David Brooks is an excellent columnist, but not good enough to avoid the language trap that besets Western liberal democracy.
His recent New York Times article, The Vigorous Virtues, rightly argues the Republicans have a case when it comes to American decline. According to Rick Perry, the task is to make the government “inconsequential” in people’s lives, to pare back the state to revive personal responsibility and initiative.
“America became great, they explain, because its citizens possessed certain vigorous virtues: self-reliance, personal responsibility, industriousness and a passion for freedom,” says Brooks.
“But, over the years, government has grown and undermined these virtues.”
This is wrong, the objectifying dangerously misleading, a source of confusion. Governments aren’t virtuous, just as corporations aren’t corrupt, nor markets ruthless. These are attributes of individuals, alone.
As such, politicians can neither promote, in the end, or undermine what truly matters to us – hence the founding American principle of government only ever assisting with “the pursuit of happiness”. It can’t take us all the way, just support and encourage individuals to be virtuous, hopeful, moral. Free will and personal responsibility are ultimately immutable.
What’s really required from Government, regardless of its colour, is a willingness to confirm this inconvenient truth through the actions of its leaders. Size doesn’t matter. What matters is whether its key individuals live and breathe its own “inconsequentialness”.
Democrats fundamentally struggle to accept this philosophy. Republicans, on the other hand, sprout the rhetoric but can’t follow through. Rick Perry, for instance, fancies himself as anything but inconsequential. Ironically, Barack Obama does.
