David Brooks Notes from Salvatori Discussion

Charles Johnson’s note: Please recognize that this is a very rough draft and that the quotations may not be perfect. The notes should also not be seen as complete. I missed certain sentences here and there.

Many of you asked me for my notes on Brooks. Here they are.

On his relationship with W.F. Buckley

W.F. Buckley offered me a job. David Brooks, if you’re in the audience, I want to give you a job. He wasn’t there. He was at Stanford debating Milton Friedman.”

“Milton Friedman debated the young. Tyranny of the Status Quo (debated undergrads)… There were six of us.”

Brooks quotes Schlesinger’s view of Friedman – “His arguments were never longer than a postcard.”

“Friedman just demolished his opponents. He took us all out to dinner afterwards.”

Moves to Buckley…

WFB Died at his desk, which is the way he wanted to go…No one has the glamour that he had…”

“No one is as big now as he was then.”

Thoughts on blogging. He doesn’t read as many blogs as he once did because he doesn’t have the time and because he’s tired of finishing a very interesting blog post and finding out that some middle schooler wrote it.

“Bloggers all pick on Times columnists. For awhile it bugged me, but now it’s part of the atmosphere.”

Welcome to the Times where it’s all criticism all the time.

“The general theme of the emails I receive is ‘Krugman is great, you suck.’”

As for the more general phenomenon of blogging,

“The newspaper feels like a dying industry. There’s something addictive about clicking through candy.”

Generally, bloggers write on something very arcane.

“Bloggers force print journalist to go a little higher to bring some big concept or bring some reporting to bear. … They have made it harder because now if there is an opinion on something, 8,000,000 have already had it and published it online before you have.”

As for writing for an audience, “The ideal audience is a U.S. Senator and they’ve never heard about the stuff on blogs.”

On writing generally

“There a million things you cannot write.”

The average person on the Subway doesn’t want to read about political philosophy. “They don’t want to read about Leo Strauss.”

“If you write Bush is Evil, Obama is God. You’ll make it to the New York Times most emailed list. It’s horrible social science, but it’s something we all look at.

My parents are academics. I was going to be an academic.

“I have an unlimited travel budget. I can go anywhere in the world if I want. You get access to pretty much anyone you want, but you have to write 780 words for an audience that is basic.”

On the supposed decay of the arts.

I’m a cultural optimist. I don’t think we’re heading towards stupid land.

• Lots more people going to the museums
• I’ve heard that more people go to classical music recitals than football games.
“Books about the founders are going strong.”

On subsidized news programming and liberal-media bias

Non-profit news. New Hour with Jim Lehrer. Lehrer wanted to talk about campaign finace reform. IBrooks just couldn’t get excited about it.

“[The media elite] tend to be Rockefeller – very Establishment mentality. “It’s the ethos of the place that shapes what’s news – kind of like how different colleges have different feels to them.”

“The Times looked down on Yahoo. The Washington Post exists because they were smart to buy Stanley Kaplan – a company whose tests I’ve sure you all enjoyed taking.”

“My general rule for journalism is aloofness.”

“I take copious notes… It’s all pile-driven.” Brooks writes dozens of pages of observations and never leaves home without his notebook. When he’s about to write a story, he puts all of the notes into a pile and then types them up. Each note sheet is a paragraph.

Brooks explains “part of the trick of writing a book. 60% of the job is traffic management.”

On his fellow columnists

“Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, and me – ego alley. Maureen and I are beginning to thaw. We have yet to sit down and have lunch.”

“Her writing style is social. It’s a little volcano of conversation and noise. I like to shut out the world and get to work.”

“Friedman… Tom is bigger than the universe. He’s bigger than all of us.”

Quotes somebody else about Tom Friedman, “Going to the Middle East with him is like going to the mall with Britney Spears.”

“Tom’s a phenomenon. Wherever he goes, he gets the usual requests. ‘Would you give my regards to Tom Friedman?’”

He likes that Kristol has come on so that he won’t be the only one getting flak for being conservative.

