The one thing that makes it worthwhile to continue to wade through each new David Brooks Column isn’t the fantasy fiction Mr. Brooks turns out each time. It’s the quality of the comments from the readers that makes me waste so much of my morning on the days I give in and follow the links…It’s the comments that are some of the most thoughtful, most interesting, and sometimes best writing on the web today.
This week he is trying to spin the Republican viewpoint on Government into something defensible; What Republicans Think.
This is the source of Republican extremism: the conviction that the governing model is obsolete. It needs replacing.
Mitt Romney hasn’t put it this way. He wants to keep the focus on President Obama. But this worldview is implied in his (extremely vague) proposals. He would structurally reform the health care system, moving toward a more market-based system. He would simplify the tax code. He would reverse 30 years of education policy, decentralizing power and increasing parental choice. The intention is the same, to create a model that will spark an efficiency explosion, laying the groundwork for an economic revival.
You have to read halfway through the column to read the above lines… The only question that statement raises for me is… What universe does Mr. Brooks live in? Moving health care to a more market based system? That is exactly what we have been doing for the last 2-3 decades. Don’t you love where it has gotten us to?
Later Mr. Brooks states:
Obama championed targeted subsidies and tax credits. Republicans, meanwhile, envision comprehensive systemic change. The G.O.P. vision is of an entirely different magnitude: replace the tax code, replace the health care system and transform entitlements.
To which one comment writer had this comeback…
…a serene acceptance of the need for progressive taxation is the price for stable contemporary civilizations – and that societies that do not understand this often experience neither stability nor civilization.
Matthew Carnicelli – Brooklyn, New York
Related articles
- Letters: Trusting Authority, Then and Now (nytimes.com)
- DAVID BROOKS: We Don’t Have A Leadership Problem, We Have A ‘Followership’ Problem (businessinsider.com)
- Letter: Obama vs. Romney (nytimes.com)
- David Brooks, “structuralist” (salon.com)
