David Brooks Wants to Be Edmund Burke

The key to understanding David Brooks is to understand his obsession with Edmund Burke.  Of course, if the hands of David Brooks, it manifests itself as a kind of pop-Burkeanism that completely misses the key insights of Edmund Burke.

I just know Brooks was super pleased with himself when he argued that neither the Democrats nor the Republics had the magic lever to fix the economy and therefore, we should do a little of everything, but basically do nothing.  On its face it sounds kinda Burkean, right?  Of course, Brooks got it wrong.  As PK pointed out, what Krugman and others are recommending for the economy is based on hard-won, time-tested wisdom; throwing it away is radical, not conservative: 

[R]ealizing that there’s a lot you can do to reverse a short-term slump isn’t magical thinking — it’s what basic macroeconomics, what we learned through hard thinking and hard experience, tells us. Rejecting all that may sound judicious, but it’s actually an act of intellectual amnesia.

Burke was suspicious of theory, but macroeconomics - at its best - is not merely theoretical.  Macroeconomics is a historical, empirically-based enterprise whereby theory is honed over time and in accord with the lessons of history.  I'm no Burke scholar, but no Burkean would advocate turning our backs on the lessons of history; Burke was suspicious of a priori arguments, he was not anti-rationality. 

Actually, it is the freshwater economists that are making the kind of a priori arguments Burke regarded with suspicion.  But the alternative to purely theoretical, a priori arguments is not superstition, it is respect for empiricism, tradition and history - a method more clearly embraced by today's saltwater economists.  When Brooks called macroeconomic theory magical, he was not channeling Edmund Burke, he was channeling a villager from a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. 

Meanwhile, Republicans want to introduce a Constitutional Amendment forever tying spending to the previous year's GDP.  The economy could be melting down (which it is), the previous year's GDP could crater, aliens could land, doesn't matter - we can only spend 18% of the previous year's GDP.  You think Brooks knows that Edmund Burke might not think this is a great idea?  I'm gonna guess he doesn't.