Brooks Calls for Patriotism to Solve Financial Mess
By David Brooks
The New York Times
Published: November 13, 2010 01:01AM
Elections come and go, but the United States is still careening toward bankruptcy. By 2020, the U.S. will be spending $1 trillion a year just to pay the interest on the national debt. Sometime between now and then the catastrophe will come.
Like the religious prophets of the ‘End of the World,’ ever since the founding of our nation the financial collapse of America has always been ten years hence. True, the financial collapse of America is more likely than the ‘End of the World,’ but nevertheless we are tiring of the wolves.
It will come with amazing swiftness. The bond markets are with you until the second they are against you. When the psychology shifts and the fiscal crisis happens, the shock will be grievous: national humiliation, diminished power in the world, drastic cuts and spreading pain.
Nothing in this past election has averted this disaster. The Republicans talk about cutting deficits, but a party that campaigns to restore the $400 million in Medicare cuts included in the health care law is not serious about averting a fiscal meltdown. Some Democrats, meanwhile, don’t even bother to pretend. Look at the vicious way many Democrats have responded to the draft proposal unveiled by the chairmen of the fiscal commission. Nancy Pelosi, the public sector unions and many liberal commentators are not only unwilling to compromise to prevent a catastrophe, they’re unwilling to even consider a compromise. They regard anybody who would negotiate as fundamentally immoral and unserious.
Untrue, Mr. Brooks, untrue. Let’s everyone keep in mind that Mr. Brooks is a conservative and everything in this column is tainted with the conservative viewpoint with a few caveats thrown in the mix to provide cover for the bias. That bias is shown with his disdain for Pelosi and no mention of the Tea Party crazies and the deliberately manufactured lies of Fox News.
The draft proposal by the two chairmen was not realistic and others on the committee did not sign off on it—and for obvious good reason. The two chairmen did it for shock value. That’s all. They both know it was outlandishly unacceptable and would destroy the country from the opposite direction.
When the committee gets real, perhaps the country can get real. The partisan bickering is there for good reason. Both sides have irreconcilable differences and our political system does not provide a way to resolve those differences. Elections have become meaningless. The Obama victory that gave Democrats majorities in both houses of Congress earned us nothing but “No, No, No” from the losers for two years, and since a majority vote is meaningless in the Senate our country was held hostage by the minority. The Republicans aren’t going to get anything of substance done the next two years either.
The filibuster is the mechanism that is destroying progress and giving strength to the extremes. Some say it forces moderation, but in the process the results become ‘half-baked.’
The report from the chairmen lists some of the best ways to raise revenue and cut spending. But it comes with no enactment strategy. In this climate, asking politicians to end the mortgage deduction and tax employer health care plans and raise capital gains taxes and cut benefits for affluent seniors is like asking them to jump on a buzzing sackful of live grenades. They won’t do it.
So we continue on the headlong path toward a national disaster. And along the way our dysfunctional political system will leave all sorts of other problems unaddressed: immigration, energy policy and on and on.
Yet, I’m optimistic right now. I’m optimistic because while our political system is a mess, the economic and social values of the country remain sound. My optimism is also based on the conviction that serious, vibrant societies don’t sit by and do nothing as their governments drive off a cliff.
Over the past few years, we have seen millions of people mobilize — some behind President Barack Obama and others around the tea parties. The country is restive and looking for alternatives. And before the next round of voting begins, I suspect we will see another mass movement: a movement of people who don’t feel represented by either of the partisan orthodoxies; a movement of people who want to fundamentally change the norms, institutions and rigidities that cause our gridlock and threaten our country.
You can’t organize a movement like this around pain — around tax increases and spending cuts. But you can organize one around a broad revitalization agenda, and, above all, love of country.
It will take a revived patriotism to motivate Americans to do what needs to be done. It will take a revived patriotism to lift people out of their partisan cliques. How can you love your country if you hate the other half of it?
It will take a revived patriotism to get people to look beyond their short-term financial interest to see the long-term national threat. Do you really love your tax deduction more than America’s future greatness? Are you really unwilling to sacrifice your Social Security cost-of-living adjustment at a time when soldiers and Marines are sacrificing their lives for their country in Afghanistan?
Yes, Mr. Brooks, we would love to direct out patriotism to solving our financial problems instead of directing it to the destructive wars that have exacerbated our financial problems. The problem is that our patriotism for financial gain is what led us to the manufactured patriotism of war.
Like the civil rights movement, this movement will ask Americans to live up to their best selves. But it will do other things besides.
It will have to restore the social norms that prevailed through much of American history: when narcissism and hyperpartisanship were mitigated by loyalties larger than tribe and self; when competition between the parties was limited and constructive, not total and fratricidal.
This movement will have to build institutions to support the leaders who make the hard bargains. As in the civil rights era, politicians won’t make big changes unless they are impelled and protected by a social upsurge.
Which much of the south and racial bigots everywhere have still not overcome and the Tea Partiers would love to turn the clock back to the pre-Civil Rights era, and some would even turn us back to the pre-Civil War era and their strident voices have just been elected to the new Congress.
Most important, this movement will have to develop a governing philosophy and a policy agenda. Right now, orthodox liberals and conservatives have their idea networks, and everybody else is intellectual roadkill. This coming movement will have to revive the American System: a governing philosophy that believes in targeted federal efforts to arouse growth, social mobility and responsibility.
Targeted federal efforts. Come now, Mr. Brooks, the federal government IS the target, the enemy, not the friend of the Republicans. Even your right of center voice is being mocked, while you mock Pelosi.
Like the chairmen’s report, this movement could demand that Congress wipe out tax loopholes and begin anew. It could protect federal aid to the poor while reducing federal subsidies to the upper-middle class.
Now there is a serious compromise. Let’s jump on that—but don’t count on it Mr. Brooks, your side won’t have any of it.
The coming movement may be a third party or it may support serious people in the existing two. Its goal will be unapologetic: preserving American pre-eminence. It will preserve America’s standing in the world on the grounds that this supremacy is a gift to our children and a blessing for the Earth.
Sorry, Mr. Brooks, but patriotism is passe. We need to move beyond borders and to a world wide unity. We are not going to progress with a country-against-country attitude. That attitude will only bring unbearable, unproductive conflict. The spirit of cooperation you are calling for cannot be achieved country-against-country, or by war, or by the continual devaluation of labor and the glorification of capital. There must be justice for all classes, not just the upper class. For all countries, not just ours, including China. Fairness must prevail and the excesses of the rich and powerful must be restrained.
The marvelous technological advances have concentrated the wealth in the hands of a few, an imbalance not seen since the Industrial Revolution, and the many will not much longer abide the unfair distribution that leaves them in poverty. We need a new trust buster like Roosevelt.
The deck has been stacked and there needs to be a re-shuffle. The same old under-the-table dealing, or the card-up-the-sleeve trick being performed by the financial industry is over. Any more such trickery should be met with the poker chips being scattered all over the floor and not permitting All the King’s Men to put them back together again.
The surprise of the current situation is that the bankers and money changers, including the ‘purchased’ politicians, have not been stripped naked and put in the docks.
Americans have unbelievable patience.
© 2010 The Salt Lake Tribune