Brooks gets my goat.

There are few things more futile than writing a letter to the editors of the New York Times. Okay, blogging is more futile, but that's understood. David Brooks consistently gets under my skin with his smug, conservative drivel. Recently he touted the great accomplishments of the current conservative era (1980 to present). I took umbrage. Here's what I wrote.

Hello,

Although I generally agree with David Brooks' assertion in his column titled “The Era of What’s Next” that the US is entering a period of political flux, I do take issue with his list of alleged conservative achievements over the past quarter century.

According to Mr. Brooks the big conservative accomplishments have been:

1) The defeat of communism.

There is no doubt that communism collapsed while conservatives were in power, but it is debatable as to the role that US and conservative politics played in that fall. There is every indication that communism would have tipped over all by itself without the aggressive US intervention that had us flirting with nuclear war throughout the 80s.

2) The reinvigoration of the economy through deregulation, tax reform and monetarism.

Deregulation has left our food less safe, our health care and prescription drugs too expensive, and corporations free to run amok. The tax code has been altered so that those who prosper the most from government supported infrastructure and policies are asked to pay the least, and those who reap the fewest rewards are required to pay the most: a “get rich or else” policy. The net effect has been to steer the US into a new Gilded Age where a few prosper and the vast majority suffer.

3) The rebalancing of the culture to emphasize family, work and individual responsibility.

The so-called ‘rebalancing’ has been in rhetoric only. One economic metric after another shows that families are far worse off after a quarter century of conservative policies. We certainly have been refocused on work. The average US worker spends more time at work for less pay in real dollars than his or her counterpart during the liberal era. How, exactly, does forcing someone – and their spouse – to work two or three minimum wage jobs just to makes ends meet help emphasize the family? Individuals have been held more accountable, but corporations have been allowed to shirk all responsibilities outside of making money by any means possible – which includes buying the conservative government. Thank God, however, that we can now throw all the pot-heads in jail.

The past 26 years have been the pendulum swing of the rich elite reasserting their power over the working class. Conservative vs. Liberal more often than not boils down to rich vs. not rich. One of my favorite definitions of the two sides is: “A conservative is someone who benefits from the evils of the day. A liberal is someone who wishes to install a new set of evils.” The liberals unleashed the ‘evils’ of personal freedom and civil rights and restrained the evils of trusts and monopolies. Now that conservatives have allowed trusts and monopolies to return, personal freedom and civil rights are under assault.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget that whole environment thingy. Deregulation has worked wonders in that arena. As some old codger who has a city named after him once said:

Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we cannot eat money. - Chief Seattle

The conservatives have indeed run out of ideas, and it hasn’t come a moment too soon. Having bad ideas holds no virtue over holding no ideas at all. Luckily, that choice is not the one confronting voters this November. The liberal ideas and ideals are still there, waiting to be awakened after a 26 year slumber. They are ideas such as applying the rule of law to everyone regardless of status or party; banning torture and anything that even remotely approaches it; and governing with the good of people taking precedence over the good of your campaign contributors. Most of all, it is the ideal that the Constitution is more important than political expediency. Voting for the Democrats this November will be first step in reviving those ideals, but there is a lot of work to be done before we can recover from Mr. Brooks’ conservative achievements.

Ken Bergenham
Seattle, WA