David Brooks, Token LARP Conservative, Can No Longer Protect the Left

David Brooks: Those Of Us Trying To Rebut Trump Have The Disadvantage That "Our Elites Really Do Stink"

And this is an advantage," Brooks said during a discussion of possible Clinton-DNC collusion.

"It was sort of an open secret that the DNC was on Hillary Clinton’s side," Brooks said on Friday's NewsHour. "We saw it from the schedule of the debates all through the year. They didn’t want to have them, because they didn’t want to give Sanders the platform."

"This goes beyond what even I imagined was the level of collusion. It’s a pretty sleazy economic takeover of a party apparatus, against the bylaws of that apparatus. It’s just not something a normal campaign that respects institutions and how things should work should do. And so they colluded, apparently, according to Donna Brazile, in a pretty major way. And if you were a Sanders person, you have every right to be completely upset," the NYT columnist said.

"OPEN SECRET"?? Just like the massive sexual corruption of other Leftist organizations, they knew; it was obvious; they ignored and denied it. They, the MSM, COLLUDED with the "inevitable Hillary" crowd, INSTEAD of doing any investigative reporting whatsoever. They are all sleaze, all the time, including David Brooks, the Token Play-like Conservative on PBS, etc.

Penetrating The Establishment Mental Armament: Nope.

Astonishingly, the Establishment Losers Have Learned Nothing

Trump fans are not all racists and xenophobes. A lot of conservatives have used the same kind of leftist slanders to tar these people that helped alienate them in the first place, hence the way Trump’s rejection of political correctness is always cited as a yuge part of his appeal. Sure, some of the people who glommed onto his campaign are freaks, but anyone who has ever been around any campaign knows that they all attract a few weirdos who won’t ever shut up. And while the media will never, ever interview the La Raza creeps with the Mexican flags and the unironic signs reading “U.S. Out of North America” at Sanders rallies, they’ll swarm all over the IQ-challenged self-proclaimed “Nordic activist” drawn to a Trump rally.

True, Trump’s followers refuse to follow the rules of the PC kabuki dance that coastal elitists instinctively adhere to when discussing issues of race, sex, or Islam. That doesn’t make them terrible – it just makes them honest. Sure, the coastal types who carefully refer to illegal aliens as “undocumented workers” may frown when some guy from Phoenix calls these criminals what they are – you think the kind of citizen who supports Trump would get a pass if he broke the law? – but it’s the elitists who are the liars. It’s the elitists using PC to cover up the truth about the economic disruption and crime illegals cause, not the Trump voters. The elitists need to change, not the Trump fans.

But, of course, change is the one thing Brooks never even considers. Sure, he now acknowledges the need to socialize with people outside of Manhattan, by which he no doubt means flying to Iowa next time and awkwardly picking at a plate of French toast in some diner adjacent to a couple farmers in John Deere caps, silently wondering if the butter was locally sourced and counting the minutes until his flight back to La Guardia. But Brooks displays no intention whatsoever of altering any of his views based upon what he claims to have learned. Illegal immigration? Nope, he’s still at “Shut up racists.” Guns? Nope, he’s still at “Let me determine what few weapons you hicks should be glad I allow you to keep.” Obama? Nope, he’s still at “We can’t possibly actually oppose him – look at those creases!”

See Brooks, you and your buddies haven’t really learned anything because you haven’t shown any inclination to change anything. Deep down – actually, not that deep down – you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. You think your own base is stupid and easily led, and you’re just mad because they are too smart to let you and your ilk lead them anymore.

It's not important that the establishment "learn" anything. It's important that they be permanently deposed from their elite thrones, and divested of their presumptive powers. True conservatives have known for a very long time that David Brooks is no conservative. He is the token RINO on PBS, and his opinion columns are never as close to the Right as they are to the Left.

And the "pants crease" incident betrayed Brooks' racism: like Harry Reid, Brooks thinks blacks are unable to have pants with actual creases, unable not to smell bad, unable not to speak ebonics, or unable somehow to simulate white elitism. The pants crease was the credential that elevated Obama out of "blackness" and into a separate class of eliteness which was understood and favored by Brooks. Brooks is one of the elites that will never receive actual consequences that cause him enough pain to actually change.

David Brooks, Terrified by "Real Conservatives"

From Ben Shapiro:

NYT’s ‘Conservative’ Brooks: Actual Conservatives Are ‘Dangerous’

"New York Times “conservative” columnist David Brooks released Tuesday an all-out assault on grassroots conservatives, name-checking Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Newt Gingrich, Ben Carson, and Rush Limbaugh in the process.

