http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/opinion/07brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

‘The Clear and Present Dangers of Socialized Medicine’ is a more apt title for this latest piece of genteel political propaganda, produced by everyone’s favorite ‘rational political conservative’,  Mr. David Brooks. Or is it just another maladroit and backhanded attempt at ‘selling’ the Paul Ryan Medicare voucher plan? Mr. Brooks is eminently rational and reasonable in his way, yet not above the usual fear mongering of dire predictions of imminent insolvency of Medicare, as reported by the trustees of that very agency of government. Mr. Brooks weds this to the misplaced governmental faith in the bankrupt practice of ‘centralized planning’ as antithetical to the great, diverse wisdom of markets, although this constitutes a myth itself.   The touchstone of Mr. Brooks politics, such as it is , is the failed notion  ‘Free Market Economics’ that ran aground in the Financial Crisis of 2008: it’s  bastard child  that piece of  financial wizardry known as ‘the derivative’, the key to the financial transformation of the 21^st Century, or so the propaganda fed by greed went.  Mr. Brooks is shameless in his misplaced faith , his advocacy of a decentralized planning model much like a ‘Free Market’ might have functioned, but emphatically did not: the vicissitudes, the necessities of propaganda are here demonstrated, while Mr. Brooks maintains his cover of bourgeois political respectability. One must at least give credit for the high flown, philosophically hyperbolic title of his latest column, ‘Where Wisdom Lives’ it is redolent with poetic and political potential, both sadly unrealized, as the imperatives of propaganda win out.

Almost Marx