On his job

“I do two to three interviews a day.”

“The more and more I learned about this job, the more I realize, character and the mental habits of politicians is more important than their policy positions.”

“Bush is not that interested in execution. He likes to say he can see fifty years ahead. But he’s not concerned with next week.”

“This business that magazines have influence is overdone.”

‘Sociology is the queen of the social sciences. The unexamined patterns of behavior shape everything else.’

“You can make fun of rich people all you want. You can’t make fun of poor people it’s not nice.”

“Forgive me for being patronizing, but I’ve run across in colleges that believe there are essentially only two career tracks, the noble ‘Teach for America types or the greedy Investment Bankers.’”

“Jobs happen by chance. You’ll probably get married in your later twenties. You have ten years to bounce around.”

Brooks talks about his acquaintance that is a Las Vegas fountain choreographer.

Brooks explains his priorities.

1. I want to be a writer

2. I want to be a journalist.

3. I want to be a conservative.

Brooks ends on a discussion of college. “Certain schools have just a Golden culture… There’s definitely a Claremont group in D.C.”

David Brooks Before the Ath

Sahil Kapur has already written about what Brooks said before the Ath, so I will try not to rehash his arguments. I have a few bones to pick with it, but all in all, it's a well done review. Of course, I laughed out loud when Kapur wrote that he liked Brooks, even though Kapur is a "non-conservative."

You see Brooks' "limited, but energetic governance" isn't conservatism at all, but a more of a compromise some conservatives want to make with the welfare state. I can understand why some conservatives want to make this compromise -- it is nice to be elected -- but what's the point of being elected if you aren't going to do something principles with it? Brooks could argue that at least Republicans would lead us down that road to serfdom slower than the Democrats, but they would lead us just the same.

At the same time, I think David Brooks is right that the conservative movement is losing its ability to get new ideas, but I throw that problem at the feet of his big government conservatism. We have been too willing to concede battles rather than take up mental arms against them. We didn't continue fighting for social security privatization or for the elimination of the Department of Education and so we lost those struggles. Had we phrased them differently, had we shown that we can offer the American people a "choice," not an "echo," we might have lost the election but won the people. As others have said, Goldwater may have appeared to lose the election in '64, but it took 16 years to count the ballots.

I think Brooks is wrong to judge the defeat of conservatism as the miscalculation of Gingrich's government shutdown. Indeed, Gingrich's cult of personality -- his turn from the libertarian principles that underwrote the Contract with America, his embrace of his own celebrity, and his reluctance to live up to the very principles he excoriated Clinton for -- was what destroyed the Republicans.

During the course of the evening, I asked Brooks about his views of Milton Friedman and how they influenced his concept of government. Brooks suggested that Friedman viewed people as only rational beings who make decisions based upon economic calculus. I don't agree. (Let's put aside the question of whether or not Friedman actually believed what Brooks says he did for the sake of argument.)

Brooks made the argument that there is no economic sense for high school students dropping out of high school. Based upon the accepted norms we have today that encourages students --rich and poor, dumb and smart alike -- to attend college this explanation seems accurate upon first examination. We are told over and over again that a high school degree is the bedrock of prosperity and that anyone who wants to be someone must have one. If you are reading this blog, chances are you agree.

But is this the whole story?

The answer to this problem, ironically enough, was addressed by Milton Friedman himself -- allow families and students to pick schools that best capture their learning styles and habits.

What Brooks doesn't make clear is that the children who are dropping out do so because school isn't meeting their perceived needs. Maybe those decisions would change if they were going to schools that they felt a part of.

They are a whole host of reasons for why these kids drop out. They are as multifarious and diverse as the children who attend the public schools. They might want to help their family by getting a low-skilled, but high-paying job, school might be too tough or the work may seem tedious. You might want to sell drugs or join the Army and high school just seems like a waste of your potential. There are any number of reasons for leaving high school. Perhaps the most famous one -- and I find it the most hilarious -- is Chris Rock's quip about a G.E.D. "Let me get this straight, I can make up four years of schooling in six hours?"

