First they came for the immigrants.
39
The author started well but went way off the rails with the part about Stephen Miller going to the dark side at a liberal university. Miller was a done deal some where in high school when his soul curdled.
Liberal trolls? How about real humans appalled at the gestapo-like raids that ICE performs? Babies and young children separated from their parents and held in jail-like holding pens? Maybe Putin sent over some former KGBers to train the ICErs. Or it’s just a logical extension of the US’s militarization of generic police forces.
Whatever it is, it is tragic to watch.
27
It seems to me the folks who prostrate themselves before "the rule of law" want anything but that. The criminals that make up the Trump family and the overwhelming majority of their sycophants don't want law to rule - they want to use rules that favor them and to use those rules selectively.
They want to simultaneously create concentration camps for children while shutting down an investigation into the greatest criminal conspiracy in the history of this nation's government. So, all you amnesty thugs out there; spare me your righteous indignation. You, yes YOU, installed in and continue to support the occupation of the highest levels of government by, a cadre of career criminals and you dare to complain about people coming into the "land of the free and the home of the brave" in the desire to save their lives and those of their children.
You really make me proud. Yes you do.
17
Donald Trump is a proto-typical Nazi totalitarian wannabe. Any resemblance to a democratic presidency has been completely absent since day one. And what he is doing in the headlines, his Caninet is doing behind closed doors: destroying any semblance of government that is humane and serving THE PEOPLE and not BUSINESS. Ditto for the SCOTUS and the Congess is mute, deaf and dumb — unless they are dying or leaving office. Fearless Leaders?
26
Oh beautiful, polluted skies,
a return of acid rain,
With arsenic, copper and lead,
from mine to flooded plains!
America, America, God is ashamed of thee.
Where brown’s no good,
and brotherhood,
a distant memory.
Oh, beautiful, for immigrant feet,
yearning to be free.
But try to cross our borders and,
witness hypocrisy!
America! America!
Rips children from their Mother’s breast!
It confirms our soul,
has no self control,
and Liberty is dead.
Oh beautiful, unending lies,
instigating strife,
Who more than country their self loved,
and vengeance more than life!
America! America!
Thy gold is not divine,
Winning isn’t winning, Trump,
You’re a loser unrefined!
Oh, beautiful, Oligarchs scream,
the fifth column in control.
Upending the world order,
America’s lost her soul.
America! America!
Oh what’s become of thee?
That Lady Liberty hangs her head,
and God’s ashamed of thee!
25
How about it David? My comments might be censored but I'm not going anywhere. I was especially surprised to see "Socrates" censored.
That said, at some point, a good and moral Republican will be overcome by debilitating nausea. Are you not there yet?
7
The separation of these migrant families is a giant horror story
tragically reminiscent of the Nazi-era and the incident that occurred in Havana Harbor in May 1939 when Franklin Roosevelt and Congress failed to come to the rescue of 900 Jews aboard the S.S. St. Louis.
Roosevelt was a beleaguered President at the time still dealing with the impacts of the Depression and the likely possibility of a war with Germany. Trump’s sole purpose now is to utilize these families as a way of making political hay.
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267
10
"Slowly" losing its humanity? No, sir. The GOP lost ALL its humanity the day they chose this fascist Hitler-wannabe as their presidential candidate. The GOP fully owns this ever-growing stain of evil.
And don't think for one minute we are fooled about why this is all happening: RUSSIA. Putin has such kompromat on Trump, McConnell, Ryan, and all the rest of the treasonous GOP slime that they don't dare risk making a move in defense of America and our traditional values.
The GOP is no longer a party working for the United States. Their loyalty is obviously to Putin, whose greed is matched by the destructive Koch brothers and the money-crazed GOP 1%. The goal is to destroy democracy and install Trump as dictator so Putin can continue to pull all the strings. The GOP 1% cares only about hoarding money, so they'll be fine with the continued trashing of our ideals.
It's atrocious what the GOP is doing to our once-great nation. They are now our "Nazi" party. Conservatives need to start over completely with new leadership and new policies--starting with condemning and distancing themselves from everything related to Trump-Hitler and his noxious racist base.
Until that happens, the GOP cowards, traitors, racists and bigots that hold all the power in the three branches of government are totally responsible for this tragic mess--and they own the disgusting and immoral Trump. They are destroying America--rapidly and catastrophically.
22
The seventh story on this subject, it seems the entire paper, and all of its employees are hell-bent on this narrative.
Justify, justify, justify.
Keep telling heart warming stories, bang the drum of unfairness and racism. Preach to the US citizenry that we are the ones that are to blame and we should open our borders, hearts and bank accounts to all you wish to come, talk down to us like children......
Get Trump elected for a second term.
17
Your party is not slowly losing its humanity. It’s lost it. What used to be hyperbolic claims the GOP endorses Nazi tactics and ideology are edging closer to truth every day. Look, listen, watch Trump, Sessions, Miller, Bannon and their complicit enablers at Fox, Breitbart, Congress. Look at the current crop of GOP candidates railing against Central American migrants fleeing gang violence, dehumanizing them as animals, and the voters who undoubtedly see themselves as noble souls who would have saved Jews in WW2 but who coldly respond to young children being ripped from their parents based on Trump’s Big Lie “it’s the law” and Democrats’ fault. No humanity, none at all.
59
Utter stupidity on Trump's part. My Republican Party has definitely left me.
27
It is good that Mr. Brooks concedes the horror this administration has placed on us. Our nation will be long remembered for this cruelty to families and children, all in the name of Trump pleasing his "base".
So, why, David, make this defense of "conservatism", when "conservatives" in Congress do nothing to stop it?
Indeed, why suggest that this somehow stems from Stephen Miller and some fall from grace due to "rebellion against the stifling conformity [he] found at [a] liberal university"?
Is this Brooks' attempt to absolve "true" conservatives from the wreckage that their anti-liberal cousins are making of our country?
I don't buy it. Mr. Brooks' is quite alone with his ideals of "conservatism" as peace-loving warders against statism and Orwellianism. Brooks' idealized "conservatism" is a luxury, nurtured by his exclusive "liberal universities". It may sell books and newspaper columns, but it does nothing for the "base".
The last 20 years have shown that only intolerance, blame-shifting and slogans stir the Orwellian proles that form the "base" of the GOP. Trump outfoxed the GOP by beating them at this game.
The rest now desperately cling to his coattails - better to be in office than fit into Brooks' antiquated, quaint idea of "conservatism".
Make no mistake - Congress could end this if the GOP called an emergency session and a veto-override. But Brooks' "conservatism" be damned, if it angers Trump, and the "base" that grovels to his Tweets.
48
The amnesty thugs are the democats. Trump gave them four common sense pillars back in March. The democrat amnesty thugs rejected Trump's proposal. It's on them.
End illegal immigration now...no matter what it takes.
Enough is enough!
8
AhHhhh good old lib logic. Never did see a law they couldnt ignore for the right reasons or enforce upon others when they felt like it. pathetic article, pathetic person.
5
This article is reductionist in an attempt to make a point. And while I understand it, I have a different take. Ethnic nationalists aren't trolls. They are ethnic nationalists. They are driven by a desire to maintain a form of cultural supremacy. They feel the same way about Central American's impact on our nation as you feel about the impact of Ethnic Nationalism on the Republican Party. You would both fight to maintain a set of values and norms.
What is taking place isn't a reactionary moment. It is the rise of Authoritarian Nationalism on the basis of ethnic threat. It is the same old old evil, only now given support by the calcified brains of a dying coastal generation aligned with the culturally isolated regions of the country.
If we are lucky, we will survive.
10
Well said, Mr Brooks. On top of that, to use this as a bargaining chip to get a more-draconian bill passed is what is disturbing.
1
"stifling conformity found at liberal arts colleges"? Really?
I didn't realize that conservative colleges were such shining bastions of diversity----of thought, or of race.
Conservatives are excellent at playing the victim when they aren't the ones in charge.
17
Who are we as a people, as a nation to allow our Federal Government, elected & appointed officials to carry out such cruel treatment of non-citizens fleeing their native lands to make a better life for themselves & their families in a similar way as all American immigrants have done since the very first settlers to these shores (with the exception of the cruel, dehumanizing, torturing kidnapping of Africans, imported as slaves against their will).
Are there problems because of immigration, illegal or not? Of course there are, as there always have been. This doesn't mean we as a people & nation (the richest now & ever) should turn our backs on those who are following what so many immigrants, our ancestors; have already done!
Where is the political will to open our hearts & our shores to these members of humanity (of which we are still part of)?
It's easy to attack the weak. That's what bullies do. It's easy to blame political groups we disagree with.
The truth is there is enough blame to spread around to all. We all should ashamed of ourselves! Instead of blaming liberals or conservatives or anti-liberals etc; we should be looking at ourselves. Each of us need to look into our hearts, into our souls to confront our own demons which allows situations such as what is happening on our southern border to occur in the first place. Otherwise we will never resolve this problem, or any of our problems & we will lose our country to our blind greed!
2
Robert Paxton defined fascism as "a form of political practice [distinctive to the 20th century] that arouses popular enthusiasm by sophisticated propaganda techniques for an anti-liberal, anti-socialist, violently exclusionary, expansionist nationalist agenda."
Mr. Brooks, doesn't this seem to be a fairly accurate description of the Trump administration and their supporters in Congress?
10
Mr. Brooks,
Slowly losing its humanity??? HA! it is hard to see at this point whether or not they ever had any to begin with. You are quite a bit late to the party....
6
A party "slowly" losing its humanity?
I cherish Brooks' mind and heart. But honestly, the GOP lost its last shred of humanity when it nominated Donald Trump, and now enables his most thuggish behavior.
Was stealing a Supreme Court seat from its rightful owner a human thing to do? Is standing by trying not to get noticed as the Naked Emperor spouts ever-more offensive lies, especially racist ones?
Of course I could go on, but I think the point is clear enough.
At some point, "just following orders" (or the Dear Leader) doesn't cut it.
20
To Secretary Sessions: And Jesus wept. Is Jesus weeping as he watches the horror on our southern border? Justifying the cruelty of separating families and holding children hostage just to get a wall is beyond comprehension. Where has our compassion gone?
14
I read over and over again that there's a "liberal policy of open borders."
I have yet to see any sort of legislation or official pronouncement by Democrats (or liberals) enacting or even approving of open borders.
This is merely a FOX News/Rush Limbaugh lie that gets repeated over and over again. I know of no one who believes in open borders.
In fact, if you talk with most thoughtful people on the issue of immigration, most agree that it boils down to supply and demand. It is those who employ improperly documented immigrants who are the root cause of the problem.
Throw a few thousand owners/corporate officers into prison for 5 years and the message will be clear.
But of course, Brooks and his vile party would never agree to such a solution.
28
"This is what George Orwell noticed about the authoritarian brutalists: They don’t use words to illuminate the complexity of reality; they use words to eradicate the complexity of reality."
Mr. Brooks,
After you and your ideology has spent no less than the last three decades doing exactly what you are complaining about to the word, "racist", you have officially lost the moral high ground to evoke George Orwell in an ideological debate.
Furthermore, we have already tried amnesty under Reagan. We got promises at the time from the Democrats that they would help us clamp down to seal the border, so that we wouldn't have to face the question of amnestying millions of illegals a second time.
The left has failed us countless times on this issue. You could have passed a reasonable immigration reform just as easily as you passed Obamacare, and you did nothing, even while Obama said and did literally all of the same things Trump is doing now.
Just like everything else from the left, this is just more crocodile tears so that your side can claim a moral majority. In truth, you care nothing for our laws, and you look forward to illegally changing the demographics in this country to one that will guarantee that your race baiting identity politics will successfully divide and conquer.
1
Good work again, David. it took someone else working for another newspaper to give you something you could repeat, but hey, of you can't play on the field, cheer from the sideline with a byline.
