I've always rather liked David Brooks. I think he is thoughtful and honest. I like his columns, and I like his appearances on Friday night Newshour, and I just like him.

Why couldn't you just argue the policy points without all the personal invectives, ad hominems and accusations as to motives?

It doesn't add to the argument. It just shows up as, well, shrill and a "bizarre and juvenile screed" so to speak.

And if you take after David Brooks with such venom, what do you have left for those who might turn up really vile? Come to think of it, maybe this sort of "argumentation" would be better left off more often than engaged in.

Robert, I'm with you on this David Brooks thing. It makes me sick to think that when I pay for an Oregonian, some of my money goes to David Brooks. The only value in his columns is that they accurately regurgitate the conservative dogma of the day.

I'm pretty well convinced that his columns (and other conservative columns) go beyond mere rhetoric to actually perpetrate lies upon the reading public. I've often wondered why newspapers think that public discourse on the Op-Ed page means a free-pass on their journalistic standards of truth. After all, it is possible to have differences of opinion as to the appropriate response to a factual scenario. When we can't agree on the basic facts or trust our source of facts -- that acts as a crippling cancer on the appropriate functioning of our form of government. The end result is that people lose even more trust in the newspaper and in columnists and in politicians. This is where the lying conservative agenda is really evil. If people buy their propaganda, the conservatives win. If, on the other hand, people tune out the lies and just disengage, then conservatives also win. That's why it is so important to point out the lies. Thanks for pointing out this latest.

As for the actual conversation on Social Security, it just isn't possible to have a real conversation in this environment. The old rules where the parties legitimately disagreed and then compromised somewhere in the middle to come up with a palatable policy for the country have long since withered on the vine. Conservatives want to kill social security the same way they've limited abortion in states like Missouri: piecemeal, one legislative inch at a time.

I'd also like to point out that the only reason we're facing any sort of budget problem has to do with the Bush administration's pi$$-poor fiscal policy. Tax cuts and increased military spending on an elective war should not add up to gutting social security. Maybe it's time to cut the Bush tax cuts -- that would save social security right there. If Bush is allowed to keep going on this current course, we're going to be faced with a horrendous decision of imposing an IMF style restructuring on ourselves (read: no more social programs like Social Security). I hope we don't ever get to that point.

You've got me there, dispossessed, this is an ad hominem attack. It was intended to be. Well, not exactly, because it was not my intention to impugn the personal character of the Brooks - whom I know very little about personally, just his professional character. I think that's fair game for someone who makes a living as a political commentator.

I do have a question for you, and it's an honest one: How would you characterize this Brooks' piece, specifically the first 5 or 6 paragraphs? How would you characterize the nature of his argument and how he sets it up?

As for the policy points, I’d like to address them, but I think that in this case they're a distraction from the real motive, which is still the diversion of funds into private accounts. Republican strategists like Frank Luntz and Karl Rove are masters at framing these debates in such a way as to put and keep the Democrats on the defensive. They're brilliant propagandists - the best out there. And it seems that they can always rely on commentators like Brooks to pick up the party line, dress it up a bit (sometimes with the “bizarre and juvenile”), and serve it out in good time. I do think it's impressive how it all comes together.

I'm actually quite shocked by the characterization of Brooks in this post, and I agree with disposessed that Brooks is generally a quality, thought-provoking read, especially when he goes off on societal issues.

But what I find ridiculous is the sense of disbelief you display, Robert, that his stuff gets published, as I always thought he was among the highest caliber of moderate conservative writers. I've read many a liberal piece that is far more baseless, shrill, and immature than Brooks' worst efforts. I'd also like to point out that the social security issue, with how much smoke and mirrors is involved, is an issue where I feel people can become very misled and think themselves completely informed--don't judge a widely themed columnist by his social security stance alone.

"I do have a question for you, and it's an honest one: How would you characterize this Brooks' piece, specifically the first 5 or 6 paragraphs? How would you characterize the nature of his argument and how he sets it up?"

Thanks for the nice response, Robert. I would character this piece as exasperated. I don't share his take, but I also don't think he is anybody's shill. And I think he comes across as more than usually impatient and testy in this piece.

As for the policy issues, whatever needs addressing has become hopeless in the context now. And for Democrats, that's a good thing. They are not on the defensive. The President is on the defensive because the public is just not going down for this. For quite a few years, I've thought FICA taxes were too heavy on the lower working classes. And all kinds of people have talked about raising the cap, means-testing the benefits, raising the retirement age or adjusting the way SSI COLA increases are calculated.

But Bush's long-held desire to "privatize" Social Security by pushing a leviathan windfall to investment fund managers hit a brick wall like few if any have been hit before.

So Democrats would now be foolish to engage the issue. So what David Brooks sees as hypocrisy, I see as, in this case, perfect advantage. Why shouldn't they enjoy it? These "reasonable doors of discussion" (eg, ye olde progressive indexation) were opened by the President only in desperation.

What may end up being more than a little ironic is if George Bush ends up having something in common with Hllary Clinton. She managed to get the kibosh put on medical coverage reform for a long time after her spectacularly failed attempt. And Bush I predict will do the same for Social Security reform. If any "reforms" were needed, they, too, won't be had for a long time to come.

