DAVID BROOKS IS A SMART GUY

This article in the Weekly Standard is important. As pointed out here at Innocents Abroad, one of the important contributions of this article is to introduce another character into Brooks's social typology: Joey Tabula-Rasa, the average American college kid who awakens to political life as American troops are rushing across the desert in Iraq. Brooks's speculative recasting of pro-war folks as "progressives" and anti-war folks as "conservatives" for the purposes of exploring Joey's political experiences is interesting but may be more useful as a tactical move in support of Republican ideas. I'll have to think about this some more. The virtue of Brooks's piece is that it attempts to show that events create lessons that can challenge received ideas. For Brooks, the ideas that need challenging are all on the left, of course. . .