"David Brooks Reveals He Literally Worships Money" (Jonathan Schwarz of "A Tiny Revolution")

STOP THE PRESSES: 9th Circuit panel lifts injunction that permitted DoD to continue enforcing DADT (see below)

Our Davy Brooks: Does the fact that he has a career prove that there truly aren't any disadvantages to being a functional moron?

I know I sometimes try to argue that, contrary to what you might think from observing who gets respect in our society, there actually are disadvantages to being a functional moron. That, however, would still leave the career of Our Davy Brooks -- and I mean the fact that he has a career -- unexplained. Beyond that, I don't think anything more needs to be said about this post from Jonathan Schwarz on his blog "A Tiny Revolution." -- Ken

July 06, 2011

David Brooks Reveals He Literally Worships Money

David Brooks just acknowledged that the Republican party is insane, which has caused great excitement among liberals. But no one seems to have noticed the most important thing Brooks said, which is that he actually worships money:

The members of this [GOP] movement [to default on the national debt] have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money.

Obviously there's no religious or moral tradition which considers repaying loans to be "sacred." It's almost 180 degrees the opposite: the Old Testament, New Testament and Qur'an all condemn charging interest on loans. And of course the Bible requires Jubilee years in which all debts are completely canceled.

That doesn't mean that defaulting on the U.S. national debt would be a great idea. It just means that Brooks is, ethically-speaking, a gigantic pervert.

On the other hand, it turns out there's a particular kind of U.S. debt that David Brooks feels is completely unsacred:

BROOKS: There is no Social Security trust fund there.

And:

BROOKS: We all bow down and worship at the beast of this fiction called the Social Security trust fund...

And:

BROOKS: ... the trust fund is an accounting fiction.

What's the difference between these two kinds of debt? Well, David Brooks himself undoubtably owns a lot of standard government bonds. Paying him back is sacred. But the Social Security debt is mostly owed to peons. So paying them back is profane.

-- Jonathan Schwarz

POSTSCRIPT: DOES OUR DAVY HAVE A POINT?

An exceptionally erudite colleague points out that "many religious traditions do, in fact, involve themselves with borrowing and lending, dating back as far as written records," which he says often actually document temple loans in barley and silver, with gods listed as creditors and wars fought over collection of such debts. Even my learned colleague acknowledges, though, though, that officially at least this is not the case in the monotheistic religions, possibly in response to the abuses noted in such cultures as the Sumerian. (And I'm guessing that when Our Davy invokes the "sacred," he has a pretty limited version of same in mind.)

He suggests that, while "maybe Brooks is right," the point to stress is that "the US is not a theocracy, legally at any rate." He points out too that it's worth stressing who it is threatening to not live up to U.S. debt obligations: the Republicans.


STOP THE PRESSES: IN THE WAKE OF FRIDAY'S DOJ FILING,
9TH CIRCUIT PANEL RESTORES BAN ON DADT ENFORCEMENT

This statement comes from Jon W. Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal in Los Angeles:

The injunction issued by the district court in the Log Cabin Republicans' challenge to Don't Ask, Don't Tell is back in effect. The government is enjoined from enforcing DADT anywhere in the world -- that means, not only no more discharges, but also no more processing for discharge of those who might violate DADT.

This, of course, was the situation that existed for 8 days, before a different set of Ninth Circuit judges issued the stay of the injunction in the Log Cabin Republicans case. Nonetheless, this is a quite stunning development. It shows just how important it is that the Department of Justice now recognizes that sexual orientation discrimination should be presumed to be unconstitutional and that courts should examine such discrimination carefully, as the Department of Justice forcefully argued in its brief filed last Friday in our Golinski case, which today's Ninth Circuit order expressly referenced.

But, how safe it is to come out depends on what happens next. The government could ask the Ninth Circuit judges who just lifted the stay to reimpose it while they ask a larger group of Ninth Circuit judges to again issue a stay or while they ask the Supreme Court to reimpose the stay. Even if the 3 Ninth Circuit judges who just lifted the stay refuse to do that, the government could ask the larger group of Ninth Circuit judges or the Supreme Court to reimpose the stay.

Jon W. Davidson
Legal Director
Lambda Legal

For more information on today's DADT development, check out Chris Geidner's Metro Weekly blogpost, "Ninth Circuit Halts DADT Enforcement, Pentagon 'Taking Immediate Steps' To Comply."

#