1
The Republican Party lost its honor and its decency and its humanity and its honesty when they nominated and then supported a fraudulent bozo for President.
16
Amnesty!
David Brooks is my favorite columnist at the NYT. There is a reason, though, that amnesty gets the blood hot. THEY ARE BREAKING THE LAW!
If the Left could just acknowledge that fact things could start to get better. If the Left could just say "illegal immigrants" rather than "undocumented" we could start moving forward. The current system is unfair to those who come legally. The illegal immigrant is cutting in line, plain and simple. The hordes of illegal immigrants are unfair to the low wage workers in this country.
I used to be hugely in favor of immigration, but I've changed. Mostly I've changed because of our identity politics and because the Left doesn't let us have a normal conversation about immigration without calling everyone racist. The only identity group I cared about before was American. I didn't care about black, white, Asian, Hispanic. I was happy to have more people come who wanted to be American. The Left, though, doesn't want Americans...they hate Americans. They want everyone else to come but they don't want them to assimilate and become American - they want them to be some hyphenated identity group that votes Democrat.
3
Let me see if I get this.
If a government official who has lauded himself as a gungho conservative is revealed to be a sadistic monster (ie Mr Miller), then obviously he can't "truly" be a conservative but must be some goofy alt form of anti liberal. Because a "true" conservative would never behave like this.
Well guess what? Apparently many modern conservatives DO behave like this. They are behaving like this. They are rigid and rule bound and amazingly unsympathetic to any point of view other than their own.
Miller et al walk and talk like the ducks they are. Definitions change. Now they are conservatives..
11
So, David, you believe that Stephen Miller was formed by his 'rebellion against the stifling atmosphere of liberal universities'?
You apparently missed the account of Miller in his high school denigrating Hispanic custodians paid to pick up student litter, so they should ignore the school's call for some minor civil volunteer work on their part. Fellow students responded with boos for Miller.
The formation of such character as his life reveals is laid at the door of his college, liberal or not, more by literary convention than by a defensible case study. Why not just settle for 'he is a jerk'?
10
"A party slowly losing its' humanity."?
That ship sailed a long time ago.
6
Talk, the coin of the realm for Congress, is cheap. Will it actually do anything of consequence or just again do you-know-what on a hydrant? Just what will Congress do if Trump vetoes the bill? What will they do if they override the veto and he ignores the law. Are they willing to defund the entire program? Entire agencies?
Trump was right about one thing: it is necessary to drain the swamp. Congress writes the checks for what the President does. And it was Congress that authorized the broad authority the President invokes to do much of his mischief. His Constitutional authority is quite circumscribed, especially domestically. Legislation and appropriations are the keys. Do not waste energy and time reacting to every tweet or comment that comes out of Trump. Instead, focus on changing Congress and, more importantly because of gerrymandering, your state legislators.
As to Trump himself, I do not understand why anyone is surprised at his very successful modus operandi. What else would one expect from a student who graduated summa cum laude from the Joseph Goebbels College of Marketing, as well as magna cum laude from the Joseph Stalin College of Loyalty for his dissertation, "The Case of Leon Trotsky: Using Apprentices When 'Lock Him Up' Aint Enough."
Snake oil will be always be sold as long as people are willing to buy it. Yes, money and outrageously false bravado from the Wimp-In-Chief can saturate the media with distortions and lies, but people still have to fall for it.
3
Wait, you really want to say the people running this country are not conservatives but some monster created by time in liberal colleges. To paraphrase any number of your party's President*, I would never say you are pathetic because that would not be politically correct.
5
Nice try, Mr. Brooks, but you and your Republican cronies are directly responsible for the current immigration mess. Don’t put the blame solely on the shoulders of Stephen Miller and his liberal education at Duke. Miller looked right into the cameras and told everyone who he was. Why won’t you?
9
During every day that passes after Trump took office, his apparatchiks have drawn closer and closer to the horrors of totalitarianism with every word, every action they take. The immigration situation is only the latest example. The state they envision will marry Stalinism with mafia criminality.
All in the name of "liberty"!
2
As usual, Mr. Brooks analysis is wonderfully manifested. However, at the end, he is too generous. He speaks of the Republican Party slowly losing its humanity. I suggest that what we are witnessing is evidence of a political party that has already lost that humanity.
4
Mr. Brooks, It's nice to see you've gotten your MOJO back. At least for now.
2
"This illustrates something crucial about this administration. It is not populated by conservatives. It is populated by anti-liberal trolls. There’s a difference."
Nice Try, but the correct term for describing them is "fascists." Stop trying to soft-pedal your criticism. Either criticize or don't.
4
Right-wingers, stop the hysteria over illegal immigration. The Europe to which you are so deeply attached--the Europe made up of white-skinned blondes and brunettes that you're afraid Angela Merkel is destroying--is made up of the descendants of hordes of Visigoths, Vandals, Angles, Saxons, Franks, Ostrogoths, and all the rest. These migrants pushed their way into the Roman Empire, and there was no wall high enough, or law that was strong enough, that would have stopped them.
5
You are right Mr. Brooks.
Immigration probably needs to be made easier not harder and these sorts of problems would then be less. Bend some. Bend towards kindness,
And if you want people to stay in Mexico, then build NAFTA even more so they will have jobs so they can stay.
And what about those US citizens who move to Mexico,,,, should we keep them from doing so?
6
The party is not slowly losing its humanity David...wake up...it is here...its humanity has already been lost, from the Southern Strategy to Entitlement Reform, to Katrina, to ACA repeal to Trump, the GOP has been on this warpath for decades, where ideology Trumps(!) basic decency and complexity be damned ...it is too far gone...
The questions conservatives like you need to put your minds to is what can take its place? can this monster be put out of its misery to allow its conservative replacement to flourish?...and is public discourse (the selfish 40%) able to recover to allow for such a renaissance?
8
It bothers me that the new policy of separating children from their parents at the border is being conflated with the larger immigration issues we have, that the story reported now - and in the past - is always slanted towards the good Democrats and the evil Republicans. Obama's policies were quietly reported - his conversion of the Walmart into a center for undocumented kids wasn't exactly widely reported - his tougher policies wouldn't help the the Democrats or the Republicans, so the reporting was weak. I want ALL the news, all the time, and let the chips fall. Sometimes I feel the Times is failing me.
4
Well said. Giving a snippet of the truth means the writer, publisher, commenter, TV talking head is telling a lie.
I suspect too many in the news media don't connect their partial truths as being responsible for declining readership / ratings.
Do they think we can't handle the truth?
1
Keep the families together. Don't separate the children from the parents. Whose bright idea was this? This is what happens when there is no coherent immigration policy vision as each party has been pushing against each other over decades.
1
The thuggery of the US government is a direct outgrowth of the neoconservative foreign adventures promoted by the likes of Brooks. After brutalizing people abroad, we now have an "enforcement" infrastructure primed to brutalize people at and within our borders, more and more including US citizens.
5
" It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity." Slowly? Really? It's been clear for decades now that the only bit of "humanity" the Republicans care about are the 1% who bankroll the Party. The rest of us, fugghedaboudit. Millions have been swindled out of a decent economic future because the Republicans were more "moral," and they appealed to their duped supporters instincts to fight a "culture war," as the hand reached in and picked the pockets. Well that facade of morality, so called, is certainly crumbling as the blatant hypocrisy that it always was becomes more manifest by Trump. "Unmask a bully and you expose a coward in disguise." - Circle of Iron
6
Many comments perhaps rightly return to the children at the border, but what of the decision to prioritize the low-hanging fruit among immigrants, such as the taxpaying husband/father of an American who has a traffic accident? Is this for the terror value? I guess that’s good, right? If you break the law, even if you correct it by marriage to an American, and you pay taxes and raise kids, we have no choice but to rip apart all those lives because, clearly and no matter what, people who break the law must be punished. Right.
Unless they are white? Gun owners? I’m confused. Victory is not numbers deported, but secure borders, right? Brooks makes the case, albeit obliquely, that zero tolerance makes us less safe. Oh wait, is that the point? So we’ll need a strongman to step in and handle the job? Oh dear. First they came for...
5
The problem with democracy is that the elected leaders aren't always the ones you or I may agree with.
Every single commenter here probably isn't dealing with child prostitution, opioid overdoses, home invasion or getting run over by an uninsured driver. However, countless voters are each and every day. Unless the Dems can find a law and order candidate instead of a rainbow and unicorn one, Trump is going to rule for 8 years and Pence for 8 more.
You've wasted 2+ years on this impeachment hail-Mary solution, isn't it time to look forward?
7
Nice job Mr. Brooks. But I beg to differ with you on one key point. The Republican Party is not slowly losing its humanity as you suggest. It has already lost almost all sense of humanity in the interest of power and blindly following the madman in the White House.
6
Dear Mr. Brooks,
Thank you for your knowledge of words and how to arrange them to make sense of this crazy administration. Your talent here has helped me better understand the anti-immigration "argument".
The only thing I would quibble with is the Republican Party has already lost its humanity.
1
“Owning the libs” “trolling?” Steven Miller and Jeff Sessions are not representative of the GOP? The House and Senate are controlled by the GOP. They could reverse the policy quite easily, but the GOP base supports Trump’s immigration policies. It is hard to tell who less tethered to reality, Trump or Brooks. Nonsense by mouth in the first case; nonsense by pen in the second.
4
The Orwellian scenarios unleashed by this administration and its horrifying appointees do not make America great--these enforcers, with their shallow-minded and blind obedience, steel-booted and heartless, represent nothing but evil. Evil that is spreading quickly and quietly while most citizens of all ages who believe in our values and ideals are dumbfounded by the daily and mean work of these evil-minded, cruel officials. American citizens with hearts, compassion, and convictions must resist now, must fight against the rising polluted tide of hate and mistrust, before our ideals and standing in the world are stamped out. There is nothing slow about the pace of change and deterioration. The president is unfit for office. So long as he remains the leader, the pack of devils under his thumb will continue to ruin our nation, spoil our legacy. Stop him, stop them.
2
No, Mr. Brooks, you don't get off the hook by labeling the Trump trolls "un-conservative." Trump is the result of years of demagoguery and dog-whistles by the Republican party you've long supported. Reagan's welfare's queen, H.W. Bush's Willie Horton, W's disregard for the victims of Katrina, Romney's "self-deportation," etc. He didn't spring out of nothing: he's the creation of years of Republican racism and fear-mongering.
8
"First they came for the communists, but I did not speak out..."
"Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out."
Americans are in the process of willingly eroding the principles of this country.
3
Republicans have been racist holy rollers for most of my lifetime. Now they are empowered to hate outright with impunity. Trump is a perfect leader for them. I am so ashamed of my country and it’s leaders. Mr. Brooks, you have sought to give them moral cover for most of your career. Look where we are now.
7
Stephen Miller wasn't "formed by [his] rebellion against the stifling conformity [he] found at liberal universities. " He was a fascist looney-tunes during his high-school days in Santa Monica. Here's hoping he'll be among the casualties when there's an accounting for this appalling mess.
14
Rather: “...rapidly losing its humanity .” Think fascism?
5
What was it Orwell said? “… a steel boot stamping on a human face forever…” as well as I can remember. Of course, he was speaking of Soviet Union statist totalitarianism. Oh, wait; isn’t that what we’re seeing now: rigid enforcement of rules (Sessions), immediate public denouncing of anyone who speaks against the government (Trump), state power used to divide and subjugate the population (Kobach, Nielsen, et. al.), and total “forever” war (MIC).
When Trump compliments Kim (Axis of Evil, anyone?) and attacks the EU, I have to wonder about our future history texts, Give this administration's penchant for denying factual reality, I expect DHS will be renamed the Ministry of Truth any day now.
7
“Amnesty” has become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate.
