NYT’s David Brooks: ‘You Can Be A Conservative Or A Republican, But You Can’t Be Both.’ He’s Dead Wrong.

On Tuesday, The New York Times’ David Brooks joined syndicated columnist George Will in calling for conservatives to avoid voting for the Republican Party. Will claimed that Republicans in Congress had abdicated their duty to check the executive branch, and Democrats would do a better job, ignoring that Democrats would be stymied by a Republican minority and that the Democratic agenda has swiveled to the radical Left. Brooks argues that conservatism is about protection of the order that pre-exists liberty, the maintenance of the “sacred space” necessary for liberty to thrive. He contrasts the Enlightenment mentality of reason and consent with the Burkeian notion that such concepts, unmoored from shared cultural history and institutions, runs amok. He’s not wrong about the value of order:

The practical upshot is that conservatives have always placed tremendous emphasis on the sacred space where individuals are formed. This space is populated by institutions like the family, religion, the local community, the local culture, the arts, the schools, literature and the manners that govern everyday life. … Over the centuries conservatives have resisted anything that threatened this sacred space.