We Can’t Have Both
From David Brooks’ editorial in today’s New York Times:
[W]e can have a culture war in this country, or we can have a war on poverty, but we can’t have both. That is to say, liberals and conservatives can go on bashing each other for being godless hedonists and primitive theocrats, or they can set those differences off to one side and work together to help the needy.
The natural alliance for antipoverty measures at home and abroad is between liberals and evangelical Christians. These are the only two groups that are really hyped up about these problems and willing to devote time and money to ameliorating them. If liberals and evangelicals don’t get together on antipoverty measures, then there will be no majority for them and they won’t get done. (Emphasis mine.)
I don’t always agree with Brooks, and as much as I like today’s editorial, there are still some things I’d quibble with. (His forced distinction between “liberals” and “evangelicals,” for example, isn’t terribly helpful to those of us who are trying to be both liberal and evangelicals. Fortunately, he offers a broader conception of the evangelical world later in his piece.)
That said, it’s truly refreshing to see prominent conservative voices starting to focus more seriously on the issue of poverty and, even better, to call for a little détente in the culture war. We’ve still a long way to go, but if Brooks and Warren are starting to sound like this, perhaps there’s reason to be hopeful.