Targeting the heart along with the head
Published October 15, 2015
by Mitch Kokai, Carolina Journal, October 15, 2015.
Mention the words “social justice” to a conservative, and you might see eyes roll. You might also hear grumbling about silly, left-wing nonsense.
But Arthur Brooks labels as a mistake a blanket dismissal of social justice as “the exclusive language of the left.” The president of the American Enterprise Institute devotes his latest book to cultivating new appreciation of “social justice” and other concepts that appear alien to many right-leaning thinkers.
As more than a dozen candidates vie for the chance to represent the Republican Party in the next presidential race, Brooks presents them with a gift of sorts in The Conservative Heart. It’s not written as a campaign playbook. But White House aspirants would be wise to peruse Brooks’ book and take some of its lessons … well, to heart.
A Charlotte audience will have a chance to learn more about Brooks’ ideas later this month. He discusses his book Wednesday, Oct. 28, in a luncheon event co-sponsored by the John Locke Foundation.
Those who want to win public support for conservative ideas and policies need to read the lines Brooks saves for the opening of his seventh chapter. “It’s time to return to the brutal truth that motivated this whole book: Conservatives have the right stuff to lift up the poor and vulnerable — but have been generally terrible at winning people’s hearts.”
“We are the fiscally responsible grown-ups, the stern authority figures, the ones people usually trust to run a tight economic ship. But that is not primarily what the country wants. Voters want leaders who care about people like them. They yearn for leaders who feel their pain and respond in tangible ways. And that has just not been us.”
This reader encounters the words “feel their pain” and thinks first of Bill Clinton, no paragon of conservatism, then of George W. Bush, whose “compassionate” conservatism helped pave the path of government bloat that our current president has been more than happy to extend during his two terms in the White House.
So it’s a relief to learn that Brooks is not advocating that conservatives drop free-market, limited-government principles and hop on the big-government train. Instead Brooks focuses on the way in which conservatives express their core principles.
“I believe that poverty and opportunity are moral issues and must be addressed as such,” he writes. That’s a stance that places Brooks directly at odds with those conservatives who argue that policy debates should focus on economics, setting morality aside.
“That is dead wrong and a false choice besides,” he argues. “Economic issues aremoral issues.”
“So when conservatives fail to invoke compassion and fairness in our bid to solve society’s problems, we pre-emptively surrender arguments with near-total support from the public. That’s insane. If conservatives want to become a true majority movement and unite the nation in a way that lifts up everyone, then we need to build our message around majoritarian values. Compassion and fairness are majoritarian values.”
Returning to the social justice issue, Brooks urges conservatives to overcome their hesitancy to fight on foreign turf. “Many conservatives recoil at the mere mention of ‘social justice,’” he writes. “But this is a mistake. ‘Social justice’ simply means working for a society that lives up to our American standards of fairness. And conservatives believe in fairness just as much as liberals do. We just define it differently.”
“To conservatives, a social justice agenda means making the starting line more equal for the vulnerable by improving education, expanding the opportunity to work, and increasing access to entrepreneurship,” Brooks adds. “Then it must ensure that rewards reflect effort, merit, and virtue. Further, true conservative social justice must also fight cronyism that favors powerful interests and keeps the little guy down.”
While accentuating positive elements within the conservative message, Brooks does not shy away from pointed critiques of the left’s failures.
For instance, he devotes a full chapter to explaining why America “hasn’t won” its 50-year War on Poverty. The analysis features a fascinating contrast between complicated problems, difficult to understand but easily resolved with adequate resources, and complex problems, simpler to understand but never completely solved. Designing a jet engine is complicated. Ensuring your favorite football team wins is complex.
“If designing a jet engine were a complex problem, you’d fall out of the sky most of the time,” Brooks writes. “If a football game were a complicated problem, you’d know the score before it started just by looking at the team rosters.”
“The difference is the fundamental reason why the War on Poverty failed. Its architects thought poverty in America was more like a jet engine than a football game. They maintained the conceit that with their big brains and a boatload of taxpayer money, they could smoothly categorize all the facets of poverty and design mechanistic programs to ‘solve’ them.”
That same delusion motivates other progressive policies, Brooks notes, and explains why conservatives have multiple opportunities to offer superior alternatives.
They must work hard, and in different ways. Brooks closes the book with a seven-step checklist for conservatives who want to win converts to their ideas. Among them: Don’t be afraid to be a “moralist,” focusing on more than facts and figures. “Get happy,” rather than maintaining the stance of the angry opposition. “Fight for people, not against things.”
There’s no simple way to ensure transformation from a minority protest movement to a majoritarian social movement, but Brooks contends conservatives must adopt new strategies to build a “fairer, happier, and more prosperous America.”
