Back to the Past

Lyndon Baines Johnson, May 22, 1964, at the University of Michigan:

The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization…. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society….

The Great Society … is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community…. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods….

Worst of all, expansion [of the economy]  is eroding the precious and time-honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference….

The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities….

For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation…Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?...There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree...."

David Brooks, May 9, 2008, everywhere:

It used to be that American conservatives shaped British political thinking. Now the influence is going the other way….

[T]he central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”…They’re trying to use government to foster dense social bonds…. They’re offering something in tune with the times….

American conservatives won’t simply import this model. But there’s a lot to learn from it."

Question: How do these two differ?

Answer: They don't. Both "hunger for community." Both condemn a "soulless wealth." Both promise decentralization. Both believe in the end that community can and should be created by coercion.