There are thousands of Americans who didn't graduate high school. Here's a list of some of the more famous ones. Notice that the occupations they entered -- politics, entertainment, and yes, crime -- didn't require the skill sets developed in high school.

After all, at the end of graduating at an abysmal public school, all you have is a degree from that abysmal public school. If you were a bad student or a slow student, chances are you aren't going to college anyways.

Brooks then went on to talk about the marshmallow study. His argument can boil down to how its better to nurture skills in young children than to let the bad habits develop into adulthood.

Brooks is right to draw a conclusion that the habits people form as a result of good parenting makes parenting desirable, but he is wrong to involve government in that process. Yes, government can create incentives for people to get married. Why not tax married people at an even lower rate?

But his solution of a "limited, but energetic government" is problematic. How should government step in to help those children? Will parents take less care of their children so that government comes in and relieves them of unwanted kids? Just where do we draw the line of "energetic" between "totalitarian"? Can a limited government be energetic?

Brooks tries to tether his philosophy to Hamilton. He believes government should be used to expand opportunity, but how? How does this differ from Keynesian economics that tries to use government as a form of investment? How does this help people in the long run? Doesn't he recognize that when the federal government invests in people it robs other private entities from investing?

True, I suppose Brooks could argue that government can achieve the ends of expanding opportunity by refusing to give special hand outs to certain groups -- no earmarks and no corporate welfare -- but how do we square this belief with his view that conservatives make peace with the welfare state? Aren't social programs, like welfare or Social Security, another kind of earmark, albeit one that's harder to taken on than the Bridge to Nowhere?

Brooks tries to draw smaller distinctions with Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's view of government. But the differences between Brooks and Clinton or Obama is one of degrees, not of principles. I see no functional difference between Brooks' view that government ought to enter into childrearing so as to level the playing field and Hillary Clinton's Brave New World-esque It Takes A Village where we get rid of the idea that there is any such thing as anybody else's child.

Further, citing Hamilton as a limited government conservative is also problematic. Putting aside the question of the National Bank, Hamilton believed in a larger, more robust executive.

To say that Hamilton, on balance, is a limited government conservative is nearly impossible, but I suppose a similar thing could be said of David Brooks.

Thomas Sowell Mentions Harvey Mudd College on NRO TV

Thomas Sowell has mentioned Harvey Mudd College as one of America's finest schools for teaching science, math, and engineering. I blogged about this issue back in October, but now you can hear Sowell talk about how tenure hurts the learning of students. Sowell has been out promoting his book, entitled modestly enough, Economic Facts and Fallacies. (If anyone has a copy of the book, I will promise to name my first born child after you if you let me borrow it.)

He makes that argument by citing the fact that Harvey Mudd students go on to earn PhDs much more often than do their counterparts at some of the bigger name universities. He's right, but he would be. He's Thomas Sowell.

Elise Viebeck, Editor of the CI, Gets Mention on Phi Beta Cons

Our highly esteemed editor of The Claremont Independent moonlights as a writer for the highly influential Independent Women's Forum. Who knew!

They have just recently published her piece on the perils of the Living Wage Activism. Naturally, her characteristic diligence and marshaling of language shines through.

Robert VerBruggen of Phi Beta Cons has a few criticisms of Viebeck's piece, but nevertheless agrees with Viebeck's essential argument that "living wage movements" end up hurting workers in effectively the same ways as minimum wage laws by reducing the likelihood that employers will hire those workers in the first place.

This argument has the same net effect on the people it is designed to help as the fair trade fraud has. (See Aditya and my piece here.) Of course, this effect is no coincidence. When you agitate through the use of emotionalism instead of reason, you often invoke unintended consequences. Maybe it's time that we all corralled these data points and wrote a book about the economic fallacies that dominate the American campus?

This is the second mention of a current Claremont Independent writer in two months. (My review of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism was picked up on The Corner.) Not bad, not bad at all. And if you throw in our own John Wilson, the former editor of the CI, we're knocking on all the right doors.

