Reading a David Brooks column is usually a fascinating exercise in logicial fallacy. Brooks usually begins his column with some fairly obvious observations, then twists them into some pre-ordained conclusion. A="It's raining outside." B="Umbrellas keep you dry in the rain." Therefore C="We should cut taxes."
Which is why I was shocked by his column today when he mostly avoided his usual trap and made a point that I've been trying to make for years. Modern Republicanism is not conservative in the orthodox sense of the word.
Conservatism is usually traced back to Edmund Burke (Brooks does so) and Burke's formulation of a conservatism that actually overlaps with classical liberalsim. It actually makes some sense, unlike modern Republicanism.
I want to first be clear that I am not engaging in what Digby calls the Infallibilty of Conservatism argument, whereby Conservatism nevers fails, it is failed by its practioners. When George Will or Andrew Sullivan attack Bush, they are doing so from a Burkean perspective. When John McCain says he supports Bush's veto on S-CHIP he is doing so from the perspective of Modern American Conservatism.
As Boho Brooks writes
Modern conservatism begins with Edmund Burke. What Burke articulated was not an ideology or a creed, but a disposition, a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change.
When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.
Over the years, the voice of Burke has been submerged beneath the clamoring creeds. In fact, over the past few decades the conservative ideologies have been magnified, while the temperamental conservatism of Burke has been abandoned.
It was for this reason that Burke - by all rights a brilliant man - supported the American Revolution (at least in its infancy). He was suspicious of the accumulation of royal power at the expense of the rights of the American colonists. In Burke's mind, Washington and the Americans were exercising an important check on rising authoritarianism within the British system.
It is also worth noting that our governmental system, as created in the Constitution is as much influenced by the conservatism of Edmund Burke as by the liberalism of Thomas Jefferson. While we are all frustrated (myself to the point of nausea) over the slow changes in Congress, we live under a governmental system that Burke would approve of. One that changes slowly, but once changed tends to continue in the same direction. Burke would defend Social Security at this point as being a traditional institution that time has shown has worked.
Most of us have some aspect of Burkean conservatism in us. When we fought to save Social Security, we are being Burkean. We when fight to save the Fourth Amendment and the Geneva Convention we are being Burkean.
But being a Burkean conservative is not what modern American conservatism is about. Modern Republicanism is a dangerous reactionary radicalism that is anathema to both American liberalism and Burkean conservatism. But it is not limited to George Bush. Modern Republicanism is widespread, statisical accounting for tens of millions of Americans who support the GOP and it's "creedal" conservatism over the veneration of our institutions and traditions.
It is important to remember that the Reagan Revolution within conservatism was to replace the traditional, country club George H.W. Bush conservatism with an ideologically driven reactionary radicalism. Brooks fails to connect those dots. He would sooner eat his own pooh than lay the blame where it belongs, with St. Ronald.
The current collapse - as Brooks himself calls it - is a natural result of the modern Republicanism. It is collapsing because it is unsound and profoundly unAmerican.