"The Social Animal" Revisited
In his September 12th column in the New York Times, David Brooks put the communitarian thesis into better chosen, fewer words than any of his predecessors. His excellent overview follows very closely on the key points and even the text of the Communitarian Platform (link) and The Spirit of Community.
Brooks writes that the "...individualist description of human nature seems to be wrong. Over the past 30 years, there has been a tide of research in many fields, all underlining one old truth -- that we are intensely social creatures, deeply interconnected with one another and the idea of the lone individual rationally and willfully steering his own life course is often an illusion."
Brooks lists the findings of many social sciences, stating: "Psychologists have shown that we are organized by our attachments. Sociologists have shown the power of social networks to affect individual behavior."
Brooks concludes that "[w]hat emerges is not a picture of self-creating individuals gloriously free from one another, but of autonomous creatures deeply interconnected with one another."
And finally "That language of community, institutions and social fabric has been lost, and now we hear only distant echoes -- when social conservatives talk about family bonds or when John McCain talks at a forum about national service."
Brooks, who is entrusted with being the conservative voice in the New York Times, calls for the GOP to embrace the communitarian message. He writes that Republicans are " ...probably going to have to follow the route the British Conservatives have already trod and project a conservatism that emphasizes society as well as individuals, security as well as freedom, a social revival and not just an economic one and the community as opposed to the state."
However, no one owns the message. Democrats--Obama more than any--have already made the rebuilding of community their mantra. The GOP is welcome to join.
Please review the communitarian platform (here), compare notes, and considering endorsing it. For more discussion see The Spirit of Community and The New Golden Rule. To contact Amitai Etzioni, write comnet@gwu.edu
Oh, gag me. You're praising Brooks now? Well, at least that's honest. Republicans have never stood for individual freedom. Libertarians have, but Republicans? Never. They have always stood against social progress and social progress has always enhanced individual freedoms.
When Brooks talks about community he's really talking the talk of the social conservative. It's about church, it's about god, it's about people telling adult women what to do with their bodies because suddenly everybody's personal decisions effect everyone else and they have to be regulated. It's about sodomy laws and the 10 Commandments on the court house steps.
No communitarian agenda can be pursued until we carefully lay out its limits. I suspect that Etzioni and Brooks are far more interested in interfering with my life than I am in theirs. No doubt, we're all interconnected. But the problem is that individuals have too little freedom from busybodies, not that they have too much.
September 17, 2008 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
You said it!
September 17, 2008 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
That Libertarians have stood for individual freedom is debatable. They have stood for minimum government and hence for stripping away all the protections that the average citizen has from the rapacious corporate structure that exists within Capitalism. You tell the average Joe that is paying 4.50 a gallon for gas, has a foreclosed home, and is losing his job that he is reaping the rewards of maximum individual freedom. Freedom comes with money not with the absence of government regulation.
Remember that Jefferson added "pursuit of happiness" and how can you pursue happiness in a jungle of sharks. No, that Libertarians love freedom is a myth. They hate government protection of the sheep from the wolves. They throw the individual to the wolves is more like it
September 18, 2008 12:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess it depends on who you're talking about. The ACLU is libertarian on social issues and I think that they really are standing up for individual rights of speech, to privacy, to live our own lives, etc.
If you mean Ron Paul then yes, you're right.
September 18, 2008 8:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have not read this particular David Brooks article but I would say he has been treading very carefully along these lines for the last couple of months. I have heard personally from my own families Republicans of a message similar to this but I have been the one pushing this message for well over the last two years. Republicans message for many years have been one of division, attacking the unions, attacking health-care, attacking our welfare system, attacking foreign governments and attacking the values of our American society(let alone their stance on Gay rights and immigration). But it would seemt that many Americans are more eager to hate than to rally together in times such as these. Whatever the case may be the Republicans have failed in many ways in delivering the change for which they speak. They have talked campaing after campaign about returning the power back to the States, because the government is the problem but have delivered more power to the federal bureacracy which they insist they are against. They have railed for years about how the government is too big while they have made the government larger and increased our national deficit. They are not the party of small government, they are not the party of fiscal conservatism at least over the last 30 years or so. But nevertheless, they paint Democrats as people who will attack the middle class through Taxes and big government but they are guilty just the same if not more so. It is long past time that Republicans change their message to something that reflects their reality. I personally only think by throwing out many of the old-subscribers to the current policy positions and rhetoric would you be able to change the Republican party. Or rather the only way to change the party is from within and it would appear that much of the Republican party has a hard time moving in any direction other than in lockstep.