Wow! I'm still having trouble getting my head around the 91% of our Congress saying they're Christians yet a majority of Republicans lacking compassion and love toward their neighbor. WWJD
4
David, this isn't "a party slowly losing its humanity", it's a party on the express train to Hades.
12
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
They are the same people who feel that immigrants are "infesting" our country, as their leader indicated today.
They'll need keen eyes to look inward and find the real infestation.
9
I'm afraid Brooks falls into the "no true Scotsman" trap. Trump isn't a failure as a *conservative*, he's a failure as a *man*. His demonizing and de-humanizing of some people while lionizing others is typical of a despot. But perhaps the most serious problem is that so many people still support him, even though he will not improve their lives one jot.
8
Mr Brooks's historical take on authoritarian brutalism is selective. There are examples on the left (think of various Marxist- and Maoist-inspired regimes) and on the right (Nazism, authoritarian regimes in Chile, Spain, etc). In the US, inhumane abstraction as a tool for repression has been primarily used by self-proclaimed 'conservatives'. And Statist tendencies have, by and large, been mild, by European standards, and crafted with the goal of mitigating inequalities (New Deal, Great Society programs) and promoting equal opportinity. Fear of creeping authoritarianism by state agencies and the Federal government has been stoked by conservatives for generations in order to serve the interests of the few and the privileged. Portugal, Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands: these models show up American conservative talking points on the evils of social engineering for the alarmist thinking it is.
2
I agree with Brooks’ article, especially his comment that, while it is conservative to oppose large government, “one size fits all” rules which ignore the messy complexity of reality, the current “zero tolerance” policy is exactly that – one, uniform rule for all who cross, no matter what the circumstances.
However, this not-so-conservative mindset is apparent elsewhere. In it, abortion is murder, no matter what the circumstances or the age of the fetus. Commit a crime, do the time, again regardless of circumstances. Regulation is bad, period.
This not-so-conservative mindset is also curiously and hypocritically selective. Commit a crime, do the time is fine for small-time criminals, but large corporations get a pass, especially on large-scale injustices like large-scale long-term pollution, financial fraud, and blatant race and sex discrimination. The same conservatives who support the rights of the unborn are devastatingly and uncaringly indifferent to the welfare of those who are born, abandoning them to the same vagaries of fate and fortune as their parents.
Brooks’ use of statistics supports the point opposite what he’s trying to make. If “64 percent of the immigrants arrested by ICE in the agency’s Philadelphia region had no prior criminal conviction”, then 36 percent –did- have a prior criminal conviction. That’s a much higher rate than the general population and a good argument for restricting immigration, not what Brooks intended.
2
"It's the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity." Slowly losing its humanity? The GOP has already lost its humanity. I have never in my life felt such revulsion for my fellow citizens as I do for people who support this policy. This isn't a tax cut to debate or a Supreme Court justice to like or dislike or a Russia investigation to love or hate. These are human beings. Children! To support this policy is to support the brutalization of children, and nothing--no immigration overhaul or border wall or reelection-- is worth that. Period.
4
Inter-specific struggles are far more lethal than inter-specific ones.
Among humans, the roundish face of infants and the cries of children evoke parental instincts to protecting the helpless, except among sociopaths, whose population, by some estimates, ranges between 1 and 2 percent and predominates among males. Could it be that a cultural explanation in this case is not accurate as Mr. Brooks believes?
What about the line routinely issued by both state and administration officials that those opposed to walls, militarization, and harsh enforcement along the border are proponents of “open borders” and against the “rule of law”?
2
What Brooks gets right here is that Miller and the folks who agree with or follow him have embraced authoritarianism to squash Liberal culture - not as a political concept, but as a more general worldview. What he gets unforgivably wrong is this: "They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities." That's nonsense. Miller was very radically authoritarian and racist years before he started college. And almost all the rest of those who actually went to college arrived there already rebellious against liberal values and culture.
An argument can be made that some departments in most universities have a strong liberal orientation. But it's absurdly reductionist and wrong to suggest that the radicalization of "conservative" thought in America is the result of a "stifling" liberalism in higher education.
11
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity." Really? In referencr to humanity, the Party of Lincoln has its foot to the floor. Trump, Miller, Sessions et al are the juggernauts of inhumanity. Ayn Rand, if alive today, couldn't be happier.
1
When Vladimir Putin first became president of Russia, he said that he would establish a "dictatorship of the law." That was the first signal in his drift towards authoritarianism. The Republican Party now appears to be following Putin's script.
7
Refugees from famine and war and those seeking asylum are different from illegal immigrants who come to this country seeking work. The 11 million illegal immigrant number is based on a ten year old census. The actual number today is probably three times as many. As long as this latest political move has captured the attention of the country, now might be a good time to address the issue at its core: the economic benefits of the status quo. Should the border with Mexico be open or closed? Is the American economy dependent on a black market labor force? Who benefits from such a labor force and who loses? Might a compromise be that Mexican workers be allowed into the country with the provision that they are protected by the same labor laws that American workers are subject to? Crossing the border without documentation is against the law for everybody, why should Mexican laborers be treated any differently than illegal immigrants from other countries? Where is the moral outrage over the routine profiteering of American businesses who hire and exploit these people? Yes, separating children from parents is a very bad thing. Many US citizens with children who have been arrested for crimes they may have committed have also been separated from their children. The media, who, by the way, promoted the Trump campaign for ratings, is hyperbolic and manipulative in its reaction to this. Let’s just get honest and solve the problem
5
What was the stifling conformity at universities that Miller was rebelling against? Was it the belief that climate change is real? Was it the demand for civil rights for LGBT people? Was it the lack of segregation?
11
Many people on various social media sites claim that illegal immigrants are criminals, as though they are murderers, rapists, armed robbers and thieves, when in fact illegal entry is only a misdemeanor.
Trump has fostered this falsehood by claiming that immigrants are murderers, rapists and thugs. No matter that many are young women with small babies and children who are fleeing terror in their own homes.
The obvious outcome is that people feel righteous in saying that criminals are routinely taken away from their children and this situation is no different. But, Americans pending trial are often granted bail. They go home to their children. They may be sentenced to probation. Again, they are home with their children.
I can't think of anything much worse to do to a family in peril than to remove the children from their parents and fail to reunite them even when the parent is being deported back to the home country. This is beyond cruel. It is sadistic.
3
The GOP has been inhumane for years. Only now their inhumanity is magnified on steroids.
10
The Republican party is not "slowly losing its humanity." It has fully embraced a man who explicitly equates winning ("pwning," in the native troll) with virtue and struggle with unworthiness. (See Trump's comments about McCain's captivity in service of his country.)
This worldview is effectively amoral - anything the regime can get away with is acceptable. Tearing families apart is another test of Trump's expressed belief that, politically, he can get away with murder.
It is also a worldview common to fascists. Which is not surprising, since Trump is a dictionary-definition fascist:
"a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."
(Webster's definition of fascism.) The Republican party is unambiguously with him - a fascist party built around the personality of its would-be strongman.
I was once a Republican, and until very recently I often voted for Republicans. Because we seem to be stuck with a 2 party system, I believe we need a healthy conservative party. If there is any chance for that to happen, it will require well-meaning conservatives like Brooks to call a spade a spade.
The Republican party is not slowly losing its humanity. It has become fascist.
9
Slowly losing their humanity? The Republicans lost that years ago.
3
"Trolls" is a good word to describe those who see the world through a veil of white victimhood or a zero-sum-game in which an amorphous liberal conspiracy is destroying the USA. "Trolls" describes those who look like everyone else but whose hearts are cold and indifferent to the suffering of others. Mr Brooks would like this quality to be completely divorced from conservative thinking. I think that once it was, but no longer. And while I concede that there are a few true conservatives left, such as my governor Charlie Baker, most have sold their souls to that big money pot in the ground.
3
"It is not populated by conservatives. It is populated by anti-liberal trolls"
Oh, How convenient, Mr. Brooks. This denial of "this is not what "true" conservatism is about" only took about 500 days of the Trump administration to be brought out to be trotted out.
No sir. This is EXACTLY what your GOP's conservatism is all about and has been all about.
2
I am dumbfounded. Not by what Brooks writes here; he is actually starting to get the point.
No, what is gobsmacking about this piece is how blind he is, and most of his now aghast fellow so called conservatives, and has been to the creeping fascism that has permeated his party as long as I have been a sentient adult.
Anti-liberal trolls, Brooks included, have been with US shouting "amnesty" or "with us or against us" or any of the other right wing bullet points for a long, long time.
There was a perfectly good Immigration bill sent to John Boehner's House with a real bipartisan imprint from the Senate and it was ignored. Because republicans were too busy shouting "Amnesty".
To all of the David Brooks out there; I am glad that you are finally being shaken out of your somnolence regarding what "conservatism" means today. But don't think you can pretend not to own what has happened to cause this current episode. t rump did not rise out of some hitherto unknown pit. He has risen out of the swamp your party has happily made since Nixon's southern strategy.
So own it.
2
A party slowly losing its humanity? This is a newspaper and it should publish news, not information that we have all been aware of for many years. The GOP lost its humanity a long time ago. Where was Brooks when Bush authorized the torture of prisoners? We know where he was when Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq on the basis of false evidence of WMD - he was in the front lines of those cheering the invasion on. Where was Brooks when Bush and the GOP demonized LGBT people to win the election of 2004? Brooks didn't seem to have a problem with any of his party's inhumane actions in those days. What has changed?
2
Too bad Brooks isn't smart enough to realize a few things.
One, this was policy since before Bill Clinton and Janet Reno abducted Elian Gonzalez.
Two, good fences make good neighbors, as his gated community would tell him.
Three, and this is the most important part, this is not a left-vs.-right issue but a state-vs.-YOU issue.
Fourth, proper respect for and enforcement of property rights would make the issue moot, but the state will never do that.
5
Mr. Brooks:
Why did Ludvin come and/or to the US illegally?
Why do we have 11 million illegal intruders in this country?
Why do we have 250,000 apprehensions of illegal intruders at the southwest border through May of fiscal 2018?
To outsiders, the US is the stupidest country in the world, arguing about illegal immigration, half the country proposing to turn the place into a barn, while thousands are overrunning our border or overstaying their visas.
I said two years before Trump got elected that illegal immigration will be the topic that will cause a Trump win. Who knows if that really happened, but I wouldn't bet against it. And it will happen again, because Democrats never learn.
I realized this was the case then by reading NYT comments of those days. Liberals left of Marx on everything else were chastising the NYT for using the term "undocumented" in place if "illegal". The issue seemed to have traction wider than had been supposed.
The tactical import of all this is that not one more Democrat is going to vote against Trump because of these immigration issues, not one Trump supporter will vote against him because of these issues, and some people who are Trump supporters but weren't going to bother to vote now will - for him. In 2018 and 2020.
I other words so much energy wasted by the left, the RINOS and the Trump-haters on this for them tactically useless at best, and dangerous at worst, subject.
Miller knows which way the deck is stacked. Smart guy.
7
David, so when are you going to publicly and decisively quit the Republican Party?
2
It seems that regulation is only bad when it keeps someone from making a profit, often at the expense of someone more vulnerable. These are truly horrible times, but I continue to believe that history will not judge Donald Trump or his administration kindly.
1
"the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
You noticed?
"Slowly" may not be the most apt word for this grotesque disavowal of American ideals being perpetrated intentionally by this administration.
4
"The Trump administration immigration officials have become exactly the kind of monsters that conservatism has always warned against."
Really? They're monsters because they are enforcing the law? They're monsters for actually holding people accountable for criminally entering the country? Evil flourishes when good men do nothing, goes the old saying. Finally, good people are protecting actual Americans from those that would exploit their own children to gain access to our country.
The liberal ideals protect criminal illegal foreigners over Americans in sanctuary cities, decry illegal migrants getting arrested and charged when caught sneaking across the border and yell "RACIST" whenever anyone suggests that, just maybe, it's a good thing for American sovereignty to maintain a border.
