David Brooks' a "progressive conservatism?"

[live free or die]

OP, your description of David Brooks is applicable to me perfectly. But David Brooks himself sucks.

[??????????]

In short, he's what civilized people flush down the toilet.

Clearly, and nobody but libs read him anyway.

[Free Trade is managed by the invisible hand.]

Too often people think in nominal terms,but if one traces conservatism/liberalism back to its historical roots than it is possible looky beyond the cookie cutter generalizations that some like to make. For example one of the most important distinctions between liberals and conservatives is how do they address moral claims. Conservatives normally suggest that government should only enforce basic fundamental rights that were laid out many years ago, and they normally never legislate a moral claim unless they feel it is reclaiming a particular right. Thus a conservative president should never create a new right, or deviate from older moral claims. Liberals on the other hand think that already existing rights should not only be enforced,but also that new rights arrising from moral claims should be put into law.

yes, i think you are on to something there

Well, this historically can be seen as rooted in the basic divergence between Anglo-American conceptions of rights, which are predominently "negative rights," and the continental-European conception of "positive rights."  So-called negative rights ensure individual liberty by restricting the government's power to infringe on a person's claims to life, freedoms of belief and expression, the ownership of property and other matters.  The paradaigm of positive rights is built around the notion that, in order to guarentee individuals the opportunity to prosper, the state must provide the conditions for such prospering, including institutions of education, health, public safety and general welfare.  American conservatives now generally identify with the government's role in protecting negative rights and liberals identify with promoting positive rights.

The thing is, I think American society is characterized politically by an uneasy mixture of committments to both kinds of rights.  On the one hand, it's not that American conservatives flatly deny all positive rights; they accept some positive rights (of citizens to education and public safety perhaps), but reject others (health care and some forms of general welfare).  Similarly, American liberals, often so supportive of as many positive rights as can be thought of, want to restrict government's powers of investigation and ensure that government does not officially endorse a favored or majority religious establishment, both in order to ensure a right to privacy, which, whether it exists in the American Constitution or not, is a prime example of a negative right.  Because of this uneasy mixture, both American political movements and individual American politicians often have difficulty locating where they are in the spectrum of these two different conceptions of rights and the government's role in ensuring them.

As far as Brooks is concerned, I think he mostly gestures towards an acknowledgment of positive rights (part of his larger argument that government should ensure opportunity), which is what irks conservatives about him.  But, he wants to promote positive rights by having government, instead of directly providing the institutions that would grant opportunity, pursue them indirectly by energizing as many free-market forces as possible, which is what irks liberals about him.  His basic stance, to me, is interesting, but in many cases vague and superficial.  And, when really pressed on a particular policy issue, Brooks always leans right, just enough of a lean for liberals to realize that he is right of them and for conservatives to notice he is not far enough right for their tastes.  From the 2004 article, it appears he believed George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" coincided pretty well with his own notion of "progressive conservatism."  In the long run, that course seems not to have worked out too well.

Which means, we're still struggling to figure out as a society, not whether to fully embrace only either negative or positive rights, but where, and in what perportions, we want to synthesize them.  One thing I can tell you is that I'd rather debate about negative rights vs. positive rights than about the cliched differences between "conservatives" and "liberals," because I think the rights vocabulary is better at getting to the heart of what our real disagreements are, as well as areas of plausible compromise.  The simplistic and artificial "conservative-liberal" dualism in American society has only become more acid, destructive, uninformaive and unhelpful.    

I think negative and positive rights not only constitute a false dilema, but they are often used in the absence of any explanation of the difference between actual rights and moral claims. Thus individuals who use this dichotomy often treat rights and moral claims as the same thing, when they are clearly not. Secondly moral claims and rights can be made to appear positive or negative by simply phrasing them in a different way. In the end people can use the simple, over abused, and often misunderstood dichotomy all they want but i think the concept of value pluarlism is much more flexible and less dogmatic.

[anvi]

I think negative and positive rights not only constitute a false dilema, but they are often used in the absence of any explanation of the difference between actual rights and moral claims. Thus individuals who use this dichotomy often treat rights and moral claims as the same thing, when they are clearly not. Secondly moral claims and rights can be made to appear positive or negative by simply phrasing them in a different way. In the end people can use the simple, over abused, and often misunderstood dichotomy all they want but i think the concept of value pluarlism is much more flexible and less dogmatic.

