David Brooks

Along came these rich hippies saying, don't work hard, drop out, do drugs.

And they were outraged.

They were just morally offended.

And so that's really the roots of neoconservatism.

It's not some right-wing Republican thing.

It started as a strategy of dissent within the Democratic Party.

Because I'm a human anachronism.

Yeah.

I think one of the things the neoconservatives can do is they teach us, first of all, some of the things they learned in the 60s.

Life is really complicated.

You should do social policy.

You should try to improve government.

But you should realize that most policies fail.

and you should really have good reasons and you should make it bureaucratic.

But I think the core insight for the neocons, they not only grew up as policy people, they were influenced by literature, by culture, by theology, by Talmudic study.

And so they made no distinction between what you would call theological, philosophical, cultural growth, moral formation, and policy.

And so they brought a much more humanistic lens to see policy.

It's not just about economics and growth.

The elemental question is, A, can we build a civilization we can be proud of?

And B, can we create policies that will nurture values, the right kind of values?