Ezra Klein: So Brooksian

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February 08, 2005

So Brooksian

Brooks's latest column is so, ugh, Brooksian. Billed as a short history of Deanism, it tries and fails to connect Howard Dean to the breakdown of fraternal orders. Or something. I'm really not sure, but I do know that PZ Myers did an excellent job gutting it:

Ooh, there [Brooks] goes, treating some nice words as if they were smutty slanders. "Secular" is a virtue: we live in a secular state, which means it carries out its functions without requiring specific religious beliefs of its citizens. It does not mean that we hunt down and persecute Christians, much as the religious right would like you to think it is so.

"Embodying the educated class" is also a lovely advantage to me. He makes it sound like some narrow, weird group of people with freakish habits, but I think he's just trying to play that divisive red-blue state game. Guess what? Alabama is full of educated people! So is Idaho! And Florida! Even Texas, although I understand they have to hide in armed enclaves. Those people we're electing to the Senate and House of Representatives and White House? Educated. Judges? Educated. Even Republicans go off to universities to learn things.

So I guess I don't understand Brooks' game. He seems to be declaring the Democrats and especially Howard Dean's clan to be the party of really smart people who like to learn things. What does that make the Republicans?

February 8, 2005 in Republicans | Permalink

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» Secular is good from Life and Deatherage
From PZ Myers , via Ezra Klein , on David Brooks and other conservatives using secular as if it means anti-Christian : Ooh, there [Brooks] goes, treating some nice words as if they were smutty slanders. [Read More]

Tracked on Feb 8, 2005 4:44:20 AM

» The Rise of "Deanism" from Doubly Sure
But I guess the largest point is this: what's wrong with college-town liberalism? Even though it may be homogeneous group of people cut off from the rest of the world, it's the right way to do things, right? A general concern for others, an interest ... [Read More]

Tracked on Feb 8, 2005 2:12:45 PM

Tracked on Feb 13, 2005 2:26:30 AM

Comments

At last somebody gets it.

Posted by: Nora Ingram | Feb 8, 2005 7:19:00 AM

damn, i read the column in my localbig-time paper and i felt appalled.

first, brooks is a grad of the univ of chicago, which is not some damn diploma mill.

and i bet he doesn't belong to any of those fraternal organizations he mentions. i wouldn't doubt it if some of them, in the past, discriminated against jews.

brooks if jewish.

ezra, and all those who read this, it would be a better spending of time if we write the powers that be at the ny times and ask them not to renew his contract when it expires -- or fire him -- or whatever, but get him away from the times' editorial page.

sorry, but do as i say and not as i do is terrible advise for any adult. it's bad enough that adults say that to children.

Posted by: harry near indy | Feb 8, 2005 8:52:06 AM

I'll try to summarize Brooks by cutting out the Norman Rockwell claptrap:
--
Plagiarizing Putnam's Bowling Alone, but without any sense of cause-and-effect, Brooks notes that America's communal life, once decentralized and local, has been increasingly edged out by organizations centered among the coastal elites. These centralized organizations use the money of the rest of America, whose actual company they would disdain, to run their operations for the benefit of the educated classes in charge of them. All these organizations want is the money of the "middle class" (whatever that is).

But wait! Here comes the political angle. Democrats take money from the educated classes; so their organizations run by, get this, the same kind of people who give the money! There's something fundamentally undemocratic about that because these organizations purport to represent America, since they don't take money from the people who can't afford to give money.

Repugs, however, take money from the "middle class" (read: the working poor; retirees; the uneducated), and so their organizations represent what America really is.
--
That's as much sense as I can make of this: Repugs represent America because they take money from poor people, too. There's some incidental Dean-bashing and a wistful look back to fraternal organizations (which were, I presume, limited in membership to white men, and presumably not Jews like Brooks), and there's a sense that organizations should create a kind of communal life too but he pretty much drops that argument. If my summary doesn't make much sense, don't blame me: blame Brooks.

Posted by: Karl the Idiot | Feb 8, 2005 10:35:10 AM

Or, uh, blame me:

Democrats take money from the educated classes; so their organizations are run by, get this, the same kind of people who give the money! There's something fundamentally undemocratic about that because although these organizations purport to represent America, they don't take money from the people who can't afford to give money.

Now, he gets to work . . .

Posted by: Karl the Idiot | Feb 8, 2005 10:37:24 AM

What does that make the Republicans?

Why PZ Meyers, it makes them idiots!

Posted by: Padraig | Feb 8, 2005 1:32:45 PM

Must like Karl - he cuts to the bone.

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