BrianGarst.com

The New York Times’ token conservative, who is really just an ever so slightly less enthusiastic advocate for big government than their big government liberals, thinks libertarians are to blame for the failures of big government.  No lie.

He argues that “two revolutions,” from the left and the right, “liberated the individual and decimated local associations.”  From the left, a “cultural revolution … displaced traditional manners and mores.” From the right, a “market revolution … decimated local shop owners.”

According to Brooks, these two revolutions “talked the language of individual freedom, but they perversely ended up creating greater centralization. They created an atomized, segmented society and then the state had to come in and attempt to repair the damage.”  Brooks is blaming the reactions of big government nannies on those who promote freedom, rather than putting it on the nannies where it belongs.

He says, “the free-market revolution didn’t create the pluralistic decentralized economy. It created a centralized financial monoculture, which requires a gigantic government to audit its activities.” Wrong.  Big government liberals like David Brooks claimed gigantic government was necessary in order to enhance their own power. It was not and is not.

Continuing, he adds that, “the effort to liberate individuals from repressive social constraints didn’t produce a flowering of freedom; it weakened families, increased out-of-wedlock births and turned neighbors into strangers.”  This is more true than his previous assertion.  There is indeed value in respecting social constraints, as they represent the collective wisdom of past generation regarding what behavior works and what does not.

That said, the biggest culprit is again big government.  Nothing has done more to damage families than the welfare state, which rewards the very same behavoirs that social constraints have merely stopped punishing. 

Brooks’ professed solution is half-right.  Reducing the power of centralized bureaucracies is a good thing.  Replacing government services with charities is desirable.  But he also betrays his elitist pedigree when he moans about the “political culture that has been oriented around individual choice.” Our political culture has, in fact, been motivated by anything but.  Individual choice is the culture this country was founded on, but has gradually abandoned as we have big government has grown.  David Brooks’ accounting is simply flawed.

Civil society and government occupy the same space.  One necessary crowds out the other.  The decline in American civil society is a direct result of the explosive growth of government during the 20th century.  If David Brooks is serious about restoring the former, he should consider joining libertarians in fighting the latter.

David Brooks