Let me offer a hat tip to the Lion of the Blogosphere for alerting me to a year and a half old column written by the New York Time’s house conservative, David Brooks. Calling Brooks a conservative is a bit of a stretch. As a Columnist for the New York Times and regular contributor to PBS’s News Hour, referring to Brooks as a conservative is akin to describing the Commander in Chief Barrack Obama as a soldier. It’s probably more apt to describe his politics as me-too Republicanism. That basically describes the Republican Party from the FDR era up until the age of Reagan. They were for whatever the Democrats were for, only not as much. Democrats would propose a program, the Republicans would say, “OK, but that program is too big. We need to trim it down.” The Democrats would say OK and they would work out a number, not as big as first proposed, but still big, and there you go, bipartisan compromise.
English: David Brooks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Me-too Republicanism.
As a commentator, Brooks seems to bring nothing to the table. I’ve watched him many times over the years expound on the conventional wisdom of the day on The News Hour. His opinions were banal and shared by everyone in his class. He could have written the ‘Conventional Wisdom Watch’ column for Newsweek. And of course, he was in love with Obama, famously deciding that Obama would make a great President after staring (too long I think) at the crease in Obama’s pants.
So it’s no surprise that Brooks is a supporter of amnesty and open borders immigration. After all, everyone in his class is. That’s the dominate view of the cocktail party set. Brook’s column is loaded with a pablum of open borders clichés, and inaccuracies that have been debunked multiple times, but what got my attention was this comment:
“Thanks to the labor of low-skill immigrants, the cost of food, homes and child care comes down, living standards rise and more women can afford to work outside the home.”
That remark leapt out at me, so revealing as it was of the class that Brooks is a part of; wealthy, urban, liberal, and totally disconnected and unattached to the rest of the country. Yes, food is cheaper. But it’s cheaper because we are allowing growers to ignore actual agricultural visas and employ illegals far cheaper than they would have to pay foreign, but legal workers. Child care, however, isn’t cheaper. For the struggling middle class shopping for day care is as expensive as it’s ever been. But Brooks doesn’t mean day care, he means nannies. For that class, that’s what child care means.
Brooks is justifying a permanent underclass to keep him and his buddies in the cocktail party circuit awash in cheap nannies and arugula. His cheap food and labor argument could have been used, and probably was used, by some southern senator in the 1850’s justifying slavery. “Ahh say suh…(yes I’m imagining him as Foghorn Leghorn) the institution of slavery is needed to provide cheap and plentiful food and clothing for all, as well as mammies to raise ouah babies so we can pursue self actualizing careers…” OK that last bit is more Brooks than Foghorn Leghorn, but you get the idea,
Putting it another way, Brooks could be saying, “Thanks to the labor of our slaves, the cost of food, homes and child care comes down…”Slaves, serfs, proles, no matter what you call them, a life dependent on keeping a permanent underclass so that you can live your dreams because you are crushing theirs is fundamentally un-American. And unstable. The elites want a life of plentiful servants, just like they see on Downton Abbey, and to do that they are willing to crush wage rates among the native poor, working class, and middle class.
You can’t be an Eloi without the Morlocks, but eventually the Molocks will turn on you.
Mike Street Station 
Pingback: Why Elites Love Low Skilled Immigration | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
One thing that cracks me up is when the Democrats and the me-too Repubs start babbling away about how the presence of cheap Mexican labor is what drives our economy. This always leaves me wondering why Mexico — the country with the most cheap Mexican labor — isn’t a global economic superpower.
But I have to hand it to the Dems. They have so effectively propagandized their base, the true believers will support policies that are sure to harm them in the long run. I guess that’s what happens when you demonize the opposition to the point that fear of the bogeyman overwhelms rational thought.
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Heh, you’re right. If cheap unskilled labor is so great for an economy, why isn’t Mexico benefiting? They have it in abundance.
As to your other point, I’m surprised at how well the propaganda job has worked.Labor Unions of all organizations, are on board for open the spigots amnesty. I can’t imagine what they think they are getting in return for being priced out of the labor market.
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The poor also have access to subsidized child care, subsidized healthcare and subsidized food to which the middle class do not have access. What Brooks is arguing for is a Third World economy. I see it happening first hand in Los Angeles, and I’m sure New York and Washington aren’t much different.
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That’s exactly what the long term result would be; a few elites on top (Brooks) living the high life, and a teeming mass of poor uneducated proles, with hardly any middle class. We would be reproducing the Latin American model for society.
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Yes, America is for the most part a lost cause for anyone who wants to live the normal middle class lifestyle. The average American is so provincial and feeble minded that he has very little social capital to draw upon globally, if a crisis arises. They deserve what they get from the elites!
Brook’s utopia for the elite and poor, without the middle class is not realizable. The balkanization of the rich and poor in America is more destructive than that of Latin America, mainly because the elites have relied heavily upon the Middle Class for a long time and have taken everything for granted because America is just light years ahead of any Latin American nation in terms of infrastructure. The menial services American elites get from the poor can’t be replicated using the same demographic for higher quality and sophisticated services performed by the Middle Class. In Latin America, the elites are isolated in very small pockets of land, living among themselves. It’s not so cut and dry in America, which is a problem for the elites, if they decide to turn America into a South American – Banana Republic.
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I hope you’re right on that. If the elites plan on wrecking the country for the sake of cheap nannies and housekeepers, I hope it comes crashing down on them too. Of course, it will have crashed down on the rest of us long before…
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Reblogged this on News You May Have Missed and commented:
Why Elites Love Low Skilled Immigration
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He is an idiot. Like you said, a complete snob. It’s good to see someone call out this guy.
By the way, here in my neighborhood, food is NOT cheap, unless you happen to be on food stamps.
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Ann Coulter needs to start a National Party. Immigration reform. Immigration moratorium. Etc.
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I totally disagree with that. All that would do is drain the GOP of it’s immigration patriots so we would have two major parties in support of open borders.
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