Will Collier is very miffed with David Brooks today. I think Will scores some fair points. But I’ll let him speak for himself. I do think David cuts some corners. First, there’s his contention that the Tea Partiers (and other likeminded Americans) are fundamentally anti-intellectual. He writes:

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.
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 opinion 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 risen sharply.

Shouldn’t Brooks take a minute or two to explain why he’s so sure the causation is all one way? Are Americans reacting to “the educated class” (a Trojan Horse of a concept, if you ask me) or is the educated class reacting to Americans? My guess is it’s both. But it’s just a guess, not an assertion.

Second, as Collier notes, Brooks switches his terms a bit sneakily. In the midst of his discussion of the Tea Partiers, he throws out this assertion:

The Obama administration is premised on the conviction that pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise should have the power to implement programs to solve the country’s problems. Many Americans do not have faith in that sort of centralized expertise or in the political class generally.

If you say so. But the political class is not interchangeable with the “educated class” (again, whatever that means). And the political class is not interchangeable with the Obama administration. Brooks makes it sound as if it’s a settled fact that the Obama administration is full of a bunch of non-ideological (i.e. “pragmatic”) professionals. That’s one point of view, but it’s hardly settled, and I would like to think Brooks knows that. Objecting to the Obama administration is not the same thing as objecting to the notion that “pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise should have the power to implement programs to solve the country’s problems.” Nor is it anti-intellectualism, nor is it purely the avocation of passion-addled members of the non-educated class, to give voice to that opposition.