I would like to direct everyone to Brooks' excellent piece in today's Sunday Oregonian. In the midst of all the Newsweek hubbub, Brooks comes out saying both sides are overplaying their hand, that the article was an honest mistake in no way related to a liberal agenda, and that the real culprits, it must be remembered, are the fundamentalists who selectively use American media reports to whip up frenzies. And he calls the administration "whiny." Not quite the picture painted of him in this thread.

article here: "Bashing Newsweek"

Sorry, Brian, but I don’t agree with your characterization of this piece. Not at all. Here Brooks presents a scenario of left and right needlessly duking it out over the Newsweek story, while never addressing the very reasonable concerns of many Americans that Muslim prisoners are being humiliated, tortured, and even murdered at the hands of US military personnel. I’m assuming that he completed this piece before Friday’s front-page NY Times article that methodically documents the horrific deaths of two Afghan prisoners at the US military detention center at Bagram.

Fair enough, though, because oversimplification of important political – and sociological - issues seems to be Brooks’ stock in trade. (For a thorough and humorous explication of this, see this piece .)

But then Brooks does something pernicious: he asks us to turn away from our internal divisions, and to look to the real enemy out there. In short, he subtly beats the drumhead for more reprisals against Muslims.

After describing how radical Muslim clerics – the leaders – work to desensitize their followers by whipping them into a frenzy, he tells us this: “The rioters are the real enemy, not Newsweek and not the American soldiers serving as prison guards.” I think the first part of this sentence contains a dangerous sentiment. Even if it’s unintentional, this kind of rhetoric desensitizes the American public to wholesale violence against Muslims. Are the thousands of rioters and protestors on the streets of a city in one of the most impoverished countries on earth our real enemy? If I accept that premise, then what is to be done about these people?

I fear that, as a group, Muslims are becoming – or have become – the acceptable “other” for large numbers of Americans, maybe even irretrievably so. I fear that we’re moving past the point of recognizing their humanity or their potential to be fully-formed politica beings. I fear that their image is being manipulated in order to manage dissent and debate in our country. I think that the tone of Brooks’ article bears this out. If you are a moderate, if you have no common cause with fundamentalists of any stripe, you might ask how we can work to step away from the breach we’re approaching, because if we don’t, we’ll have the conflict of civilizations that fundamentalists on both sides are pining for.

But I digress.

On a lighter note, Brooks’ does sound perfectly reasonable here, even moderate, particularly if you think that the only matter of political importance for Americans is that they put their divisions behind them and focus their energy on other conflicts and other enemies.

Bingo, Robert. Those who mislead are most dangerous when they sound moderate and reasonable. Brooks is a good example of the conservative type. Thomas Friedman plays the same game on the liberal side, in my opinion.

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Bingo, Tom, if I take your meaning correctly that Friedman poses as a liberal and that pose is intentionally misleading and false, since he is not liberal.

By that same measure the NY Times is misleading everyone who thinks it is liberal. And everyone who thinks it is conservative, for that matter. The Times, like almost any corporate media, is intentionally unprincipled. It doesn't believe in people or human ethics. It will say whatever it is paid to say and during Bush administration it favors Bush, it favors war and favors the death of American soldiers and Oregon Guards, and prints the lies that lead to Bush and death -- because then the NY Times profits thirty pieces of silver. It is not conservative, it is not liberal, it has no moral soul. It does anything for money.

Same as The Oregonian, with the added corruption that its publisher favors McCarthy-style supremacism and bigotry, (but not more than the money -- when Democrats pay for lies in his paper he puts the lies in his paper, (one word: Goldschmidt), shuts up, and clasps the money tightly in his fingers).

Edward complains: "It makes me sick to think that when I pay for an Oregonian [newspaper], some of my money goes to David Brooks." Please, either 1) DO NOT BUY the paper -- steal it, borrow it, read it online or at the library, just don't give YOUR MONEY to someone who uses it to buy bullets TO SHOOT AT YOU -- BOYCOTT The Oregonian; or, 2) quit complaining. 'But, on the other hand, by BOYCOTTing The Oregonian,' Edward has been led to believe, mistakenly: "If ... people tune out the lies and just disengage, then conservatives also win." Wrong-o. When the paper is bankrupt, the lies stop being promoted and impressionable young voters stop being intimidated to accept greed and gold as inevitable and 'worthwhile' for the meaning available to you in life. Also, a BOYCOTT, or "tune out" of the lies in corporate media, does not mean having to "disengage" -- obviously you have internet access and that is a way to MORE ENGAGE. Like writing your comment here: That's GREAT! That's engagement. You're JUST DOING IT. I liked that you made the effort and I liked what you had to say and I'm glad you're here. And you didn't need either the newspaper or David Brooks to tell you what matters to you and what you believe in.

For those here who 'excuse' Brooks 'this one time,' here is a shortened record of Brook's false statements and distortions in only recent months. In another venue, Al Franken has gone over the lies written in Brook's latest book, and as a pattern and by which to judge Brook's character, taking in misinformation and dishing out misinformation goes back all the way to his start. Deformed thinking IN leads to deformed opinion OUT. That's why it is so important to "tune out the lies" and cut them off -- so you can think for yourself and trust the thoughts you have when you do.

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I agree that Brooks is both readable and dangerous.

But, if y'all do plan to boycott the Oregonian, do it every single day, not like Lars.

See, on his show, Lars Larson calls the Big O the "fishwrapper" that is not worth his time.

But, guess what? Lars emails the Oregonian about five times a day, blowing his own (small, shrill) horn and begging them for ink. Begging is the word the editor used.

<h2>So, if you boycott the Big O, do it right.</h2>