Analyzing David Brooks And His Theory Of Moral Decay

I decided to post this article by David Brooks to provide a lesson on how to read David Brooks. He has been provided a platform by the NYT, and he has been given a weekly platform by Public Television to tell us how to think about current issues. Consequently, it is important to examine his ideas and his style of rhetoric. That is what this post is about.

I usually read the last paragraph or two to find the conclusion that Brooks is working toward, and then I go back and examine how he reaches his conclusion. He concludes this article by stating that public debate is dominated by people who stopped thinking in 1975. This reference is to liberal economists who are guilty of "economic determinism" in his eyes. It is also a reference to the period of history deplored by conservatives. That is, the period dominated by the Vietnam war protests and a counterculture which rejected the dominant social values revered by conservatives.

Now that I understand what the article is about, I go back to see how he reaches his conclusions. His opening two paragraphs lays out his premises. His first premise is a sweeping description of the history between 1912 and 1962. This period included two world wars and the Great Depression. Despite this tumult we had high marriage rates and community groups connected across class. In one sentence Brooks concludes that we had social cohesion prior to 1962. He probably never read The Grapes of Wrath, or the social commentary on that period, but lets grant him his point. Things were great until 1962.

In his next paragraph he describes the period between 1962 and 2012. He describes this period as one of prosperity, peace (despite Vietnam and wars in the Mid-East) and fairness. We are better off in this period but our social fabric deteriorated. Social trust declined, society became more segmented and a larger number of children were born out of wedlock. In other words, the economy was much better than it was between 1912 and 1962 but things went to hell starting with the 1960's. This reinforces the conclusion that Brooks reaches in his last paragraph. Our thinking today is dominated by those rebels who developed their liberal values in the 60's and early 70's. They are "economic determinists" who don't understand that we were better off socially when we were less prosperous. Moreover, it was their crazy ideas that destroyed the social fabric of society.

The premises in the first two paragraphs are enough to enable Brooks to reach his conclusion, but he always fills in the middle of his articles with references to articles or books that demonstrate his scholarship. In this case he describes research from sociology and psychology which paint a picture of social deterioration that is self reinforcing. Once it got started in the 1960's it has built upon itself and young people are not able to acquire the "social capital" and cognitive skills that are necessary for success. He makes the point that we could not find enough skilled workers to take the jobs that have been lost even if they were to come back. Those liberal economists, who stopped thinking in 1975, have ignored 25 years of sociology and psychology that tell us that money and jobs do not matter. We have a problem of social decay that started in the 1960's when we had shared prosperity.

Almost all of the op-eds that I read by David Brooks have a similar structure. He provides all the material that a teacher would need to provide lessons in the art of rhetoric.