Children should not go to jail when their parents are arrested. This is why they are separated. Nothing more nefarious or punitive than that. The parents made the choice to drag their kids through 1000 miles of Mexico to illegally enter the US. Is it reasonable to just say "oh, you have a kid, come on in!"? Of course not.
Thank goodness for an administration that finally has the guts to enforce the law. Let's hope Trump doesn't back down from the absurd noise and false outrage from the left.
3
My first real understanding of our American culture was in 1974. I was a senior at a Catholic prep school. Our theology instructor asked our class how many of us favored amnesty for those who fled to Canada to avoid fighting in the Vietnam war. I raised my hand...and then slowly looked around the room to discover that I was the only one with a raised hand. This was a theology class filled with Catholic kids many of whom I had known since grade school. I was appalled that not one - not even one - other student made a connection between the spirituality of forgiveness and reconciliation that we had been schooled in for 12 years with the real world. THAT was the real America - Amurica - hypocritical and, frankly, not that bright.
11
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
I agree with every word but one: "slowly."
This is a party racing toward inhumanity.
7
"The Trump administration immigration officials have become exactly the kind of monsters that conservatism has always warned against."
Uh no, this is conservatism. Thankfully you didn't propose some false equivalency as you usually do, maybe your propagandist nature is receding due to some kind of weird cognitive dissonance you're having as you see kids traumatized and injustice becoming synonymous with your beloved ideology.
Conservatives never really accepted the founding principles of this nation, liberal principles like all men (people) are created equal. You happily suppress the voting of minorities and deny them equal rights with enthusiasm. If you need to break the law, so be it, act without morality, no problem.
It's just now that it's starting to remind you of the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany that you are getting a little squeamish, but no, you don't get a pass.
8
Where is the zero tolerance policy for employers that hire illegal workers? How about shifting at least 50% of the enforcement efforts onto a big source of the problem.
13
An interesting column that tries, with moderate success, to distance conservative, libertarian thought from present Republican party's reductionist views. However, these views are more than a product of a rebellion of the "stifling conformity they found at liberal universities". Most in the liberal universities welcome conversation and broad thought with rational and respectful conversation. It has been my perception that many of those described in this column as "anti-liberals" have been steeped in a fundamentalist "Christian" tradition that sees the world in black and white. Witness our Attorney General's "proof text" from Romans 13 to bolster the present border policy. So it is time for true conservatives to distance themselves from the anti-liberal trolls and either stay home or withhold their votes in the voting booth for candidates such as those Republicans in the Arizona race.
8
Good start, but absurd follow-through.
The idea that conservatives have historically considered the fine details of the human situation leaves me laughing.
Wasn't it fundamentally conservatives, Lindbergh, Kennedy, and the 'America First' movement in WWII who were all for 'getting along' with Germany, turning away boatloads of Jewish refugees, despite the intricacies of the evident human suffering at the hands of the Nazis (statists by any definition)?
Go rewrite this David.
2
Blame FDR; he was the guy in charge of it all.
1
So, the Democrats are to blame for the terrible law that is forcing our Dear Leader to rip babies from their mothers, and liberals are to blame for the creation of sociopaths like Stephen Miller?
Then why do the overwhelming majority of conservative Republicans approve of Trump? Why won’t Ryan, McConnell and other party “leaders” stand up to him? Why does the party of “family values” tear families asunder? And why has the “party of personal responsibility” become so unaccountable?
I could go on, but will just say that the Republicans own this TRUMPERATION (he’s not the only one who can brand). MAGA, my patootie.
4
Brooks is joining the rest of the main stream republicans in a attempt to save their careers. Trump belongs to your party, Brooks, you created him and you own him. This column is just a cynical attempt to save your miserable behind.
2
Ah David you’re dishonest again. There is only fake equivalency between allegedly stifling liberal colleges and what you call statism. First and foremost private colleges are not part of the government. Next you are oh so dishonestly wrong in alleging there is no conservative statism: did you never hear of Bismarck, franz Joseph, czarist Russia, or Netanyahu?
2
Wow! Way to paint a picture of poor little snowflake Steven Miller being bullied by liberal universities thinkers into becoming a monster. Bad example! It doesn't appear he needed to be pushed off some existential edge to become a world class jerk. He would have been one regardless of the university. Heck, here he is in high school railing against the all powerful cleaning staff -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni6OpZN6IqUusg=AOvVaw2WGEkRIjHusbdwtLZ81...
The equivalency you're looking for Mr. Brooks is not there and Steven Miller is no victim of liberalism. He only makes victims and giving him the scent of victimhood is all the administration is asking. My guess is he took the same elitist, janitor hating attitude to university and was called out on such feckless behavior. Sorry Mr. Brooks you can't blame political correctness for Steven Miller. But you can blame him for taking the cruelty and racism already baked into the conservative cake and turning those into the only ingredients.
5
One of the most aggressive and formidable "amnesty thugs, however Mr. Brooks, is your favorite right wing radio hater-monger - Rush Limbaugh, who is in your considered opinion and words is "a good Republican who just wants to win." He has been yelling amnesty at every sensible immigration fix to his rural white voters (who BTW helped immensely to elect Trump) for decades, and dumping all over conservatives like you at the same time, and yet you hero-worship him because he helped you get your GOP into control of both Houses of Congress. Repent, brother, own what you have sown before you complain about what we are all now reaping in shame (except, of course, you).
2
The Trump policy is built on one thing - racism. Sadly, we have always been an intolerant, racist society and it rears its ugly head every chance it gets. White privilege is what white people fear losing, and so we MUST keep the brown and black people out (or enslave them) and let in only people from Norway. But why don't we just go all the way, to the extreme the eugenics people of the 1920s wanted to go? If you're not white, blonde, blue-eyed and tall, you get euthanized, to improve the race. Go ahead, Donnie - go for it. You'll never get a better chance.
1
Mr Brooks, you sway back and forth: one minute you are sounding like a reasonable man, the next, you are defending the Trump administration Korea policy. Could it get out you are a republican in name only (RINO)? Or could it be Mr Tin Man, you are discovering your heart?
David Brooks has spent his entire career rationalizing the ever-growing Republican policy obscenities.
3
Still trying to blame this administration and its racist republican monsters on “stifling Liberal Universities” Mr. Brooks?
Take a good hard look at what Ayn Rand and your conservative ideology has wrought and own it. This is your bed David Brooks, lie down in it or do some meaningful work for the common good. You are currently complicit my friend.
9
I am waiting for the ultimate David Brooks column: "I'm Sorry."
6
Awww, so nice that David can no longer bring himself to use the words “illegal immigrant” or is NYT forcing him to use the words “unauthorized immigrant”
6
This is ethnic cleansing. It is yet another facet of the fascist night we see descending upon our country. And it is terrifying not just to the children we are caging; it is terrifying to us all.
4
Mr. Brooks, why are you still a Republican? Why?
4
It is not the sign of a party slowly losing it's humanity. It's a clear indication that Trump and his administration has already lost it. Republican leadership does not have the courage to challenge policies and a president they know are immoral. His loyal supporters either ignore the fact or refuse to believe their beloved leader is a disgrace.
Ripping children from their parents is reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Oh, how far we have fallen. I weep for these families and I fear for our country.
2
I am saddened to read that Mr. David Brooks has finally snapped.
Instead of objectivity today, Mr. Brooks just goes full tilt emotional reaction to the latest bit of Propaganda. And George Orwell explains all that very carefully in his novels............next time Dave, think. Before you set pen to paper. Think. (hint..... crying baby sound bites.....its propaganda....no different than the "Save the Children" commercials featuring the emaciated african kid who refuses to swat flies away from his face).
3
The Trump administration combines character assassination of immigrants and tactics aimed at terrorizing their communities. All this in the interest of ginning up the GOP base. Substitute "Jews" or "Gypsies" for "immigrants" and the playbook clear - it is the same as during Hitler's rise to power.
4
So liberal universities made Miller a psychopath?
4
If you remember 2005 post Katrina catastrophe. It stained the Bush presidency eternally. However there the main problem utmost incompetence of FEMA chief.
This Child separation issue is going to be indelible stain much darker than anything on Trump administrations stains. However here the main issue is malign intent , deliberate cruelty and un American actions towards the world refugees.
Trump and his fascist dictatorial agenda people literally putting a stain on American reputation.
I cannot comprehned also GOP's criminal submission to Trump. Seriously You can think that Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronal Regan party , history ,legacy can accept Donald Trump.
Moderate republicans , yes you are beaten a lot , you are already excommunicated or ostracised but let's not forget thsi is your party , if you are not stand against this evil, no boduy is going to stand for you.
GOP as history knows is ceased to exist , don't understand!!!!!!!
David, I'd recommend you spend some time with your conservative fellows. They support this.
3
There are many, many, many problems with this column, but I'll just pick one: what editor let the mixed metaphor "'Amnesty' has become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate" through to publication? Who uses a club in the act of stamping? How would that even work?
1
How come every illegal immigrant profiled by the Times is a Christlike figure of innocence and suffering? Are there no MS-13 death squad enforcers available? What about child smugglers? Rapists? Murderers? 36.7% of federal sentences in 2014 were handed out to illegal immigrants, but the Times can't seem to locate these people.
It's almost as if the Times had an Open Borders agenda or something.
11
Absolutely nothing good will come of this insanely Orwellian attitude about immigrants. We will be left a weak shell of a country without values or compassion or any larger vision of who we are and what we as a country wish to accomplish. Trump is a disgusting cancerous growth with money and attention for himself and destruction for everyone else.
2
The Republican Party, like it or not David, consists primarily of anti-liberal trolls. On the immigration issue, they shout "Amnesty!" On the abortion issue, they shout "Murder!" On the health care issue, they shout "Death panels!" There's a pattern discernible here for all to see with eyes in their head.
3
It seems to me the last 5 words include a serious error. "party slowly losing its humanity." should read either 'party rapidly losing its humanity' or 'party having lost its humanity.'
3
It's pretty clear that the actions of this administration are NOT of "government officials blindly following a regulation" but of racists thugs.
2
Can anyone tell me what's not fascist about this administration? It's checking all the boxes.
3
they may be anti-liberal, but that's a surface analysis. They are racist, through and through.
6
Conservatives rip children from their parents' arms.
Liberals force prenatal care on mothers and give children health insurance.
A pox on both their houses...
2
"...losing their humanity...."?
Realize, David, the one commonality of Trump and his Trumpbots: They swear that they love children, value children, the family is the linchpin to Civilization.
If I had a dollar for every time that I've ever heard a Republican praise the value of a child - Lo! especially an UNborn one - then I would be as rich as David Koch! There's not enough words in the Thesaurus to cover all the LOVE Republicans have for children!
Well, that's Trumpian poppycock, isn't it?
Like Roy Moore - he loved the kiddies, didn't he?
And still was so respected that a sitting President backed him for election - and so did half of the electorate!
Take Pardoned Apario: He instructed his deputies to not investigate any sexual abuse crimes against children if they lived in a certain part of town. Over 400 children abused.
The Prez liked him, too.
Denny Hastert? Ah, everyone loved Denny!
How many Republicans who swear that they love kids, have demanded that the Catholic clergy be jailed on child rape?
None.
R's lost "humanity" long ago.
They've proven that they will stand for any abuse of a real live child. Hungry? Even better! Homeless? Who cares! Smacked around by the folks? Bible says that's okay!
Rip children from their parent's arms?
No, no, the Bible says that's okay, too!
God sayz.
Look, David, there is no other subject where the R's are real sickies, than on children. Ever.
This is State-sanctioned child abuse.
It's always been "zero tolerance" on kids.
4
Gitmo for Toddlers. Thanks, GOP.
6
I love when people like David Brooks write about Trumpism as if they are anthropologists visiting some far-off land, making observations. David Brooks and his ilk are why these extremist "amnesty trolls" exist. He helped pave the road on which they now crash the vehicle of our democracy.
