David Brooks has written an eloquent, bruised elegy for a conservatism he once believed in—a conservatism that, in his telling, began with Burkean virtue and ended in MAGA nihilism. He mourns a country that no longer believes in the moral underpinnings of democracy, in the quiet dignity of public service, in the slow work of civic knitting. He describes a nation ravaged by the acid of Trumpism, which has corroded not only the Republican Party but America’s very soul.
And yet, as a liberal, I find myself both in agreement with Brooks and in fundamental divergence.
Yes, he is right that something grave has been lost: a shared sense of responsibility, of the moral duties that undergird democratic life. But what he mourns as a betrayal of conservative ideals is, to many of us on the left, a reckoning that was always going to come—not because we wished it, but because conservatism too often refused to confront the contradictions rotting at its core.
Let me begin where Brooks ends: with history. He draws inspiration from the Whigs, those moral reformers of the 19th century who sought to temper liberty with justice. He yearns for a Whig moment today—one of institutional rebirth, civic renewal, and restrained optimism. But history also tells another story: that moments of profound change, of democratic realignment, require not just moral clarity, but moral courage. And that courage too often comes not from the center, but from the margins.
Brooks is at his best when diagnosing Trumpism as a force of nihilism—one that does not govern, but desecrates; that does not build, but belittles; that replaces the gospel of service with the gospel of spectacle. He is right to compare this moment not to the Age of Reagan, but to the Age of Jackson—though I would add: it was not the Whigs alone who delivered us from Jacksonian despotism. It was also the abolitionists, the suffragists, the free Black communities, the runaway slaves and their allies, those radical moral witnesses who shattered complacency and forced the nation to reimagine itself.
In this way, the left has often carried the burden Brooks now claims for the right: to insist on America’s higher calling.
We liberals have long argued that America’s story was not one of natural virtue, but of continuous struggle—a struggle to extend rights to the excluded, to make good on the broken promises of equality and freedom. Brooks’ belief in America’s essential goodness is touching, but perhaps also part of the problem. For if we assume America has always been good, then we are shocked—blindsided—when it is not. But if we recognize that America has always contained both cruelty and compassion, both democracy and domination, then we understand that the work of democracy is never done. It is not a status quo to preserve—it is a struggle to perpetually renew.
Brooks writes movingly of conservative Christians devastated by Trump’s cruelty. But he does not dwell long enough on why so many others—millions—embraced that cruelty with cheers. It is not enough to say they were seduced by a demagogue. We must also ask: what grievances festered in the body politic, left unhealed by conservative governance? What fears were exploited after years of inequality, racial backlash, and declining trust?
Trumpism is not a virus from abroad. It is an American mutation. And to fight it, we must do more than simply restore civility or mourn lost virtues. We must interrogate the systems—economic, cultural, racial—that made space for it to thrive.
That means liberals, too, must be willing to confront our own failures. The condescension Brooks names—of faculty lounges and NPR dinner parties, of policies that favor elite credentials over lived realities—these are not inventions. They are real, and corrosive. We must speak less as curators of righteousness and more as listeners, bridge-builders, co-authors of a shared future.
But unlike Brooks, I do not believe the answer is to revive a moderate center that tries to balance the two poles. That center has often meant stasis. Instead, I believe the moment calls for moral ambition—for a politics that is not afraid to speak of universal healthcare as a right, of climate justice as a global duty, of racial reckoning as foundational, not peripheral.
Brooks calls for a “working-class abundance agenda.” So do I. But to be meaningful, abundance must come with equity. It must mean not just more housing, but fair housing. Not just lower tuition, but reparative education. Not just jobs, but dignity in work.
We do not lack the tools. We lack the will. And Trumpism thrives in the vacuum left by that lack.
Where I join Brooks most deeply is in the belief that democracy is not guaranteed. The slow burn of democratic collapse is often mistaken for resilience. But it is not. January 6, 2021 was not an endpoint. It was a flare—a warning that the institutions we once trusted are not indestructible, and that the habits of democracy—truth-telling, compromise, mutual regard—must be taught, modeled, and defended anew.
So where do we go?
We go not to a restoration, but to a reckoning. We name what has broken. We acknowledge the rot. We stop pretending that this is a phase, or a fever. It is a fracture in the American experiment.
Then we go to work. Building coalitions not of perfect agreement but of shared decency. Reclaiming the public square from cynicism. Teaching our children not just facts, but the fragile miracle of pluralism. And voting—voting not just for presidents, but for school boards, city councils, and propositions that shape the soil beneath our national tree.
America has been cracked open. But inside that rupture, new roots can grow.
As a liberal, I do not share Brooks’ nostalgia. But I share his hope: that this country, flawed and flailing, can still find within itself the audacity to begin again.
And when that happens, not in Washington but in our towns, our classrooms, our neighborhoods, we will remember: democracy is not something we inherited. It is something we are called to re-earn, every generation, every day.