September 17, 2008 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Brooks, who is entrusted with being the conservative voice in the New York Times"
And William Kristol? What voice is he entrusted with being?
September 17, 2008 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brooks is like Friedman, way late to any subject. This community issue has only recently been nailed down by some quantitative experiments and surveys, but that it can be considered news is a joke.
"No man is an island..."
The individual-responsibility meme has always been a convenient fiction for certain subjects, mainly for avoiding spending money on undesirables, or for limiting oversight and restrictions on business.
September 17, 2008 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me add to what destor23 said so well.
Brooks isn't a communitarian; he's a Republican who's noticed recently that his party is very likely to lose this election and maybe, a number of elections thereafter. He claims to believe that this sad state of affairs is the result of Republicans emphasizing "individualism" in crafting solutions to Americans' current anxieties: poor schools (maybe), expensive health care, and global competition for jobs.
What Brooks can't bring himself to say is that Republicans suffer from being tied to corporate America. It isn't individualism that's their problem; it's cronyism.
Etzioni should look around for a better and more honest ally.
September 17, 2008 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
What Brooks is talking about sounds more like Tony Blair's brand of progressive community building than the emphasis upon national identity that the Tories often talk about when they put "community" first.
After reading the linked Communitarian platform, I see that it would be (and has been) the work of many books to deal with this juxtaposition of liberal vs communitarian logic. So I will only address one of the passages and frame my concerns without pretending to fight on those many fronts:
And there are other families who aren't that weak who don't want the "community" telling them what to do.
Every parent I know, who has any business being a parent at all, already is enjoying the "moral climate" you speak of. So the real issue for this platform is that are two communities. The one that values parenting and the one that does not. Your plan is to get the second group to join the first group. It looks like this attempt to transcend identity politics could run into some serious identity politics.
This is where my brain starts to hurt. The Communitarian Platform emphasizes the ineluctable need for functioning moral families. It talks about corporate/employer incentives to make this more possible (a discussion within itself). But the platform also says schools are also supposed to somehow provide this essential thing if the parents fail. It might be better for all concerned to continue framing the matter in terms of equal opportunity and leave the remodeling of moral character to more mysterious forces than a polity based upon the common good. As you point out in your book The Essential Communitarian Reader , the insistence upon the common good can be a source of virtue or the instrument of oppression.
September 17, 2008 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Communitarianism, that's the ticket! Why don't they just admit that they were wrong about globalization(it's really about cheap labor), the invisible hand and deregulation(its a fantasy, like communism - contrary to human nature, greed is not a virtue), and trickle down theory(too slow and miniscule to be of much use). Economic conservatism is just another failed ideology. Even those who purported to adhere to it, never dared or cared to try it.
Changing your tune after 30+ years of getting extreme, disproportionate, often unjustified profits and sneering at the less fortunate does not qualify you to be community organizers. How long before they are blaming this crisis on the 60s? They would help the American community every bit as much as the Southern aristocracy helped African Americans at the end of Reconstruction.
September 17, 2008 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
An amazing amount of material has been posted on TPM Cafe about one Mr. David Brooks. Why? How is it that he is so widely read and debated? What is the secret of the magical power he possesses over so many TPM Cafe contributors?
September 17, 2008 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's the curse of liberals. We're fixated on "moderate" Republicans. They sound so normal and rational to us!