1
It appears Mr. Brooks has never stepped foot on a college/university campus if he can make the statement that there is enforced conformity (and apparently without exception) on every college/university campus--that's not only a falsehood, it's quite fantastical. As a university professor I constantly witness and engage with individuals who do have countervailing perspectives. That does not mean conservatives are not welcome or do not exist on campus--but it does mean that many groups, liberal or otherwise, will not simply stand idly by while any group (conservative or otherwise) publicly proclaims that any difference among people will not be tolerated. Mr. Brooks, it is quite clear that you have no idea what "liberals," are about, or that there are vast differences between people who define themselves as politically "liberal" or "progressive," and your words have long helped to confuse conservatives who mistakenly think you know what you are talking about.
8
I'm glad Brooks calls out Trumpism for what it is, and for denouncing the egregious cruelty of separating children from their parents at the border.
But if being a decent, hard-working family man is a get-out-of-jail-free card for illegal immigrants, as Brooks argues on behalf of Ludvin Franco, then he is against any meaningful immigration enforcement whatsoever, since most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the US fit that description.
Either mass illegal immigration drives down working wages, burdens our public schools, makes basic municipal services more scarce for the communities in which illegal immigrants concentrate, and mocks the rule of law, or it does not. We can't keep pretending that this is the one issue with zero downsides. We can't keep pretending that it all comes out in the wash.
And then we must choose either to enforce these rules on that basis, or choose not. But if we do, no matter how humane we are, those who are here illegally are going to have their lives disrupted.
If being decent and hard-working prohibits us from enforcing our laws, then let's just drop the pretense of caring about the costs.
4
When you amnesty thugs advocate for zero tolerance for employers who employ undocumented workers, I will believe you really care about the law. ThT policy more than any other would stem the flow of people across our borders, but you amnesty thugs are strangely reluctant to embrace the one policy that would most effectively curb illegal immigration.
1
David,
Enough complaining. You and the 15-17 percent of Republicans who see this for what it is need to switch parties now. Vote straight Democratic because they are a center-right party and the one constitutional way to address this.
5
Half of all Mexicans want to come here. Another roughly forty million Central Americans from places like Honduras also want to come here. The vast majority do not have any education beyond sixth grade. They do not speak English.
Just how many should be allowed to move here? I would like an honest answer. Are we really obligated to increase our population by a fourth? Is migration really the best thing for someone who doesn't speak English, has little education and no real job skills? How is that person supposed to support themselves? Is it really fair to let in here? Or hand the actual bill for their health care, food stamps, interpreters and many, many children to people like me? Since when did the solution to Latino poverty (much of it self imposed by having far too many kids and not educating them) become importing it here?
9
Thank you, Enough Already. Well said.
2
We are discussing the torture of children by separating them from their parents. Do you support that?
Thats the only question being discussed here, not imaginary problems like all of Mexico wants to move to the USA.
1
Illegal is illegal. I support letting dreamers stay. Thats about it. I obey firearm regulation and laws because i don’t want to own any illegal guns. They are illegal if i dont register them, not just merely unauthorized. When I discharge my weapon outside of a firing range it is illegal. Not just unauthorized. Admit that illegal immigration is actually illegal and we might have a chance at a real conversation.
As an American I shouldn’t have to say this but I know how nytimes commentaters roll.
I am asian american, first generation immigrant.
USMC Veteran, two deployments as a grunt in Afghanistan.
3 years of college, did not graduate since I could not pay tuition.
I now run a small business and I am married to another LEGAL immigrant who I had to prove I could financially support before she was allowed a green card (rightfully so). We also have family we want to being over legally and are taking the time to do that. So ueah, I’m glad we are cracking down on this. Why should other people get to jump the line of my family?
9
Regarding Stephen Miller: it seems that he, a real alt-right character who can actually read, write and speak well, is possibly the most influential person in Trump's entourage.
It seems that now, Trump is echoing Miller's thoughts and beliefs of years.....
See this from the Trump presidential campaign:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/stephen-miller-donald-tr...
2
So the scale you argue is not liberal to conservative, but statist to conservative. It could also be argued that the scale is statist to liberal as many liberal thinkers don't agree with the one size fits all mentality and operate in grey scales predominantly. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of any liberal who thinks imposing abstract rules is more important than a living human being. They probably exist but I have never seen it as that common. I do see a lot of conservatives thinking in black and white, right and wrong, my way or the highway terms which would tend to a statist mentality far easier than the prototypical wishy-washy, "how does it feel" liberal that is most lambasted by conservatives. Funny that you rejected liberal ideology for its stifling conformity when it's Republicans who are known for falling in line, provide litmus tests for their representatives, and love calling others in their own party Rino's.
1
C’mon, David. Stephen Miller has been on the racist front lines since high school. He’s not in some kind of adolescent rebellion against the supposed liberal conformity in our universities. No, he’s just a racist.
11
"For centuries, conservatives have repeated a specific critique against state power. "
Please, conservatives love state power except when it is used to protect less favored populations. Conservatives in the South loved Bull Connor enforcing Jim Crow. Trump's immigration policies are the culmination of 60 years of race baiting which folks like Mr. Brooks winked at for tax cuts.
4
The republican party is not SLOWLY losing its humanity.
5
Dear David - “Conservatives” have been using amnesty in the way you describe for decades. “Conservatives” have also deployed state power to maintain the status quo for centuries. There is nothing more “conservative” than Jeff Sessions’s argument that the law must be obeyed, the justice of the law be damned. When you finally admit that the present is the poisonous fruit of the tree you’ve been watering all these years, only then will you be able to give a full voice to the compassion that I know you hold so deeply, and that you once thought was consistent with, and in fact only possible within, the conservative ideology that you espoused. Yours sincerely, Mark
3
The law must be obeyed...except when Trumpolini is issuing pardons to the likes of Joe Arpaio. Convicted, ironically for....Contempt of court, i.e., contempt of the law.
3
I applaud your efforts to distinguish your favored and cherished brand of conservatism from the cruelty of the current administration, but your plaintive melancholy is terribly full of holes.
The conservatism you lament, i.e., that of the Reagan era, was just as eager to use government power to oppress. Think about all those battles about denying women reproductive choice, ignoring the AIDS crisis for nearly a decade, supporting sodomy laws, gerrymandering. The GOP has always been delighted to use state power against people it despised and dehumanized. Trump is no different, your efforts to distinguish notwithstanding.
3
Brooks once again displays his talent for illustrating differences without distinction.
1
"The republican party is slowly losing it's humanity" David Brooks says at the end of his column. Sorry, but I beg to differ. The republican party quickly lost it's humanity when it embraced and
elected this man-child school yard thug. To think the ends justified the means to conservative goals like tax cuts, overturning abortion rights and "starving the beast", was without any moral consideration what so ever, and has left us all in peril, as this brat and his lunatic fringe do their best to bring this country and our democracy to it's knees. Humanity be damned.
6
Sorry David to prick your self righteous little bubble, but Steve Miller, for one, was this way in high school. Please don't try to make this the "liberal's fault." With that statement, you negated the entire first half of your article. Don't blame liberals for the what the right has been itching to do for decades - to wit: The Minutemen, The John Birch Society, The Moral Majority, and the Tea Party movement. No, David this has been a long held dream that the right- starting with the likes of Charles Lindberg and going forward. This is the true republican party -the thin veneer of "compassion" has simply been stripped away.
5
Republican party losing its humanity? That has been happening for decades. One example, long forgotten, it considered the original GI Bill, following WW2, as welfare. Make no mistake they have been the party of non-caring for a very long time.
6
First they started with illegal immigrants crossing the border, and we did nothing. Then they started to round up illegal immigrants in the USA, and we did nothing. Then there was the separation of children from their parents. Then they came for me, an American citizen who demonstrated against Trump and I was afraid!
4
So what exactly should be done with people who break our immigration laws? A parade? Are we simply not allowed to have immigration laws foreign nationals don't like?
7
" It's a sign of a party slowly losing its humanity ". Sir, where have you been ? That train left the station long ago. Trump is a profoundly stupid man. He is getting his " policies " from his own cadre of thugs and dregs of any polite society. Certainly he is responsible for his own actions, however, he is like a rabid animal: incompetent, vicious, inconsistent and extremely dangerous. His Collaborators should know better, and many of them do. But cowardice and keeping an extremely overpaid " JOB " is their priority, and WILL be their downfall. November, it's time to make America SANE, again. Seriously.
9
It’s astonishing how David Brooks always finds a way to blame liberals for everything while apparently saying the “right thing.” If he reads his colleague, Paul Krugman’s piece on the same issue, he will know how to honestly write about it. It is people like Brooks who provide “intellectual cover” to this monstrous administration, by insisting that it is always liberals who paved the way for morons like Stephen Miller to come up with the evil policies of Trump. Oh, the horror of stifling conformity of liberal education! Only if Miller went to Liberty University, things would have been so much better.
9
Slowly ????? Nonsense.... It's been happening rapidly... since before "Lock Her Up!"
… and its mind, too....
We are watching abject, unbridled insanity run amuck, while the GOP luxuriates in the few pieces of silver it was able to harness for its soul....
I have no patience for 'nuance'.... This is the rape of one of the greatest nations to ever exist.... We are fouled by a demon who delights in our collective anguish!!
4
Yeah, throwing the word "amnesty" around is a terrible rhetorical club used by the trolls, almost as terrible as the club "racist" used against them.
3
Steven Miller's worldview was formed long before he had to "suffer" in suffocating places like "liberal" universities.
He was a known racist in middle school and high school, and his brand of zero tolerance is steeped in authoritarianism, white supremacy, and delusional thinking.
He is ghoulish, bereft of human decency, and an employee of the White House helping to orchestrate America's torture of foreign children.
11
I doubt "stifling uniformity" at Universities - your favorite cliche - is responsible for the rise of the anti-liberal Troll. Right Wing Media, which has made demonizing a caricature of the left a profitable entertainment model, is to blame for the senseless sadism that now animates politics in the US.
8
At least Donald Trump is not slaughtering and starving these kids. Unlike King Salman and his son Muhammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia are doing to the Houthi in Yemen.
And Donald Trump is not shooting at and killing and wounding kids. Unlike Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Leiberman are doing to the Palestinians along the Gaza Israeli border and inside Gaza.
By comparison to these two thug nations Trump is a "humanitarian". Nobel?
3
Numbers are important. The way the generals in Viet Nam convinced Johnson that the US was winning the war was by reporting a large number of enemy casualties compared to the US casualties. To make sure they were all counted they had to be dead. Not many wounded enemies were captured. They ended up dead instead. Shot while trying to escape, I guess.
1
“...anti-liberal trolls...”. No. Trolls are secretive, anonymous snipers. Cowards unable to come out into the open. Angry, jealous, dim witted for the most part. No, this administration shows its character in public. Wears its allegiances proudly. Meets in congress (both upper and lower case), brave enough to be treasonous, tough enough to be compared with Hitler’s close circle without any regrets. Far worse than any scattering of mean-spirited subterranean trolls.
2
“Amnesty” has become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate. It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity.
— Brooks
Agreed, except for the use of the word "slowly." The Trump Party is hell-bent to created a totalitarian state.
1
If we could have ranked choice voting and Electoral College votes could be agreed by enough state legislatures to be given to the winner of the popular vote, the Republican party would disappear and, as the song goes, they'd none of them be missed. See https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/. Right now, Trump and the Republicans are really showing themselves for what they are. They are taking us on a tour of the circles of hell. They are acting like the deranged caretakers of a nation at war with itself and the world. Whatever dreadful mistakes brought them to power, whether through gerrymandering, voter suppression, hacking, outright lies, or you-name-it, must never be repeated again.
6
I don't know how far it is from this to Nazism, but it's a heck of a lot closer than it used to be.
