What is morality if not a felt obligation, as opposed to a coerced form of behavior? So what's so not-moral about fighting for your comrades? I don't know anything about Dineen (unless he's related to Alice Deneen, a great puppetteer I worked with decades ago), but I don't see the problem. Then again, it's Brooks. He's the problem.
Deneen is a political science professor at Notre Dame, which means he can't possibly exist, since as we know our universities have been taken over by radical leftist cancel culture maniacs who would never allow a conservative like that to have a job like that.
All I know is that when I read Brooks had been “pushed over the edge,” I immediately flashed to Eddie Murphy’s Donkey in Shrek shouting, “I’m a donkey on the edge!!!” Look out world, David Brooks is positively miffed! Tremble in fear!
Now I have an urge to see an animated feature about the punditry in which Brooks is played by a donkey and voiced by Eddie Murphy. Not sure if we can make that happen.
One reason I can’t be angry about what Patrick Deneen, “central figure in the national conservatism movement,” says: I don’t see any evidence a conservative movement exists, or even evidence of a conservative philosophy floating detached from a movement. Brooks’s anger is a kind of wishful thinking for these things to be real, instead of what is real, which is a fascist or fascist-adjacent, genuinely lawless party whose leaders and voters will say anything that suits them in the moment, accruing power at all costs in an era of startling wealth consolidation. Bothsides though I guess, because the way liberals can be, people live in fear of admitting they don’t know what soppressata is.
I'm pretty sure "national conservatism" is a euphemism for fascism, like "national socialism" used to be but aimed at a different audience; where Nazis were recruiting workers, these are recruiting petits bourgeois who *think* they're workers.
Ah! Thank you for clarifying. I missed that, and it’s important. I’m going to go ahead and blame Brooks though, not myself. I mean, leave it to him to describe Nazism elliptically, as a problem of too much respect for your family’s Kentucky cemetery. What a sensitive portrayal!
"But Deneen is the Lawrence Welk of postliberalism, the popularizer of the closest thing the Trump administration has to a guiding philosophy."
I think he means Paul Whiteman, a pale popularizer of pungent music (although I've seen it argued that Whiteman wasn't bad, really, and even his some of his Black peers thought he was okay). How you'd confuse Whiteman and Welk I don't know, but Welk did produce smoothed-out versions of rock, country, and probably even R&B songs in my (and Brooks's) youth.
Maybe Welk was the person who introduced Young David to "One Toke Over the Line."
(Twelve-year-old me heard the Brewer & Shipley original on Top 40 radio and bought a 45 with money cadged from my mom, even though I had no idea what "toke" meant.)
I know Whiteman as the commissioner of Gershwin's first important orchestral work, Rhapsody in Blue, which his orchestra played pretty well in 1925. I remember at least one. of Welk's appeals to a youth audience, the Lennon Sisters and "Sad Movies Always Make Me Cry". I was no longer in that audience when "One Toke Over the Line" came out and learned about it a lot later. Cadging money from Mom for 45s is familiar.
Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, David Brooks. What exactly is this "national conservatism movement" that Davey is so het up about? This Deenen guy is clearly channeling some George Patton energy, when the bullets are flying past your head ideals like freedom are not at the top of the list. Notice the classic Brooks 2 step where "willing to die" turns into "never fight partly out of some sense of moral purpose" (I know you covered this but I wanted to highlight the rhetorical fraud) and the Brooksian qualifier of "partly" there, deflating his own argument while he makes it.
Brooks is the purest example of never-Trumpism, angry at Trump for ripping the mask off his party, a mask he has tended to for decades. This is not his beautiful Republican Party! My God, how did I get here?
As some readers know, I'm a Vietnam-era draft evader (not a dodger like Trump or Georgie Bush or Dick Cheney, or even a proper case like Bill Clinton, I had a decent chance of prison), and I knew that without having to give it a lot of thought. I like to add at this point that veterans I've known, at least Americans, have never had a beef with me nor I with them on this account. We understand and respect each other.
What is morality if not a felt obligation, as opposed to a coerced form of behavior? So what's so not-moral about fighting for your comrades? I don't know anything about Dineen (unless he's related to Alice Deneen, a great puppetteer I worked with decades ago), but I don't see the problem. Then again, it's Brooks. He's the problem.