“Basically,” writes Brooks, “the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own.”

Full-scale panic has now set in among members of the Republican establishment. Last week, the Wall Street Journal lamented the “Republican crack-up” after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) dropped out of the Speakership race, whining, “The listless economy, the failure to repeal ObamaCare or secure the border – all these disappointments supposedly can be blamed on GOP leaders who don’t fight hard enough.”

Rep. Peter King (R-NY)said that Republicans were openly weeping in closets in the Capitol after McCarthy’s decision.

Now that establishment favorite Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) appears to be short of the votes necessary to replace Speaker of the House
Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), the Republican freak-out has reached epic proportions.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said, “His critics are not true conservatives. They are radical populists who neither understand nor accept the institutions, procedures and traditions that are the basis of constitutional governance.”

That strong language, especially coming in defense of a man who helped Boehner ram through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the auto bailout, and confiscation of CEO bonuses in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse, and who backs immigration legislation and budget deals that make many conservatives shudder.

But Brooks takes the cake. He describes conservatives variously as “bombastic, hyperbolic, and imbalanced,” as well as “dangerous.”

If ever anyone wondered why the conservative base feels uneasy about coastal Republican elites, this column answers that particular question.

In his column, Brooks describes conservatism as “intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible.”

But these are means, not principles. Incrementalism is generally a wonderful idea, since stability is a necessary precondition of freedom in a well-governed society. But incrementalism ceases to become an option when Democrats ram the hardest-left measures in American history down Americans’ throats while ending the filibuster, expanding the authority of the executive branch, and using legislative gambits to avoid Republican buy-in for their power grabs. Conservatism sees incrementalism as a defense to big government power – but once big government has the power, those defenses become useless.

Brooks, like many of his establishment friends, sees no real threat to constitutional principles from the left. He continues to maintain the myth that “Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love.”

What chains of affection are those? The chains of affection between those who love liberty and limited government, and those who wish to grow government unendingly and label their opponents racist and bigots to achieve that end? What, precisely, is David Brooks smoking?

Whatever it is, it’s making Brooks rather loosey-goosey about the state of the country:

“Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced. Public figures are prisoners of their own prose styles, and Republicans from Newt Gingrich through Ben Carson have become addicted to a crisis mentality. Civilization was always on the brink of collapse. Every setback, like the passage of Obamacare, became the ruination of the republic. Comparisons to Nazi Germany became a staple. This produced a radical mind-set.”

No wonder Brooks thinks things are hunky dory – or at least were, up until those loutish conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, the moving forces behind Republican victory in 1994, showed up. Brooks never worries about the left. They’re all just bound by those “chains of affection,” as well as a shared love of creased khaki pants – a love that knows no political boundaries, as Brooks said in 2005:

I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant…and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.

In 2006, the man now chiding conservatives for not trusting establishment types wrote a column titled “Run, Barack, Run.”

Those of us who actually watch President Obama on a daily basis recognize the inherent threat he and his supporters represent. That isn’t a false crisis mentality. That’s reality. Not every comparison to Nazi Germany is justified; most aren’t. But refusing to guard against the possibility of tyranny makes tyranny inevitable.

Brooks says the real problem is those troglodyte conservatives and their hatred for political compromise. “Politics is the process of making decisions amid diverse opinions,” he writes. “It involves conversation, calm deliberation, self-discipline, the capacity to listen to other points of view and balance valid but competing ideas and interests. But this new Republican faction regards the messy business of politics as soiled and impure. Compromise is corruption.”

No, actually. Compromising without resort to principle is corruption. And that’s just what Brooks wants. Because, after all, “Running a government is a craft, like carpentry.” Brooks simply refuses to recognize that perhaps
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Barack Obama took a torch to the construction site long ago."

Brooks long ago jumped ship into the roiling sea of Leftist confusion between truth and fiction. On rare occasions I watch PBS News Hour, and along come Brooks and Shield. Shield is an unabashed uber-Left socialista, and Brooks is supposed to give conservative balance (I think that's why he's there). As shown above by Shapiro, a "good" conservative is defined as one who rubber stamps whatever the Left does. That is "good" compromise, better even than the Hegelian thesis/antithesis/synthesis, by going straight to synthesis without being obstructionist.

Brooks has for some time blown his "conservative" cover.

Be Kind: Give Shapiro a click HERE, for a good article which deserves it.

