Immaculate

I was listening to the audio version of the recent David Brooks article "How America Got Mean." It's somewhat typical for Mr. Brooks' work over the past few years, I think; an article that posits that the solution for a problem that plagues the present-day United States can be found in its past. Which I get, it's part of what Conservatism is about, the idea that halting, or sometimes reversing, social change is the best way to create a better society.

And just as this article seems to be a lot like other David Brooks articles that I've read and/or listened to, it seems to have the same blind spot. While Mr. Brooks is not averse to noting the problems of the past, he views them as entirely separate from what he understands to be the strengths of the past. And so he envisions society in which the manners and morals of, say, the 1930s can be restored, but the racism, homophobia, control freakishness et cetera of the time can be simply avoided. Taking the bad with the good is only something that people have to do because they insist on modern ways of behaving.

And this, as I see it, frees Mr. Brooks from having to answer one of the persistent questions of societal change: If the past was so wonderful, why didn't people stick with it? Why did people throw the proverbial baby out with the proverbial bathwater if the two were completely unconnected? While I've never encountered Mr. Brooks describing conservative values as "magical" (as Juan Williams has done) this idea that they have no downsides sets them apart from pretty much everything else on Earth. But I suppose that this is the appeal of ideology; it can somehow be perfect.