When Democracy Fractures: What Neocons Taught Us About Moral Collapse

An American citizen holding nothing but a cellphone gets shot 10 times in the back by law enforcement. Half the country sees a tragedy. The other half sees justice served.

This isn't hyperbole—it's the reality David Frum described in his latest podcast, detailing the Minneapolis shootings that have exposed America's fracturing moral consensus. ICE agents are conducting warrantless home raids, detaining wrong people, dragging citizens into Minnesota streets in their underwear. Reports of deaths in custody are emerging. Yet a "determined minority" continues defending these actions while the majority recoils.

The Unthinkable Becomes Debatable

What's most disturbing isn't just the violence—it's that basic constitutional rights have become partisan talking points. The right to record police activity? Controversial. The right to bear arms legally? Depends on your skin color and accent, apparently. The right to due process? Only if you're the "right kind" of American.

Frum's stark observation cuts deep: "MAGA people carry guns at their events and don't expect to be executed for it, but other Americans don't have those rights." We're witnessing the emergence of a two-tiered citizenship system, where constitutional protections apply selectively.

As Trump's first year accelerates toward the 2026 midterms, the question looms: if this is year one, what does year three look like?

Neoconservative Wisdom for Democratic Crisis

New York Times columnist David Brooks offers an unexpected prescription: look to the neoconservatives of the 1930s-1960s for answers. Not the Iraq War neocons of popular imagination, but the original thinkers who emerged from a City College dining hall in Depression-era New York.

The story begins with young Jewish immigrants like Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer—former Trotskyites who occupied "Alcove 1" in the CCNY cafeteria, intellectually demolishing the Stalinists in "Alcove 2." These future neoconservatives learned a crucial lesson from the 1960s social upheaval: *life is really complicated*, and most policies fail.

Their core insight? Politics isn't just about economics—it's about "*nurturing the right kind of values.*" As political scientist James Q. Wilson put it in 1985, everything from education to fiscal policy should "inculcate certain virtues"—basic bourgeois values like showing up on time, working hard, treating neighbors decently.

The Conservative Crack-Up

But Brooks witnessed conservatism's moral deterioration firsthand. In the 1980s, working at National Review, he encountered a new breed of conservative—graduates from elite schools like Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza from Dartmouth. Unlike traditional conservatives who were "pro-conservative," these figures were "*anti-left*."

The defining moment came during 1980s anti-apartheid protests. When students erected symbolic shantytowns representing South African suffering, The Dartmouth Review editors arrived with *sledgehammers* and destroyed them. "That's not America," Brooks recalls thinking. "That's Goebbels. That is really thuggish fascism."

Today's Trump administration follows the same pattern: Stephen Miller (Duke), Pete Hegseth (Princeton), J.D. Vance (Yale Law)—all "*oppositional nihilists*" who attended elite schools but emerged hating what they found there.

The New Class War

Brooks predicts the Republican Party will remain a "*working-class party for our lifetime*"—a dramatic shift from the bankers' party of old. The 2024 election confirmed that *education level*, not income, now best predicts voting patterns.

This reflects a deeper structural problem: the Information Age economy rewards the top 20% with education while leaving others behind. Across Western democracies, highly educated elites are creating what Brooks calls a "*caste system based upon education and inherited privilege.*"

When people see this 20% rigging the game "generation after generation," Brooks argues, "they're gonna flip the table." That's why populism isn't uniquely American—it's erupting everywhere democratic societies have failed to address Information Age inequality.

The Path Forward: Rupture and Repair

Brooks advocates for what he calls "*rupture and repair*"—the same process individuals use to heal from trauma. Rather than pursuing mass prosecutions of Trump officials, he suggests America needs to "turn the page" and offer something different.

His historical parallel: the 1920s-30s saw vicious anti-immigration movements and semi-fascist figures like Father Charles Coughlin. They were discredited not by prosecutors but by events—the Depression, World War II, and America's subsequent triumph. The phrase "America First" became toxic for 65 years until Trump resurrected it.

But Frum pushes back: that discrediting required the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and Pearl Harbor—a "string of things so dramatic, it's very unlikely to repeat." Without such catastrophic wake-up calls, will Trump-era authoritarianism simply evolve into a smarter, more disciplined version?