Arthur C. Brooks Quotes
Conservatives have long stayed away from fairness debates.
What makes this quotation particularly interesting is that The American Enterprise Institute is a highly conservative “think tank” and Brooks himself, a leading conservative. Usually, conservatives are chided by the rest of the political spectrum for ignoring issues of fairness. In this case, an influential conservative not only admits this, but his article argues that it is desirable not to consider fairness in political decision making. Since conservative parties generally represent the more affluent members of a society, fairness arguments rarely help that constituency and are typically avoided by conservatives. However, few admit that. Here is an exception.
Arthur C. Brooks, President, American Enterprise Institute, “Fighting Words,” The Washington Post, April 24, 2011
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The reason this quotation is important, it was the first time in American history that a President had tied racial discrimination to morality. Before that other Presidents had argued against segregation on pragmatic grounds or on legal, Constitutional grounds. Kennedy’s private moral declaration had a huge impact on Black leaders throughout the country who heard about it by word of mouth. That statement forged a bond between JFK and Blacks while most whites did not see anything striking in the statement.
AEI, though a conservative think-tank, with this approach departed far from the then current Republican Party that was highly influenced or even controlled by the Tea Party faction.
Rodriquez was an indigenous Indian who came to power with the startling victory of Evo Morales, also an Indian in a country where the Indians comprise the majority of the population but have had virtually no political power and been discriminated against by Bolivian governments since the country became independent of Spain. Many whites feared the new elective revolution fearing that the Indian’s in government would turn the tables and do exactly what they had done in distributing the nation’s limited wealth—namely direct it primarily to the whites and elites to the relative exclusion of the Indians. Rodriguez claimed that the intention of their administration was otherwise.
Jackson was a great champion of equality and equal rights, but for whites only. He had no problem with Negro Slavery and had a major bias against Indians. He was the only U. S President to refuse to obey a decision of the Supreme Court when he forced the removal of the Cherokee Indians from their lands and forced them to the Oklahoma Territory.
Arthur C. Brooks is an American social scientist, musician, and contributing opinion writer for The Washington Post. He was the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, for a decade. As of July 2019, he joined the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. Brooks has researched the junctions between culture, economics, and politics. He is the author of 11 books, including two New York Times best sellers: The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise (2012) and The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America (Broadside Books, 2015). Politically, he is a center-right independent and a libertarian.
