"What do you mean, 'we,' Kemo Sabe?"

Far be it from me to think to attempt to improve upon Doghouse Riley's takedown of Brooksie's drivel today, in which the hirsute pundit decides that now is the first day of "moderation's" life, while he stayed silent for eight years of ham-fisted Republican distribution of wealth to the top 1 percent wealthiest, just as he roared for the head of fiscally responsible Democrat leadership on account of a hummer (and, yes, I mean that ironically), and just as he applauded the Great Communicator's revolutionary destruction of a half century of centrism that provided safety nets and relatively fair distribution of the nation's income. But here's Doghouse:

If the "moderate 'conservative'"--let alone the "moderate 'conservative'" Republican--lurks out there like some finless albino coelacanth he is, assuredly, in a state of natural grace, not a man writing books on comparative lawn care modalities. You, Mr. Brooks, are a Friedmaniacal economic radical, a position you have never renounced nor repented, and only recently began to deny owning, as though it were a gallon of toxic sludge draining into a sanitary sewer, and you hopeful the passing cop who just asked you about it didn't actually see you do it.

That, my friends is just a small taste of the Indiana Iconoclast's...oh...je ne sais quoi...and I suggest you read the whole thing.

Then there's Joe Klein's "shorter:" "David Brooks is a friend of mine, but he's being an ass."

But I disagree with him profoundly about the Obama budget--and so, I would venture, do most moderate-liberals. The budget has to be seen in context. We are at the end of a 30-year period of radical conservatism, a period so right-wing that many of those now considered "liberals"--like, say, Barack Obama--would be seen as moderate pantywaists in the great sweep of modern political history. The past 30 years have been such a violent departure from the norm, such a profound destruction of the basic functions of government, that a major rectification is called for now--in rebalancing the system of taxation toward progressivity, in rebuilding the infrastructure of the country, not just physically, but also socially and intellectually.

But I must pick out the creamy nuggat of Brooks' column this morning, a column in which he inadvertently illustrates just how far to the right our public discourse has taken us since Richard Nixon flew off in "disgrace."

But beyond that, moderates will have to sketch out an alternative vision. This is a vision of a nation in which we’re all in it together — in which burdens are shared broadly, rather than simply inflicted upon a small minority. This is a vision of a nation that does not try to build prosperity on a foundation of debt. This is a vision that puts competitiveness and growth first, not redistribution first.

So, by asking the wealthiest in this country to accept a small few percentage point increase on their marginal rates is "inflicting" a burden on a small majority. Clearly, returning income tax rates to where Clinton left them is a form of class warfare that would come as quite a surprise to post Louis XVI France.

Or, say, the president of ITT, circa 1971.

At a time when a true "minority" of something like one percent are in uniform, fighting and dying in wars Brooks wholeheartedly supported (nearly 5,000 dead, to date, by the way), for him to even write such a paragraph is disgusting.

But his intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking. It can't be belabored enough that this so called "moderate" cheered Bush and the Plutocrats on until there was simply no more room at the Vomitorium, and now, after a presidential campaign that stretched out for nearly 24 months, he announces himself shocked, shocked, that Obama has a progressive vision. A "progressive" vision that merely returns us to some sanity in terms of the role of government in a modern society and the the role of a progressive tax system.

After 25 years of waiting for the tide to lift all of the boats and not just the yahts and cabin cruisers, Brooks paints himself as a "centrist."

We moderates are going to have to assert ourselves. We’re going to have to take a centrist tendency that has been politically feckless and intellectually vapid and turn it into an influential force.

Well, he's got the "politically feckless and intellectually vapid" parts right.