I couldn't let this editorial go, seeing as its one of the last Brooks pieces I'll have the pleasure of reading before the NYTimes imposes its self-defeating subscriber wall. I wrote this in response to a classic Brooks piece in today's NYTimes. In other words, a rhetorically persuasive piece that is riddled with straw men, disortions and disingenous claims, claims that are used to not so subtly support President Bush's entitlement "reform" charade":

To Whom it May Concern,

David Brooks's June 2 editorial, "Fear and Rejection," contains a series of arguments that are disingenous, ignorant, or perhaps both simultaneously.

It is certainly true, as Mr. Brooks notes, that several major European economies have been struggling, and could use a degree of reform and liberalization, especially in terms of the nature of their labor markets as well as in terms of the privatization of state-run enterprise. But so what? When American liberals talk of the welfare state, what we have in mind is, say, Britain's or Canada's, not France or Germany. Mr. Brooks's debating point here is a straw man, and he knows it.

Indeed, there is very little evidence to suggest that having things like universal healthcare or state provided pensions has anything to do with their situation. Indeed, if this were the case, one would expect nations like (all stastics from 2004) Great Britain, 3.3% GDP growth, 4.7% unemployment, Ireland, GDP growth 5%, unemployment 4.3%, Australia, GDP growth 3.2%, Unemployment 5.1% Canada, GDP growth 2.9%, Unemployment 6.8%, Zapatero's Spain, GDP growth 3.0%, unemployment 10.38% and yes, even "Socialist" Sweden, 3.2% GDP growth, 5.5% unemployment - all of which have many of things Mr. Brooks attributes as causes for the current economic malaise in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy, most prominently a more fair and generous welfare state than that of the United States - to be sufferring the same fate, which any quick perusal of the economic data from the last decade demonstrates they are not.

Secondly, Mr. Brooks references an Anatole Kaletsky article from the May 30 edition of the London Times ("ECB Dogma or Active Policy? No Brainer!") giving the reader the impression that Kaletsky's arguments support his own, which if one takes the time to read Mr. Kaletsky's article, is clearly not the case. Kaletsky's argument is primarily about the European Central Bank's monetary policy and the travails of trying to impose a single monetary standard on the still-diverse needs of the eurozone, and has nothing to do with questions of the welfare state. Indeed, Mr. Kaletsky's argument tends to suggest that is the 1992 Maastrict treaty and the subsequent European monetary union that is the problem. Considering Mr. Brooks's decision to start measuring France and Germany's economic performance in 1991, this would tend to suggest a more sensible explanation for these two nation's relative economic underperformance in this time period than the one Mr. Brooks would like to suggest.

But Mr. Karetsky's real argument - or the relative economic performance of countries with welfare states more generous than the United States that are not Germany, France, or Italy - is, of course, not helpful in achieving what is Mr. Brooks's primary goal: the use of clever distortion and rhetorical sleight of hand to provide intellectual succour for Mr. Bush's fraudulent and floundering "entitlement reform" project.