argh... New comments on David Brooks's latest column, "The Next Culture War," are no longer being accepted, so I'll have to vent here. Many readers have correctly pointed out that Brooks fails to put any blame for our current "decadence, corruption, and decline" on Ronald Reagan and his followers, that he fails to credit Roosevelt and the New Deal for our erstwhile restraint, and that past bubbles were also caused by lack of regulations, and others have noted the odious American exceptionalism of his introduction (as if working hard were a peculiarly American trait!). What struck me was this:

Government was limited and did not protect people from the consequences of their actions, thus enforcing discipline and restraint.

When economic values did erode, the ruling establishment tried to restore balance. After the Gilded Age, Theodore Roosevelt (who ventured west to counteract the softness of his upbringing) led a crackdown on financial self-indulgence.

Brooks ignores the fact that big government was born with Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive effort to "restore balance." In other words, the limited government Brooks praises in one sentence is exactly the opposite of the "crackdown on financial self-indulgence" that he also praises in the next sentence. It's symptomatic of Brooks's authoritarian sympathies that he disdains our elected government but instinctively admires the "ruling establishment."