A Nation’s Strength: Why Morality and Ethics Must Lead the Way
There are forces attempting to break American society right now, but we can choose instead to be broken open to foster the emergence of a better country and culture.
What I watched: “How the Elite rigged Society (and why it’s falling apart)” by David Brooks for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Posted February 18, 2025.
If you had told me a few years ago that someday I’d be elevating a speech delivered by a staunch conversative writer and commentator, I would never have believed you. Well, this is that day. This short speech by David Brooks, delivered recently at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship 2025 conference in London, is noteworthy and something we all need to hear right now.
Brooks remains a conversative, although these days he's not aligned with the extremist right-wing form of it Trump and MAGA represent.
Throughout the speech, Brooks makes religious, particularly Christian, faith references to frame his points. Those who’ve read my work over the years know I’m an atheist and have rabidly disavowed my former faith of Catholicism. But I choose to perceive what Brooks is saying in this speech not in religious terms, but in moral and ethical terms.
For those who align with my distaste for religious faith, please try to put that aside for a moment because when Brooks uses religious framings I believe he's in essence using foundational moral and ethical framings, and our country and world could certainly use more morality and ethics right now.
Brooks starts off mentioning that he and others he calls the “educated elite” have done some good things and they’ve done some bad things. To punctuate one of the bad things they’ve done, he alluded to the misguided default to meritocracy in our country that has essentially created our own caste system, although many often pretend it to be egalitarian.
We designed a meritocracy designed around the skills we ourselves possess and rigged the game so we succeeded and everybody else failed.
In the past, I was a champion of meritocracy. Sadly, I bought into its proponents and throughout much of my professional career would hear others also extol the virtues and wisdom of elevating meritocracy as a good thing for our society. I’ve changed my tune. In “The Misguided Perspective of Meritocracy,” I discuss Michael Sandel’s TED Talk about the tyranny of meritocracy.
Sandel’s short TED talk encapsulates much of what the plethora of published articles have articulated as the negatives of embracing meritocracy as always a good thing for our society. In light of the recent American election outcome, perhaps it’s important to listen to Sandel now more than ever to ensure that the realities of systemic inequalities start to be appropriately corrected because they deeply influence our country’s current state of politics.
Brooks echoes similar sentiments when it comes to meritocracy.
Although the bulk of my education didn’t take place at a college or university, Brooks rightly points out that an education dramatically advantages people while people who don’t have access to a good education are severely disadvantaged. In my book, The Art of Self-Education: How to Get a Quality Education for Personal and Professional Success Without Formal Schooling, I tout the power of self-education and I stand by that, but I’m fully aware that when generalizing across millions of Americans those with college degrees experience a privilege others do not. The bottom line is the more educated a population, the greater their advantage in a society configured like modern America.
Brooks doesn’t think the worst thing his “educated elite” class has done is economic, but rather spiritual. Again, I choose to interpret spiritual in the non-religious sense of the word.
We privatized morality and destroyed the moral order.
Brooks references the historian George Marsden.
What gave Martin Luther King’s rhetoric its power was the sense there’s a moral order built into the universe. That if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong. If segregation is not wrong, then nothing is wrong.
Let me emphasize here that the word moral here is used as “of or related to principles of right and wrong in behavior.” Theft is wrong. Bigotry is wrong. Certain things are inherently wrong and our society has abandoned that essential moral order that holds people together and instead has defaulted to each individual finding their own truth and values.
Brooks points out that in 1955 journalist Walter Lippman understood that deviating from some commonly accepted rights and wrongs in our society would end up being a big problem.
If what is right and wrong depends on what each individual feels, then we are outside the bounds of civilization.
Again, I sense what Brooks and Lippman were alluding to is not the incremental moral and ethical cultural growth that takes place over time in a decent society. Things like fighting racism, the equality of women, and the civil rights of LGBTQ people, are examples of incremental but steady growth in American culture that I contend are founded upon the bedrock of a deeper, broader sense of morality and ethics.
Without a moral order it’s difficult to establish trust, and without trust it’s difficult to find meaning in life. As a result, the United States has become a sadder society. That collective sadness is what I believe has catapulted some of the more heinous aspects of American politics and culture into some dark and dangerous places. Sad, unhappy people sometimes act out in awful ways. Data from recent studies have concluded we are indeed a less happy and sadder society.
