{"id":2296,"date":"2021-12-11T13:10:32","date_gmt":"2021-12-11T13:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/12\/11\/vito-caiati-on-david-brooks\/"},"modified":"2021-12-11T13:10:32","modified_gmt":"2021-12-11T13:10:32","slug":"vito-caiati-on-david-brooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/12\/11\/vito-caiati-on-david-brooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Vito Caiati on David Brooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I solicited Dr Caiati's comments on David Brooks' Atlantic<\/em> piece, What Happened to American Conservatism?<\/a>  The lede reads: "The rich philosophical tradition I fell in love with has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression." That is a good tip-off to the quality of the article. Here is what Vito said, and I agree:<\/span><\/p>\n

I am not the right person to write a response, since I have nothing but contempt for Brooks, whom I regard as a miserable opportunist at the service of the Left. (He is precisely the sort of creature that makes an ad hominem<\/em> attack, usually best avoided, entirely appropriate.)  Any man who writes, <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019m content, as my hero Isaiah Berlin put it, to plant myself instead on the rightward edge of the leftward tendency\u2014in the more promising soil of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party<\/strong>. If its progressive wing sometimes seems to have learned nothing from the failures of government and to promote cultural stances that divide Americans, at least the party as a whole knows what year it is<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

is either delusional for thinking that such a \u201cmoderate wing\u201d actually exists and that \u201cthe party as a whole\u201d is an entity that fosters national comity and is actually concerned for the welfare of the citizenry or, in my view, is simply acting in bad faith.  No true conservative of whatever stripe can have anything to do with this intellectually and morally bankrupt party, which is entirely dominated by the Left and which wages an unceasing war against the very traditions, customs, and legal system that Brooks supposedly values so highly. <\/span><\/p>\n

…………………..<\/span><\/p>\n

Now for my two cents. Useful idiots such as Brooks are worse than hard leftists. They live in the past, blind to the present, and unwittingly advance the very causes that they, as conservatives, are supposed to be opposing.   Here<\/a> is what I had to say four years ago. The passage of time has only reinforced my points:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Op-Ed pages of The New York Times<\/em> are plenty poor to be sure, but Ross Douthat and David Brooks are sometimes worth reading.  But the following<\/a> from Brooks (28 October 2016) is singularly boneheaded although the opening sentence is exactly right:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The very essence of conservatism is the belief that politics is a limited activity, and that the most important realms are pre-\u00adpolitical: conscience, faith, culture, family and community. But recently conservatism has become more the talking arm of the Republican Party. Among social conservatives, for example, faith sometimes seems to come in second behind politics, Scripture behind voting guides. Today, most white evangelicals are willing to put aside the Christian virtues of humility, charity and grace for the sake of a Trump political victory.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Come on, man.  Don't be stupid.  The Left is out to suppress religious liberty.  This didn't start yesterday.  You yourself mention conscience, but you must be aware that bakers and florists have been forced by the state to violate their consciences by catering homosexual 'marriage' ceremonies.  Is that a legitimate use of state power?  And if the wielders of state power can get away with that outrage, where will they stop? Plenty of other examples can be adduced, e.g., the Obama administration's assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason evangelicals and other Christians support Trump is that they know what that destructive and deeply mendacious stealth ideologue  Hillary will do if she gets power. It is not because they think the Gotham sybarite lives the Christian life, but despite his not living it.  They understand that ideas and policies trump character issues especially when Trump's opponent is even worse on the character plane.  What's worse: compromising national security, using high public office to enrich oneself, and then endlessly lying about it all, or forcing oneself on a handful of women?<\/span><\/p>\n

The practice of the Christian virtues and the living of the Christian life require freedom of religion. Our freedoms are under vicious assault by leftists  like Hillary. This is why Trump garners the support of Christians.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The threat from the Left is very real indeed.  See here<\/a> and read the chilling remarks of Martin Castro of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights.  Given Castro's comments the name of the commission counts as Orwellian. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I solicited Dr Caiati's comments on David Brooks' Atlantic piece, What Happened to American Conservatism?  The lede reads: "The rich philosophical tradition I fell in love with has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression." That is a good tip-off to the quality of the article. Here is what Vito said, and I agree: … Continue reading “Vito Caiati on David Brooks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,245,56,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-polemics","category-politics","category-social-and-political-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}