David Brooks on What Happened to American Conservatism

David Brooks says Trump replaced conservatism with reaction

David Brooks argues that American conservatism has been displaced by Trump's reactionary politics. His own tradition runs from Edmund Burke's incrementalism to Alexander Hamilton's limited but energetic government, and it now lacks a home. He traces the rupture to progressive overreach, which shut working-class and conservative voices out of universities, media, nonprofits and corporations. His response is moral and relational rather than political.

Takeaways

• Conservatism rests on Burke and Hamilton. Brooks defines it as epistemological modesty and constant but incremental change, plus limited but energetic government that enhances social mobility. He says it is not what Donald Trump produces, which he calls reactionary politics.
• Resentment and siege mentality drive the right's meanness. In his Atlantic essay I Should Have Seen This Coming, Brooks traces it to animistic human nature and to voters told their voices do not matter. Trump's lust for power, he argues, has eviscerated both conservatism and Christianity.
• Progressive overreach built an exclusionary caste system. Brooks agrees that left overreach invited reaction. Progressives' sin, he says, was building universities, media, nonprofits and corporations with no room for working-class or conservative voices. College-educated Americans now live 15 years longer than high-school-educated ones.
• Elite colleges ration seats and narrow ability. Galloway notes UCLA's admission rate fell from 76% to 9%, and would strip tax-free status from universities with billion-dollar endowments that do not expand. Brooks cites a study finding 54% of people in media, law, science and entertainment came from 32 colleges.
• The crisis of boys is not zero-sum. Brooks credits Richard Reeves with showing that helping males does not hurt females. Young men want discipline and self-improvement, he says, citing Letwin's vigorous virtues. After divorce and loneliness he was broken open, found faith and remarried eight years ago.
• Marriage needs several kinds of love. Brooks draws on Tim Keller's The Meaning of Marriage, where a marriage works when each partner works on their own selfishness. The Greeks named several loves, and Brooks says a marriage should have all of them.
• America is overpoliticised and undermoralised. Brooks's stated purpose is defending Hamiltonian conservatism and modelling civility, and he pushes back on a country he calls overpoliticised and undermoralised. His nonprofit Weave supports people rebuilding trust in their own neighbourhoods.

Brooks's route to the right

1. He became a conservative in his twenties while working as a police reporter in Chicago.