Columnist David Brooks, an Insightful Observer, Says Deficit Reduction Is Hopeless for at Least the Medium Term — and a Comment on Spiritual Hubris

© 2010 Peter Free

 

23 November 2010

 

 

Mr. Brooks’ column yesterday confirmed what many of us were thinking

 

Never send an American politician to do an honorable person’s job.  At least not in this era.

 

David Brooks summed up the results of his recent conversations with members of Congress.  No new taxes.  And no significant entitlement reductions.

 

We’re gonna keep the deficit boat a-sinkin’.  And avoid investing in anything else constructive.

 

 

Why are we self-destructively stagnant?

 

Why, when other countries — most visibly Great Britain — are doing something about their deficits, is the United States sitting on its slope-sliding national buttocks to the Republic’s increasingly likely destruction?

 

Mr. Brooks pinpoints the same cause that I have been hammering since this website’s inception — a decline in the ethics of leadership.

 

Brooks argues that, for centuries, politicians restrained themselves from running up the national debt because they recognized that the nation was comprised of an equilibrium of competing factions.

 

 

This equilibrium is fragile because we are flawed and fallen creatures and can’t quite trust ourselves. So all of us, but especially members of the leadership class, should practice self-restraint. Moral anxiety restrained hubris (don’t think your side possesses the whole truth) and self-indulgence (debt corrupts character).

This ethos has dissolved, on left and right. The new mentality sees the country not as an equilibrium, but as a battlefield in which the people, who are pure and virtuous, do battle against the interests or the elites, who stand in the way of the people’s happiness.

The ideal leader in this mental system is free from moral anxiety but full of passionate intensity.

 

© 2010 David Brooks, Sin and Taxes, New York Times (22 November 2010)

 

The irony of an allegedly Christian nation and the simultaneous resurrection of unencumbered personal hubris

 

Many of the most stalwart opponents of political compromise and constructive action are allegedly Christian.  “Born again” members of the faith at that.  Yet, virtually all have forgotten the character flaws that the world’s major spiritual teachings repeatedly emphasize.

 

Consequently, the United States is in a national slump that is arguably based on the rise of unwarranted spiritual pride and human self-blindness.  It isn’t just our leaders who have fallen off Wisdom’s saddle.

 

And I don’t think going to worship more often, in the mindless way that most people do, is going to help.

 

 

Pain is in our future

 

From an observational perspective, given our lack of humility and outwardly-directed compassion, the future will be parable-interesting.

 

From an experiential point of view, it is going to sadly painful.

 

Absolution anyone?