The re-education of David Brooks

P.J. Gladnick at Newsbusters has the story of how the White House dispatched a team of four operatives to persuade David Brooks to back off his threat to lead an army of moderates to oppose the Obama agenda. Gladnick observes:

So either the four overseers of the White House were masters of manipulation or they had extremely pliable material to work with . . .

Indeed. And now the useless idiot has returned with a new column singing paeans to Obama's education "reform" plan. The Toady-in-Chief's latest column includes this:

Thanks in part to No Child Left Behind, we're a lot better at measuring each student's progress. . . .
Most districts don't use data to reward good teachers. States have watered down their proficiency standards so parents think their own schools are much better than they are.
As Education Secretary Arne Duncan told me, "We've seen a race to the bottom. States are lying to children. They are lying to parents. They're ignoring failure, and that's unacceptable. We have to be fierce."

Oh, those "fierce" reformers! Like President Clinton before him, President Obama sends his kids to private schools. Public schools are for Other People's Children, and the endless promises of "reform" have never been fulfilled, nor will they ever. America's schools are arguably worse now than they were when No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001, and they are certainly no better.

Obama's "reform" plan will not improve the schools, either. To a Democrat, the policy object of school "reform" is full employment and higher pay for members of the teachers' unions. Hire more teachers, pay them more money -- it's a constituent-service model of policy. The Democrat who says anything else is lying, and yet Brooks takes Obama's professions of "caring" at face value:

The Obama approach would make it more likely that young Americans grow up in relationships with teaching adults. It would expand nurse visits to disorganized homes. It would improve early education. It would extend the school year. Most important, it would increase merit pay for good teachers (the ones who develop emotional bonds with students) and dismiss bad teachers (the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed).

Of course, "merit pay for good teachers" is just code meaning, "higher pay, period." Whatever standards are used to measure "merit" will be manipulated by administrators to reward their favorites. Just as the chief result of the student-testing requirements of No Child Left Behind was wholesale fraud in standardized testing, so will the lure of "merit pay" result in bogus attempts to fake "merit."

One wonders if the White House's favorite columnist even believes what he writes anymore. Certainly no one familiar with the bureaucratic reality of how American schools actually operate can believe Obama's plan will produce genuine "reform."

Becoming one of The Republicans Who Really Matter -- of whom Brooks is a leading example -- requires acceptance of a fundamentally false premise, namely, that Democratic politicians act in good faith. This is the Big Lie to which all other liberal lies are ancillary.

The Democratic Party is a conspiracy whereby liars advance the cause of evil with the assistance of fools. Republicans who "reach across the aisle" to cooperate in the implementation of the Democratic agenda are therefore agents of evil. (Whether Republican enthusiasts for "bipartisan compromise" are conscious of their agency in the cause of evil is moot, but they don't call them The Stupid Party for nothing.)

The reason David Brooks is the White House's favorite columnist is because, by the fraudulent pretense that he is a "conservative," Brooks provides key assistance in the Democrats' most essential mission: Obscuring truth.

Hit the tip jar.

UPDATE: Let's have a contest: Describe the Democratic Party in 20 Words or Less.

UPDATE II: A 'Lanche this way comes. Thank you, Professor, and welcome Instapundit readers. While you're here, feel free to poke around and check out the links -- it's Full Metal Jacket Saturday, and Monique Stuart would appreciate your traffic. You can also add me on Twitter or Facebook or your RSS feed. And, of course, your generous contributions to the David Brooks Fisking Fund are deeply appreciated. (It's For The Children!)

UPDATE III: When it rains, it pours: Also linked at RedState RedHot, Liberty Papers, Right, Wing Nut, Tom Maguire at Just One Minute, Ed Drisoll, Little Miss Attila and Moe Lane. Welcome all! And please give generously to the David Brooks Fisking Fund, because I don't know how much longer the ACORN protesters can keep the repo man away from my 2004 KIA.