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An analysis from the "Liberty Under God" perspective. |
| DAVID BROOKS - Op-Ed Columnist |
Summary |
| Published: May 4, 2009 |
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| Republicans generally like Westerns. They generally admire John Wayne-style heroes who are rugged, individualistic and brave. They like leaders — from Goldwater to Reagan to Bush to Palin — who play up their Western heritage. Republicans like the way Westerns seem to celebrate their core themes — freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity. |
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| But the greatest of all Western directors, John Ford, actually used Westerns to tell a different story. |
A story that is "different" from the a story about "freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity," would be a story about "slavery, collectivism, regimentation, and moral relativism." Since this is hardly the world John Ford promoted, it's inaccurate to say he told a story "different" from the one Republicans tell. |
| Ford’s movies didn’t really celebrate the rugged individual. They celebrated civic order. |
Is Brooks saying that Republicans don't like "civic order?" Is Brooks saying that the ideals of John Wayne, Goldwater and Reagan lead to civic disorder? |
| For example, in Ford’s 1946 movie, “My Darling Clementine,” Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp, the marshal who tamed Tombstone. But the movie isn’t really about the gunfight and the lone bravery of a heroic man. |
It's not that the story isn't "really" about the gunfight. It's about that. But it's also about something else. It's more profoundly about something else. Could it be that Brooks has a superficial view of Republicans? Could it be that Republicans like "rugged individualism" and the civic order produced by such individuals? |
| It’s about how decent people build a town. Much of the movie is about how the townsfolk put up a church, hire a teacher, enjoy Shakespeare, get a surgeon and work to improve their manners. |
Is Brooks saying Republicans don't like building towns, putting up churches, hiring teachers, etc.? |
| The movie, in other words, is really about religion, education, science, culture, etiquette and rule of law — the pillars of community. In Ford’s movie, as in real life, the story of Western settlement is the story of community-building. Instead of celebrating untrammeled freedom and the lone pioneer, Ford’s movies dwell affectionately on the social customs that Americans cherish — the gatherings at the local barbershop and the church social, the gossip with the cop and the bartender and the hotel clerk. |
Is Brooks saying Republicans are against "religion, education, science, culture, etiquette and rule of law — the pillars of community?"
Is Brooks saying Republicans have no affection for these things?
If not, what on earth is his point?
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| Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order. |
Why? Why is it that someone who believes in community and civic order must be opposed to "untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice?" Why is it that someone who believes in the "church social" and "religion, education, science, culture, etiquette and rule of law," must also believe in trammeled freedom and totalitarian annihilation of individual choice? |
| They would begin every day by reminding themselves of the concrete ways people build orderly neighborhoods, and how those neighborhoods bind a nation. They would ask: What threatens Americans’ efforts to build orderly places to raise their kids? |
Is Brooks seriously maintaining that Republicans don't care about orderly places to raise their kids? What planet is Brooks from? |
| The answers would produce an agenda: the disruption caused by a boom and bust economy; |
Is Brooks saying that Democrats are the best opponents of Keynesianism and the boom-bust cycle it causes?
Why Austrian Economics Matters More Than Ever by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
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| the fragility of the American family; |
Is Brooks saying that Democrats are more concerned with "the American family" than with, say, the Swedish "family" or the homosexual "family?" |
| the explosion of public and private debt; |
Is Brooks saying that debt is more prominently featured in the platform of the Democrats than the Republicans? |
| the wild swings in energy costs; |
Is Brooks saying that if Democrats were in charge, gasoline would still be 39¢ a gallon? |
| the fraying of the health care system; |
Is Brooks saying that HMO's were the brainchild of "rugged individualists?" |
| the segmentation of society |
Is Brooks saying that "the segmentation of society" "threatens Americans' efforts to build orderly places to raise their kids?" What the heck is "the segmentation of society," anyway? |
| and the way the ladders of social mobility seem to be dissolving. |
Is Brooks saying that "social mobility" and ladder-climbing builds better places to raise kids? Are there any studies showing that better kids are the result of socially-mobile parents in different homes, different neighborhoods, different schools, over the course of a socially-mobile childhood rather than in a "Little House on the Prairie?" |
| But the Republican Party has mis-learned that history. |
Can Brooks name a single Democrat in Hollywood who is making another Western like John Ford? Was Sam Peckinpah a Republican? |
| The party sometimes seems cut off from the concrete relationships of neighborhood life. |
Match one from Column A with one from Column B:
| Column A |
Column B |
| Republicans |
Washington D.C. |
| Democrats |
Neighborhood |
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| Republicans are so much the party of individualism and freedom these days that they are no longer the party of community and order. |
If anything, the Republicans are the party of the "War on Terror," the "War on Drugs," and neo-conservatism. But Reagan and John Ford were not the Party of Washington D.C. |