David Brooks Tries To Advise “Secularists”

Building Better Secularists

Brooks is that pseudo-conservative who haunts talking head shows, and he’s the one who is just slightly less Leftist than the other people on the panel. That qualifies him as the token right winger, although it’s debatable whether he has ever actually seen one, himself. In this particular article, Brooks analyzes Atheists, who he mislabels as “secularists”. One can be a secularist without being an Atheist, of course. But apparently to Brooks, secularists are exactly Atheists but without that pejorative moniker.

Brooks has some insights which miss, and some come close yet fail to satisfy. For example, he thinks that it must be difficult, perhaps stressful, to come up with one’s own moral system:

” But I can’t avoid the conclusion that the secular writers are so eager to make the case for their creed, they are minimizing the struggle required to live by it. Consider the tasks a person would have to perform to live secularism well:

• Secular individuals have to build their own moral philosophies. Religious people inherit creeds that have evolved over centuries. Autonomous secular people are called upon to settle on their own individual sacred convictions.”

Brooks has applied his own moral twist on Atheism. He doesn’t seem to realize that Atheists desperately want to create their own “sacred convictions”, which basically just match their habitual behaviors, desires, and make them comfortable in their self-perception of elitism. It’s no sweat, it’s a labor of love, this self-adornment with elitist moral authority and the perception of moral privilege which that entails. It’s not that they are “called upon” to do so; it’s that they crave doing it, escaping from external moral rules and controls, escaping external moral authority, and escaping external authority of all other types, too. (Death and Taxes can be reduced to just death; why pay taxes?) Doing so is what Atheism is all about. Brooks' concern is, well, absurd.

Not stopping to think about Atheist morals for too long, Brooks charges into “community”:

” Secular individuals have to build their own communities. Religions come equipped with covenantal rituals that bind people together, sacred practices that are beyond individual choice. Secular people have to choose their own communities and come up with their own practices to make them meaningful.”

Atheists have no problem finding like-thinking people. They love their echo-chambers on the web, their political affiliations, and even their own “churches”. There are humanist organizations, free-thinker organizations and Atheist groups in every town of any size. And finding one’s own community applies to everyone, doesn’t it? Why should Atheists be burdened more than anyone else? It’s absurd.

On he goes:

” Secular individuals have to build their own Sabbaths. Religious people are commanded to drop worldly concerns. Secular people have to create their own set times for when to pull back and reflect on spiritual matters.”

No. Nonono. No, they don’t. They don’t even have to acknowledge any spiritual component to their existence at all. Is there another term for absurd? I seem to be using it a lot here.

Only in the following does he get close to half right:

” Secular people have to fashion their own moral motivation. It’s not enough to want to be a decent person. You have to be powerfully motivated to behave well. Religious people are motivated by their love for God and their fervent desire to please Him. Secularists have to come up with their own powerful drive that will compel sacrifice and service.”

Atheists are motivated somewhat by what is legal, and no more than that. But there is no motivation even possible which can create empathy in those who are elite, moral, and superior in every way already. For such people, the concept of decency merely means that they should share their superiority with others in a fashion which others cannot refuse without being condemned as morally evil. So Atheists, who are tautologically moral under their own systems of personal morality, are already “decent”, in the same sense that they are “empathetic”: it follows because they are perfect, according to their own standards. But these aren’t the actual motivators for Atheist activism. That’s up next, though.

Skipping down in Brooks’ article, we see that Atheists need to gen up a little more passion for their belief set:

” It seems to me that if secularism is going to be a positive creed, it can’t just speak to the rational aspects of our nature. Secularism has to do for nonbelievers what religion does for believers — arouse the higher emotions, exalt the passions in pursuit of moral action…

The only secularism that can really arouse moral motivation and impel action is an enchanted secularism, one that puts emotional relations first and autonomy second.”

Well, Atheism is already an emotional, passionate pursuit of autonomy… and personal superiority. So they don’t really need an “enchanted secularism”. They already have their enchanted Leftist Utopianism, the three-class system for Class War, a defined set of Victimhood and Oppressor Classes, and university/political forums from which to fight the Class War, which is waged on a society which is inferior to themselves. And they are quite happy in savaging dissenters with high volume hatred, in the form of name-calling and personal assassination, followed up with legal definitions of hate crimes.

Brooks is out to lunch. Or maybe he should GO out to lunch and meet some of the folks he’s trying to analyze. His viewpoint seems to come from being too cloistered, himself.

I didn’t read the legions of comments, but I bet he got some hot ones.