What in the bloody blue...
Team Liberal Blog has taken to calling New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks "Mr. Magoo" these days for his ding-batted walk-into-walls confidence through ignorance. I try to leave the discussion to them, but today he really tops himself. Here, watch his intellectual rigor develop in the first two paragraphs:
Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American liberalism.Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline.
The blogomosphere is up in arms about numbers and how Europe's not really in decline. Thanks a bunch to them, but I say let's forget for a second the weakness of his argument, or his usual talent of demeaning everyone by calling his mediocre conclusions "blunt and obvious." The big hole is the last line in the above quote: if years of decline is enough to indict a country's governmental style, why isn't he writing about America?
Look, here's nothing you don't already know: our health care system is completely out of whack, we're fighting a war with neither an exit nor a victory strategy, we're 20 years away from being completely economically overtaken by China, India and who knows who else, and David Brooks thinks the region in serious trouble is Europe. Sorry homeslice, the highest standards of living in the world still lie with the cradle-to-grave welfare states, so you may want to look elsewhere to jump to wildly inaccurate conclusions. How about you go back into the real America and tell us more about how Republicans are real people and Democrats are out-of-touch elitists? Good doggy.
So to all my damn-foreigner readers (there are some, thank you SiteMeter), please keep in mind, we're not all this dumb, misleading or opportunistic. Also, start playing more baseball, stop breeding terrorists, and of course, thanks for Westlife.