Claremont McKenna Alum Reflects on Buckley

Marlo Lewis Jr. is a libertarian and Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was once a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Claremont McKenna and graduated from our esteemed college.

Though I first saw this post on National Review's The Corner, I'm reposting it in its entirety from OpenMarket.org. I have bolded the paragraph that most resonated with me.

William F. Buckley, Jr. passed away today. How very sad. For some libertarians, it all started with Rand. For me, it started with Buckley.

WFB was my guiding light through those formative years in the 1960s when the “anti-war” (pro-Hanoi) movement, the New Left, and the counter-culture were in full cry.

Though vastly outnumbered in high school by peers and teachers mouthing cliches of socialism, appeasement, and moral relativism, I confidently debated any and all comers, armed with facts and arguments from National Review, Firing Line, and a slew of books by WFB and other NR columnists, and emboldened by his courage, brilliance, and wit.

Very likely I would not have read Mises and Hayek in my teens, attended Claremont McKenna College (a school hospitable to conservative students and faculty), studied there with Harry Jaffa (the great Lincoln and Aristotle scholar whom Buckley esteemed), or pursued graduate studies in political philosophy had WFB not opened my young eyes to the perils of statism and the excitement of the war of ideas.

WFB’s contribution to American politics and civilization should not be underestimated. Would the Reagan Presidency–critical to the demise of Soviet communism–have even been possible without the conservative movement WFB did so much to found and nurture? I doubt it.

Although never personally associated with WFB, I always felt a personal fondness for him that went beyond admiration for his talents and contributions. I’m sure many others share this feeling. He will be missed.

Well said. I'm glad to see that the Claremont McKenna alums far and near recognize the importance of Buckley at changing the terms of the cultural discourse for the better.

William F. Buckley: The Man, The Legend, and Everything Else

I'll write up my reflections on Brooks and Buckley tomorrow as I spent the night with some fellow conservatives and just got back to Stark. I promise to make it up to you. I took notes during the Salvatori reception, which, upon editing, will also be available on my blog.

I suppose we all know today as the day Buckley died. And yet, I'm more interested by how he lived. He was the intellectual who weaponized conservatism by disarming its critics and by rallying its troops. A bon vivant who never lost track of ideas and an idea man who never lost track of the more basic human pleasures, Buckley's characteristic humor moved The National Review from mockery to mandatory.

Though I don't believe David Brooks is right when he says that many conservatives wanted to be William F. Buckley, I do believe there is a contingent that worships the ground upon which he walks and that Buckley wouldn't have it any other way.

I remember the first William F. Buckley thing I ever read -- God and Man at Yale. I remember discovering it in sophomore year of high school, almost sixty years after it was written.

Like all good journalists, Buckley was fearless. He named names and documented the abuses of professors with the kind of glee that only a conservative can feel after surviving years of thought-reform.

I had witnessed these similar abuses at my prep school, Milton Academy. Minority rights reigned supreme, free speech gave ground, religious students were harassed, and a whole generation of young people were led to believe that the new holy trinity -- race, class, and gender -- mattered more than character, liberty, and truth.

For me and my numerous run-ins with the thought police, Buckley (and later the other NRO writes) led me back to the kind of conservative libertarianism I espouse and still believe is the only way to live.

Buckley proves that the fight half-finished is the fight half-done. He never gave up on the movement he embodied.

You see, I believe it is no coincidence that Buckley launched his career by fighting against the encroaching statism and coercion that is tragically characteristic of the American academe. For only when liberty is at its ebb do we see what man is made of.

Nor is it any coincidence that National Review continues to evolve. Buckley always had a way of making the conservative fresh. He distanced it from the age old crackpotdom. His successors push it forward by diving into the new territories of blogging and videoblogging, while simultaneously remembering the values that made it great.

Unlike David Brooks, I never met William F. Buckley. I knew the man from his ideas. Much like our own Martin Diamond, who died defending the Electoral College, we'll remember Buckley by how he left this world -- at his desk, a better place, still unfinished.