Whack Fight! Lionesses of the Right Scratch It Out Over Immigration

Meow!

Today's Brooks blather goes paw-to-paw with Ross's recent piece on immigration reform. It's a battle of obscure social science references! Meowwwww!

It's an obvious rebuttal to Ross, but for some reason Brooks is unwilling or unable to say something like, "Notwithstanding the arguments of my protege and lunatic-fringe colleague Ross Douthat ..."

Take That! Or Not.

C'mon! You guys are supposed to be fighters, scrappers. Let's mix it up a bit!

Deep Down, Douthat Is Pretty Shallow

Ross Douthat must be a David Brooks protege. He's certainly adopted Brooks's penchant for making broad, provocative, icky ideological assertions unsupported by evidence beyond references to research that he doesn't seem to have read.

This technique is on display in his latest piece for the NYTimes, in which he argues, more or less, that Mexican immigrants are incapable of assimilating, so we shouldn't let any more of them in, and while we're at it, let's put the kibosh on Hispanic immigration in general.

It's Them Mexercans

He says the main immigration-reform proposal in Congress misapprehends two key points: "the assimilation patterns for descendants of Hispanic (particularly Mexican) immigrants and the socioeconomic disarray among the native-born poor and working class."

"Conservatives," he continues, "have long worried that recent immigrants from Latin America would assimilate more slowly than previous new arrivals — because of their sheer numbers and shared language, and because the American economy has changed in ways that make it harder for less-educated workers to assimilate and rise."

He Don't Need No Stinkin' Data

Douthat refers to, but doesn't actually cite, an 11-year-old study by the Public Policy Institute of California, Falling Behind or Moving Up? The Intergenerational Progress of Mexican Americans, and a more recent book by two UCLA sociologists, Generations of Exclusion (2009), to make the case that Mexicans just aren't getting with the American program, so let's just slooooow this immigration-reform train down.

He breezily pins the blame on the old standards: In addition to all that "socioeconomic disarray among the native-born poor and working class," there's "family breakdown [and] weakening communal ties" in the U.S. generally, and Mexican-Americans' "shared language" in particular, the ironically unspoken implication of this latter point being that because they're speaking Spanish and not English at home, the Mexican-American children are at a disadvantaged in an English-speaking economy and society.

If Only

That would be a good point, but it's not supported at all in the research Douthat cites. The 2002 study is focused almost exclusively on the links between educational attainment and economic progress and virtually nothing about "socioeconomic disarray," "family breakdown" or "weakening communal ties."

Instead, "Consistent with prior findings on minority-white attainment differentials, we find that family income plays an important role, explaining as much as 75 percent of the white-Mexican graduation gap."

It says the language spoken at home is an "insignificant" factor in high school graduation rates for Mexican American students; for "U.S.-born and near-native students ... speaking Spanish at home appears to confer no particular disadvantage on Mexican Americans."

Yeah, But ...

As for the 2009 book by the UCLA sociologists, Douthat says almost nothing other than that they discovered "stagnation and slippage for descendants of Mexican immigrants during the second half of the 20th century."

True. But they also found, according to the publisher's description, that "institutional barriers [are] a major source of Mexican American disadvantage. Chronic under-funding in school systems predominately serving Mexican Americans severely restrains progress. Persistent discrimination, punitive immigration policies, and reliance on cheap Mexican labor in the southwestern states all make integration more difficult."

Their prescription? Tighter immigration requirements? Stronger communal ties? Less Spanish and more English at the dinner table?

Nyet, Nyet, Nyet and Nyet

Instead, they authors call for "providing Mexican American children with the educational opportunities that European immigrants in previous generations enjoyed. The Mexican American trajectory is distinct -- but so is the extent to which this group has been excluded from the American mainstream."

If Now Them, Then Whom?

We know a few things:

• Native-born birthrates are insufficient to keep our workforce competitive, so we either bring in more people from elsewhere or accept that we're screwed.
• Education is the key to long-term economic and social success for individuals, communities, economies and societies, particularly pluralistic, democratic societies.
• Higher rates of educational attainment are associated with lower rates of infant mortality, better personal health, cleaner environments, happier people, and more peaceful and prosperous societies.
• The earlier kids start school, the better they do in school and life, and that the best way to achieve this is universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds.

A smart guy like Ross Douthat might want to read some of those studies. Or just read the studies he cites a little more closely.

Postscript: Brooks has a rebuttal today that conflicts with Douthat on just about all the key assertions, including language and generational progress. Oooh! Whack Fight!

Ron Who?

Ah, the depth and brilliance of our Republican senators is on such wonderful display in this story.

