I found David Brooks’s most recent New York Times column largely a lament for an America that has been gone for nearly 40 years, one in which there was a liberal and conservative wing of both the Democratic and Republican Parties and they didn’t hate each other. Indeed, that might be the capsule summary of most of his columns. Here’s the kernel of his piece:
No matter how moderate or left, Democrats of a certain age were raised in an atmosphere of liberalism. I don’t mean the political liberalism of George McGovern. I mean the philosophic liberalism of people like Montaigne, John Stuart Mill, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass — people who witnessed religious and civil wars and built structures to restrain fanaticism.
Philosophic liberalism, Adam Gopnik explains in his essential book, “A Thousand Small Sanities,†begins with intellectual humility. There’s more we don’t know than we do know, so public life is a constant conversation that has no end. In the liberal view, each person contains opposites and contradictions. You flatten and dehumanize complex individuals when you see people according to crude dichotomies and assign them to tribal teams.
Liberals prefer constant incremental reform to sudden revolution. “Liberal reform, like evolutionary change, being incremental, is open to the evidence of experience,†Gopnik writes. Liberals place great emphasis on context. The question is not: What do I want? It’s: What good can I do in this specific circumstance?
Liberalism loves sympathy, suspects rage and detests cruelty. Politics is inevitably a dialogue between partial truths. Compromise is a virtue, not a sign of cowardice. Moreover, means determine ends. If you win power through rhetorical violence, and by hating those who disagree, your regime will be angry and destructive. Liberalism arose out of the fact that political revolutions, while exciting at the outset, usually end up in brutality, dictatorship and blood. Working within the system is best.
People who came of age in the past few decades did not grow up in an atmosphere of assumed liberalism. They often grew up in an atmosphere that critiques it.
Progressives are not liberals. Liberals love what the United States is and has been and yearn to make it better through gradual, gentle, and consensual change. Progressive love the United States only for what it might become under their tutelage.
If you think that is a good formula, try it out on your boss in describing how you feel about your job, on a chef in describing his preparation of a dish, on your spouse, or on your mother. I predict that in short order you will find yourself without a job, unwelcome in the restaurant, without a spouse, and persona non grata in your parents’ home.
I think we should knock off the “I love the US stuff” entirely. Few people, certainly no politician, love the country for what it is. They love, if they are capable of that emotion for anything other than themselves, the half of the country that believes the same things they believe. So, I would say that liberals value the country both as it is and as they hope it will be. I think Progressives are largely the same, but they are more likely to hate the people in the country who dont believe the same things they believe. It is that hatred that makes them not want to listen to the other side. Liberals will listen and then argue and bring out charts and graphs and data.
Is there any longer a group among conservatives that corresponds to liberals? If there are, they are not organized and are very quiet. You just hear hatred being thrown at people on the left, liberal or Progressive. Now you are a communist if you think top marginal rates should be a bit higher.
Steve
You must know better than that, steve.
I certainly love the United States. As the Armenian poet said, I love my country because it is mine. I recognize the faults but I do not hate the United States for its faults. Politicians? As you would say, meh.
While I chafe when people burn the flag in protest or otherwise disrespect it or our government, I recognize it is their right to do so and tolerate it. I do more than chafe when they fly foreign flags or pull down the U. S. flag, hoisting a foreign flag. That exceeds legitimate protest veering into sedition.
You must know that you are in a minority Dave. It still bugs me when people wear the flag or dont take it down at night and fold it properly. It just doesn’t seem right, but I dont think that says much about loving the country. Of those who are politically active and who talk about loving the country, how many people can you think of that you would believe? I bet almost none. What you consistently find is that people “love” some version of the US that does not really exist.
Where I will concede that I would be wrong is that among those who are relatively apolitical I think you can find some people who can still make a valid claim that they love the country. However, as it stands, I dont want anything to do with people who make loud proclamations about loving the country. I immediately think scoundrel. (Please note that I keep saying words like few as there are exceptions.)
Steve
Most people are apolitical.
However, I hope that the portrait you paint is wrong. If it is correct, war is inevitable.
Cranky today, steve?
Love my country? Can’t say that love is the right verb. I don’t want to live anywhere else. Because I have family I would fight to the death to hold this ground. But, you see, anywhere else is coming here. Faster every day. Is that what they call “nativism”? Like a disease? That’s what elitists like you Dr. Steve, want for families like mine. To be displaced, to be gone, to make room for your “People of Color”.
In my neighborhood, almost all of the homes date from 1900 or before. When one burns down due to old wiring (most fires occur in the winter, space heaters), or is sold at tax auction, it’s always the same. Demolition, one day, excavation and foundation poured, one day, prefab home sections assembled, 3 weeks, Muslim or other Blacks then move in. The rest of us bought these homes 30 years ago. Old, dilapidated, we spent 30 years of effort and 30 years of our earnings to improve them. Total waste, we were stupid, we should have laid on our backs and moaned, we would have been given new homes.
“That’s what elitists like you Dr. Steve, want for families like mine. To be displaced, to be gone, to make room for your “People of Colorâ€.”
I have never said or come close to implying such a thing. I say almost nothing about People of Color. Either read what I actually say or go F yourself. What I have specifically said about immigration is that, like Dave, I support a stronger E-verify. I support stronger enforcement at ports of entry. I support increased support for courts so that we can process people and return them quickly which will, I believe, discourage people from coming w/o good cause. I oppose the Trump plan of b being deliberately cruel to families and children in an effort to discourage asylum seekers. I also think the wall is stupid, perhaps because I am the only person here, it appears, to have worked on a military base and claimed over walls and fences to get in and out. It aint that hard.
“In my neighborhood, almost all of the homes date from 1900 or before. When one burns down due to old wiring (most fires occur in the winter, space heaters), or is sold at tax auction, it’s always the same. Demolition, one day, excavation and foundation poured, one day, prefab home sections assembled, 3 weeks”
Sounds like my family, the ones who are solid Trump supporters. Meh. Dont conservatives believe that you are responsible for your own outcomes? Also, there arent enough Muslims in the country to take over all of those homes. Not buying it. Know the difference between a puppy and a conservative?
Steve
If we grow short of Muslims, Catholic Social Services will bring more. One problem with this town is that with the University here, there are more SJW’s than working class, and far fewer and smaller low income areas than new suburbs. The SJW’s work in government or UNL, live in the burbs, and cram their pet diversity projects into the shrinking center.
That I even object is less about being conservative and more about being old I think. Plus, It adds traffic.
The answer to your riddle is that the puppy will lick your hand as you take it to the vet to be put down.