The Liberty Bell — a symbol of freedom fractured, yet still standing. Like America’s founding ideals, its crack is a reminder that liberty must be protected not just with pride, but with principle.

In This Article

• Why true conservatism died and why it matters
• How David Brooks represents a larger failure of accountability
• The slippery slope from Bush to Trump
• Why progressivism needs conservative restraint to thrive
• Can democracy be saved without compromising morality?

The Death of True Conservatism and What Comes Next

David Brooks is a thoughtful man. He’s articulate and reflective and genuinely strives to wrestle with the moral and emotional lessons life has handed him. In his recent conversation with Scott Galloway, he spoke openly about the personal transformation he experienced following his divorce — a shift from ambition to connection, from intellectual detachment to emotional depth. It was the kind of self-awareness we wish more public figures had: an acknowledgment that fulfillment comes not from accolades or career prestige but from relationships and humility. That kind of introspection is refreshing in today’s performative outrage and denial culture.

But here’s the thing — reflection without accountability is just polite regret. What Brooks fails to fully grapple with is not his personal failings but his public ones. His career was built, in part, on lending intellectual cover to a conservative movement that steadily abandoned its moral core. From justifying the Bush administration’s overreach to sidestepping the theft of the 2000 election, Brooks — along with many so-called moderates — helped pave the highway to political hell with essays complete with well-meaning caution but no meaningful resistance. For instance, his support for the Iraq War, a conflict that many now see as a grave mistake, is a clear example of his failure to resist the political tide. It’s one thing to feel bad about beliefs you once held. It’s another to pinpoint when you compromised your values, why you did it, and how it contributed to the collapse of the institutions you now claim to defend.

The Meaning of True Conservatism

Let’s define our terms because, too often today, “conservatism” is mistaken for a vague cocktail of tax cuts, deregulation, and cultural grievance. That’s not true conservatism—a branding exercise dressed up in patriotic bunting and sold as moral clarity. Real conservatism, espoused by Edmund Burke, is grounded in humility and the belief that society is a delicate inheritance passed down through generations. It respects institutions' slow, organic evolution and the accumulated wisdom embedded in long-standing traditions. Burke didn’t oppose change; he just insisted it be thoughtful, measured, and guided by a sense of duty to future generations. On this point, David Brooks and I are in complete agreement. He, too, reveres Burke, and in our shared reverence lies a mutual recognition that restraint is not weakness—it’s civilization’s strongest thread.

Then there’s Hamiltonian conservatism, a form of conservatism that understood that a strong, centralized federal government wasn’t the enemy of liberty but the guardian of national cohesion. This form of conservatism, named after Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, saw value in civic order, economic planning, and responsible investment in infrastructure and institutions. It wasn’t writing paeans to Wall Street or deregulation. At its core, true conservatism is about stewardship. It’s about guardrails and boundaries, about knowing the difference between necessary reform and reckless demolition. You don’t burn the house down because you don’t like the wallpaper. You fix what’s broken and preserve what works, not because you fear change but because you respect the fragility of civilization itself. Brooks gets this, too—and it’s precisely why his failure to confront how far we’ve drifted from those ideals makes his silence on inevitable political betrayals all the more painful.

When Restraint Was Replaced by Rush

The slow erosion of conservatism didn’t begin with Trump. It didn’t even start with the Tea Party. It started the moment “respectable” conservatives — people like Brooks and David Frum — justified moral shortcuts in the name of expedience. The 2000 election? Stolen in broad daylight. I know because I lived in the district where much of the theft occurred. Voter rolls purged. Ballots tossed. The will of the people was subverted by a Supreme Court acting like it was auditioning for the Roman Senate.

That was my moment of political transformation—the grease on the slippery slope. The so-called grown-ups in the room—the Brookes and Frums of the world—offered thoughtful commentaries on civic unity while the foundations cracked beneath our feet. Then came Iraq, another moral compromise wrapped in patriotic branding. Frum was even the speechwriter who coined “Axis of Evil.” Look where that axis led us.

