Writing in The Atlantic last week, the columnist David Brooks — the kind of Whiggish moderate conservative rendered politically homeless and functionally irrelevant by Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party — explained that he is very worried indeed.

With mounting horror, the veteran pundit recounted watching not only the growing authoritarianism of the current administration, but also the abject failure of America’s democratic institutions to rein it in, despite “drawing on thinkers going back to Cicero and Cato.” (Pop quiz for history buffs: Who here knows exactly how effective Cicero and Cato were at preventing tyranny?) While hand-wringing that the brutal instincts Trump represents could endure long after his time in office concludes, Brooks writes that “For the United States, the question of the decade is: Why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here?”

It is ironic that Brooks’ plaintive cri de cœur was published only days before the latest mass “No Kings” protests, which he offers only the briefest acknowledgment; it is probably safe to assume that millions of Americans did not take to the streets simply because David Brooks told them to. Yet his screed is enlightening, although probably not in the manner he intended.

“Will enough Americans rise up to reverse the tide of populist authoritarianism?” Brooks asks. “The Filipinos did it under Marcos. One morning the autocrats woke up and were no longer in control; the marchers were. That needs to happen here.” America needs a mass movement of resistance, and thankfully, Brooks is here to tell us exactly what it should look like.

The longtime New York Times opinion columnist writes longingly of a bygone alliance between populists and progressives that was “economically left, socially center right, and hellbent on reform.” A........

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