David Brooks: The Republicans’ Incompetence Caucus

[Machiavelli]

David Brooks
The New York Times
October 13, 2015

The House Republican caucus is close to ungovernable these days. How did this situation come about?

This was not just the work of the Freedom Caucus or Ted Cruz or one month’s activity. The Republican Party’s capacity for effective self-governance degraded slowly, over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals. Basically, the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own.

By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love.

More

Ezra Klein: David Brooks: The Republican Party is producing "leaders of jaw-dropping incompetence"

Ben Shapiro: NYT’s ‘Conservative’ Brooks: Actual Conservatives Are ‘Dangerous’

[Paladin]

Ah, Brooks, your mother wears combat boots.

[andy58-in-nh]

"By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions.

What David Brooks truly means is that his idyll of "conservatism" is the type of fellow who lets himself be properly steamrolled by his more intellectual and Progressive social betters, thus presiding quietly, and in passive resignation over the destruction of every belief and institution he pretends to hold dear.  "Steady, incremental change" = the Socialist ratchet, as Margaret Thatcher astutely noted.

Conservatives who won't fight for what they believe, even in the face of a destructive and malignant ideology aren't worth spit.