The Bootstraps Myth and Conservative Amnesia

Brooks speaks eloquently these days about our crisis of social disconnection, the epidemic of loneliness, and the yearning for moral renewal. He’s not wrong—those are real problems in a fractured society. But even as he emphasizes American life's emotional and spiritual deficits, he still falls back on the familiar conservative refrain of individual responsibility and “bootstraps.” The term' bootstraps' is a metaphor for the idea that everyone has the potential to succeed if they work hard and take responsibility for their actions. The assumption, of course, is that everyone has a fair shot—that the tools for success are evenly distributed and that the moral failing lies with those who don’t use them properly. That’s the comforting myth. But it’s just that—a myth.

In reality, not everyone gets the same pair of boots, let alone the laces. Real conservatism—the kind Brooks and I both revere—should know better. It should be understood that personal responsibility requires a baseline of shared provision. You can’t ask someone to pull themselves up when the boots were stolen by policy and sold off by corporate greed. The factory that made them was shipped to Vietnam or Mexico in the name of “efficiency.” And then not give them the means to purchase them. Suppose we genuinely want people to be responsible citizens. In that case, we must give them structural support: access to healthcare, education, food, shelter, and a functioning legal system. These aren’t socialist luxuries—they are the raw ingredients of a functioning civil society. A real conservative wouldn’t just expect effort from the individual; they’d demand accountability from the system that often sets people up to fail. This underscores the necessity of a supportive system in fostering personal responsibility.

What Progressivism Loses Without Balance

When true conservatism dies, it doesn’t just leave a gap on the right—it destabilizes the entire political spectrum. Progressivism, for all its noble aims, was never meant to operate without a counterbalance. Without principled conservative resistance rooted in tradition, discipline, and institutional respect, progressivism risks drifting into ungrounded idealism or policy overreach. The tension between reform and restraint sharpens both sides, forcing ideas to mature through friction. But with no intellectual friction left—only culture war theatrics—progressive ideas often end up untethered, floating between lofty intention and impractical execution, lacking the rigor that real opposition once demanded. This is why the need for restraint in political decision-making is crucial to maintain the balance in governance.

Meanwhile, the vacuum left by real conservatism has been filled not by thoughtful moderates but by performative radicals. The result is a disoriented left trying to find its footing and a psychotic right bent on vengeance rather than governance. The center no longer holds because it has been hollowed out—replaced with influencers posing as policymakers and demagogues monetizing outrage in ten-second clips. We now exist in a political ecosystem where tribalism is fed by algorithms, fear is repackaged into content, and guardrails are mocked as relics of a bygone civility. The serious adults—those who knew the difference between governing and grandstanding—have either retired, been silenced, or become too afraid to speak without first checking the polls.

When Expediency Becomes a Habit

The real danger isn’t just rooted in past betrayals—it’s in the lesson those betrayals taught future leaders and voters alike: morality is negotiable, especially when power or patriotism is on the line. We’re not talking about villains in some political thriller. We’re talking about men like David Frum and David Brooks—intelligent, educated, well-meaning individuals who lent intellectual cover to disastrous choices. They didn’t lie outright, but they rationalized. They didn’t swing the sword, but they held the sheath. They reassured the public that everything was under control, even as the wheels of justice, diplomacy, and democratic norms slowly emerged. Their mistake wasn’t malice. It was silence when clarity was needed and deference when defiance was required.

This moral ambiguity doesn’t just fade with time—it metastasizes. The message was clear to younger politicians, media figures, and the public. If you wrap your complicity in enough nuance, you can avoid accountability. Bush-era conservatism didn’t collapse because it was attacked—it collapsed because its supposed guardians chose not to guard. It didn’t resist authoritarian drift; it rationalized it, dressed it up in American exceptionalism, and hoped no one would notice the erosion until it was too late. And in doing so, it created a culture where writing an eloquent op-ed about your inner turmoil was seen as a substitute for real courage. That is the true legacy that must be confronted if there’s any hope of rebuilding integrity in our political culture.

Can the Left Survive Its Own Dilemma?

Now, the question has come full circle—only it’s staring directly at the left this time. If the modern right can openly justify authoritarianism in the name of victory, is the left morally permitted—or even obligated—to use extraordinary measures to preserve democracy itself? If elections are no longer fair, if courts become rubber stamps for autocrats, and if the Constitution is bent until it breaks, what then? Are nonviolent norms still sacred, or are they relics of a system already hijacked? These are not academic hypotheticals. They're looming dilemmas, and pretending otherwise is a luxury we can no longer afford. The rules of engagement change when one side no longer plays by the rules.

