David Brooks recently posted a spurned-lover complaint at the New York Times (New York Times Article Here) where he judiciously plays with the historical facts regarding his affaire de coeur with the Republican Party.
**All quotes New York Times**
Brooks is a well-known shill for the Repugnantcans; but his op-ed article truly spin-doctors reality into, well, a John Ford Western.
Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order.
Never mind history, Mr. Brooks; us Americans, the mainstream, we're not really interested in facts, are we? We sooooooo want to have the Republican face romanticized for us:
They would begin every day by reminding themselves of the concrete ways people build orderly neighborhoods, and how those neighborhoods bind a nation. They would ask: What threatens Americans’ efforts to build orderly places to raise their kids? The answers would produce an agenda: the disruption caused by a boom and bust economy; the fragility of the American family; the explosion of public and private debt; the wild swings in energy costs; the fraying of the health care system; the segmentation of society and the way the ladders of social mobility seem to be dissolving.
Wow... what a laundry list. Where to start... how about, it was Patron Saint Ronald Reagan who first endangered the ability to give our children quality education, by slashing school budgets and forcing schools to give up LUNCHES FOR THE LOWER CLASSES. Do we know what "Class warfare" is, Mr. Brooks? Apparently, we don't want to deal with that tiny little factoid from reality-based society, do we?
Or how about the fragility of the American family and the explosion of public and private debt, or in fact everything else in your little list, caused by the August 1981 tax cut for the extremely wealthy, followed very closely by the tax HIKE that redistributed the responsibility for Reagan's Cold War budget to that American family you rhetorically mollify here?
Do you understand the term "redistribution of wealth", Mr. Brooks, at all??? Well, that's what REAGAN did; he redistributed the wealth of 99% of Americans into the hands of the upper 1%! Those "ladders of social mobility" were thereby dissolved, when that same 1% decided they weren't willing to share the fruits of their corporate legislative labors... you know, the ones that stripped out pretty much every bit of regulation? Yeah, those. The ones that are causing this global warming, class stratification, financial collapse, and probably the swine flu outbreak, those are the results of your paramour's work over the last 28 years.
And oh... did anyone tell you how well that farce called "trickle-down economics" turned out for "social mobility"??? Probably not. Probably you got your statistics on that from Rush Limbaugh.
Instead, you have to be the typical hypocritical idiot conservative and twist the reality around to blame the Democrats:
President Obama has made responsibility his core theme and has emerged as a calm, reassuring presence (even as he runs up the debt and intervenes rashly in sector after sector).
Yes, we all know what a "back-handed compliment" is. And then, because that just isn't enough, you have to go on and blame the people who REALLY have had no hand in the downfall of the nation, liberals, because you and your ilk have made liberalism a bad word:
Then they will have to explain that there are two theories of civic order. There is the liberal theory, in which teams of experts draw up plans to engineer order wherever problems arise. And there is the more conservative vision in which government sets certain rules, but mostly empowers the complex web of institutions in which the market is embedded.
It's this kind of verbal feces that the less-educated has eaten up like Soylent Green, thanks to the mind-numbing bleating of Fox News, the Family Resource Center, the American Enterprise Institute, et al, that has progressives and liberals blacklisted from being able to fulfill their true destiny, and direct this broken-rudder ship of a nation back to where the founding fathers and mothers (most of them liberals, or did you not read your history either, a la Dubya?) charted the course 230+ years ago.
First and foremost, Mr. Brooks, your version of "liberal theory" is a pathetic and gross distortion of reality. Liberals and progressives aren't the reactionary ones; historically, that label belongs firmly in the conservative world. Because I know you barely know how to read, Mr. Brooks, here is the online Webster definition of "Liberal":
a person who is liberal: as a: one who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox, traditional, or established forms or ways; b: a member or supporter of a liberal political party c: an advocate or adherent of liberalism especially in individual rights
And, the definition of "progressive":
a: one that is progressive b: one believing in moderate political change and especially social improvement by governmental action
Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that, by definition,nature, and inclination, liberals and progressives are PRO-ACTIVE, meaning it is US who want the government to establish the rules, but not in a manner that allows the soul-less "free market" to determine the directions and exigencies of the financial game. Never mind theory here; 28 years of empirical evidence have shown how dismal a failure that particular bit of conservative brainpower was.
But I find the denouement of Mr. Brooks' article most laughable:
Both of these visions are now contained within the Democratic Party. The Republicans know they need to change but seem almost imprisoned by old themes that no longer resonate. The answer is to be found in devotion to community and order, and in the bonds that built the nation.
It is most ironic to equate the present status of the Democratic Party with both the conservative AND the liberal ideologies. It is certainly more true than any true progressive is comfortable with, as I can attest.
But the most gut-busting cri de coeur here is your belief that the Republican Party has EVER been devoted to community and order. Except, perhaps, among the upper 1%, in their protective, gated communities and their executive office suites and their multi-million-dollar bonuses. It is, and always has been, the avowed goal of the Republicans and conservatives to empower the few at the expense of the many. And that is the very antithesis of community, and creates nothing but disorder.
Put that on your cracker and chew.