Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: "Republican Virtues"? I Don't Think So

I've been mulling over a column by David Brooks on "The Politics of Solipsism" for the past couple of weeks. What he wrote is nervy to say the least. He argues that America has lost the republican virtues on which it was founded, namely, the curbing of self-centeredness in the interest of the public good. I too am a fan of Cicero, but Brooks fails in one of the primary republican virtues by not forthrightly acknowledging that Republicans, the adherents of Ayn Rand, are the ones who have most ...