Brooks also contends it was the educated elite who produced Donald Trump. Despite Trump often being identified as a populist, the truth is he and Elon Musk went to Ivy League schools and became billionaires. Brooks lists others who currently hold the levers of power and the elite schools they attended. They all represent the educated elite. However, the next thing Brooks says really made mountains of sense and gave me a better understanding of the modern American right-wing represented by Trump and MAGA.
The key factor of the educated elite is that they’re not pro-conservative. They’re anti-left. They don’t have a positive conservative vision for society. They just want to destroy the institutions that the left now dominates.
And this means, in the first place, they’re astoundingly incompetent. I have a lot of sympathy with what drove people to vote for Trump, but I am telling you as someone who’s on the front row to what’s happening, do not hitch your wagon to that star.
Anyone paying attention to the last few weeks of the new Trump administration is witnessing that rampant incompetence.
Elite narcissism causes people like Trump, Musk, and their inner circle minions to “eviscerate every belief system they touch.”
Although I’ve never embraced the conservative mindset, like Brooks I respect that many conservatives believe in institutions, a constitutional government, and moral norms. Trump, Musk, and the entire MAGA movement do not.
While the likes of Trump and other MAGA adherents will often tout their Christian beliefs to justify their hate and bigotry, the truth is many Christians believe in service to the poor, service to the immigrant, and service to the stranger. Trump, Musk, and MAGA believe in none of that. Decent Christians within American government and society are being attacked by Trump and MAGA for attempting to uphold their core beliefs in decency and service.
Then Brooks gives me hope and I want to believe his assessment of this time in our country’s history as indeed a pivotal moment with a better country poised to emerge.
How can we come back? Well, we already are.
I often ask people, tell me about a time that made you who you are as a human being. They never say I went on a fantastic vacation in Hawaii. They never say that. They say I went through a really hard time, the death of someone, the loss of someone, moving away from home, entering a new vocation.
Paul Tillich the theologian said those moments of suffering interrupt your life and they remind you you’re not the person you thought you were. They carve through the floor of the basement of your soul, and they reveal a cavity below and they carve through that floor, and they reveal a cavity below.
In moments of suffering, you see yourself in a more deep way than you ever did before. And in those moments of suffering, you can either be broken or you can be broken open. And people who are transformed decided I’m going to be broken open. And nations that are going to be transformed by moments of suffering say we’re going to be broken open.
The United States and countries across the globe have been through national crises before. Nations have historically “hit a spiritual and cultural crisis and then revived.”
As Brooks points out, our country hasn’t grown over time as a pleasant ride down a measured path, but rather through a constant process of rupture and repair. Brooks offers examples from American history. We are currently amid a period of such rupture and repair.
Brooks quotes a number of Bible passages and while I’m not a fan of that text, the passages he quotes align more with a moral and ethical world than a religious one. He also quotes several great American thinkers that champion the truths of a moral and ethical life.
For a while I’ve been noticing something that Brooks alludes to, that we’re beginning a cultural shift from a hyper individualistic culture toward a communal one. At the core of that shift is our individual and collective need to find community. Brooks quotes Walter Bagehot.
Culture changes when a creative minority finds a beautiful way to live. Culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy.
We can change culture only on a personal level relating to each other “with attentive and generous gaze.” Brooks mentions a quote from one of my favorite philosophers, Simone de Beauvoir.
Attention is the purest form of generosity.
(I’ve logged that one in my quotations library.)
Brooks hammers home that it’s only when we put moral formation at the center of our society that goodness can thrive. Individual moral foundations then contribute at a civic level when a multitude of voices and organizations create institutions “that provide healing and relationship in society. That is how culture changes.”
Finally, Brooks evokes the words of one of my favorite writers and civil rights activists who I’ve admired for years, James Baldwin. That Brooks chooses to illustrate his point using the words of a Black gay man was not lost on me. Many conservatives can respect truth where they find it.
There isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough. And what you’ve got to remember is that when you walk down the street every person you meet you could be that person. That could be you. You could be that monster. You could be that saint. And you have to decide who you’re going to be.
I strive to see other people with the respect Brooks says we should all be attempting to evoke, even in these harsh and brutal times. I often violate that directive. But I’m trying and will continue to try.
To my American readers, this may perhaps give you some hope for our country. I believe like Brooks that we can all be collectively "broken open" and recreate our culture and society for the better and not forever be "broken" because of the tumultuous and dangerous political landscape in which we now live. May the fates decree that will indeed come to pass.
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