There's Kelly Ayotte, with this penetrating, clear-eyed Yankee insight: “This is obviously an important issue."

And the ever puzzling Climate Hoax Inhofe, seen here fulminating against the parents of Newtown's slaughtered children for having the temerity to participate in the process when, after all, this gun debate thing "has nothing to do with them and they know that."

Kudos to Ron Johnson -- I know: Who? -- for defiantly asserting that he "took an oath to uphold the Constitution." Perhaps one day he'll take an oath to read the thing, too.

And of course, we are elevated by the meditations of that profile in courage Rob Portman, he who changed his position on gay marriage only after his son came out. Senator Portman remains wracked and undecided on this issue that has been debated for, oh, 50 years. Presumably, his vote will depend on whether a family member is shot by a nut with a gun before the roll is called.

Brooks Gives Wall Street a Hand Up

In his column on Obama's second inaugural address, Brooks writes the following absurdity:

"I am not a liberal like Obama, so I was struck by what he left out in his tour through American history. I, too, would celebrate Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall, but I’d also mention Wall Street, State Street, Menlo Park and Silicon Valley. I’d emphasize that America has prospered because we have a decentralizing genius."

It's so hard to take David Brooks seriously. Does he really think that Wall Street and Silicon Valley haven't gotten enough attention and public benefit over the past 12 years or, in the case of Wall Street, over the past 200 years? Our economy and public policy are built around Wall Street's needs.

Out of whack

The whole point of Obama's focus on things other than Wall Street, etc., is that public policy has been so disastrously weighted toward Wall Street for so long that we need a determined, sustained effort to recalibrate. Wall Street and Silicon Valley are doing just fine. They don't need marquis treatment in a presidential inaugural address. The rest of society could use a little attention.

Who are you?

It's not clear that David Brooks knows, himself, what he believes. His intellectual conflict is on full display in this column, which is really two columns. The first half is praise for progressivism; the second half is an attack on progressivism.


David, please settle your internal conflicts before dragging readers through your inability to decide who you are and what you believe. Right now, you're everything and nothing.

Oh, Please

Of course, none of these rational, reasonable, nonthreatening views were expressed by any Republican with a platform over the past 2 years.

Look at Me! Look at Me! Ain't I Smart?

Anyway, the important point is that David Brooks reads a lot and is a really smart guy. Zzzzzz.

Big Announcement

We have a big announcement today: We are now adding Ross Douthat as an honorary fool. In today's column, Douthat asserts that

• Hispanics aren't assimilating into American culture or society or something else undefined, "or worse, [they] are assimilating downward, and that Democrats swoop in like vultures with government support -- those Romney gifts that buy votes

• single women live "insecure and chaotic" lives, and that Democrats swoop in like vultures with government support -- those Romney gifts that buy votes

• the typical "non-churchgoing" American is "often an underemployed working-class man whose secularism is ... a symptom of his disconnection from community in general," which presumably makes him vulnerable to the Democrats, who swoop in like vultures with government support -- those Romney gifts that buy votes

Blame the Infidels

Even assuming those fellatious arguments are true, what are Republicans doing for all those insecure, underemployed, undereducated, disconnected women, minorities and laborers? Apparently not as much as the Democratic vultures who swoop in to help them with that creepy thing called the social safety net. Douthat's solution, of course, is to return to the 1950s and send everyone to church, got molested, hitched, then divorced and alienated from their kids, whom they sent to Vietnam, where it all went to shit.

What an Asshole

"Democrats assume their newly emerged majority is a sign of progress rather than decline." Read: Anyone who doesn't vote Republican is for social degeneracy.

If this keeps up, we'll have to change the brand to BrooksandDouthatAreFools.

Cognitive Dissonance, Cognitive Disorder

Today's column is perhaps the fullest expression of the sloppiness and inconsistency of Brooks's political thinking. He applauds

• "the scale of his ambitions, the scope of his grand plans"
• his call for “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics"
• "the scale of his ambitions, the scope of his grand plans

He even acknowledges that "[i]n some ways, President Obama has lived up to the promise of that day. In office, he has generally behaved with integrity and in a way befitting a man with his admirable character."

"In moral terms, he hasn’t let us down. If he’s re-elected, his administration would probably remain scandal-free. Given the history of second terms, that is no small thing."

Hold Your Neck. Here Comes the Whiplash

But he's voting for Romney.

Whuzzuh?

Oh, because Obama had to trim his ambitions to meet the treasonous obstinacy of the Republicans, who would rather sink the economy and the country than see the nigger succeed.

