Reading David Brooks’ “A Moderate Manifesto”, I remembered another manifesto he wrote a few years ago, “Karl’s New Manifesto”, wherein he imagines being visited by the spirit of Karl Marx. He wrote:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Freeman and slave, lord and serf, capitalist and proletariat, in a word oppressor and oppressed, stand in opposition to each other and carry on a constant fight. In the information age, in which knowledge is power and money, the class struggle is fought between the educated elite and the undereducated masses.
The information age elite exercises artful dominion of the means of production, the education system. The median family income of a Harvard student is $150,000. According to the Educational Testing Service, only 3 percent of freshmen at the top 146 colleges come from the poorest quarter of the population. The educated class ostentatiously offers financial aid to poor students who attend these colleges and then rigs the admission criteria to ensure that only a small, co-optable portion of them can get in.
The educated class reaps the benefits of the modern economy – seizing for itself most of the income gains of the past decades – and then ruthlessly exploits its position to ensure the continued dominance of its class.
Yesterday, he wrote:
The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward.
[….]But beyond that, moderates will have to sketch out an alternative vision. This is a vision of a nation in which we’re all in it together — in which burdens are shared broadly, rather than simply inflicted upon a small minority….Moderates are going to have to try to tamp down the polarizing warfare that is sure to flow from Obama’s über-partisan budget.
I’m sure Brooks would say he didn’t really believe the first manifesto, that it was his alterego David Marx or Slim Brooksie or David Fierce or whatever.
But isn’t it a bit strange to write one column that ends “Undereducated workers of the world, unite! Let the ruling educated class tremble! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win!” and another that suggests that it’s important to make the working class sacrifice even more than they already are in the name of “Hamiltonian moderation”?
Michael
I think his point in the first manifesto (I could be wrong) was something along the lines of "neener neener, I got mine. Now fuck off and get back to work on the landscaping, prole."
It makes me long for a Dexter solution. I’ve got the episodes written in my head already – he’d need enough shrink wrap for about three corporate boardrooms……
Comrade Stuck
Good catch DougJ. Kind of nails Brook’s mealy mouth pop pseudo intellectual schtick to the barn door. How about Brook’s Forked Tongue Manifesto?
Turgidson
So what you’re saying is that David Brooks is full of shit. Am I reading that right?
Brooks’s whole schtick is to put a reasonable face on abhorrent right wing politics and policies by occasionally praising people like Obama or criticizing right-wing fanatics when it is convenient to do so.
But he doesn’t just say these things to say them, or because he has a particularly strong belief in what he says. He says these things to set up columns just like this one, where he attempts to single-handedly push the political center 50 miles to the right. He thinks that by giving the impression that he is giving Obama a chance, he will have future credibility to launch furious and fact-free right wing assaults on his policies (which, so far, are *gasp* attempts to follow through on his campaign promises).
Brooks isn’t as clever as he thinks he is.
Comrade Dread
Mainly because the American worker has been spoonfed the lie of "You can become of the ultra-rich with enough hard work and education" (and the lie of Social Darwinism before that).
Now that most of America has had the veil torn in two and beholds just how stupid, feckless, and irresponsible the ‘elite’ have been and are beholding them tweak the levers of power to ensure their own survival and enrichment at our expense, I know of a lot more people who are really fucking bitter.
Hell, I’m starting to wonder if the French peasants during their revolution didn’t have the right idea on what to do with the elite.
Zifnab
With David Brooks, every day is opposite day. He’ll be contrary just to prove that he’s smarter than you, even when he comes off looking like an ignorant jackass.
jenniebee
I remember a time when I was first studying the French Revolution and I was actually astonished at the nobility and wealthy people’s absolute refusal to allow their taxes to be raised even slightly, even in the face of certain economic collapse without it, even surrounded by the building sans-culotte desperation and rage. I was doubly astonished that they could get away with it, especially since the king was (at least in theory) an Absolute Monarch and he was in favor of taxing the wealthy to pay off the debt. And Phillipe Egalite fomented rebellion to enhance his political position – incroyable!
Naivete is, in its way, the greatest luxury we have.
BDeevDad
These guys wouldn’t know class warfare if they were sitting next to Marie Antoinette at the guillotine.
Waingro
Hmmm. It’s almost as if he’s not a Reasonable Conservative at all, but a disingenuous piece of shit who’s is trying to protect his personal brand.
He is aware that anyone can go back and read what he actually wrote, right? He doesn’t have total contempt for his readers, right? Don’t answer that.
Shinobi
I’m amazed at the whole "Let them eat rich people’s tax cuts." philosophy they seem to have going.
ThresherK
He was crap as a conservative, so he’s bringing his gifts to moderatism?
