david brooks, lampin’ on the communist manifesto

The Times will shortly be firewalling me away from his errant and at times incoherent ways of thinking, which is good because I cannot seem to look away. (Does anyone think that this is a good idea?) Every once in a while, he does pick out an interesting thought or two, as he does in ‘Karl’s New Manifesto:’

“The information society is the only society in which false consciousness is at the top. For it is an iron rule of any university that the higher the tuition and more exclusive the admissions, the more loudly the denizens profess their solidarity with the oppressed. The more they objectively serve the right, the more they articulate the views of the left.”


Of course, he then blows it, by writing:

“Poor children are less likely to live with both biological parents, hence, less likely to graduate from high school, get a job and be in a position to challenge the hegemony of the privileged class. Family inequality produces income inequality from generation to generation.”


Ugh. At least he pretends to read Marx. Notice the use of ‘hence.’ Inequality, again, falls at the feet of the working class and the everyday folk. Don’t put the left and the right together on this one, David. The ‘Go it on Your Ownership Society’ is in full swing, and it ain’t coming from the left.

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