Loyalty to a mean-spirited backwardness

In case you missed it, here’s the link to an important OpEd piece, "The Mother of All No-Brainers," penned by David Brooks in the New York Times. Here’s a quote from it:

The members of this movement [within the Republican Party] do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.

Republicans who haven’t rotted their brains into mush by chug-a-lugging the bug juice from the Tea Party’s fountain of disinformation should take the time to read what Brooks -- an old-fashioned kind of "conservative" -- has to say this time. He’s talking about reality.

Being a conservative used to be about appreciating hard-edged reality, rather than indulging in dreams and theories. Now, according to the dictates of extremists and opportunists, being a conservative means eschewing all compromise. Now it seems to mean that starving the beast of government is more important than keeping promises or the commonweal.

In 2011 being a conservative is more about loyalty to a mean-spirited backwardness than it is about trying to make the future brighter.