Today's Republicans: The Party Of Strivers - Conservative Columnist David Brooks

There is a flaw in the vision the Republicans offered in Tampa. It is contained in its rampant hyper-individualism. Speaker after speaker celebrated the solitary and heroic individual. There was almost no talk of community and compassionate conservatism. There was certainly no conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which individuals are embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions.

Today's Republicans strongly believe that individuals determine their own fates. In a Pew Research Center poll, for example, 57% of Republicans believe people are poor because they don't work hard. Only 28% believe people are poor because of circumstances beyond their control. These Republicans believe that if only government gets out of the way, then people's innate qualities will enable them to flourish.

The fact is our destinies are shaped by social forces much more than the current GOP is willing to admit. The skills that enable people to flourish are not innate but constructed by circumstances.   Government does not always undermine initiative. Some government programs, like the GI Bill, inflame ambition.  Today's Republicans, who see every government program as a step on the road to serfdom, are often blind to that. They celebrate the race to success but don't know how to give everyone access to that race.

Today's Republican Party won't be a worthy governing party until it treads the course Lincoln trod: starting with individual ambition but ascending to a larger vision and creating a national environment that arouses ambition and nurtures success.

The full article is available here