| This puts them out of touch with the young, who are exceptionally community-oriented. |
Are the young Washington D.C. bureaucracy-oriented? |
| It gives them nothing to say to the lower middle class, who fear that capitalism has gone haywire. |
How about: "Capitalism has not gone haywire; it has been replaced with democratic socialism (fascism)." Or replaced by a combination of fascism and socialism ("fascialism"). |
| It gives them little to say to the upper middle class, who are interested in the environment and other common concerns. |
Was Soviet socialism good for the environment? Which land is better taken care of -- privately-owned land, or government-owned land? |
| The Republicans talk more about the market than about society, more about income than quality of life. |
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| They celebrate capitalism, which is a means, and are inarticulate about the good life, which is the end. |
Isn't the real issue in politics the means? Is there really a party that advocates "the bad life?" |
| They take things like tax cuts, which are tactics that are good in some circumstances, and elevate them to holy principle, to be pursued in all circumstances. |
Are higher taxes good in some circumstances? The tax on tea that resulted in the Boston Tea Party was three pence per pound. The total tax burden on the colonies, all taxes combined, was less than three percent. Today's Red Coats confiscate over half of everything you own. Yet taxes are not high enough?? Are there any circumstances, any bureaucracies, that are not wasting our tax dollars? What circumstance is there today where tax cuts are unwarranted; that requires us to have more of our earnings transferred to Washington bureaucrats? |
| The emphasis on freedom and individual choice may work in the sparsely populated parts of the country. People there naturally want to do whatever they want on their own land. But it doesn’t work in the densely populated parts of the country: the cities and suburbs where Republicans are getting slaughtered. People in these areas understand that their lives are profoundly influenced by other people’s individual choices. People there are used to worrying about the health of the communal order. |
Have Democrats helped inner cities by rewarding illegitimacy, and making it "unconstitutional" to teach children that God says "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not kill," and wait until you get married? Is Brooks saying that Republican fail to speak out against the diseases and the toxins that threaten "the health of the communal order?" |
| In these places, Democrats have been able to establish themselves as the safe and orderly party. |
I don't believe this, and I'd like to see the polling data to support it. But let's assume that the Democrats have in fact convinced urban voters that the Democrats are the party of safety and order? Have Democrats really made the cities safer and more orderly? Really? |
| President Obama has made responsibility his core theme and has emerged as a calm, reassuring presence (even as he runs up the debt and intervenes rashly in sector after sector). |
Is Obama really the Messiah? Really? Or have voters been deceived by politicians, first in government-run schools, and then in government-run media? |
| If the Republicans are going to rebound, they will have to re-establish themselves as the party of civic order. First, they will have to stylistically decontaminate their brand. That means they will have to find a leader who is calm, prudent, reassuring and reasonable. |
Probably Brooks would define anyone who believes "government is not the solution, government is the problem" (Ronald Reagan) as hysterical, imprudent, disturbing and unreasonable. This would undoubtedly include everyone who owned a musket in 1776 and signed a piece of America's "organic law." |
| Then they will have to explain that there are two theories of civic order. There is the liberal theory, in which teams of experts draw up plans to engineer order wherever problems arise. And there is the more conservative vision in which government sets certain rules, but mostly empowers the complex web of institutions in which the market is embedded. |
I can't think of a single John Ford movie in which the hero was the government, who wisely "empowered" a "market" embedded in "institutions."
Conservatism is the theory of the "empowering" government?
Where is the view of America's Founding Fathers, of government as a "necessary evil," which governs best when it governs least, and which cannot be trusted.
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| Both of these visions are now contained within the Democratic Party. The Republicans know they need to change but seem almost imprisoned by old themes that no longer resonate. The answer is to be found in devotion to community and order, and in the bonds that built the nation. |
Who built this nation?
The history of America is, to quote Brooks, "about how decent people build a town. Much of the movie is about how the townsfolk put up a church, hire a teacher, enjoy Shakespeare, get a surgeon and work to improve their manners." Everything Brooks extols -- "religion, education, science, culture, etiquette and rule of law — the pillars of community" are threatened by politicians and jackbooted thugs, not built by them. All of these pillars are protected by the Bill of Rights from the government, not by it.
About 155 years ago, Henry David Thoreau composed a speech called "On Civil Disobedience." In that speech, which is available here, he said that the government had not done anything. It had not settled the West. It had not educated the people. It had not opened new avenues of trade and commerce. All that had ever been done was done by individuals.
He pointed out that if trade and commerce were not made of a substance akin to India rubber, it would not be able to bounce over all the obstacles constantly put in its path by government. Indeed, if legislators, he said, were tried and punished for the results they produced, rather than understood for their intentions, they would be equated with the miscreants who put obstructions on railroad tracks.
-- Jim Davidson |