School's in.

Bob Herbert gets it:

We're not smart as a nation. We don't learn from the past, and we don't plan for the future. We've spent a year turning ourselves inside out with arguments of every sort over health care reform only to come up with a bloated, Rube Goldberg legislative mess that protects the insurance and drug industries and does not rein in runaway health care costs.

The politicians will be back soon, trust me, screaming about the need to rein in health costs.

David Brooks? Not so much...

Instead of catching that the "educated class" has led us as a country into a financial pickle -- spending more than we're making -- with ill-thought out policies that benefits the consultants, the analysts, the speculators, and the speculating pundits ...

Brooks believes it is a jealousy of their "betters", I think, that leads to wholesale rejection of the educated class's policies, and lack of ethics, that have led us to this current national lowground:

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public option is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should "go our own way" has sharply risen.

So... Brooks thinks that people turn against abortion, not because science has proven the viability of babies at earlier and earlier ages, and birth control allows more and more women to "choose" before conception...

he thinks they turn against global warming, not because Climategate documents and the science have demonstrated that the problem is being hyped, the dangers overstated to get people to take economically crippling action -- not thought out, but apparently better than no action at all...

they support gun control because the "right" Hollywood types, and that educated class, assure the little people from the safety of their own gated homes and bodyguards that it's best to disarm all citizenry, and let only outlaws have means to protect themselves, despite Constitutional guarantees...

that Americans are becoming more and more isolationist not because of mounting financial pressures at home and the futility of remaking the Middle East when even our number 1 ally, Israel, balks at working together for a comprehensive land-resolution process...

(he didn't say it aloud but...) he thinks that the mass public scoffs at hires like Janet Napolitano, Susan Rice, Justice Sotomayor and others not because their careers appear to be built on affirmative action and just putting the hours in, even if their results are later overturned/corrected (remember Ricci!)...

and also, he probably thinks that the President's critics, those who warned of elevating an untested junior senator with an outstanding education section on his resume but little for results in the experience section other than forwarding his own career ... have petty motives as well.

Back to Mr. Herbert above. I think he gets it. Merit matters. Sooner or later, the educated class will have to show some results -- some evidence that they actually attended and learned from those classes, something other than how to network, fluff the results and conclusions section -- and demonstrate a leadership that the people will follow without a legislative mandate and accompanying financial penalty for choosing differently.

Wise up, or get thee back to the safety of the schools, and out of the way with these unfunded mandates. Making poor choices on behalf of others. Because the school of hard knocks has a way of educating that strips away any illusions of who's really leading, and how well.

And they don't teach that at a one night, $100 ticket Springsteen concert. Sing us out, David?

He could throw that speedball by you...
Make you look like a fool, boy...

Glory days, well they'll pass you by...
Glory days, in the wink ;-) of a young girl's eye...
Glory day, glory days, glory days...

ADDED:
Law professor and Instapundit Glenn Reynolds doesn't get it either. See, he too buys the idea that one group of folks define themselves against the other. Personally, I don't think most Americans, educated or not, give a hoot what kind of choices the "educated classes" make for themselves or think about issues; instead, they'd define themselves as what they stand for: pro-family, community, sports team, religion -- there's a million ways to think of these folks other than what they are "against".

But I suppose you'd have to turn off the sock puppets, think for yourself, might help to actually know some real Americans, and then listen, rather than being so keen to tell them how they define themselves.

Kinda like lil Ezra Klein educating the rest of us on Christianity, or the fact that he just learned Epiphany (tomorrow) marks the end of the traditional 12 Days of Christmas. Seems like some folks just don't know what they don't know ... and they've got products to push that put them in a position of "educating" others. Probably wreaks havoc on those listening skills...

Okay, I went and reread that Brooks column. When I posted a link this morning, I didn’t see it as being as objectionable as these responses suggest, and on rereading I still don’t. Yes, there’s the air of Brooksian condescenscion (sic) toward the great unwashed, but that’s practically required for the NYT columnist gig, and remember, he’s trying to explain this stuff to the Upper West Side crowd. And I’m not so sure he’s using “educated class” in a positive way. See, e.g., “The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.” So cut Brooks at least a little slack, here.

Cut your own slack, Glenn? You might be out of practice, but you can't expect to play the "first!" card forever, even with the linky-link handouts evenly distributed to the other "educated" pundit pals, who have so much of substance to say, apparently they can't confine it to the classrooms even ...

ADDED: Reynolds then links to Prof. Kenneth Anderson, who sticks out like a sore thumb at the otherwise thoughtful Volokh blog, who just can't resist chiming in to plug his own rather tedious academic views on the subject (get yourself a cup of coffee before you wade into this one):

My Response to David Brooks, Taken from an Old Article on Lawyers, Elites, and the New Class
Kenneth Anderson • January 5, 2010 6:46 pm

(Update: Thank you Instapundit)

David Brooks has a piece up today in the Times attracting much comment. I am no populist, except perhaps by David Frum’s unexacting standards, but let’s just say I think that Brooks somewhere along the way lost the marvelous tuning that made him the true heir of Veblen. I think it was the need at the Times to do politics rather than Bobo culture and “comic sociology.” As for me, well, how much of an elitist am I? An editor of the TLS once told me, “Ken, you have almost exquisite taste. It would be flawless, too, except for your fondness for the novels of AA Gill.”

Here is my response to David Brooks, en passant, taken with some editing from the conclusion of an essay of mine in the Columbia Law Review in 1996, reviewing books on lawyers, elites, and the therapeutic New Class.

WTF? Was he purposely trying to come off as an educated schlub with nothing to contribute? I suspect these types of showy academics are what turns off so many intelligent young people from other cultures to the educated classes. If it means pomposity over practicality, obfuscating over communicating, collecting tenure checks at the expenses of contributing anything of value ... I suspect there's a lot of good talent rejecting those paths, and choosing more wisely.

Hint to Mr. Anderson? You're not as smart as you think/pretend you are. Nevermind that academic specialty on national security. And to answer this question, from posts past?

Last night at the children’s Mass at our Catholic parish in Washington DC, observe the arrival of the fellow up top in the photo, dressed in a red suit, who proceeded, at the end of the service, march down the aisle loudly saying, “Ho, Ho, Ho,” and “Merry Christmas,” and who delivered a special message to the children that he would be by later that night and they should all be Very, Very Good. (Rumor has it that Tod Lindberg helped with matters, and a jolly good job too!)

But how should we understand this Santa Claus in church? Here are two possible theological accounts. I should note that I am not Catholic, and do not make any claims to deep understanding of Catholic doctrine.

Easy (no need to pontificate here and pretend to be something you're not). It means you go to a pretty crappy church. No need to overanalyze, unless Volokh is paying you by the inch?