Brooks has the chutzpah to accuse Obama of running "one of the most negative campaigns in history, aimed at disqualifying his opponent." Has Brooks not noticed that Romney is a psychopathic liar? Name your issue: auto bailout, RomenyCare, taxes, abortion, coal plants, Medicare, Iran.

It would be impossible to predict what policies you could reasonably expect to get with Romney other than all of them, because he's taken every side on every issue.

But he's your guy?

Have You No Shame? At Long Last, Have You No Shame?

Brooks is as empty and intellectually dishonest as his candidate. And that's saying a lot.

Evidently, it's Obama's own fault that he's judged by a higher standard because "his innate ability justifies that high standard. These are the standards he properly set for himself."

Please, NYTimes, dump this empty suit.

Boundless Brooks

It's astonishing that David Brooks can take these very critical positions against Mitt Romney -- basically agreeing with Gail Collins and everyone else that there is no discernible Mitt Romney -- and still favor him for election.

There You Go Again

Once again, he proves that his intellectual dishonesty is boundless.

Brooks Renounces Enlightenment, Abandons Skepticism

"If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out."

That's a journalistic chestnut. Brooks needs to be reminded of it in light of today's column, in which he hails the return of "Moderate Mitt." How gullible can he be?

How does Brooks know that Moderate Mitt, and not Severely Conservative Mitt or 47 Percent Mitt or Let 'Em Die in the ER Mitt is the real Romney? Brooks lacks even the patina of journalistic skepticism.

What an abdication.

Dave Defends Raping Boys

That's more or less the argument Brooks makes in today's column on the Penn State boy rape. He trots out the old "You don't know what you would do until you're in that situation" chestnut, then cites the usual suspects: genocide, Kitty Genovese.

 

Not Even Close

Yeah. Right. Except there's really not much of a comparison between the Kitty Genovese or Rwandan genocide cases and stumbling on the football coach butt fucking a little boy in the locker room shower. There are scenarios when it's legitimate to say you can't know what you would do until you're in that situation. But this isn't one of them. All the witness had to do was to call out, "Hey! Stop raping that boy!"

Both Sides Now

Once again, Dave argues both sides to make no meaningful point. He spends the bulk of the column citing wishy-washy social science that defends moral relativism -- we see what we want to see, blah blah blah -- but then concludes by implying it's our wishy-washing, moral relativism that allows us to let grownups rape boys in locker rooms. Just more of Brooks's bottomless intellectual dishonesty.

What's your next column? Defending the Catholic Church's right to rape boys?

Oy ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/opinion/the-inequality-map.html

So if church inequality, ancestor inequality, moral fitness inequality and spending inequality are unacceptable, we can look forward to Brooks’s next column announcing that he’s leaving the Republican Party.

Vey

Foreign visitors often come up to me and ask, “Why does David Brooks get a column in the New York Times?" And I answer, "Damned if I know. Nice cupcakes!"

Wrong Again

Today, DB complains about "Blue Inequality."

There is so much that's wrong with Brooks's analysis, but let's stick to just two points. First, the complaint about 1% vs. 99% is not exclusively about income inequality; that's a literal and tendentious interpretation. The complaint comprises educational inequality as well as income inequality, in part because college is becoming financially out of reach for all but the most affluent, which of course further entrenches the divide.

There is almost no relation between the general economy and the economics of higher education. In that sense, higher education is similar to health care: the costs exist in their own spheres.

Ain't Data Great?

Brooks is so enamored of social science statistics and research. There's plenty of data about students graduating college saddled with crushing debt, and that Congress refuses to address the problem. Why does the federal government charge 7% on student loans?

That's the second point: Brooks is absolutely correct to underscore the links between education and educational attainment on the one hand, and individual, community and national social and economic well-being on the other (e.g., income, health, family dynamics, social cohesion).

So what's Brooks's solution? Complain about young, White, urban liberals.

Really?

It's liberals and progressives who have been drawing attention to the social consequences of educational disparities at least since before Brown v. Board of Education. There’s plenty of social science and developmental research on how critical early childhood support is to academic success and lifelong well-being. Go read some. Fool!

If Brooks and other conservatives believe education is so critical to social well-being, as liberals have been screaming about for generations, why don’t they support, say, early childhood learning instead of gutting public education and diverting tax dollars to religious schools?

Brooks’s intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking.

Obscure References to Others' Thoughts and Work

The economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley Heim

Meaningless Data

• Roughly 31 percent
• About 16 percent
• 14 percent
• 8 percent
• 5 percent
• About 2 percent
• 38 percent
• 75 percent
• tens of millions of Americans
• 40 percent
• 50 percent

Oh No You Didn't

Did Brooks really tag the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as anti-Semitic in today's column?

