brooks is a closet liberal. He may have been snubbed or insulted at an impressionable age by the liberal establishment. He seems at once desirous to be among them- he writes for the Atlantic Monthly and now the New York Times, he lends his analysis to PBS, and he is found of profiling the East Cost liberal lifestyle in his essays- and desirous to ridicule them: He spends an inordinate amount of time deriding liberal narcissism.

It is my belief that this desire to ridicule comes from envy. I think David Brooks secretly wishes that he could find such engaging minds among his conservative friends. He lashes out at liberals not simply because they disagree with him, but because of the manner in which they disagree: They construct well defended, well articulated arguments. If his conservative friends were capable of engaging his mind in such a manner, he would be free from this need to prove so publicly that he is not a liberal.

It strikes me as quite revealing of the fundamental deficiency in today's conservative thought that Mr. Brooks demonstrates through his behavior a recognition that within conservative circles it is not enough to challenge one's adversaries on his thoughts. One must attack one's adversaries personally, make them appear morally slack- hence his harangues against liberal narcissism. I think this behavior is exacted from those claiming to be conservatives chiefly because intelligent debate is so strongly identified as an attribute of the liberal mind. Show a preference to engage in such intelligent debate rather than trite moralism and conservatives will question your credentials.

I too am offended by liberal narcissism. But it doesn't make me run to the Republican Party. That would be like Richard Feynman giving in to scientific elitism because the host presiding at many of his public lectures would introduce his as "a quantum physicist who also plays bongo drums." The compulsion of the common man to explain away one's intellectual fascinations is not license to derogate him. It identifies an opportunity to educate him and improve our common culture.

This, in my mind, illustrates the primary difference between conservatism and liberalism. It is a question of how to react to the shortcomings of others: exploit the man, or educate the man?