Right. It’s not fancy enough for him. It’s not “abstract”.
Deneen is a political science professor at Notre Dame, which means he can't possibly exist, since as we know our universities have been taken over by radical leftist cancel culture maniacs who would never allow a conservative like that to have a job like that.
All I know is that when I read Brooks had been “pushed over the edge,” I immediately flashed to Eddie Murphy’s Donkey in Shrek shouting, “I’m a donkey on the edge!!!” Look out world, David Brooks is positively miffed! Tremble in fear!
Now I have an urge to see an animated feature about the punditry in which Brooks is played by a donkey and voiced by Eddie Murphy. Not sure if we can make that happen.
One reason I can’t be angry about what Patrick Deneen, “central figure in the national conservatism movement,” says: I don’t see any evidence a conservative movement exists, or even evidence of a conservative philosophy floating detached from a movement. Brooks’s anger is a kind of wishful thinking for these things to be real, instead of what is real, which is a fascist or fascist-adjacent, genuinely lawless party whose leaders and voters will say anything that suits them in the moment, accruing power at all costs in an era of startling wealth consolidation. Bothsides though I guess, because the way liberals can be, people live in fear of admitting they don’t know what soppressata is.
I'm pretty sure "national conservatism" is a euphemism for fascism, like "national socialism" used to be but aimed at a different audience; where Nazis were recruiting workers, these are recruiting petits bourgeois who *think* they're workers.
Ah! Thank you for clarifying. I missed that, and it’s important. I’m going to go ahead and blame Brooks though, not myself. I mean, leave it to him to describe Nazism elliptically, as a problem of too much respect for your family’s Kentucky cemetery. What a sensitive portrayal!
"But Deneen is the Lawrence Welk of postliberalism, the popularizer of the closest thing the Trump administration has to a guiding philosophy."
I think he means Paul Whiteman, a pale popularizer of pungent music (although I've seen it argued that Whiteman wasn't bad, really, and even his some of his Black peers thought he was okay). How you'd confuse Whiteman and Welk I don't know, but Welk did produce smoothed-out versions of rock, country, and probably even R&B songs in my (and Brooks's) youth.
Maybe Welk was the person who introduced Young David to "One Toke Over the Line."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tdmaEhMHE
(Twelve-year-old me heard the Brewer & Shipley original on Top 40 radio and bought a 45 with money cadged from my mom, even though I had no idea what "toke" meant.)
I know Whiteman as the commissioner of Gershwin's first important orchestral work, Rhapsody in Blue, which his orchestra played pretty well in 1925. I remember at least one. of Welk's appeals to a youth audience, the Lennon Sisters and "Sad Movies Always Make Me Cry". I was no longer in that audience when "One Toke Over the Line" came out and learned about it a lot later. Cadging money from Mom for 45s is familiar.
That last sentence: 2 marks.
War is failure by definition (no matter who 'wins').
I had to see the photo in an e-mail to determine the top of that column wasn't falling off
Oh, Bobo. Still not credible after all these years ...
Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, David Brooks. What exactly is this "national conservatism movement" that Davey is so het up about? This Deenen guy is clearly channeling some George Patton energy, when the bullets are flying past your head ideals like freedom are not at the top of the list. Notice the classic Brooks 2 step where "willing to die" turns into "never fight partly out of some sense of moral purpose" (I know you covered this but I wanted to highlight the rhetorical fraud) and the Brooksian qualifier of "partly" there, deflating his own argument while he makes it.
Brooks is the purest example of never-Trumpism, angry at Trump for ripping the mask off his party, a mask he has tended to for decades. This is not his beautiful Republican Party! My God, how did I get here?
Brooks never served.
Deneen is absolutely correct...where the bullets meet the road, in combat you and your squad mates are all that matters. Thats who you fight for.
This is why it is paramount that we don't send those men and women into harms way for anything but a cause worthy of their sacrifices.
As some readers know, I'm a Vietnam-era draft evader (not a dodger like Trump or Georgie Bush or Dick Cheney, or even a proper case like Bill Clinton, I had a decent chance of prison), and I knew that without having to give it a lot of thought. I like to add at this point that veterans I've known, at least Americans, have never had a beef with me nor I with them on this account. We understand and respect each other.