David Brooks explains Why the New York Times Columnist that He Is Is Not a Liberal

As Bret Stephens shares his insights into Mass Migration and Liberalism’s Fall, as John McWhorter suggests that the term ‘African American’ be dropped in favor of ‘Black’ once and for all, and as an Obama speechwriter wonders whether it isn't time to stop snubbing your right-wing family — what surprises from the New York Times! — David Brooks explains Why I Am Not a Liberal:

Just write people checks.

This is consistent with something I’ve noticed all my life — the materialist bent of progressive thought: the assumption that material conditions drive history, not cultural or moral ones. … Progressives have often argued that improving schools is mostly about spending more money, that crime is mostly the product of material deprivation.

 … [Liberal] Thinkers like Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer had been poor immigrant kids. They were willing to spend money to fight poverty, but they wanted the programs to nurture the values that they had seen firsthand help people rise: hard work, family and community cohesion, reliability, a passionate commitment to education. These values tend to inhere in communities before they are transmitted to individuals.

Progressives, by contrast, are quick to talk about money but slow to talk about the values side of the equation. That’s in part for the best of reasons. They don’t want to blame the victims or contribute to the canard that people are poor because they are lazy.

 … Human agency disappears if research subjects are reduced to a bunch of variables that can be correlated. People who overly rely on social science knowledge are going to tend to focus on money because it can be counted more easily than culture. People who rely on government to solve problems will tend to overemphasize the power of money because that’s the thing government most easily controls. 

 … Populism is not primarily economic; it’s about respect, values, national identity and many other things. All that spending [that Joe Biden's team threw at problems] did not win anybody over [to the Democrat Party]. 

 … Today most of our problems are moral, relational and spiritual more than they are economic. There is the crisis of disconnection, the collapse of social trust, the loss of faith in institutions, the destruction of moral norms in the White House, the rise of amoral gangsterism around the world.

I’ve been driven away from the right over the past decade, but I can’t join the left because I just don’t think that tradition of thought grasps reality in all its fullness. 

 … If you can find some lefties who are willing to spend money fighting poverty but also willing to promote the traditional values and practices that enable people to rise, you can sign me up for the revolution.