Bobo now resembles nothing so much as the dog who, after vomiting in your kitchen, feels the need to barf in every room in the house before you can stop him.
former capitalist
Oh please. Who is Brooks trying to sell with this bullshit? He’s pissed off because he’s one of the non-95% who is now going to have to pay his way.
The "moderates", whoever the hell that represents, have financially supported the 5% crowd for what seems like forever. But someone called shenanigans and the worm has turned. It’s time to ramp up the polarizing rhetoric, not tamp it down. Tough doodoo, Brooks.
See you in the soupline…not.
MattF
In fact, the fabric of "movement conservatism" has a peculiar neo-Trotskyite red thread running through it. I don’t pretend to understand that.
David Brooks
$%#* Internets! I knew I should of had that column scrubbed.
Max
Beltway insiders like Brooks aren’t about consistency. Intellectually they’re about as fickle as a housecat with advanced ADD.
jenniebee
@MattF:
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his, oh you little people are so cute when you vote Republican. Here, now that you’ve cut my taxes at the expense of your own, I can afford to give you a third job, and you can’t afford not to take it! It’s win-win! You’re welcome."
kid bitzer
no, really: brooks has only one loyalty, and that is to the republican brand.
he will contradict himself three ways from christmas if that is what he thinks will benefit the republican brand.
he really is simply fox news in column form–no intellectual integrity, no shame about lying.
a little bit of nice-nice and ha-ha here and there to make the poison go down. but poison it remains.
it’s only a shame that a few rubes are still taken in by his cultivated mask of reasonableness. he is no more reasonable and moderate than limbaugh; he just does a better job of hiding it.
John Cole
Can someone point me to a graph of tax rates for the ighest bracket throughout history, including what Obama is proposing. I had one, but can not find it now.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
Arlen Specter is going to tell Limbaugh and Hannity to STFU?
bayville
Brooks is a moderate? News to me.
Like all these pseudo-intellectual zeroes who have been wrong about everything important for decades, they are just recasting themselves now that popular opinion isn’t on their side (see: Klein, Joe).
Centrism is so 1990s and Compassionate Conservativism is, well, a fraud.
It’s Marketing 101 and the Brookses are attempting to rebrand their "message".
These putzes deserve to be ignored and ridiculed whenever possible.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@John Cole:
Not a graph, but here ya go.
Lesley
Brooks is a man filled with hatred and embarrassment at his educated, nerdy self. Any chance he get to make a cutting remark toward anyone who might have intellectually spanked him at college (and who’s to say that didn’t happen) he goes for it, ostensibly wrapped in concern for Joe Walmart.
Today, backed into a corner by diminishing options, he threw Joe under a bus.
HyperIon
@Turgidson:
yeah, that’s what he’s saying. and that’s what he (and others here) have been saying for quite a while. but i’m thinking he’s gonna keep saying it. i just don’t understand why.
haven’t we already established (repeatedly) the idiocy of:
1. Brooks
2. Ace o’ Spades
3. Bill Kristol
4. Rush
5. Hannity
6. McCain
7. Palin
8. Karl Rove
9. all House repubs
10. Mark Halperin
11. George Will
12. Gerson
13. GWB
14. ??? (add your fav here)
Personally I do not need any more evidence about anyone on this list. Can we find new people to complain about?
Because snarkily pointing out (again) that Brooks is an idiot just does not provide the same thrill it did the first 10 times.
gussie
This isn’t a graph, so not what you want, but interesting: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213
I wonder if we could run with ‘Bringing taxes back to those 1950s values, before everything went to shit in this country ..’
cleek
@John Cole:
the graph is here. there. wherever.
The Raven
"The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment."
Sic transit Eugene V. Debs, Harry Bridges, etc., etc., etc.
JenJen
I was always under the impression that when marginal tax rates were at their highest, during WWII and through to JFK, the nation experienced its highest and most rapid rate of economic expansion.
Weirdly, the elite rich, who were being taxed at a marginal rate of 88% to 92%, remained quite rich, and the middle class was created.
I’m certainly not advocating a return to those rates, but honestly, isn’t the demise of the wealthy and the claims of "class warfare" under Obama’s proposals greatly exaggerated?
The cacophony from the right just smacks of Reaganism Death Pangs to me, moreso each day.
Les Miserable Fulcanelli
@jenniebee:
That was a thing of snarkly beauty, Jenniebee
Turgidson
@HyperIon: f
True, that.
I think the difference with Brooks is that he tries so very hard to seem above the fray. Most of the idiots you listed make no such attempt. Maybe Halperin tries to seem reasonable when he’s not busy predicting McCain landslides – I don’t pay him enough attention to know. George Will might think he seems reasonable, but that’s just the senility.
As kid bitzer wrote above, Brooks’s loyalty is to the Republican brand. He just seems to be at least dimly aware that the Rush wing of the party are doing irreparable damage to the brand he so loves. So he does his bullshit moderation schtick even though his ideology is strikingly similar to the wingnuts’, as this crappy column makes clear despite the empty Hamilton references.