I'd be interested to hear more about what you have in mind regarding the distinction between an "actual right" and a "moral claim."  It seems to me, these are alike in several ways.  I reject the notion that a "right" has any sort of objective status or derives from any naturalistic categories, I think "rights" are social constructions, and so I don't know what to do with the label "actual right."  Secondly, assuming that a "right" is a social construction, its function is precisely to make a "moral claim" on the state and society in general, a claim for instance that the state either does or does not have some sort of moral obligations toward individuals that it must honor.  In that sense, the distinction between "negative" and "positive" rights seems to at least make some heuristic sense, where "negative rights" constitute what I claim to be the state's moral obligations to refrain from interfering with me or restricting my freedoms in certain ways, where a "positive right" makes moral demands of the state to provide me with certain things to ensure my basic well-being or enhance my potential to contribute to it in turn.  This is the way I tend to view the relation between "rights" and "moral claims;" rights are a variety of "moral claims" people make from both the state and from their fellow human beings.  So, I'd be interested to hear more about what you see the distinction between them as being.

I do agree about one thing, which I tried to articulate above.  I think "negative vs. positive rights," when used to endorse the "actuality" and validity of only one set of rights and deny the other set, is definitely a false dichotomy.  When the distinction is rhetorically set up as a dichotomy, it's very misleading and often used simply as a catchphrase to serve a person's or group's already-formulated agenda.  The truth is, as I tried to say above, we actually do embrace both, regardless of what part of the political spectrum we inhabit.  We should critique the dichotomization of "negarive vs. positive rights."  But not all distinctions are dichotomies, and I think there could be ways of distinguishing reasoably between them that might be both informative and constructive. 

[Free Trade is managed by the invisible hand.]

I think negative and positive rights not only constitute a false dilema, but they are often used in the absence of any explanation of the difference between actual rights and moral claims. Thus individuals who use this dichotomy often treat rights and moral claims as the same thing, when they are clearly not. Secondly moral claims and rights can be made to appear positive or negative by simply phrasing them in a different way. In the end people can use the simple, over abused, and often misunderstood dichotomy all they want but i think the concept of value pluarlism is much more flexible and less dogmatic.

I'd be interested to hear more about what you have in mind regarding the distinction between an "actual right" and a "moral claim."  It seems to me, these are alike in several ways.  I reject the notion that a "right" has any sort of objective status or derives from any naturalistic categories, I think "rights" are social constructions, and so I don't know what to do with the label "actual right."  Secondly, assuming that a "right" is a social construction, its function is precisely to make a "moral claim" on the state and society in general, a claim for instance that the state either does or does not have some sort of moral obligations toward individuals that it must honor.  In that sense, the distinction between "negative" and "positive" rights seems to at least make some heuristic sense, where "negative rights" constitute what I claim to be the state's moral obligations to refrain from interfering with me or restricting my freedoms in certain ways, where a "positive right" makes moral demands of the state to provide me with certain things to ensure my basic well-being or enhance my potential to contribute to it in turn.  This is the way I tend to view the relation between "rights" and "moral claims;" rights are a variety of "moral claims" people make from both the state and from their fellow human beings.  So, I'd be interested to hear more about what you see the distinction between them as being.

I do agree about one thing, which I tried to articulate above.  I think "negative vs. positive rights," when used to endorse the "actuality" and validity of only one set of rights and deny the other set, is definitely a false dichotomy.  When the distinction is rhetorically set up as a dichotomy, it's very misleading and often used simply as a catchphrase to serve a person's or group's already-formulated agenda.  The truth is, as I tried to say above, we actually do embrace both, regardless of what part of the political spectrum we inhabit.  We should critique the dichotomization of "negarive vs. positive rights."  But not all distinctions are dichotomies, and I think there could be ways of distinguishing reasoably between them that might be both informative and constructive. 

A moral claim is when someone claims that they should have a right, and in theory the function of a liberal government is to address moral claims through popular soveirnty/democracy. An actual right is something that is created through this process and enforced by the existing social system. To me rights are the most important things when it comes to considering what is a liberal/conservative.

[angus]

A recent article by David Brooks, summarizing his diagnosis of what has gone wrong during the Obama presidency:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23brooks.html?ref=opinion

led me to look for a more robust representation of Brooks' conception of "progressive conservatism."  The most detailed one I found dates from the 2004 reelection campaign of George W. Bush.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/magazine/29REPUBLICANS.html?pagewanted=1

Opinions of Brooks' ideas of "progressive conservatism"?