10
Stephen Miller is a fascist and white nationalist. He forms the intelligence and policies upon which Sessions and Trump rely for their immigration policies. To these three, illegal immigrants are nonhuman trash to be thrown out and removed from US society. No different that Hitler's attitude about Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally defectives and other undesirables. We are witnessing the takeover of our democracy by a group of immoral fascists who want to "purify" the US.
11
Well written, reminds me of what Hitler said of the Jews, ie they are the cause of all the problems and evils in Germany and gradually used it as an excuse to exterminate them.
Just like what Trump is doing with the illegals, ie deporting every one of them instead of gassing them. They are the cause of all the misery and problems in this country.
What he doesn't understand is that the hard working illegals are what keeps our economy humming just like the Jews did for Germany.
The lure of the demagogue is very strong.
4
The recent acts by the Trumpian GOP are much too close to those of the 3rd Reich in the 1930s. The most recent abomination is saying they want to take US citizenship from naturalized citizens. Trump's followers think they are the real Americans just as Hitler's followers thought they were the real Germans and eventually stripped citizenship rights from Jews. It can happen here. It is starting with the separation of families at the border. They won't stop with that but keep escalating these attacks. History won't be kind to Trump's enablers.
4
Borders are porous and a vulnerable spot for governments in maintaining control. My great uncle was in charge of clearing the border towns during the Third Reich; obviously he was 'just' following orders too. Don't these Trump trolls see how their behavior leans more toward Nazi than American? Those who publicly support Trump on this like the head of HHS will forever be tainted and reap what they sow.
1
Trump is using straight up Nazi language. He speaks of immigrants "infesting" us.
Holding DACA kids hostage, tearing babies from their mothers' breast, locking people up in cages - children! -
This isn't my America.
5
"Anti-liberal trolls"? That's a new one, David, to deflect from the abhorrent attitudes and policies of the Republican Party for which you have been an apologist your entire career.
2
Anti-liberal trolls do not care what happens to law-breaking non-citizens, period. If you came into this country illegally or overstayed your visa, you go. The law-breakers are not human, they are others, especially the brown-skinned ones.
2
For these anti-liberal trolls it appears being hateful and mean-spirited somehow makes them better Americans than the rest of us.
2
The Republican leadership, these folks are the GOP leades, are not "anti-liberal trolls." They are full fledged fascists.
2
Another Brooks column attempting to weasel out of his (and his conservative fellow-travelers) responsibility for the rise of the whack job right. You and your ilk are the ones who thought turning over the rocks was a good idea. Now you have to own what came slithering out.
4
Yes humans are all given to one or more of these things.
I for one missed the part where voices were raised denying this.
What I believe, as a progressive, is that these vestiges of our clan/tribal should be suppressed, just as we've done for so much other baggage from our uncivilized past.
So many people sneer at the ' thought police' or at 'politically correct' speech, but aren't these just tools toward a world where people are just that, and all they should be judged by is their own behavior and not their race, color, national origin.
We've cut way back on human sacrifice, and ritual cannibalism, maybe it's time we moved on from some more of our often rotten baggage.
2
"The Trump administration immigration officials have become exactly the kind of monsters that conservatism has always warned against."
I agree with what they've become, but since when has conservatism "warned us against" such monsters? Since I can recall conservatives have been all about taking away healthcare and social security, and built on fueling racial division. Please.
3
The US has provided amnesty to tax law breakers and skilled evaders often over the years. So it's not the action, but who benefits from it.
4
Mr. Brooks is delusional in thinking that Conservative thought was in any way principled. It was, and still is, a fig leaf for maintaining privilege in the hands of a few.
When that meant having a small government to keep tax and regulations low, so the wealthy could operate without too many obligations to their community, that's what they advocated.
And now that they actually control the federal government they're using that power to keep brown people outside, intimidate political opponents and anything else they can think of...
3
Of course if the illegal immigrants in question were from say, Norway then amnesty would be just peachy creamy. Make no mistake ... the Republican party was driven by misery, hatred, and bigotry long before Donald Trump. Donald Trump came out of nowhere and proved to be better at being them than the rest of them, and so was able to coalesce that misery (aided in no small measure by Democrats who in opposition to the "counterpuncher" presented a punching bag). The word to watch is "true conservative". A "true conservative" checks all the following boxes: trickle-down economics, theocracy aka "religious freedom", American Exceptionalism, gun worship, science denial, and of course preservation of the white Christian male power structure.
6
Whereas the Democratic Party clearly favors Hispanic immigrants.
David, what the heck are you saying?
The uniform application of the law is not reducing complexity to uniformity, nor is it statist.
It is the equal administration of justice, also known as the rule of law. Where state power is not exercised pursuant to the the arbitrary whims of the powerful, but pursuant to agreed rules of general applicability.
Following the law is fairly easy. Breaking it is at your own peril, no matter if you have children or not.
7
Responding to questions here about where are the marchers protesting the treatment of immigrant children and families. There are nationwide marches being planned for June 30 to protest Trump's treatment of immigrant children and their families. Please spread the word.
4
"Amnesty" might be the rallying cry of the anti-liberal trolls, but open borders is the policy of the Democratic Party, which panders shamelessly to Hispanic immigrants - legal or not - hoping those immigrants will finally give them the electoral majority that their policy agenda will not. Trump is right. The whole thing is out of control. It's time for the Democrats to get real about the problem of uncontrolled immigration. I am a registered Democrat but they will not get my vote again until they support real border control. The Democrats also have no idea how their supposedly "humanitarian" efforts aid and abet the drug cartels.
7
The next Democratic President should revoke Melania's citizenship if she lied on her application.
Pursuant to USCIS; If the lie is discovered later, USCIS can revoke (take away) a person's citizenship. Melania overstayed her tourist visa and worked in the US illegally.
4
Now that's "Biblical" law enforcement.
Sessions, Do your job! Zero Tolerance for Melania!
Oh wait....she's not a brown immigrant.
A hard and ugly truth about the Republican party's moral bankruptcy well explained. It's no more complicated than just those words.
2
You might want to pick a different adverb to describe the speed with which the party is losing its humanity.
1
Brooks is really just using the same logic that got us here to try to get us out. Saying "Trump's administration is not really in our group." Now he's just othering Trump and pretending like conservatives got used versus conservatives abandoning their values.
But it's not an either / or choice; it's both.
Conservatives of America can't simply abdicate responsibility about this administration. This is too big and too long coming to blame someone else ("liberal universities"). Conservatives engaged in anti-liberal animus for far longer, more consistently, and at more levels than anything in reverse.
So don't try to cowardly escape blame. Just own up to it, condemn what's bad, declare who's evil, and BE better. That's the only way to rebuild the trust that conservatives have lost.
3
"What’s most significant is this: The Trump administration immigration officials have become exactly the kind of monsters that conservatism has always warned against."
I disagree. They are doing exactly what I despise about conservatives. They are cruel because they can be cruel.
5
its time for ICE to be disbanded.
2
It’s time to increase ICE.
2
What an incredibly dishonest piece. As if "statism" has not always been synonymous with American conservativism. It wasn't "the libs" who were enforcing segregation laws, or conducting mass arrests at gay bars, or interning American citizens because their parents were born in Japan, or forbidding women to access birth control. Perhaps Brooks doesn't think that these state demands "ignored the nuances of human relationships"?
Own Stephen Miller. He's in a long tradition of xenophobia and draconian "law and order" within your GOP.
2
"A party slowly losing its humanity." Slowly? We could've had universal healthcare by 1995, if the GOP hadn't killed it in 1993–94. The GOP watered down healthcare reform and economic stimulus in 2009–10 so the Democrats wouldn't get credit for an improving economy and, y'know, saving tens of thousands of American lives a year. 20,000 Americans a year are STILL dying from simple lack of health insurance, and the GOP has been fighting for years—a generation, actually—to preserve and increase that number, which had risen to around 45.000 a year pre-Obamacare. Let's see, conservatively estimate an average of 30,000 dead Americans a year due to lack of health insurance, 1995–2018, that's 690,000 dead Americans. Americans killed in World War II? 405,000. The GOP has (Godwin alert), since the Clinton administration, killed more Americans than Hitler. "Slowly" losing its humanity?
4
Excellent insights, Mr Brooks. Many of my personal discussions of the present Administration's policies are countered by a diatribe against "progressives." And much of the driving force behind these policies seem to be an attempt to simplify the real world. And then there is the overriding fear of the unknown, which when you are so ignorant, easily dominates a tiny world view. The ability to dehuminize anyone "not from these parts" boggles the mind. We are becoming the parihas of the world. How can that be good?
3
It's disappointing, but not surprising, that Brooks is unable to realize that his alma mater, The National Review, is largely populated with well-written anti-liberal trolls, and the publication's raison d'être has always been anti-liberal trolling.
NR's founder and god-head, William Buckley, said, "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop." That's not a philosophy of anything other than of opposition.
3
No true scotsman ... got it.
The problem with this is that Brooks et al spent the better part of two decades helping to create an electorate that would elect the kinda people that would do this stuff and support them doing it.
Note: These people, they are the conservatives now. This is the republicans now. There is no going back. You want a different conservatism ? Create another party, because this is what republicans are now and this is what conservatism is now.
4
Good article, but the last sentence fell short:
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
The GOP sold its humanity with the Southern Strategy 50 years ago when it decided to be the party of institutional racism. Since then Republicans have talked themselves into pretending that we were a post-racial nation. It took an evil and shameless President Trump to expose the stinking rot underneath.
6
If Franco were married to Anne, wouldn't he be a citizen?
1
DAVID BROOKS, Whose skills and talents I admire, needed, in my opinion, to have taken off his gloves. Ever the gentleman, he was measured in his well constructed critique of the crimes Trump et al are perpetrating, effectively killing off our Democracy. The key phrase David uses to characterize the change in attitude in government officials is blindly following regulations. At the Nuremberg Trials after WW II, the top Nazis tried there all stated over and over again that the atrocities which the perpetrated amounted to nothing more than following orders from above. Without questioning or protesting. In the book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen documents how the Nazis were permitted to go home if they did not want to participate in atrocities with impunity. Meaning that the claims of the top Nazis at Nuremberg were false. When there is a day of reckoning for Trump and his band of monsters, I hope that they will be called to account by a present day version of the Nuremburg trials, without another World War, or wrecking the US completely.
2
Mr Brooks refuses to understand Conservatism as it actually has been espoused by founding father Edmund Brooks right on down through the major players: some groups of people are superior to others in important enough ways to justify the privileges accorded them. This would particularly include white males with "good breeding/"blood." Burke was vehemently against the concepts of both the American & French revolution (not the excesses, as you might think. Burke had no problem with spilled blood - lots of it if necessary to enforce what he felt was the natural order of things. The excesses of the French Revolution were not the problem. The concepts were the problem - that and the excesses being applied to the wrong people).
Extensive documentation by CCNY's Corey Robin (The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, Oxford University Press, 2011). Krugman has often cited this book as the most informative analysis of Conservatism.
4
“It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity.”
Once lost, the value of human life goes into free fall.
Once that happens YOUR life has lost its value as well.
This precept used to be the basis of a social contact designed to keep all of our lives safe from those that would try to devalue human life.
2
How about a moment's thought for the America citizens of all ethnic backgrounds who are not being provided with affordable dental and medical care, whose public schools are increasingly having to concentrate on social welfare, not education, whose seniors face cancellation and reductions of pensions and social security, whose children are not able to look forward to jobs that provide a living wage (yes, there are low skill jobs available, now try to raise a family on them). We cannot solve the world's increasingly desperate problems by taking everybody into America. I'm willing to consider educated immigrants with skills that contribute to the American economy, not who will exacerbate our problems; that is not the group massing along our southern borders right now.
8
Your description sounds a great deal like the seizure and confinement of Jewish german citizens under the Nazi's in the early days. Not much difference .....