This puts the left—and anyone who still believes in democratic values—in a brutal moral bind. Do we preserve our ideals at all costs, even if it means losing everything? Or do we adopt a strategy of necessary resistance that may involve force, disobedience, or targeted disruption—not out of malice, but as a last defense against tyranny? Is self-defense of a republic a crime or a duty? These questions are uncomfortable because they challenge the foundations of liberal governance. But suppose we don’t ask them now. In that case, someone else will answer them for us—likely not with a ballot or a court ruling, but with a gavel slammed in finality, or worse, a gun raised in defiance of the democratic experiment itself. History has shown us what happens when people wait too long to face this question. Let’s not repeat it.

We All Compromise — But Can We Admit It?

This isn’t a finger-pointing exercise—it’s a reckoning we all must participate in. At some point, everyone has made a compromise that didn’t sit quite right. We’ve overlooked the warning signs because they were inconvenient, we didn’t want to rock the boat, or we convinced ourselves that the ends would justify the means. That’s part of being human. The issue isn’t whether we’ve made mistakes—of course we have. The real question is what we choose to do with them. Growth doesn’t come from pretending we’ve always been right. It comes from standing in front of the mirror, looking yourself dead in the eye, and saying, “Yeah, I blew that one. Now, what am I going to do about it?”

David Brooks is partway down that road. He’s begun to reflect, to publicly question some of the beliefs and positions he once held. That takes courage. But reflection without full accountability only gets you halfway to redemption. Brooks—and many others like him in the political commentariat—still haven’t owned up to how their voices, their platforms, and their credibility helped normalize the very forces they now lament. They didn't just witness the erosion of democracy—they helped pave the road by softening public resistance. And until that truth is faced head-on, we won’t heal as a nation. Healing without accountability isn’t healing at all. It’s denial with better lighting and a polished tone. It may feel like progress, but it only postpones the reckoning we desperately need.

Burke, the Fourth Turning, and the Call of History

As I’ve been reading Russell Kirk’s seminal work on Edmund Burke, it’s become increasingly clear that Burke himself was shaped by a Fourth Turning moment. This generational upheaval shook the British Empire and culminated in the American Revolution. Burke’s conservatism didn’t emerge in calm waters. It was forged amid chaos, uncertainty, and a dramatic reordering of political authority. He understood deeply that the breakdown of trust in institutions and the collapse of consensus across generations could unravel the very fabric of civilization. That’s why he urged caution—not stagnation, but prudence. Not opposition to change, but respect for the change process through continuity and tradition.

Fast forward to today, and we are again living through what bears all the hallmarks of another Fourth Turning: institutional decay, extreme polarization, economic upheaval, and the rise of demagogues who promise restoration through destruction. Burke would recognize the signs. He would not stand idly by while radical actors—on any side—threaten the survival of constitutional governance. His conservatism was about preservation through adaptation, not submission to chaos. In that spirit, today’s conservative leaders have a choice to make. Not between right and left but between preservation and ruin. This moment calls for integrity above partisanship, for conscience over calculation. Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The time for doing nothing has passed.

True conservatism doesn’t have to be dead. But to bring it back, we have to stop confusing it with tax cuts, deregulation, or religious tribalism. We need thoughtful people who understand limits, tradition, and moral clarity — but also justice, equity, and reality. That’s the balance the founders argued over. That’s what made the American experiment work. If we want that again, we need to stop pretending that “both sides” are always equally flawed and start building a new center — not one made of compromise but of principle.

About the Author

Robert Jennings is the co-publisher of InnerSelf.com, a platform dedicated to empowering individuals and fostering a more connected, equitable world. A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army, Robert draws on his diverse life experiences, from working in real estate and construction to building InnerSelf with his wife, Marie T. Russell, to bring a practical, grounded perspective to life’s challenges. Founded in 1996, InnerSelf.com shares insights to help people make informed, meaningful choices for themselves and the planet. More than 30 years later, InnerSelf continues to inspire clarity and empowerment.

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Article Recap

The death of true conservatism has left America politically unmoored. Voices like David Brooks and David Frum reflect how moral compromises helped shape our political transformation. Without Burkean or Hamiltonian restraint, progressivism lacks balance, and democracy becomes harder to defend. This article explores how we got here — and how we might still find our way back, not by forgetting the past, but by owning it.

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