The Russell Moore Show David Brooks on Moral Courage for a Soulless Age
David Brooks' Early Buckley Parody
- David Brooks once wrote a mean parody about William F. Buckley at University of Chicago.
- Buckley offered him a job despite the parody, marking Brooks' big break in journalism.
Conservatism's Shift To Outrage
- Shock-value became a conservative marketing strategy in the '90s to rile liberals and sell books.
- This shifted conservatism from a serious ideology to anti-left performance and outrage.
Christian Colleges Offer Moral Formation
- Christian colleges provide a model for spiritual formation and moral vocabulary that the wider world longs for.
- This framework offers outsiders a better way to live and moral seriousness.
What happens when a movement built on moral seriousness gives way to one powered by cruelty, resentment, and nihilism?
In this episode, New York Times columnist David Brooks joins to talk about what he calls one of the greatest ruptures of his lifetime: the implosion of the conservative movement’s moral center.
Drawing from his widely discussed essay in The Atlantic “I Should Have Seen This Coming,” Brooks offers a deeply personal—and deeply unsettling—account of how a reactionary fringe rose to power and reshaped American public life. Together, Moore and Brooks trace the descent from Burkean virtue to clickbait outrage, from civic institutions to “own-the-libs” performance art.
But this conversation doesn’t stop at diagnosis. The two turn toward questions of cultural repair and spiritual renewal: Is there any real possibility of revival—in literature, in politics, in faith? What might it look like to recover a moral vision strong enough to resist the acid of our age?
And what role could Christians play in offering a better way?
Along the way, they talk about why the next spiritual awakening might not look like the last one, the legacy of Tim Keller, how we can engage in conversations on issues of the soul, how the Trump White House culture is different from other presidents’ and whether AI is really going to change American life as much as Moore thinks it will.
This is a candid, searching conversation about what it means to be human in a disordered world—and what kind of moral courage is needed to hold fast when the center does not.
Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guest include:
- How to Know a Person by David Brooks
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David’s Atlantic article, I Should Have Seen This Coming
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Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America by Sam Tanenhaus
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David’s article that talks about Alasdair MacIntyre in The Atlantic, Why Do So Many People Think Trump is Good?
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Diminish Democracy by Julian J. Rothbaum
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The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy by Christopher Lasch
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David’s New York Times Article: When Novels Mattered
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David’s novel suggestions:
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Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
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War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
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Selected Essays by Samuel Johnson
Middlemarch by George Eliot
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