2
Fox Propaganda and the Republican Party leadership fathered of the anti-liberal trolls to which you refer. Your own right-wing diatribes have provided some of the ideological power driving the Trump machinery. Are you proud? Are you ready to admit self deception for the majority of your life? If not, wait until November when, with the aid of GOP vote suppression efforts, Trump extremists triumph at the polls. Then you can climb aboard the Trump train and thumb your nose at the peasants as they worship at the altar of Trump greatness.
Re Stephen Miller: "They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities. " Ummm, while at Santa Monica High School, Miller supported Bush's misguided invasion of Iraq, told Spanish speaking students to speak English and complained when the school encouraged students to pick up their on trash, since there were "janitors to do that." In other words, he was already a right wing troll when he was 16 years old (apparently "inspired" by a book he read by Wayne La Pierre). Maybe you should do a little research before you write your columns?
2
Slowly? I thought you were trying to be serious.
Every time the American voters' intelligence level dips into negative territory, they tend to vote for an idiot based on the assumption that he can do no harm. It's time for an instant zapper measuring 10,000 VDC to stamp it on their foreheads as they head to the voting polls.
2
Very much on point, David. Perhaps this will slow your incremental normalization of this authoritarian president that is evident in your writing as well as your television and radio appearances.
3
Excellent column.
Every member of the GOP who does not fight tooth and nail to stop this horror is complicit. Cowering Republican politicians who hide under the cover of that old excuse: “I was just following orders” as they cleave families, sending half to the showers (... I mean baths... ) are worse than thugs. They have no place in decent society, much less in Congress.
8
Slowly losing their humanity? I'd say they're getting rid of it as fast as they can. Thankfully for the rest of it, they're starting to do so in photogenically, politically stupid ways, but these folks gave up their humanity quite a ways back down the road.
3
"...slowly losing its humanity"?!! Please, the modern GOP doesn't give a whit about humanity. Only power, and darn if anything like democracy, decency, compassion, or crying children in mass detention camps get in the way.
Shame on everyone who voted for this aweful president and his trope of pathetic enablers in the House and Senate.
3
Exactly.
"Slowly losing its humanity"?
Fast enough for me, pal.
The ultimate statist Joe Stalin, famously said "When your neighbor dies it's a tradegy, when one million die, it's a statistic". I think Criminal Don and Uncle Joe would have been great pals. You can throw bad Vlad into the mix too.
1
Doh! I was with Brooks until he managed yet again to blame liberals and universities for the cruelty of Trump, Miller, & Co. Don't try to dump your party's garbage in our backyard, DB. These vile people are the logical outcome of decades of Republican/Conservative politics, placing power above governing, wealth above the common good, race baiting above tolerance, and Orwellian propaganda above facts. You and your ilk created this disaster and it's in your hands to fix it.
5
“Amnesty” has become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate. It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
Sorry, David, this is a party that lost its humanity a long time ago, in case your weren't watching because you were equivalizing.
1
When did David Brooks become an Open Borders extremist? And why doesn't he propose the same policy for his other country, Israel?
4
Is “any true conservative” akin to “any true Scotsman”?
Conservatives believe in the rule of law. “Dreamers” exist precisely leftists and their enablers refused to enforce the law. Dreamers should have been deported, with their parents, decades ago. People like “compassionate conservative” W and outright socialist BHO, by refusing to enforce the law, created an entire class of sympathetic plaintiffs who should not exist.
OK, so, we're stuck, and some accommodation must be made. But it MUST be coupled with a “this far, and not one inch further” policy. That’s what we thought when RWR granted (gasp!!) AMENSTY back in 1986. It was supposed to have “solved” the problem. Obviously, the Dreamers prove that it failed. We weren’t serious about enforcing the law; millions more illegals flooded in.
This. Must. Stop.
Immigration policy ought to benefit us. We don’t need a single unskilled immigrant. The door should be barred. The folks seeking entry – and those you profile – might be great people and, 150 years ago, might have made great Americans. No more. They cost us a fortune and depress wages. They contribute nothing to society that we can’t do for ourselves.
The left doesn’t want an “immigration debate”; it doesn’t believe in borders. Sane people do. And that means ensuring that potential illegals know that we are serious. They will be caught and they will be summarily deported. If you are here illegally, GO HOME. Only when that message is clear will the problem be solved.
3
It is 100% possible to crack down on border security and deport illegal immigrants without separating families and caging children. This administration is unnecessarily cruel, and that is the bottom line.
4
Thank you very much for some very important thoughts Mr. Brooks
Brooks' apologia for Stephen Miller is more than nauseating. Has he seen the video of him in high school (!) about little and the janitors? Google it, David,and learn that it wasn't the college PC police. I have no doubt that Mr. Miller, who probably lost distant and unknown relatives in the Holocaust, would have been one of the kapos in the camps, maintaining discipline and issuing punishments in the service of the SS guards.
Stephen Miller was formed by his rebellion against the stifling conformity of his liberal college?
I give up!
Mr. Brooks! By you, every conservative sin has its genesis in some sort of bad behavior by liberals. We stifled poor Stephen in college? Hardly. Have you seen the video of him in high school, complaining that he was told not to throw trash on the floor, and saying that's what the janitors were for? Long, long before college Stephen Miller was a vile, obnoxious white nationalist.
This is a poorly researched portrayal.
5
David Brooks is a Conservative/Republican Apologist. He would be a Christian apologist, but unlike his co-Op-Ed columnist Republican apologist Ross Douthat, he is Jewish.
In many respects, both Brooks and Douthat are worse than the Trumpists because they both give conservatives a thin glaze of repectability covering their true corruption. They would both do well to follow Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, who has written off all Republicans and conservatives, including apologists, unless they have completely broken with Trump, knowing fascism when she sees it.
3
Whatever intellectual calisthenics Brooks uses to distance himself from Trump and his immigration storm troopers, this is his Republican Party today. You break it you buy it.
6
Nothing "slowly losing our humanity" about it - Repubs have done lost it. The Repubs are now a toxic slew of gun-loving frightened racists lead by adolescent men like Bannon and Miller, twisted men like Sessions, and the Ingraham/Coulter/Nielsen/FOXtalk groupies who move dead-eyed, empty-suited Trump's mouth. Be a VOTER in November!
3
“What’s most significant is this: The Trump administration immigration officials have become exactly the kind of monsters that conservatism has always warned against.”
Poor David, you were sold a bill of goods in your youth at National Review. American conservatism has never - and I mean never - been opposed to bureaucratic power per se. American conservatism has only ever been opposed to the state when the state wielded its power at the expense of white people and the unfettered market.
Should the state wield its power to falsely imprison hundreds of thousands of black men in the Jim Crow South and exploit them for coorced labor? American conservatives said, “Go right ahead.”
Should the FBI and the national security state target Jewish socialist idealists for illegal domestic spying, false arrest and vilification? American conservatives said, “Go get ‘em, J Edgar!”
Should the state’s military arm secretly drop megatons of TNT on Cambodian civilians? American conservatives said, “Take the fight to them, Dick and Henry!”
David, if you think your beloved conservative movement has ever been pure, you’re dreaming.
4
David, there are Statists who happen to be liberal and statists who happen to be conservative and Statist who are neither. Fascism is a form of Statism that is conservative, Communism is a form of Statism which is lefty, not exactly liberal, etc...
Not every person trolling liberals was rebelling "against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities." Many of them have never been to college. Stephen Miller was a jerk while in High School, he used to throw trash on the walking paths arguing he did not need to throw them in the trash can since the school employed janitors to clean the campus. Please be better informed by facts and do not start with a pet theory and cherry-pick assumptions to fit your theory.
Jeff Sessions is a bigoted man, Trump is an immoral man, Kirstjen Nielsen is a spineless coward, John Kelly is a bitter racist who confuses his hatred of colored people with toughness. None of these people got that way because liberals stifled them with conformity at university. I could continue to list the rest of the leadership of the R party, the Fox News pundits, talkradio lunatics and so on, who are all the prime forces behind this awful administration and its evil shenanigans in the name of making America Great Again.
If you have any integrity, you will take all of the above facts into consideration and withdraw this facile and spurious column. Integrity, like charity, begins at home.
5
Honestly, when i read the title i thought Mr. Brooks was talking about pro-amnesty groups. Then it's a "wait, what" moment.
Firstly, let me say, Mr. Brooks, when thousands and thousands of journalists come across the border into your area and put you outta work, then maybe we can talk.
I get it. You don't want to be associated with Miller and Sessions. Friends and loved ones will be mad at you. I dig. Now your boy...(sorry i watch a lotta Pardon the interruption on ESPN), Jorge Ramos was calling President Obama the deporter in chief. Really, he dare call the first black president that? So, this all falls under the..."it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt" moniker. And, these kids are getting hurt.
Of course, if they are fleeing a land beseiged by gang violence and killings, them kids are a bit safer over here in these cages.
The black lives matter and the hillbilly elegy narratives should come together and say we gotta stop gun violence and opiod addiction and get good paying jobs for the working folks. The rich and powerful love this situation. More opportunities to focus on that and ignore working people.
And, your boy, Lou Dobbs was on that CNN years ago with his smug face hating on immigrants years ago.
2
Well, let's see. Who would have been in favor of concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II? Liberals? I don't think so. My parents were around at that time, and they certainly were not in favor of rounding up their neighbors in Berkeley and busing them off to Manzanar. But as I recall, the original order was signed by Earl Warren, the Republican governor of California, and I think it would be safe to categorize Warren as a conservative. So, Brooks, it looks like you have joined the national pastime of rewriting history to suit the moment. Tush, tush, tush, you bad Preppy, you.
2
More wistful melancholy for a conservatism that never was. Conservatives have always been happy to use the power of the state to oppress people, the problem in America has always been deciding who qualified as human. Remember that 4/5s bit in the Constitution? Or the 14th Amendment? The 15th? The 19th? Read the conservative dissents from Lawrence, Windsor, and Obergefell and then explain to me how conservatives define humanity. Then tell me that fairy tale about how it's only now eroding.
5
You are so right David. Words do matter. When Trump and Bannon came up with "deconstruction of the administrative state" they failed to further articulate that their real intent was to deconstruct the United States. That's what has been going on for almost a year and a half now. Rule of law? gone. Trust in the agencies and institutions of government? gone. Respect for all people regardless of party affiliation? gone.
Now they bend the government to their will on immigration because the checks and balances that used to constrain administrations have failed. The Trump administration has scared the Republican Congress into silence. We are (too) slowly seeing some republican leaders starting to speak up and call for the reversal of this Trump Meanspirited Policy. It's a faint sound but getting louder. There is hope. Everyone should remember these times when we vote in a few months.
3
We let the saviors in the White House who are burning the village to save it. Add to the list Mitch and Paul who have been anxiously wishing for the saviors to reach D.C. and they got their wish on a silver platter.
The callousness of the Republican leaders today cannot be deflected by creating a new “anti-lib” class. If conservatives had an iota of courage they would be standing up in defiance rather than sitting down in compliance, happy to take the money for reelection and to retain power, regardless of what it stands for.
2
So much flim-flammery. Ever since Mises the policy of the laissez-faire crowd has been, that the one valid purpose of the State is guards, armed troops and police to ensure the smooth functioning of the Market.
Thanks for bringing George Orwell into the current discussion. In our troubled time, we could certainly profit by revisiting his incisive analysis of language and its misuse.
"For centuries, conservatives have repeated a specific critique against state power. Statism, conservatives have argued, has a tendency to become brutalist and inhumane because a bureaucracy can’t see or account for the complexity of reality."
This is a subtle rehash of Government is the Problem (tm). White Supremacy is a foundational ethos undergirding the American political and socioeconomic order. Preserving this ethos is inherently conservative. This brutality is the xenophobic manifestation of the Southern Strategy. No GOP members of Congress have opposed the Administration. This isn't just Miller and Trump. The GOP revanchists are culpable for failing to work with Obama.
