Viewpoint: David Brooks

last updated 8 January 2015

“There are now two conservatives in this country for every liberal. Why aren’t there more liberals? It’s not because recent events have disproved the liberal worldview. On the contrary, we’re still recovering from a financial crisis caused, in large measure, by Wall Street excess. Americans may agree with liberal diagnoses, but they don’t trust the instrument the Democrats use to solve problems. They don’t trust the federal government. It’s not because they dislike individual programs like Medicare. It’s more likely because they think the whole system is rigged. Or to put it in the economists’ language, they believe the government has been captured by rent-seekers—interest groups seeking to capture its power and money.”

David Brooks in The New York Times