It's not just TPM contributors loving David Brooks. It's... liberals giving John McCain the very "maverick" moniker that he's now using against us. It's commenters here posting, seriously, that Obama should have picked Chuck freaking Hagel as a veep based solely on his opposition to the Iraq war. It's every nice word ever written about, say, Lincoln Chafee. Republicans aren't like that. They don't blog about what great guys the Blue Dog Democrats are. They don't praise Joe Lieberman until Lieberman actually leaves the Democratic party and then endorses their nominee. But some people on our side get really excited when somebody on their side merely acts as if they could be reasoned with.
It's kind of pathetic.
September 17, 2008 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
he is an intellectual tease and these guys have a weakness for that type for some reason.
They always think that soon the tease will deliver the real goods but s/he never does
September 17, 2008 11:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan K,
You have probably heard the expression, "putting lipstick on pig." Brooks is in charge of cosmetics for the GOP.
September 18, 2008 7:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmm... I see that TPM is hosting a Book Club discussion of "Security First" next week. Does that explain why Etzioni, who hasn't posted here in awhile, has suddenly stepped up his game?
I welcome the discussion but I wonder if Etzioni will react to the commenters here or if he'll save he responses only for the designated Book Club people. I wonder if the supposed communitarian will treat us as equally as he treats everyone else or if, in his communitarian view, some are more equal than others.
September 17, 2008 11:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ein Volk, ein Reich....
September 17, 2008 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink or think. You can substitute GOP for horse in that quote. How can thinking Americans overlook the mess we are in and then pull the lever for the group that put us there? Why not give Change a chance.....it certainly wouldn't be any worse than what we are seeing now. All GOP candidates are changing their REP. outerwear, think of your convention and the ignoring of the Pres. If the guys at the top can do it, so can you become an Ind. and vote for the best ticket. You don't even have to tell anyone what lever you pulled in the voting booth.
September 18, 2008 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Dr. Etzioni
As an undergraduate sociology major many years ago, I read a great deal of your work. I graduated college with a profound respect for you.
Unfortunately, I was in the audience at Temple Sinai a couple of years after 9/11 when you appeared with Michael Chertoff. You belittled the experience of people who were swept up and inprisoned in the madness after 9/11, and made claims about their treatment that were blatantly false -- at one point you claimed that the longest a detainee had been kept without contact with a lawyer was a few hours.
Once someone has shown himself to be that dishonest, he loses all claim to be believed in the future.
You have lost your integrity, sir, and I have lost all respect and admiration for you.
Sincerely,
M. Teitelbaum
Silver Spring, Maryland
September 18, 2008 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, he really said those things? I've long suspected that Etzioni is really a conservative or at least an authoritarian who uses friendly seeming Communitarian label.
September 18, 2008 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep. I can't tell you how disappointed I was in him. I was so excited that he was on the panel and to watch as he allied himself with Chertoff -- even outdid Chertoff on how security trumps any civil liberties. Chertoff never actually lied -- but he just went along with Etzioni.
This old sociology major was completely disillusioned.
September 18, 2008 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Etzioni reads your comment and doesn't at least try to explain or clarify what happened then he doesn't think very much of us.
September 18, 2008 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can take a ___ out of Germany but you can't take the German out of a ___.
September 18, 2008 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
There an oddball compact among Western intellectuals to envision imminent nirvana in collective approaches to social intercourse. The Communitarian manifesto is but the latest example of this delusion, projecting vague "moral" benefit by blending individuals in a vast, inarticulate stew of "community." Reality tells us otherwise: Whether in "peoples' committee" bull sessions or around tribal campfires, societies operating as political, religious or ethic collectives are backward, poverty-stricken, opressive and profoundly corrupt. Community standards calibrate themselves at mediocre levels.
Government by assent, when it functions optimally, means government with extremely circumscribed claims to moral authority. There's a difference between responding to an elected authority, and answering a "moral" one.
Western civilization produced democracy an an outgrowth of its traditional estimation of the individual over the collective. Yes, there can be no real personal freedom without personal responsibillity, but achieving this legislatively has a much chance for success as using a chainsaw to produce origami.
Brooks isn't a conservative voice on the Times - he's a neoconservative hack. As late as 2006, he was still claiming there was actionable evidence Saddam was trying to get fissionable uranium.
September 19, 2008 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink