In his most recent essay, A Case of Mental Courage, David Brooks writes that America’s underlying problem is that “there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate.”

That is to say, Brooks laments Americans’ lack¹ of esteem for “mental character.” Hear, hear!

While stereotypes are imperfect, and often dangerous, it seems to me that Brooks has dug down to an important difference between “liberal” and “conservative,” at least as those terms are recognized and represented in the sphere of public media. Dug down to, but not recognized or explored.

Brooks identifies as “mental flabbiness” the unwillingness to confront personal bias. He appropriately deplores herd thinking, confirmation bias, and the rigidity of political debate. All of which are indeed deplorable. Unfortunately, however — and unsurprisingly, given his political bent — Brooks stops short of what he might find a painful insight: the biggest obstacle to the status of mental character is the “conservatives,” not the “liberals².”

Conservatives in politics and the press deride mental character. A striking example of this conservative disdain is the one-liner that badly hurt John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign: “He was for the war before he was against it,” with its implication that to change one’s mind is a character flaw. It’s not. Sadly, too few Democrats thought it would be useful to stand up for mental character; instead many shot back their own “for it before he was against it” quips.³

I’d go on, but it’s late and I’m out of footnote characters4. Regarding other aspects of Brooks’s latest, see the Times’s comments section and, for what I hope are interesting tangents, my footnotes below if you didn’t hop down to them yet.

¹ Brooks might say “loss,” not “lack.” In Brooks’s narrative, mental character is a characteristic men once upon a time valued, if not possessed. (“This emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated.”) He frames mental character as Christian myth frames Virtue or Grace, and like a conservative cleric might argue about the decline of religion, Brooks argues that modern Man has fallen or turned away from mental character, which, like Christian Virtue, is a state Man can only aspire to achieve through constant struggle (and painful struggle at that, though I suspect the arguably vivid allusions in Brooks’s essay to self-flagellation were unintentional).

The mystical fog in which Brooks envelops (or envisions) this “ethos” notwithstanding, he and I agree that society would benefit by placing more value on mental character as he describes and defines.

² The political spectrum isn’t one-dimensional, and I’m generalizing and categorizing,  but not too dangerously, I hope. My characterization, while generally valid, still admits outliers — but they’re exceptions that don’t diminish the value of the characterization. Among media outlets, for example, one “liberal” voice that is unfortunately antithetic to mental character on many issues is the Huffington Post (in contrast to the New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Kos, MediaMatters, and scores of others). A “conservative” voice that thankfully shows considerable respect to mental character is the Atlantic (in contrast to [expletive deleted], National Review, the Washington Times, the New York Post, and scores of others). Such exceptions are relatively few.

³ Here I’ll risk exposing my own confirmation bias with some speculation: at least at first, I believe the Democrats hit back with the same “before he was against it” as one might return a schoolyard punch from a bully. This was quicker and easier than addressing Republicans’ base values. It might also have been less risky, because it’s not clear whether the public cared about candidates’ character more than their success at bullying. In a bullying contest, unfortunately, the conservatives are likely to win. (They’re better bullies by far. To wit: Beck, Limbaugh, Palin.)

4 Ok, I lied. I’m only out of the ones I can type without using the <sup>tag. But it’s still late.