Brooks longs for national socialism, knowing full well that it is precisely the system of government we have now. What is missing, in his mind, is the public spirit essential to making it thrive, the civil religion of statism. This is what the federal government started with Lincoln, and has tried to foster from McKinley to Clinton. This is why Brooks's article is not only wrong, but also evil. But in his apparently triumphalist article, Brooks is whistling past the D.C. graveyard.
National socialism is no longer an option.
It's been tried, and it's failed. The locus of national life has at least shifted outside the beltway. Few care anymore what Washington has to say, and fewer still believe it when they hear it. Even more importantly, the fear that once restrained fundamental criticism of the government is largely gone. And this fact, more than any other, is what is driving the power elite out of their living minds.