I read the first article, but not the second.  yet.  I must admit I clicked here because I'm a huge David Brooks fan.  I never miss a friday airing of Lehrer's Newshour, mostly because of the "...analysis of Shields and Brooks..." and mostly too because of Brooks.  (You can keep Shields.) 

But he misses the point by a little here.  I think I could always relate to the "alienated by the right, and in disagreement with the left" persona he always assumes on PBS, and in his weekly columns in the NYT on-line, but his narrative in the first link trails off after about six paragraphs.  He's right:  history happened.  But that's about as vague a statement as you'd expect a politician to make.  I'd expect better of David Brooks, who isn't a politician and who probably wouldn't want to be compared to any.

The paragraph that reads "The administration came into power at a time of economic crisis. This led it, in the first bloom of self-confidence, to attempt many big projects all at once. Each of these projects may have been defensible in isolation, but in combination they created the impression of a federal onslaught." is spot on.  But after that he claims that "One of the odd features of the Democratic Party is its inability to learn what politics is about. It’s not about winning arguments. It’s about deciding which arguments you are going to have."  This is a bit illogical.  The point of politics is to decide upon the point at which your original opponents will recoil from anything further you have to say, and then to stop just short of attempting to make that point in order that you may get your smaller, leading points to be approved.  And little by little, thusly, you may achieve your agenda.  At least that's the angus interpretation.  I'm not schooled in politics or economics, but if some of you smart guys want to school me I'm all ears.  Usually this is what David Brooks does, but he seems to have missed the boat.  True, the Democrats seem not to have overcome their ancient problems, and Obama risks becoming another Jimmy Carter, albeit a friendlier one, but it isn't that they're moralizing--granted, moralizing is a central conceit of the DNC, witness John Edwards' claims that "universal healthcare is a moral imperative" even as his own libido was placed above his families integrity--and the idea of "morality" versus "freedom" is as old as the trees.  George Bush mentioned the word "freedom" not less than twenty-seven times in his 2004 State of the Union Address, and of course one man's economic freedom is another's inability to pay his rent, as any self-respecting statist will tell you, but it isn't the moral crusade that defines the DNC, no more that it is the anti-government stance of the right that defines the GOP.  Abject nationalism is, and always has been, the defining characteristic of the GOP, and that has been the case since its first national convention in Pittsburgh in 1856.  Wrapping yourself up in God and The Flag, as it were.  Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord/He is trampling through the vintage where the Grapes of Wrath are stored, and all that.  Lincoln, Bush, and all republicans in-between were abject nationalists, and the Democrats, although an older party, are best defined as counter to whatever the GOP has on offer.  In the 1860's the opposition to nationalism meant sectionalism, in the very early part of this millenium it meant "multilateralism" (a phrase oft-repeated by the likes of Howard Dean and John Kerry during the 2004 primaries, "Bush's 'go-it-alone' attitude has destroyed trans-atlantic alliances."  Remember that?) 

Still, it was interesting to read Brooks' definition of the Tea Party movement.  I still don't have a good feel for that.  I even looked on line for the nearest Tea Party meeting or convention, thinking that I might have something in common with those Tea Party types, but having been stymied by the fact that you can't just go to Tea Parties Are Us dot com and find your local Iowa Branch of Tea Partiers and find a nice meeting schedule, I decided that it was a loose bunch of yokels who somewhat spontaneously wanted to have a anti-government crecendo reminiscent of 1770 Boston.  Replete with Crispus Attucks. 

I suppose Duane "Dawg" Chapman or someone like that will be playing the part of Crispus Attucks.  Especially since Corey Haim is now dead.  Or is it Corey Feldman who is dead?  I always get those two confused.

Anyway, it was somewhat elucidating to read that the Tea Party movement was basically a "characteristically raw but authentically American revolt led by members of the yeoman enterprising class."  I'll buy that.

In the penultimate paragraph he says "But when the country is wrapped up in a theological debate about the size of government, people like me are stuck crossways, trying to make distinctions no one heeds."  The weakness here is that he doesn't expound on those distinctions.  Sure, those of us faithful followers of Brooks' writings and rantings kind of, sort of, know what he means, but if this piece is meant to be persuasive, he needs to expound.

As far as his disappointment, I can agree, I just think he's a little off the mark in his analysis.  Don't get me wrong:  David Brooks is way smart, imho.  He just needs to rethink and clarify.