Les Miserable Fulcanelli
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness – John Kenneth Galbraith
BDeevDad
@John Cole: For a different perspective here are total taxes by income level.
John Cole
I don’t think a day should pass without someone somewhere pointing out that David Brooks is an idiot. Also, Broder.
valdivia
@MattF:
You should watch the documentary "Arguing the World" it explains exactly why. It all comes from the original neocons emerging from the Pro-Trostky alcoves at City College and the now defunct magazine The Partisan Review.
Zifnab
@JenJen:
Why the hell not? You just said it didn’t impact the wealthy in any serious fashion. And we presided over an era of unprecedented prosperity. Which part did you not like?
HyperIon
@John Cole: how could i have forgotten Broder?
but, look, if you enumerate *all* the idiots everyday, when are you going to get any work done? just sayin’…
Wile E. Quixote
@JenJen
There’s a lot more to it than that. Firstly nobody was actually paying 90 percent of their income in taxes back then, the system was rotten with loopholes, nobody who could hire a decent accountant was paying 91 percent of their income in taxes. Then you have the fact that the United States was the pre-eminent economy in the world from the late 1940s through the late 1960s. Europe and Japan had been destroyed and China and the Soviet Union were largely outside of the world economic system. It’s not hard to be prosperous when your potential competition is either rebuilding their industrial base after their countries went through an extensive low-level reformatting or if they’re not playing the game.
Things started to change in the 1970s. Japanese companies took over the US electronics market. Japanese and German auto-makers started making serious inroads into the US automotive market and you started seeing a decline in American prosperity relative to the rest of the world. The fact that we continued to subsidize the defense costs of our largest competitors, and continue to do so, didn’t help either.
Axe Diesel Palin
If Marx were living today
He’d be rolling around in his grave
And if I had him here in my mansion on the hill
I’d tell him a story t’would give his old heart a chill
…
Oh Karl the world isn’t fair
It isn’t and never will be
They tried out your plan
It brought misery instead
If you’d seen how they worked it
You’d be glad you were dead
Just like I’m glad I’m living in the land of the free
Where the rich just get richer
And the poor you don’t ever have to see
It would depress us, Karl
Because we care
That the world still isn’t fair
Pure genius – http://www.randynewman.com/tocdiscography/disc_bad_love/lyricsbadlove
Ailuridae
@Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon):
John, et al – if you look at the top of that you can see an option to open it in excel. Do that, graph the columns against each other and save as a .gif or whatever you want and you’ll have it forever.
JenJen
@Wile E. Quixote: Regardless, doesn’t the point remain that the elite wealthy remained the elite wealthy, though? It seems to me that the crux of the latest Limbaugh-esque argument claims the opposite.
valdivia
well maybe the problem is that the idiots just do not understand the tax system?
See also Obsidian Wings.
Teh stupid, never ends.
Steve M.
I’m sure Brooks would say he didn’t really believe the first manifesto, that it was his alterego David Marx or Slim Brooksie or David Fierce or whatever.
Ol’ Dirty Buckley, aka Big Baby Hayek.
justcorbly
Hamilton’s opponents would be very surprised to see him identified as an exemplar of moderation, since they thought he was hell-bent on concentrating wealth in power in an elite few and turning the new republic into a quasi-monarchy.
Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what conservatives have been trying to do for 30 years, especially the last eight.
Dennis-SGMM
@justcorbly:
Hamilton’s appeal to people like Brooks likely stems from the fact that, during the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton proposed that the President and Senators be elected for life. Thankfully, only Senators are elected for life.
nylund
Shorter David Brooks,
"As a person who makes lots and lots of money, I will use my job and influence to try to convince you what a bad idea it is for me to have to use my prosperity to help out my fellow countrymen in need."
LV-426
Comrade Dread:
Tyler Durden
jcricket
The thing is, if the middle class and poor make more money, they will spend it (wisely or not). If the middle class and poor have more discretionary income because they don’t have massive consumer or healthcare debt (or worry about ridiculous college costs or the potential of healthcare bankruptcy), they’d also spend it.
And because of the magic of capitalism ™, that money would work its way through the economy and into the hands of people like David Brooks through higher corporate profits, bigger dividends, higher stock prices.
Thus, even if his taxes go up 4-10% on the top portion of his income, it would likely be drowned out by the overall increase in income due to the higher level of spending of the "bottom 95%". So he’ll pay $5k more in taxes, but make $20k more income (or whatever). Sounds awful.
I’m somewhere between the top 10 and 5% income wise. I would happily pay more in taxes if it offered nothing else other than better healthcare, infrastructure and other shared services. Add the fact that it’s likely to ultimately lead to the situation I mentioned above (more opportunities for me to make more income) and I’m asking, "Where do I sign?"