David Brooks Needs to Read Some History.

By John Aloysius Farrell

Partisans like to simplify the debate. They take the best thing about their side, and the worst about the other,  and reduce them to self-glorifying shorthand.

Witness David Brooks in today’s New York Times.

“The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government,” Brooks wrote. “The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state.”

Well, no.

Not even close.

I don’t think Brooks is an ignorant man.  So he must be careless, or making a malicious argument, hoping his readers are dolts.

Let’s start with the Right. If the Right stood for “individual freedom” in the 20th century, it was the freedom of white racists to lynch black Americans, and to perpetuate a policy of state-sanctioned, and police-enforced discrimination. It was the Right-wing state that had the police dogs and the fire hoses, and ran the courts that sanctioned hate crimes in the South.  At least in America, there was nothing that the Left ever did that came close to what occurred in our own long-enduring system of apartheid.

Then there were those champions of “individual freedom,” the Kaiser of World War I, and the fascist regimes of Germany, Italy and Japan in World War II. To be sure, Stalin and Lenin gave them a run for their money when it came to horrific cruelty. But can we please recognize that it was Right-wing gangster tyrants in the 20th century, who kicked off the wars that killed hundreds of millions of people, including the victims of the concentration camps?

I’ll give all the credit that Brooks wants to deal to the conservative principles and courage of Winston Churchill. But let’s give a little recognition to those “Leftys” Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, who rallied America to defeat the Right-wing thugs. Not to mention the great Cold War liberals who recognized the Soviet Union for what it was, and put together the policy of containment. Did Brooks ever hear of the vital center?

Let’s see. How about the champions of industry? The good ol’ conservative businessmen and jurists who fought tooth and nail for their unfettered “individual freedom” to make kajillions of dollars, but employed the powers of the state – the courts, the cops, the Congress – to stop working folks from joining together and bargaining in unions.

And I think I am correct, as well, to hang the various 20th century witch hunts on the Right. Maybe Brooks can correct me, but Joe McCarthy had a big ol’ R behind his name in the congressional directories.  He was, of course, one of our great champions of individual freedom. So was J. Edgar Hoover.

Now the Left. If memory serves me, it was the American Left that, for most of the century, manned the marches and the demonstrations demanding individual freedom for African-Americans and women – and got their heads beaten in, or were set upon by police dogs, at the hands of the State.

And of course it was the Democratic Party (Left) that toughed it out on Civil Rights, and the Republican Party (Right) that turned tail and ran.  For most of the 20th century, the Republicans provided real champions for civil rights – like Teddy Roosevelt and Everett Dirksen. Then the GOP made its devil’s deal with Southern racists; pocketed the South’s votes, and abandoned  the cause. Brooks can dress that whole episode up as states rights and Right-wing “principle,” but it wasn’t: it was all about greed and power and hate.

Did the Left overdo it when it came to high taxes and federal regulation? Sure. Read my book on Tip O’Neill. In many ways, the Reagan-Thatcher era was a necessary correction. Does the liberal elite do stupid things? Absolutely. And, surely, one of the great disappointments of the Bush-Clinton era has been both parties’ failure to constantly review and reform the ponderous agencies that line the Mall.

But even the Big Government Lefties did things that made our lives more “free,” especially if freedom is defined broadly, as most folks would do, to include freedom from want and ignorance. The schools got integrated and the educational system became the best in the world. Dirty air and water got cleaner. Old folks got the right to medical treatment, no matter the size of their bank accounts.

Yes, some little-loved toads and snail darters were saved at considerable cost, but where was the alternative to state action? What freedom-loving Right wingers stepped up to save wolves and grizzlies and bald eagles from extinction? Ducks Unlimited?

It is a shame that the power of the State is employed to reach too many of our American goals, and so some freedoms are compromised. I detest traffic cameras and speed bumps. But business and profit have made our society big and wealthy and complicated, and with crowds and growth comes regulation.

I’m a Jeffersonian. I’d love to return to agrarian simplicity. It ain’t going to happen.

David Brooks needs to read some history.