Ok, Brooks, unlike Buchanan didn't actually write a book with some blatantly racists themes.
"The book "Suicide of a Superpower" contained chapters titled "The End of White America" and "The Death of Christian America." Critics called the book racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, charges Buchanan denied"
http://news.yahoo.com/pat-buchanan-msnbc-015053514.html
Buchanan lashed out at "blacklisters."
"I know these blacklisters," he wrote. "They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats and off-the-record meetings. They work in the dark because, as Al Smith said, nothing un-American can live in the sunlight."
I can't pretend I'll particularly miss him over at MSNBC. What I really found interesting in a recent interview he had on CSPAN about the book is how he continues to demonize affirmative action even though he was the midwife for affirmative action while in the Nixon Administration-he started the Philadelphia Plan at Nixon's direction. Must be something to spend your whole life railing against your own law.
But what about David Brooks. He hasn't written anything racist but Charles Murray has and Brooks sure seems impressed with Murray.
Just recently again he was griping about the "materialist fallacy" that misses the fine work of Murray. Don't get me wrong, he criticizes Murray too, of course. He's not a conservative or liberal, he's just nonpartisan and "centrist."
For Brooks centrism always means you find the mean point of an argument. If anyone fits Krugman's "opinions differ" people it's David Brooks. If Hitler were alive maybe he'd be impatient with these unreasonable liberals who argue that Hitler shouldn't gas Jews, rather than just fewer like Brooks believes they should call for.
Are 6 million Jews being killed? Let's demand they only kill 3 million in the future. What never seems to happen is that in the face of a rdiculous argument you just say it's rdiculous rather than "compromise" between a ridiculous argument and a non-ridiculous one. Opinions differ.
What about Brooks? He's a twit that is too dumb to realize what he's saying. Buchannan knows better.
ReplyDeleteAnd, there's this nice take down of Brooks for your reading pleasure: http://doghouseriley.blogspot.com/2012/02/chaotic-markets-and-ordered-lives.html
ReplyDeleteThanks. To me Brooks is the one who's supposed to "know better"-he works at the NY Times and is supposedly not a Right winger.
ReplyDeleteBuchanan is a known Righty-worked for Nixon, Reagan, is anti-semitic, etc.
Brooks just really irritates me more than anyone with his "sensible center" nonsense. It's meaningless in his sense because no matter how outlandish an idea is intellectually or morally he inists on splitting the difference.