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Moderates in Paradise: David Brooks
David Brooks, the reflexively moderate New York Times columnist, is at it again, this time lamenting those poor, confused Iowa Christians who believe that the Bible’s injunction “Do not show partiality to the poor” means, well … not showing partiality to the poor. According to Brooks, this idea should extend to both policy and political discourse, but the parlance employed by the likes of Ted Cruz is deemed un-Christian by the pant-crease impresario.
Brooks finds evangelical support for Ted Cruz inscrutable. They are supposed to respond to the reassuring tones of Mike Huckabee or the pleasantly sleep-inducing Ben Carson. This is why Brooks — whose column is characterized by his unfunny and, apparently, unself-aware tendency to lecture Christians about how they should comport themselves — is confused by Cruz’s lead in Iowa. These Iowa Christians don’t seem to know their place anymore. Trump? Cruz? Please! It’s not like Iowa evangelicals have witnessed much undesired change during Obama’s tenure.
Brooks sees little in America that has changed in Obama’s tenure for evangelicals to complain about. Why don’t they simply roll with it now that divorce law is deemed fit for basket cases likes Oregon and Illinois while while marriage be defined once-and-for by one man in a robe? It’s a play so absurd, Harold Pinter and Harold Becket together couldn’t have conceived of it.
President Obama arrived unfashionably late at the marriage-rights party, though his fellow partygoers didn’t much seem to care. Future histories will show the president as characteristically behind the times, knowing that it took his vice president’s coming-out party on the issue to make him realize he was the last man in the room to get the joke. (Imagine, for a moment, being deemed less-hip than Joe Biden.)
For Brooks, it’s a given that Christian values like fairness and love are inherently progressive values and he cases his argument in a Third-Way-Al-Gore vein for added annoyance. And it’s not just social issues that have Evangelicals nonplussed. At any rate, these social-issues ingrates don’t seem unduly impressed by the managed loses of both the “bad” war in Iraq and the “good” war in Afghanistan. They don’t seem to marvel at the apparent ingratitude from the Libyan people, Congress, and NATO for their special brands of magic.
But don’t take my word for it, read Brooks’s latest column, “The Brutalism of Ted Cruz.” In Cruz’s speeches there is “not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy.” Brooks continues:
Traditionally, candidates who have attracted strong evangelical support have in part emphasized the need to lend a helping hand to the economically stressed and the least fortunate among us. Such candidates include George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.
That no misprint: George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum all cited positively in a single sentence. In the Times, no less!
None of this would matter were Brooks not routinely identified as conservative among conservatives who should know better.
Published in General
I have wondered what it would be like to consciously find myself transitioning (evolving not what I am asserting) from a previous conservative mindset to a moderation in views. I fully realize that I am increasingly soft and less sure in my own conservatism.
What is wrong with accepting David Brooks for who he is? He, clearly, is comfortable in his own skin. He has never been confused with Thomas Sowell or Mark Levin (the author). Is it out of the realm of possibility that someone (perhaps even many) may not be charmed by Sen. Cruz’s confidence in a conservative or religious medium. I understand that to cede a point that progressives may be more fundamental Christian in practice/word is misguided, but not inconceivable as a view. It is consistent with who Mr. Brooks is as a write. Oh well.
This was a pure snow job by Brooks. James Taranto devoted his Best of the Web column yesterday to this column by the malicious twit Brooks. Brooks failed to mention Cruz won by a 6-3 vote with Ginsberg and Breyer supporting his view. I guess they are not Christian enough for Brooks, either. Taranto correctly compares it to the way Robert Bork was unfairly attacked.
Link here:
ww.wsj.com/articles/brooks-borks-cruz-1452628864?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb
I disagree. Brooks either lied or didn’t even bother to read the decision. It is a despicable hatchet job.
That is a great sentence Ralphie – I need to remember that one.
It reminds me of a column written by the Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, RI that addressed the myth of the cuddly, sweet, always nice no matter what Jesus.
This is also a great sentence, WC.
Hoo boy.
It sounds like the polemicist in me is bringing out the polemicist in you.
Thanks
I have no idea what that means. What does that mean?
Sweet Meteor of Death.
I don’t think “progressive” was a word until the mid-2000’s. Gaffe! Gaffe! Gaffe!
You’re no fun. ;)
Glancing over the traditional corporal works of mercy, one of them is listed as “To ransom the captive”. Justice is to keep the man in prison for his term because it is deserved. Mercy would be to release the man early though he does not deserve. But on this, like so many things, I am probably misguided.
Guilty.
Many people who never read or studied the New Testament have the impression that Jesus was all humility, mercy, and meekness. He certainly taught and exhibited all of these traits, at times.
But they forget, or never knew, the Jesus who cleared the Temple, or condemned the Pharisees in the Seven Woes, or told a Jewish crowd that they were children not of Abraham, but of the Devil.
And that’s just out of the Gospels. Revelation has him slaying millions (or billions?) with the sword from his mouth, and casting multitudes into the lake of fire for all eternity.
He is the gentle Good Shepherd of those who accept Him. He is the terrifying God of wrath and righteous judgment to those who don’t.
