Nobody Can Screw Up A Good Idea Like David Brooks

David Brooks, the NYT's token "conservative" columnist takes on Charles Murray's new book Coming Apart in his Jan. 31 column. He predictably oversimplifies and misinterprets Murray's work, but he really craps on it in the penultimate paragraph, where he gives into the predictable leftist impulse for totalitarian social planning:

I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.

Right, Brooks, because the poor proles can't possibly get their lives together without being forced to by government bureaucrats smart coastal elites like you. What could go wrong? I can tell you, out here in rural southeast Ohio, we tell each other nearly every day "If only we had some New York City slickers to come out here and tell us how to live!"

Please, Brooks, take a trip out here. I don't imagine you're good for much real work, but I've got a farm with miles of fence that always need clearing and repairing, hay to haul, livestock to tend to, horses to train. I'm willing to put a shovel in your hand and let you try ... or wasn't that the kind of "example" you were hoping to set?

Brooks focuses on Murray's bottom 30% as the troubled demographic and uses it to assert that the traditional American "salt of the earth" type is a myth:

Republicans claim that America is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.

 I think if you look at the demographic that makes up that bottom 30% what you'll find that the majority is not traditional, heartland Americans. The traditional heartland American resides largely in the middle 50% that Brooks never even mentions in his column. Furthermore, the plight and lifestyle of the rural poor is quite a bit different than that of the urban poor. Also, the demographics are skewed somewhat by cost of living differences and lifestyle choices. Successful elites in Silicon Valley , D.C. or Manhattan would regard my income as nothing special. And it isn't, in their areas. But, by the same token, an executive at my company recently paid more than $700k for a modest house in on a small suburban lot. Meanwhile, I live like a comparative king out here in rural southeast Ohio on enough land to hold his whole subdivision, for a fraction of that purchase price. You don't need to earn the incomes that the top 20% do to live very comfortably out here and the coastal elites don't really have a good understanding of the extent of that disparity.

DHS: Keeping Us Safe from Hyperbole!

Seriously? Really?

It's like we have space aliens doing the analyses. "I do not understand your strange, British humor, earth person!"

Well, if just one dead Hollywood starlet's grave is saved, it's worth it, right?

Battered Nation Syndrome: It's Our Fault They Hit Us. We Keep Making Them Mad.

The U.S. and Israeli militaries have postponed planned joint war games to avoid aggravating Iran.

Seriously? Can you say "pussies?"

That's like a battered wife postponing getting help "because it might make him angry." It would have been like Churchill refusing to shore up Britain's air defenses because Hitler might be offended.

Good lord. Words cannot suffice the depth of craven cowardice, the reflexive surrender-monkeying on display here.

Mixed messages

OK, so we tell our soldiers that some guys are bad enough to deserve killing, but pissing on their bodies is right out. I guess they gave them a nice, respectful bullet to the head. Wouldn't want to disrespect the fact that you just killed their asses by pissing on them.

Seriously, soldiers have to hate their enemy. How else can you ask good men to shoot people in cold blood? That's what our enemies do with us -- those guys who have murdered our soldiers and dragged them through the streets don't respect us. That's normal human nature once you've designated someone as your enemy. Do the politically correct desk jockeys who make the rules really expect that every time a U.S. soldier pulls the trigger it's with a pang of regret and a tear shed for the wasted life? That's not even emotionally healthy for the soldiers.

In World War II it was completely accepted for the soldiers to hate and dehumanize the "krauts" and the "japs." That's the only way a normal person can maintain his own humanity in the face of what he's doing -- thinking "those guys were evil bastards and deserved to die." If you expect our soldiers to go into battle with love and respect for their enemies in their hearts, you're asking to traumatize them.

If you think a war can be fought with guns and shrapnel one second, and diplomatic expressions of respect the next, by the same man, you don't understand human nature.

You can already see the dehumanizing propaganda from the other side right in the story (great how CNN is a water carrier for the other side's propaganda):

And no religion that follows a holy text would accept such conduct. This inhuman act reveals their real face to the world," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said via text message Thursday.

See? "This inhuman act reveals their real face to the world." Don't think the Taliban aren't going to use that as one more thing to remind their soldiers that our guys are inhuman bastards who deserve killing. They never treat our dead with respect, and it's fantasy to think they would if only we treated their dead better. Their entire strategy is to dehumanize us in the eyes of Afghanis. If we didn't provide the incidents, they'd make it up.

We should be dehumanizing them in our propaganda. They certainly give us enough fodder.

"Crime" Crime, Not "Hate" Crime

In this article,  Man arrested on hate crime charge in NYC firebomb attacks, it disturbs me on principle that the man is being indicted on "hate crime" charges. The man made (mostly incompetent) molotov cocktail attacks on a variety of locations that seemed to have no ideological connection other than that he had various grievances with them.

The fact that two of the places were religiously affiliated (to completely different religions) seems irrelevant: there's no indication he attacked them because he hated their religions -- it mentions that his grievance with one might have been that he wasn't allowed to use their restrooms. He's an angry nut, that's all.

By this reason, any molotov cocktail attack is a "hate" crime, because you really only throw molotov cocktails at things and people you hate, right?

Why aren't our "normal" laws and penalties against arson and property destruction enough? Not to mention all the other laws this guy most have broken. Theoretically these laws were thought out and implemented with all due seriousness and given appropriate penalties for the crime, right? Why, then, do we need to label it a "hate" crime? Are there non-hateful molotov cocktail attacks, and are those any less serious to the victims?

Why Do They Even Write Stories Like This?

The AP recently published the story

Thousands Rally in North Korea in Support of New Leader

A story like that is so willfully naive it's practically volunteering to do North Korea's pathetic propaganda work.

The story talks about "signs of his quickly expanding personality cult." Have you seen this guy? Kim Jong Un is in his late 20s and looks like this:



I think it's more open to debate whether he actually has a personality than whether a "cult of personality" has developed around him. It's not even clear if he attended the rally. Or has ever spoken publically. Can you say "dim-witted puppet figure?"

And even if he is not a puppet, if he is actually in charge, does AP really think that all those people are just thrilled to be at that rally? This is North Korea. The place where they let millions of their people starve rather than deviate from their ideology.

The piece would be more honestly headlined "In Brutal, Repressive North Korean Police State, Cowed Subjects Go To Rally When Told To."

If Only This Were Some Sort of Cartoonish Exaggeration

From the 2012-01-02 Dilbert: