Immoderate Moderation

There is nothing moderate about the moderation of The New York Times columnist David Brooks. And in his most recent piece he reveals as much...again.

I'll linger for only a moment to note how foolishly naive or willfully blind Brooks must have been to the transparently obvious anything-but-moderate politics of our current president. Everything about Barack Obama, before the election, positively screamed "I'm a true-believing Lefty", from his life experience, his education, his career direction, his party of choice, his biographies, his place of worship, his associations, his voting record, etc. As a result, nothing he has done since the election can justly be called a surprise.

But, as I say, I don't wont to dwell here. Rather, I want you to consider instead this telling paragraph in Brooks' latest missive:

The government war is playing out just as you’d expect it to, strengthening those with pure positions and leaving those of us in the middle in the cross-fire. If the debate were about how to increase productivity or improve living standards, people like me could play. But when the country is wrapped up in a theological debate about the size of government, people like me are stuck crossways, trying to make distinctions no one heeds.

In another portion of the piece Brooks calls the perennial debate between those who believe in constitutionally limited government and those who do not, "stale". He's wrong. What's stale is his, and the far too many he represents, insufferably narcissistic pose of carefully measured, "a pox on both your houses" moderation. I do wish he were a little less extreme in advancing that view on the rest of us.