I think he did!

"Take the Occupy Wall Street movement. This uprising was sparked by the magazine Adbusters, previously best known for the 2004 essay, Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish? — an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy."

What a putz.

Don't Let the Facts Get in the Way of an Ignorant Argument

Brooks laments what he declares to be the lack of innovation in America today, variously the "innovation slowdown" and "innovation stagnation."

Well, Dave, it certainly doesn’t help that our political leaders don’t believe in science, anthropology or climate change; that they put more faith in faith than in ideas; and that they block public investment in science, research and things like, oh, alternative energy. Like the Green Economy Brooks slammed a couple of weeks ago for not having created 300 million new jobs in two years.

Best Unsupported, Ideological Swipe

“... the environmentalist ethos has undermined the faith in gee-whiz technological wizardry.” So it’s all the fault of environmentalism?

Gratuitous References to Obscure Writers

• Michael Mandel

• Tyler Cowen

• Neal Stephenson

• Peter Thiel

Unnecessary Reference to Overused Thinker

• Einstein

Boy, Gomer! That Brooks feller sure is smart!

It's Official

It’s impossible to take David Brooks seriously. It seems as if he’s not even trying to be intellectually honest. Here, he blames the imminent collapse of the U.S. economy on:

• consumers
• the credit crunch
• housing prices
• the freeze in business investment
• skills mismatch
• regulatory burdens
• the business class’s utter lack of confidence in the White House
• the looming explosion of entitlement costs
• the public’s lack of confidence in institutions across the board

And of Course ...

Obama’s failure to seize that seminal moment in history, the Simpson-Bowles report.

But not a word about the banks, insurance companies and financial institutions that hollowed out the economy in order to enrich themselves.

No Countrywide, no Goldman Sachs, no AIG, no Bank of America. Don’t they at least get a mention alongside regulatory burdens and business executives’ lack of confidence in Obama? No GOP obstructionism?

Oh, if only we had seized Simpson-Bowles! And fully funded the McKinney Act! If only those greedy old pensioners would stop insisting on getting a return on their Social Security and Medicare payments, and if the poor would just shut up, go to college and get jobs, we’d be great again!

Hell No, You Won't!

As for politicians’ sclerotic thinking about public policy, Obama has proposed investment on a green economy and at least offered the public option as a way to restructure the health insurance market. What bold approaches have Republicans offered other than lockstep opposition to the colored guy in the White House and support for tax cuts for the rich?

Dave's Best Joke

Simplify the tax code. End corporate taxes and create a consumption tax. Reshape the European Union to make it either more unified or less (?!) Reduce the barriers to business formation. Reform Medicare so it is fiscally sustainable. Break up the banks and increase capital requirements. Lighten debt burdens even if it means hitting the institutional creditors.

Dave, the Republicans won’t even keep the FAA afloat for a week without turning it into a crisis. You really think they’ll go along with breaking up the banks and “hitting” institutional creditors?

Down With the EU!

Of course, your suggestion for reforming the EU, we're all with you on that one. Just as soon as we figure out what you're talking about.

There He Goes Again

"[A]t least Republicans respect Americans enough to tell us what they really think."

That's not worth dignifying with an insult. But I'll try.

Republicans say that the deficit and debt are existential threats. But if they honestly believed that, they'd support SOME tax increases if only to save the country from ruin. What they really believe is that the social safety net -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- should be dismantled and capitalism left to work its magic unregulated, and the rabble left unprotected.

Bush and Reagan ran up the debt and deficit to create a crisis -- starve the beast, they called it -- so they could dismantle the New Deal. Grover Norquist and his GOP marionettes want to "strangle government in the bathtub," or some weird construction like that.

You Lie!

But no, David, they won't tell us that. Because they don't respect us enough, and because they know they'll be pilloried at the polls.

David, you're still struggling with intellectual honesty. Try harder.

Straw Dog

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/opinion/brooks-the-planning-fallacy.html

Brooks writes: "Over the past decades, Americans have developed an absurd view of the power of government. Many voters seem to think that government has the power to protect them from the consequences of their sins. Then they get angry and cynical when it turns out that it can’t."

Says Who?

Oldest trick in the book: Set up a straw dog, and tear it down. What evidence does he have that ANYONE feels the government should solve all their problems?

The problem is just the opposite: Over the decades, the government, a powerful referee when it wants to be, has withdrawn from the arena and let the powerful interests run amok. That's how we got this latest financial crisis, by eliminating regulations, distinctions and protections. That's not creating free markets; that's picking winners and losers.

