In his most recent New York Times column David Brooks tries to fight the light at the end of our present tunnel:
Radicals are good at opening our eyes to social problems and expanding the realm of what’s sayable.
But if you look at who actually leads change over the course of American history, it’s not the radicals. At a certain point, radicals give way to the more prudent and moderate wings of their coalitions.
In the 1770s, the rabble-rousing Samuel Adams gave way to the more moderate John Adams (not to mention George Washington, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton). In the middle of the 19th century, radicals like John Brown and purists like Horace Greeley gave way to the incrementalist Abraham Lincoln. In the Progressive era, the radicals and anarchists who started the labor movement in the 1880s gave way to Theodore Roosevelt.
Radicals are not good at producing change because while they are good at shaking up the culture, they don’t have practical strategies to pass legislation when you have to get the support of 50 percent plus one.
They also tend to divide the world into good people and bad people. They think they can bring change if they can destroy enough bad people, and so they devolve into a purist, destructive force that offends potential allies.
The people who come in their wake and actually make change are conservative radicals. They believe in many of the radicals’ goals, but know how to work within the democratic framework to achieve them.
IMO characterizing these individuals as “conservative radicals” is a futile exercise in rebranding. They are pragmatists and at this moment in history pragmatists are in bad odor. People who can actually get things done because they’re willing to accept half a loaf rather than none are viewed as class, race, or ideological traitors. Heresy is unforgiveable.
Here’s his view of events:
To some, this feels like a revolutionary moment. In Commentary, for example, Abe Greenwald argues that the radicals have seized control. They are pushing radical agendas (No police! No rent!). Worse, they undermine the liberal fundamentals of our democracy — the belief that democracy is a search for truth from a wide variety of perspectives; the belief that America is a noble experiment worth defending.
Many people smell in today’s radicalism the whiff of revolutions past: the destructive brutality of the French Revolution, the vicious thought police of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the naked power grabs of Lenin’s Soviet revolution.
I am not as alarmed. I’m convinced that the forces that brought Joe Biden the nomination are far more powerful than a few extremists in Portland and even the leftist illiberals on campus. I’m hopeful that if given power, Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will forge a new conservative radicalism.
I suspect the Mensheviks were saying the same thing about the Bolsheviks back in 1917. 70 years later the heirs of the Bolsheviks had been looting, retarding Russia’s progress, and spreading their ideas all over the world for three generations.
I think he has forgotten Shakespeare’s advice that “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” The “forces that brought Joe Biden to power” are some combination of hatred of Trump and the raw desire for power. I don’t see Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and Schumer as prospective “radical conservatives” but as survivors. They will tack in whatever direction they perceive the winds of the Democratic Party are blowing.
In what direction will they be blowing in 2021? I find it hard to imagine they will be blowing in the direction of moderation, liberal democracy, and the thoughtful consideration that leads to good policies.
A curious interpretation of history, presumably reached by Brooks to stave off his woke peers from destroying him. See, Brooks is actually the “conservative radical” — a convert to reparations and a preacher of a new gospel of personal survival.
I’m not too worried about the leftist radicals, but for different reasons than Brooks. They’ve already driven some progressives rightward through their zero-tolerance dogma. Combined with an incoherent message and the lack of any effective solutions, much less the vision or strategy to implement them, I think they are probably doomed in the long run. At best they’ll shift the Democratic overton window leftward on social issues.
One more point: including Nancy Pelosi in his list of prospective “radical conservatives” or, frankly, any variety of conservative is a stretch. Her lifetime voting record puts her securely among the leftmost faction of House Democrats.
‘They’ve already driven some progressives rightward through their zero-tolerance dogma.’
But many if not most not rightward enough. They will most likely still vote against OMB simply because everybody they know says he’s OMB and why should they bother checking OMB’s actual record (not his words) themselves because obviously everybody calling him OMB has already done so (NOT, for the same circular reasoning mentioned above).
They simply positively cannot understand that the Woke are the true enemy, not the opposition party. They simply don’t get the term ‘existential threat’. They need to talk to some survivors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Then maybe after hearing those horror stories they might, just might, reconsider their future vote.
“But many if not most not rightward enough.”
Of course not, why should anyone expect them to? They still have their own preferences and political values. They only have to go as far as Biden. Or maybe they just won’t vote.
Samuel Adams was not a radical, nor a rabble-rouser. The view that Samuel Adams was a powerful verbal agitator that single-handily brought Boston into open revolt is a staple of the Tory interpretation, the people are just sheep led by great men. Samuel’s views were little different than any of the other founders, and if anything he tried to calm the street mobs by directing them towards non-violent means of protests.
And to put him in the same category as John Brown, a disciple of violence is crazy. Brown did not open anybody’s eyes to slavery. Slavery had been abolished by legislatures in northern states and by the national legislature for the Northwest Territories. Republicans controlled the House of Representatives by the time he organized his raid on Harper’s Ferry and it was such a shambles of an effort, it could not inspire further insurrections.
And I do not know by what standard Greeley is a radical, and he wasn’t too pure to endorse conservative Edward Bates for the Republican nomination, the only candidate that was not actually a member of the Republican Party and who believed Lincoln was a radical on slavery.
Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Right afterwards I turned on CSPAN3 and historian Harold Holzer is hawking some civil war book and refers to the famous mural of Brown (“Tragic Prelude) as depicting him as an apostle of violence. Can’t escape.