David Brooks on Virtue, Changing Values, and Donald Trump
Relevance…
Our MCN framework includes a commitment to increased understanding of our larger world, including the trends and issues apparent in current political philosophy and implemented policies. While we can and will focus on the Canadian themes, we sense an overwhelming effect of changes occurring on the American scene. Some of these changes are being actively interpreted by those with deep Canadian connections, such as David Frum and David Brooks. We look for insights here as an example of what Timothy Keller popularized as “cultural anthropology.” It’s at the heart of both past foreign missions and, now, of the closer-to-home Missional Church Movement. Can we pick up clues to common interests across the Kingdom-Secular boarderlands so as to better communicate the truths and richness of the Gospel of Christ?
David Brooks identifies himself more as a traditional, more-centrist conservative. He has Jewish roots and converted to Christianity about 10 years ago. He has written some books of keen interest to Christians (as well as the larger public) including:
- The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011)
- Road to Character (2015)
- How to Know a Person (2023)
Our focus article…
Why Do So Many People Think Trump Is Good? – The Atlantic (published 2025 07 08)
While it’s hard not to talk about Donald Trump these days, David Brooks in this article speaks to much more than Trump. He focuses here on deep social trends, with the aid of a framework provided by the late Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre authored After Virtue (1981) which has been described by Newsweek (1981) as “a stunning new study of ethics by one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world.”
Using MacIntyre’s analysis, Brooks writes:
It’s a story that tries to explain how Western culture evolved to the point where millions of us—and not just Republicans and
Trump supporters—have been left unable to make basic moral judgments.
He also writes:
I’d say the decline of a shared morality happened over the past 60 years with the rise of hyper individualism and moral relativism. MacIntyre, by contrast, argued that the loss of moral coherence was baked into the Enlightenment from its start, during the 18th century. The Enlightenment project failed, he argued, because it produced rationalistic systems of morals too thin and abstract to give meaning to actual lives. It destroyed coherent moral ecologies and left autonomous individuals naked and alone. Furthermore, it devalued the very faculties people had long used to find meaning. Reason and science are great at telling you how to do things, but not at answering the fundamental questions: Why are we here? What is the ultimate purpose of my life? What is right and what is wrong?
Later, we find this:
In the 1980s, the philosopher Allan Bloom wrote a book arguing that in a world without moral standards, people just become bland moral relativists: You do you. I’ll do me. None of it matters very much.
And, yes, he describes Trump as a product of his times, as follows:
Along comes Trump, who doesn’t even try to speak the language of morality. When he pardons unrepentant sleazeballs, it doesn’t seem to even occur to him that he is doing something that weakens our shared moral norms. Trump speaks the languages we moderns can understand. The language of preference: I want. The language of power: I have the leverage. The languages of self, of gain, of acquisition. Trump doesn’t subsume himself in a social role. He doesn’t try to live up to the standards of excellence inherent in a social practice. He treats even the presidency itself as a piece of personal property he can use to get what he wants. As the political theorist Yuval Levin has observed, there are a lot of people, and Trump is one of them, who don’t seek to be formed by the institutions they enter. They seek instead to use those institutions as a stage to perform on, to display their wonderful selves.
Towards the end of his article, Brooks writes:
We’re not walking away from pluralism, nor should we. In fact, pluralism is the answer. The pluralist has the ability to sit within the tension created by incommensurate values. A good pluralist can celebrate the Enlightenment, democratic capitalism, and ethnic and intellectual diversity on the one hand and also a respect for the kind of permanent truths and eternal values that MacIntyre celebrates on the other.
Getting access…
If unable to acquire the article otherwise, I have a complimentary copy, here, for limited study and small-group access. It’s protected, so please access me for access.
Note of interest: As of posting date here, it appears that more than 7.8K comments and shares have been recorded for this article.
This page by: Ron Richmond
First published: 2025/07/16/