You don’t have to believe it. But you really shouldn’t comment on Christian voters, as Brooks does, if you don’t understand it at all.
Would you believe the political connotations go back to 1846? The word to 1612.
Paul Dougherty – One of the nice things about being a polemicist is that I needn’t be weighed down by contemplation!
In partial defense of Brooks’s conservatism, I suspect that at the Times, and in the upper-class NYC environment in which he lives, he actually appears to be a conservative by comparison. It’s a social circle much like Europe, in which I think that Mark Steyn once wrote that the public debate ranges from the left, to the far left, to the looney left. I seem to remember Elena Kagan testifying that, growing up, she didn’t even know any Republicans.
So Brooks is like Pippin Took, if he had never left the Shire but somehow nevertheless partaken of Treebeard’s ent-draughts. Pippin might think that he was a giant because he was the tallest of the hobbits.
I’m not sure if DD was being tongue-in-cheek.
The Teddy Roosevelt Republicans were called “progressives” in the early 1900s. TR actually ran as a third-party candidate for the “Progressive” party in 1912 (splitting the Republican vote with W.H. Taft and handing the election to Woodrow Wilson).
The Democrats simultaneously used the term “progressive,” and Wilson was identified with the progressive movement in the Democratic party.
A different “Progressive” party was the vehicle of Robert LaFollette, a third-party candidate in 1924, and also a former Republican.
The term eventually came to mean “leftist,” and was discredited by the failures and unpopularity of many Democratic policies. The left-wing Dems then took over the term “liberal,” which they again discredited by the mid-1980s. Rather than come up with a new misleading term, the left-wing Dems just switched back to “progressive.”
I suppose that they can get away with such shenanigans because many mushy-middle voters have short memories and little knowledge of history.
I was. ;)
Another review of the case via Powerline. http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/2016/01/an-nyt-hatchet-job-on-ted-cruz.html
Being comfortable in one’s own skin is likely one of the listed definitions of a psychopath and therefore not much in the way of a positive comment on Brooks.
Great article David Deeble! And the photoshop is simply priceless. Thank you for the laughs.
Right, because when you care enough to send the very worst, Cthulhu just won’t cut it.
I continue to be amazed at the attention paid to Iowa. That state supported Huckabee and then Santorum so I don’t consider it a valid indication of the national GOP vote. On the other side of the fence, Iowan Dems have supported Obama.
I’m far more interested in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Unfortunately, Ohio and Florida (18 and 29 electoral votes) come later in the game.
So it’s basically comparing Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin? Who’s the conservative? The one shot by the communist.
David Brooks’ prior and present (legion) sins against conservatism do not render the basic question moot, though. Can anyone point out where in Ted Cruz’s speech and demeanor he has promoted a compassionate idea regarding the Christian directives (repeated multiple times by Jesus and the Apostle Paul) to show mercy and compassion to the poor and misfortunate.
It is really about tone and priority more than policy- Marvin Olasky’s writings clearly show how government programs tend to fail. But Christians, in particular, recognize that God does not give us what we deserve- which is eternal death. Grace is about a quality of mercy that is not strained.
So, how could this be expressed in a way that reflects Hayekian market compatibility and still shows care for the poor? I honestly have not heard anything like that from Cruz. Brooks seems to me to be right about that. There are ways that one can follow conservative principles and still show honest empathy for the underclass and the desire to get them out of the trap.
I’m an evangelical Christian who shares precisely Brooks’s qualms. I respect Cruz’s political acumen–something a lot of evangelicals have trouble factoring into their choice of candidates, in my opinion–so it is not as though I would never support the man, unlike say, Ben Carson whose political inexperiance made him a dreadful candidate. But there are religious reasons not to do so.
The episode regarding the representatives of persecuted Arab Christian groups is a case in point. The issue of Israel was not on the table, not being discussed.. Cruz took a complex situation of oppressed people of his own faith and got a floating thought bubble in which he saw himself lecturing Arabs on how they ought to feel about Israel, and how much ill-informed American evangelicals would like him for it. He took a group systematically oppressed by a genocidal Islamic fundamentalism and decided to lecture them on policy, turning the summit into political hay. His willingness to sell out his own co-religionists for political gain makes me concerned about who else he might ditch when he needs votes. The episode did not give me confidence in his ability to play the principled Christian candidate.
This sort of opportunism calls into question just how well Cruz actually represents evangelical Christians. As one myself, I want the absolute best representatives contending for my causes, men and women whose conduct is above reproach and honorable.
I agree and I’m particularly invigorated by this point because I just re-read Clarence Thomas’ autobiography this week. He grew up in the most impoverished of circumstances that are truly unimaginable for any socio-economic group in 20th century America. He was abandoned by both parents and fortunately adopted by his grandparents who ruthlessly instilled the work ethic and insisted upon the value of an education.
Thomas is still remarkably bitter about affirmative action policies. After graduating from Holy Cross and then Yale law school on merit, he had a very difficult time finding work. Most employers assumed his degrees were not earned and based upon affirmative action crutches alone.
I’ve read this argument before from Thomas Sowell whose children suffered from the very same bias.
Ah, The Tragedy of American Compassion indeed!