David Brooks on Conservatism.
David Brooks talks about how the Republican Party is on the verge of collapse because they strayed from their roots and moved away from its roots, as championed by Edmund Burke. He advocates what he calls "Temperamental Conservatism," which preaches a resistance to change and favors groups and institutions over individuals.
Brooks' version of Conservatism avoids some of the errors of the Bush administration. For instance, Temperamental Conservatism would have been highly skeptical of an invasion and occupation of Iraq, under the supposition that the Iraqis could change their own country better than we could ourselves. In other words, it was up to the Iraqi people to change their own government using their own customs and morals.
Temperamental Conservatism, for instance, would have avoided the radical reinterpretations of the Constitution advocated by Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales, arguing that any changes necessary to stop terrorism had to come through the traditions our contry had already developed, such as our Constitution. It would accept the current restrictions on abortion, but would not push for anything more because that would go completely against 30 years of legal precedent. It would go back to the days of Clinton, where there were balanced budgets.
Tempermental Conservatism is what a local legislator told me when I asked him about changing a law; he explained that the legislature needed to be careful before making major changes because there would be ramifications to that which would go far beyond the intent of the changes. Therefore, any changes that would be needed should only be done after careful consultation with lawyers, judges, and other people who were affected by the changes. Only then should there be changes to the law.
However, there have been times throughout our nation's history where we needed to change radically in order to adapt and survive. We needed to change radically in order to throw off the yoke of British rule and become independent. We needed to change radically in order to solve the problem of slavery; we had to settle the question one way or another in order to survive as a nation and avoid breaking up. We had to change radically in order to avoid repeating the problems of the Great Depression and to get people back to work. We had to change radically in order to survive the threat of the Axis Powers. We had to change radically in order to meet the challenges of the Soviet Union launching the first-ever rocket into space.
And now, this is one of those times when we have to change radically once again in order to confront the problem of global warming. We must get out of Iraq, restore our standing in the world, and then work with each other in order to confront this challenge. We must radically reduce our carbon emissions in order to stop the cycle of global warming. To meet this challenge will not only save us as a race, it will create a new world where poverty will be eliminated and we can all go out into the world and expect to make a living wage at whatever we do. To fail would mean more and more warfare as humanity would be fighting for ever-dwindling resources on this planet.
Temperamental Conservatism is based on the faulty premise that everything is fine in the world the way it is. But it ignores the many times within our history in which we had to radically change in order to survive as a nation.
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