Loser!

Ultimately, the loser is capitalism, because when the government withdraws as the ref, powerful interests combine and distort the market, and consumers get run over.

The whole argument over lots of government vs. minimal government -- Rick Perry's notion of making the FEDERAL government "inconsequential" in people's lives (never the state gov, of course) -- isn't about left or right or free markets or socialism. It's about protecting capitalism in the long term by softening its roughest edges.

Thrown Under the Wheel

Capitalism has always been recognized as a rough system; it's great if you're among its winners, but it's brutal on the losers, and there will always be losers. No one wants go get rid of it; we just want to make sure that someone is there to help those who would otherwise get crushed under its wheels.

That's what will protect capitalism in the long run by ensuring people don't turn against it.

Brooks, you fool!

The Hoax of Climate Change?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/opinion/brooks-where-the-jobs-arent.html?ref=davidbrooks

Whoever said the point of a Green economy was to create full employment? It's to ensure that there's enough energy to sustain human habitation and industry after the fossil fuel runs out.

Have Faith

The same people who believe climate change is a hoax because there's no 100 percent, definitive, scientific proof don't believe in science. But they do believe in the omnipotence of an unseen force somewhere in the heavens for which there is not a shred of empirical evidence, let alone proof.

We're Doomed

And Obama is an enabler of our destruction by not standing in the way.

Nice Boy, Long Way From Home

Sometimes it’s so hard to know where to begin responding to a David Brooks column. This one's a Dusey.

Whose morality is he extolling? Is Brooks suggesting that young people look to those community oriented paragons of ethics and morality who favor torture, unprovoked war; manipulation of public opinion; aggrandizement of the wealthy; elimination of the social safety net; vilification of racial and religious minorities, the poor and the politically and economically powerless; the apotheosis of guns over public safety; and the exploitation of homeowners?

Role Models?

Whom should those young people emulate? Grover Norquist? Eric Cantor? Jamie Dimon? Newt Gingrich? If so, kudos to those immoral, empty young people for choosing a different path.

If Brooks had any sense of intellectual honesty or political courage, he’d apply his analysis to the grownups who ran this country into the ground, and who are itching for another crack at it.

As for rabid consumerism, puh-leeze. That’s the backbone of this economy. Where’ve you been? The problem we’re having is that people aren’t spending enough on stuff. After 9/11, Bush told us to go shop. I don't recall hearing any acceptance of personal accountability by anyone in the Bush administration for all their failures and missteps.

But 18 year olds are held to a higher standard? Hoo-kay, then.

He a Smart Feller!

This is a classic Brooks column in another respect: its pretentious catalog of references to (mostly) obscure academics and researchers. I counted nine:

• Christian Smith
• Kari Christoffersen
• Hilary Davidson
• Patricia Snell Herzog
• Allan Bloom
• Gertrude Himmelfarb
• Alasdair MacIntyre
• Charles Taylor
• James Davison Hunter

Nine citations? In a 15-paragraph column? OK, we get it: You read a lot. You're smart. You like abstruse stuff. You're recondite. But all these citations constitute the mark of a writer who develops his material by reading others’ stuff instead of doing his own living and reporting. It reads like a college term paper.

Nice Boy, Long Way From Home

David, you’re probably a very nice person. But you’re wildly out of touch and in over your head as a social thinker.

What's His Point?


What's the subtext in Dave's column dismissing Green industry as unable to unilaterally create full employment (Sept. 6, 2011 column)? That climate change is a hoax? Or that the science, as Rick Perry says, is "not settled"? Pardon me, but since when is 100 percent certainty the criterion for public policy?


We weren't 100 percent certain that ...

• Saddam had WMD, but we went to war anyway

• the Bush tax cuts would destroy the budget, but Congress enacted them anyway

• a nuclear arsenal would deter the Soviets (we still don't know that they did, but we can probably say that we don't know that they didn't)

• repealing regulations on business will lead to 20 percent GDP growth, 106 percent employment, and the Second Coming of Christ, but there's a lot of agitation for it

• Rick Perry would make a really lousy president, but he's running anyway
• there's an ominipotent, omniscient, ageless, timeless, unseen, bearded being in the sky, but lots of people believe it anyway, despite there being ZERO evidence for it

You see?

We do lots of things that we're not sure -- absolutely, positively sure -- will work. But we do 'em anyway. Like voting. And what a waste of time that's turned out to be.

What if there is global warming?

We'll only know for sure by the time it's too late to do anything about it.