StephenKMackSD's Blog

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/05brooks.html?src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

“The Republicans have changed American politics since they took control of the House of Representatives. They have put spending restraint and debt reduction at the top of the national agenda. They have sparked a discussion on entitlement reform. They have turned a bill to raise the debt limit into an opportunity to put the U.S. on a stable fiscal course.

Republican leaders have also proved to be effective negotiators. They have been tough and inflexible and forced the Democrats to come to them. The Democrats have agreed to tie budget cuts to the debt ceiling bill. They have agreed not to raise tax rates. They have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.”

Fellow readers of Mr. Brooks, is there any doubt that he is, at the least, a committed propagandist for the Modern Republican Party, from the 1968 victory onward ? There can be no doubt after reading these two opening paragraphs of his latest column, that one might become heady from the aggrandizing rhetoric of congratulation: one might even opine that it is a burlesque of a Pravda “news story”. Is the Great Fake Budget Reform of Mr. Paul Ryan the centerpiece of this vision for the future? The Modern Republican Party has become the political voice of an atavistic, reactionary irrationalism, seamlessly attached to the care and maintenance of an entrenched Plutocracy. Mr. Brooks casts the Modern Republican Party in messianic terms, while arguing an almost patent critique of the Tea Party Jacobins, as the heretics of a Conservative Legitimism, bent on the advent of a destructive political nihilism. The question then becomes a matter of theology rather than politics, a matter of conflicting belief systems, of world views, of faith.  But one could argue that the mainstream Party, itself, is, in fact, just that thing identified as heresy, with a not so carefully maintained veneer of bourgeois political respectability. One could, then, argue as Mr. Brooks does, that he is ready to endorse a particular extremity of choice, arguing that his choice is representative of a moderate form of the extremes, and therefore demonstrative of an arguable, simulacrum of moderation. Mr. Brooks maladroitly performs that rhetorical gambit, for want of a better term, but fails to convince his readers of his premise, that the Republican Party is fulfilling its mission of Political Redemptionism but for the pernicious Jacobins.

Almost Marx             

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/radicals-reactionaries-and-an-unhappy-fourth/2011/07/02/AGx3dvwH_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

Here is columnist Robert Samuelson with the help of Right Wing political hack Michael Barone constructing a convenient rhetorical dichotomy between Democrats in the thrall of New Deal Nostalgia, a reactionary political manifestation:

“A reactionary is someone who, says Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, desires “a return to an earlier system or order.” This defines many liberals. They “pine,” Michael Barone writes in the Wall Street Journal, for “the golden years of the 1940s, ’50s and early ’60s [when] Americans had far more confidence in big government.” Modern liberals want yet-bigger government to enhance social justice. They defend virtually all Social Security and Medicare benefits. Everything can be financed, they suggest, by cutting defense or increasing taxes on the rich.”

And a Republican Party in a the hands of Conservative Radicals bent on the destruction of the what is left of that New Deal, i.e. Medicare, Social Security etc. and its project to radically reduce the size of Government, the Kill the Beast strategy of Mr. Grover Norquist:

“Conservatives have become radical by seeking “drastic political, economic or social reform.” Their obsession with tax cuts when even today’s taxes don’t cover today’s spending implies radically shrinking government programs that are woven into America’s social fabric. All this ignores a basic conservative tenet: to respect existing institutions and traditions that anchor the social order. Change — especially radical change — is a last resort, not because today’s world is perfect but because efforts to improve it might make it worse.”

This is mere rhetorical preparation for the Rational Centrism that Mr. Samuelson, here, proposes as antidote to these two political poisons. Yet one might more easily characterize the split as between The Weak New Democratic rule of Barack Obama and its’ essential timidity, in all areas of Policy including the Economy, and a Republican Party courting economic disaster in hopes of creating a political opportunity, that they can then exploit for a Presidential win in 2012. Mr. Samuelson predicates himself as the one lone voice of economic rationalism, in the cacophony of partisan political argument, surely that also qualifies as a dream.

Political Observer

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/opinion/01brooks.html?src=recg

One of the Stars of the Aspen Ideas Festival, Mr. David Brooks, here takes aim at his latest victim Ms. Diane Ravitch, a highly respected scholar, theoretician and advocate in education and schools. He opens by giving Ms. Ravitch a good dressing down for her, to our thinkers own thought, ideologically inspired critiques of the American Educational System and its’ obvious deficits. Mr. Brooks excels in the art of nearly free-floating high minded critiques that reflect his penchant for overarching metaphors, that most times caricature the subjects actual thought. He resembles that great American pop artist Walt Disney in the realm of the pseudo-intellectual, which makes him the perfect embodiment of the Aspen Ideal of never ending self-congratulatory rhetoric. We can observe that Ms. Ravitch is on the ‘left’ and Mr. Brooks is on the ‘right’ in the most reductivist of terms of this presentation, of the good and the bad in Mr. Ravitchs’ career as advocate and partisan in the Education Debate: the political crux of the matter, here, being her once supporting No Child Left Behind then changing her mind. Here are quotes from the Wikipedia entry for Ms. Ravitch that will clarify:

“While she originally supported No Child Left Behind and charter schools, Ravitch later became "disillusioned," and wrote, "I no longer believe that either approach will produce the quantum improvement in American education that we all hope for." In the major national evaluation, 17% of charters got higher scores, 46% were no different, and 37% were significantly worse than public schools, she said. High-stakes testing, "utopian" goals, "draconian" penalties, school closings, privatization, and charter schools didn't work, she concluded. "The best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers."^[8]”

“Ravitch said that the charter school and testing reform movement was started by "right wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation," for the purpose of destroying public education and teachers' unions.^[9] She reviewed the documentary Waiting for Superman, directed by Davis Guggenheim, as "propagandistic" (pro-charter schools and anti-public schools), studded with "myths" and at least one "flatly wrong" claim.^[10]”

 Mr. Brooks never tires of giving those ‘left-wingers’ what for, as part of his duty as watchman of the republic, a duty he takes mighty seriously. As one of his regular readers I can attest that Mr. B. is always on point, when it comes to ideological enforcement, embroidered with mitigating intellectual rationalizations, while hewing to a simulacrum of argumentative rationalism: one might even say that that is his singular talent.

Political Observer