Sullivan on Brooks
Andrew Sullivan fisks David Brooks’ new column in a most delightful way. (I feel some trepidation at not having read the entire Brooks piece, but it’s behind the TimesSelect wall.)
Nice work, Sullivan.
update (4/2 @ 3:47pm):
Brooks’ statement that “Goldwater and Reagan were important leaders, but they're not models for the future” stuck in Glenn Greenwald’s craw as well, as the conclusion to his rebuttal illustrates:
On every front, the Bush administration has ushered in vast expansions of federal power -- often in the form of radical and new executive powers, unprecedented surveillance of American citizens, and increased intervention in every aspect of Americans' private lives. To say that the Bush movement is hostile to the limited-government ends traditionally associated (accurately or not) with the storied Goldwater/Reagan ideology is a gross understatement.[…]
The terms "left" and "right" do not mean what they meant even ten years ago, though they still have meaning. At least for now, until this movement is banished to the dustbin, those terms have come to designate whether one is loyal to, or whether one opposes, this government-power-worshipping, profoundly un-American right-wing cultism that has been the dominant political faction in America for many years.