David Brooks on Moral Courage for a Soulless Age

The Russell Moore Show

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29d ago 59:38

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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

David’s Atlantic article, I Should Have Seen This Coming
Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America by Sam Tanenhaus
David’s article that talks about Alasdair MacIntyre in The Atlantic, Why Do So Many People Think Trump is Good?
Diminish Democracy by Julian J. Rothbaum
The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy by Christopher Lasch
David’s New York Times Article: When Novels Mattered
David’s novel suggestions:

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Selected Essays by Samuel Johnson
Middlemarch by George Eliot

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