David Brooks!

David Brooks, in one column, takes everything he doesn't like (Hippies! Montessori Schools! Free Love!) and some things he's pretending he doesn't like (Imperialism! Re-engineering other people's societies!) and explains for us, his silly readers, that science says its all just a bad idea. It turns out that the conservatives, and he lists them for us, were right all along.

His argument is that people used to believe in natural human goodness, and that society corrupted the individual, so people tried social engineering, communes, and... drugs? Anyway, according to Brooks none of that can be successful because of human nature. It's genetics, see?

The idea that science is remotely conclusive about how much people are shaped by institutions is absurd. The idea that the nation has reached this massive philosophical turning point, but that only wise David Brooks noticed, is hilarious. Look, Progressive Education is growing in popularity! And its being used in public schools, almost as if people were trying to alter institutions to change their effects on how people turn out.

But now we get to the heart of the column, and really the heart of every David Brooks column. How will he, someone who was uniquely positioned as a center-right commentator to convince people that Iraq would be a big mistake, shift the blame for that war to somebody, anybody other than himself. Take it away, David:

"In the realm of foreign policy, [the belief in natural human goodness] led to a sort of global doctrine of the noble savage — the belief that societies in the colonial world were fundamentally innocent, and once the chains of their oppression were lifted something wonderful would flower."

Gosh! Who could be gullible enough to believe that?! Must be someone who subscribed to a now widely discredited LIBERAL philosophy. Stop reading Rousseau, Liberals! Did I mention it's liberal? Like hippies! I wouldn't think something as absurd as that because I'm a follower of Burke and Smith!

The implication here is that because conservatives have effed up our foreign policy so badly, it has discredited liberalism, and we need to just recognize that the conservatives were right all along.