Even a broken clock . . .

  I once said about David Brooks, that saying stupid things in a reasonable way, is still saying stupid things but I have to give credit where credit is due as in the miasma of the end of the Republican Convention Brooks  makes an insightful and thoughtful point about the Republican Party's fundamental worldview. I recommend reading the entire editorial over at the NYTimes but two lines stand out for me.
  "[at the convention] There was certainly no conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which individuals are embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions." Brooks does something that few liberal, moderate or (certainly not) conservatives commentators are doing, questioning the "Conservatism" of the modern Republican Party. If at heart the "conservatism" initiated by Burke, is based in respect for authority, tradition, custom, individual rights and gradual policy measures, than the GOP has become the anitheses of that as it seeks to root and branch disrupt what have become, civil traditions of an inclusive democratic society, the hard earned rights to individual expression and the concern for popular welfare and stability. These politicians and policy makers are seeking to establish an Ayn Randian Fascism, where the capitalist and the corporation become the sum total of society's strivings mixed with a deeply delusional crypto-white supremacist religiosity which would seek to take us back to 19th century ethno-civic-cultural relations and Bronze Age gender perspectives. In the face of the gradual expansion of rights, liberties and opportunities that have been the defining positive feature of the United States, the GOP's program is down right repealingly revolutionary.
  The second point Brooks makes must be taken seriously and speaks to the first.
"They celebrate the race to success but don’t know how to give everyone access to that race." In the light of the abuses of the Reign of Terror the political left came to be identified as wild eyed savage utopians, unable to embrace the conditions of civic life as they were, too irrational to commit to the gradualism of mature governance and too bloody to respect those institutions upon which society is constructed. Yet in its inability, nay unwillingness, to give everyone access to that race or admit that, "our destinies are shaped by social forces" not just individual motivation, the GOP turns reasonable critics of a system that works against those not born with keys to the club (whichever private club that may be) into wild eyed revolutionaries, class warriors, man haters, atheists and/or sodomites who are out of touch with the mythical land (ca. 1950) many GOPers believe the "real" America to be.  I have always argued that the kamikaze (or Ben Tre depending on the speaker) like nature of the modern GOP is a true tragedy as the nation needs as many reasoanble, sober and invested political voices as it can stand. A two party system has limits enough, but one wherein one party is stark raving mad, does not well serve the country at such a desperate moment in its life. If Brooks' article circulates widely, if it draws attention and generates conversation, if it stimulates serious debate among Republican and conservative voters, than he will have offered a parachute to a party that has committed to crashing itself and the nation upon the rocks of history.