David Brooks is Forgiven Some Sins

[Updated -- see below]

I commented the other night that the bread-and-butter of the liberal blogger was bashing David Brooks. And it's partly out of frustration, because he used to be so interesting, and at the Times he became such a predictable party hack hiding behind a pose of erudition and independence. It would be easier to bash Charles Krauthammer or Michelle Malkin, but what's the point? They are who they are. Brooks was something more.

Well, I stayed up late enough to read Brooks's column tomorrow, so perhaps I will be among the first to say, no Brooks-bashing today, and none for the next two weeks. Brooks says that liberal efforts to replicate the conservative infrastructure of ideas and organization fundamentally misunderstand the right, characterizing it as an "echo chamber" or "message machine" that disseminates a single viewpoint. I've been making this argument in these discussions on the left for years, but perhaps Brooks will have a little more insider credibility. He says,

Conservatives have not triumphed because they have built a disciplined and efficient message machine. Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly. As these factions have multiplied, more people have come to call themselves conservatives because they've found one faction to agree with.

and concludes,

If I were a liberal, which I used to be, I wouldn't want message discipline. I'd take this opportunity to have a big debate about the things Thomas Paine, Herbert Croly, Isaiah Berlin, R. H. Tawney and John Dewey were writing about. I'd argue about human nature and the American character.

In disunity there is strength.

In between, he describes the early disputes within National Review and among today's factions, arguing that they have made conservatism more introspective and adaptable.

I know this to be true. I'm familiar with the right and it's think tanks and magazines, and I know what goes on in them. What goes on is that people argue. They argue endlessly, not just about their philosophies (because, frankly, very few people think in those terms even if they've read all their Oakeshott and Burke and Hayek), but about practical politics and policies. Sometimes they stop speaking to each other, and sometimes, having aired their disagreements, they find a way to work together. They learn, they adapt, they develop their voice. They argue for their viewpoints knowing that no one viewpoint will dominate. Bill Bradley captured some of that the other day, even though it may be his op-ed that Brooks is reacting to, when he wrote that wrote that the various actors on the conservative side, such as Ann Coulter and Grover Norquist, understand their roles.

Update (the next morning):

Just to be clear: What I'm talking about here, and what Brooks is talking about, is not partisan unity or disunity, which is a separate question. Obviously, there was strength in unity on Social Security and there would have been extraordinary weakness in disunity at that point. I'm talking about the process by which ideas and ideology are developed. Many of those who want to build up the "progressive intellectual infrastructure" see the right-wing institutions, such as the American Enterprise Institute and magazines such as the Weekly Standard as simply part of a disciplined message infrastructure. That leads to a particular conclusion about what a counterpart would look like. And it's wrong: those institutions are loci of great internal debate. Does that debate then lead to ideological clarity, which can be the basis for greater partisan unity later? Absolutely.

If you're going to take the right-wing intellectual infrastructure as a model -- and I'm not convinced one should -- you have to at least understand this one thing about it.

The other question to think about is what to argue about. There's a lot of argument right now about attitude: how to enforce discipline, how to react to Republicans, how to punish Joe Lieberman, etc. Those are natural arguments to have, because people have different views, but they don't lead to greater clarity about the ideas that motivate us. A real argument about our governing philosophy, on the other hand, might.

I hope this isn't perceived as backing off too much from what I wrote at 2:00 in the morning, because it isn't meant to be. But I expect it will be less discomforting to some of the commentators here.

Finally, I would be remiss if I totally honored my promise, and did not bash Brooks on one point: He declares triumphantly that he called up the head of a liberal think tank and asked who his "favorite philosopher" was, and got a promise of a call back later which never came. Aha! Those liberals don't think about philosophy!

But is it really a measure of deep thinking to have a "favorite philosopher"? It reminds me of the argument going on in my household right now about whether everyone should have a favorite color. (My wife, it seems, has no fixed favorite, although my daughter would desperately like to persuade her to join her on the green team, having lost me to blue.)