A fake conservative "reluctantly" converts to supporting one of the main Dem proposals--NYT

For years, David Brooks pretended to be conservative. 

It was a lie from the get-go, but it made his fortune.  And now he's written an article for the NY Times supporting the idea of "reparations"--the idea of paying descendants of slaves huge sums because slavery was the collective fault of all whites living today, eh?

The Case for Reparations A slow convert to the cause.
By David Brooks
...
[S]in travels down society through the centuries. Lincoln was saying that sometimes the costs of repairing sin have to be borne generations after the sin was first committed.

Really, David?  Somehow I don't recall Lincoln saying that.

Say, you don't suppose you just made that up, do ya?  I mean, it's absolutely un-possible that an America-hating progressive would just make up a quote from a revered historical figure to try to justify a pet progressive policy, right?  So...well, it just boggles the mind that anyone would do that.  So surely you...well, let's go to the tape, shall we?  Here's the Lincoln quote Brooks cites as saying "the costs of repairing sin have to be borne generations after the sin was committed."

The sentence is from Abraham Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address.

“Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

Um...am I the only person who didn't see this as saying what Brooks says it said?

Slavery and the continuing pattern of discrimination aren’t only an attempt to steal labor; they are an attempt to cover over a person's soul, a whole people's soul.

That injury shows up today as geographic segregation, the gigantic wealth gap, the lack of a financial safety net...

"The lack of a financial safety net"?  I thought we had Social Security and welfare.  Oh wait, what he really means is that different groups have vastly different average incomes.  Just like poor whites who drop out of high school have low incomes?  Why yes, that's right.  So...racism, eh?

And about your claim of "geographic segregation:"  Unless I've been misinformed, groups tend to live with people of the same tribe:  Chinatown, Little Italy, Germantown, Little Mogadishu ring a bell?  Was that racial discrimination, or did they live with others because they felt more comfortable?

Sorta' like you and the other millionaires living in gated communities, eh?

...but also the lack of the psychological and moral safety net that comes when society has a history of affirming: You belong. You are us. You are equal.

If you thought what Brooks cited as "the lack of a financial safety net" was WAY vague and open-ended (i.e. no natural limit on how far it could be stretched), he's just getting warmed up:  How far do you think progs will be able to stretch charges of a lack of a " psychological and moral safety net that comes when society has a history of affirming: You belong. You are us. You are equal."

Nearly five years ago I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Atlantic article "The Case for Reparations," with mild disagreement. All sorts of practical objections leapt to mind. What about the recent African immigrants? What about the poor whites who have nothing of what you would call privilege? Do we pay Oprah and LeBron?

Great questions, David.  Should recent African immigrants qualify for reparations, since as recent arrivals they were never slaves?  I suspect that demand would strike most Americans as sorta' unreasonable, eh?  (Although with prog schemes ANYTHING can be stretched to any result they desire.)  But if it's unreasonable to give reparations to recent arrivals, doesn't that same argument apply third-generation descendants of slaves?  Just asking.

But I have had so many experiences over the past year -- sitting, for example, with an elderly black woman in South Carolina shaking in rage because the kids in her neighborhood face greater challenges than she did growing up in 1953 -- that suggest we are at another moment of make-or-break racial reckoning.

"Face greater challenges than she did growing up in 1953."  News flash, David:  When your community makes multi-millionaires of people whose "entertainment" elevates drug sellers and people who shoot cops--and whose members refuse to help law enforcement find killers and drug dealers--most of those "challenges" are self-inflicted.

Coates's essay seems right now, especially this part: "And so we must imagine a new country. Reparations -- by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography...

"Full acceptance of our collective biography"?  What are you really trying to say there?  I suspect you meant "collective guilt."  But of course that concept has been totally, thoroughly discredited.  It's the kind of rationale the Nazi's used to execute innocent French villagers when members of the French resistance blew up a German train in WW2.  We condemed that bullshit rationale back then, but you've just sought to resurrect it today--but cunningly, calling it by a cryptic name.  Clever, David.

Here's more from Coates, quoted approvingly by Brooks:

...and its consequences -- is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely.... What I'm talking about is more than recompense for past injustices -- more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I'm talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal."
...
The need now is to consolidate all the different narratives and make them reconciliation and possibility narratives, in which all feel known.

Ace of Spades summarized Brooks' article essentially like this:

Lotta glittering generalities about making people "feel known."  And invoking the discredited theory of collective guilt.  So, really solid reasoning.

This is like someone who says "This isn't about the money, it's about healing our collective souls."  And then the guy says, "Just kidding!  It's about the money, but I figured if I came at you with this heal-our-collective-souls bullshit maybe you wouldn't notice I'm in your pockets again."

David Brooks: fake conservative.  For his entire career.

H/T Ace of Spades.