"They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities. "
Liberals are not to blame for the logical outcome of centuries of conservative racial demonization and territorial expansion. You are characterizing the morality you ostensibly pine for as "stifling conformity".
Your core objection to the Trump administration is that its stalwarts are not members of your clique.
1
Don't blame the liberal universities for making the Steven Millers of this world. They came to these universities with their minds already made up and refused to listen to reason and/or did not study the classic (conservative?) literature that examines the ambiguities and nuances of human societies. Yes, they only focus simplistic words such as amnesty to justify their own selfishness.
Secondly, it is illegal to employ an undocumented immigrant. These employers also broke the law. Why aren't they prosecuted? The excuse that they did not know they were hiring an undocumented immigrant is pure baloney.
David,
Sorry but the Republican party began to lose its way when Nixon adopted the "Southern Strategy". Exclusive of Gerald Ford, and the elder Bush the party has relied on double speak, thinly veiled racist tropes, and outright lies to gain and maintain power.
Exactly how does the ongoing war on the A.C.A. exhibit humanity, particularly the current attack on provisions related to pre-existing conditions?
And face it, for much of the base Obama's biggest problem was his skin, fed and abetted by too many of the so-called leadership (birtherism anyone)?
1
On some level I sympathize with Brooks. Conservative Republicans are a long extinct species and the compassionate conservative always was a unicorn. Oh sure, occassionally a siting is reported but the observation never holds up. These days the closest species is centrist Democrat, cold comfort to Brooks who keeps pining for a political dodo but has to settle for an obama.
1
I wonder how David Brooks reconciles his tendency to admonish liberals who feel and express their deep reservations about the lack of compassion and cruelty that seems to permeate republicans. On the one hand, we, as liberals, should "listen" more, and not reinforce the idea that we feel moral contempt for republicans. But 58% of republicans support this policy. Are we allowed to feel morally superior now David? This question sounds snarky, I know, but for me it's a real question.
3
Well, now who is dismissing the opposition with a single word?
Of course, if the "moderates" on this channel had any honesty, they would call their objective "amnesty". That's what they had in 1986, when we had "reform" the last time. The situation we have now was not supposed to happen. Everybody was supposed to put in their I-9 like good people whether they were citizens or not, and employers were supposed to get punished for employing people illegally, and only legal immigrants could live and work in this country.
It didn't work, did it? So after three decades of turning a blind eye to immigration and scoffing at enforcement, along comes somebody who, perhaps with callousness and maybe even evil intent, enforces the law. Hear the howls of anguish!!
If you want an immigration law, you have to deal with enforcing it. If you don't want to enforce it, don't have a law. And if you want a 30-year amnesty cycle, be honest enough to admit it.
3
“Oh gee – that’s not my conservatism!” Welcome to another installment of the Brooks Fantasy Workshop. Today David shares with us his tips for making conservatism appear to be compassionate and humane. Tip #1 (wait, there’s only one) cherry pick one conservative tenet and make it look bright and shiny – and –ignore all the other conservative principles that contradict that choice.
And now: reality. It’s valid to condemn zero tolerance by the Trump administration, but totally wrong to suggest that the policy is anything but the logical conclusion of conservative thought.
Conservatives have never liked “statism” (government) because it attempts to restrict oligarchical power and to level the playing field. Brooks notes that for conservatives statistism represents “social engineering,” but he conveniently neglects to mention that the entire conservative project has always been about social engineering. What conservatives want is control by a few rather than control by and for the many.
The father of conservatism, Edmund Burke, was a staunch elitist who advocated that the lower classes should be tolerated but never in power. Russel Kirk, the father of modern conservatism, insisted that religion (natural law) should guide social order i.e. social engineering in the form of theocracy. Kirk also believed that “civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a ‘classless society.’”
So, David, the cruel culling on our border is unvarnished conservatism.
7
"Slowly losing it's humanity"? The Republicans lost their humanity years ago when they embraced birtherism and racism to oppose President Obama. Was it humanity that caused them to oppose the Affordable Care Act and begin efforts to prevent people from having access to healthcare thereby contributing to thousands of deaths and millions of preventable complications from treatable conditions? No, not slowly losing it's humanity, it already lost it! It may be true that the present Administration and congress are not traditional conservatives, but make no mistake about it, they are The Conservatives of the 21st century!
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity....." Said the man who has apparently slept through the past few decades.....
5
“This [the Ludvin Franco deportation to Guatamala] is an example of ICE going after a perfectly productive member of society”
ICE is an army that has freedom to act beyond the law in a way unlike other government agencies. Right now they round up the unfortunate and make them less fortunate [sometimes sent to their death]. Soon they will be rounding up other elements of society that Trump and company find irksome.
Watch out - who’s next??
1
David—I welcome your commentary and the Times. Please, Please, Please, beg the Weekly Standard and some other conservative publications to publish your comments there on occasion. Like this occasion. You know better than most that there is an echo chamber reality of the Times and WAPO, etc., where folks like me get a feel-good morning shot needed to get through the day. Give thinking conservatives who need to read your comments today, an opportunity to do so. Perhaps the Times editors will allow an occasional replication.
You're either with them or against them, as one Republican once famously said. The 45% of Republicans who do not agree with these policies (a shocking minority--if anything can still shock--according to the latest poll) need to leave their party NOW or be forever classed with the famous evildoers of the 20th century.
1
Shame on the federal officials at any level carrying out this "Zero-Tolerance' policy. May they be haunted by the knowledge that they could walk away, they could speak out, they could refuse to go along with these inhumane actions.
1
Great column Mr. Brooks. Thank you.
The most important part of David's piece is this:
"What’s most significant is this: The Trump administration immigration officials have become exactly the kind of monsters that conservatism has always warned against."
Trump, Miller, et al are NOT conservatives. They are reactionaries, who believe in using the government to brutally, if necessary, run their agenda down the throats of others. This is the stuff of fascism, Stalinism, and other authoritarian regimes. The fact that Republicans have rolled over for this is perhaps the most shameful episode in American politics in my long lifetime. Vote for a Blue Wave this November, even if, longer term, you are a real conservative. The republic is on the line.
'
5
According to a CBS poll yesterday, 55 percent of Republican voters support separating these families. That a majority proportion of "not really conservatives, just anti-liberal trolls" among the Republican ranks. So, David, has the Republican Party been lost?
4
Please keep up the good work, Mr. Brooks.
This zero tolerance policy is a piece with the strategy of Steven Miller, Jeff Sessions and 45 to Make America White Again. If 45 ever acquires the autocratic power he envies in his best buds (Putin, Kim, Erdoğan, et al.), believe you me that black and brown citizens will not be safe either. This horror show is just beginning.
2
Really, David? Liberal universities are responsible for Stephen Miller? That's ingenuity put in the service of evil, right there.
I think Miller's head will probably be one of the first to be mounted on a pike -- preferably over the entrance to the special privilege, paid high speed lanes on I-495 -- lit with multicolored lights at night, for full recognition....
2
Thank you for you thoughtful and balanced words. I am a member of a very conservative family that are "anti-liberal trolls". You give me the words to have a discussion - maybe.
1
With most Republicans either lying about, excusing, or openly endorsing the stealing and caging of children by ICE, David Brooks blames the people he views as the real monsters: campus liberals. These monsters of myth, the great bogeymen of the NYT op-ed section, somehow created Stephen Miller, who created these policies, so...it's the "illiberals" (left and right, but really the left) who are to blame. (Never mind that a simple Google search will show that Miller was already despised at his high school for racist trolling...perhaps these earlier antisocial outbursts were a natural reaction against his lefty teachers? Or perhaps he and his conservative ideology are just morally indefensible?)
Brooks must twist the truth even further than usual to portray this purge of immigrants -- which even nice, modest, "true" conservatives like Susan Collins refuse to do anything to stop -- as a result of creeping "statism." (Talk about "using words to eradicate the complexity of reality.") What political ideology promotes secure borders, nationalism, harsh punishment of perceived criminals, protection of tradition, an organic society? It isn't "statism," and it isn't campus liberalism.
The left has its own problems, but it has consistently opposed the brutalization of immigrants and refugees, and the left is now the main group trying to put a stop to this disgrace. This is the right's doing, and Brooks should own it.
2
This is an excellent article from Mr. Brooks. He nailed the entire Trump phenomenon, right here:
"Their primary orientation is not to conservative governance but to owning the libs."
That's it. Trumpism is a reaction, period. If Trump hadn't sent liberals to their fainting couches with his antics during the campaign, if he hadn't served as a foil to the left's "stifling conformity," he'd still be a silly reality t.v. show host who stiffs his creditors.
His cult, which is what he has built, is a howl of rage against what has been described so as a culture of "well intended lies, viciously enforced." Trump supporters are those who were tired of not only being forced to lie to advertise that they were "on the right side of history," but who were tired of being demonized for telling the truth.
While understandable, their support of this monster for president was reckless, emotional and irresponsible. Their on-going support of this would-be autocrat is destructive and disgraceful.
Sorry Brooks, you don't get to disown Trump and his despicable minions. You are conservative, they are conservatives--your "no true Scotsman" defense notwithstanding. All Republicans are complicit unless and until they find a way to stop this megalomaniac.
2
David, you had me until the last sentence where you characterized the Republican rush to a lack of humanity as “slow.”
3
Another way to say it is that Republicans are conservative until the point at which conservativism no longer fits in with their racist, bigoted and xenophobic goals.
3
Why did Mr. Brooks find it necessary to imply that the "stifling" intellectual
environment of liberal universities gave birth to the sociopathy of trolls
like Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller was a standout sociopathic troll in
high school, long before he had to endure the natural rejection of his
deeply offensive views in college.
4
“Amnesty” has become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate. It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
.......nothing slow about it under the Trump Administration, my friend.
1
"His wife, Anne, is from a Pennsylvania Dutch family that has been in this country for generations."
Under U.S. law, can you actually be deported when you're lawfully married to an American citizen?
Thank God for reporters like Deborah Sontag and Dale Russakoff. We will only maintain our freedom (if we do) because of the efforts of the free press. And thank God for journalists like you, David, who tell the truth.
Today the Birther-in-Chief says immigrants are "infesting" this nation. Can't get worse that than. But then again, there's tomorrow.
1
Good column. Brooks is getting stronger and stronger, obviously growing and finding a new voice.
My only nit to pick today is in the conclusion:
"'Amnesty' has become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate. It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
Slowly?
As we drive through the rural interior of the country, it is clear what Trump and the GOP are up to. This area is mostly white and primarily in blue collar jobs. They see very few immigrants or people of color. It is easy for Trump to borrow from the Nazis by creating fear of "the other" and losing "our culture." Where before these same Americans were friendly and helpful, they now view you with anger and distrust. How this supports a greater end is hard to fathom.
2
One kind of amnesty is OK with the Trumpists, presidential pardons for those who have committed criminal violations of democratic norms, Joe Arpaio, Scooter Libby, Dinesh D'Souza.
17
Well said, David. One question though: Wasn't separating children from their mother's the big reveal in "Sophia's Choice"? It's about time to call this thuggishness by its name. Maybe Trump isn't Hitler but as he would say, "there were some very fine people there too"
2
What is truly amazing is that you STILL found a way to blame the liberals. The Trolls exist because universities are too liberal, you say? Brutal forced conformity running roughshod over the poor, delicate conservatives? Of course, that explains it all. I'm being sarcastic, but your viewpoint is silly beyond words. The Trolls are the logical outcome of the conservative actions of the past 40 years. You created them; you own them.
16
Unfettered economic migration disproportionately affects the poor, mostly black, Hispanics and native Americans.
The problem with liberal argument is that they want all concessions for illegal immigrants in the country without committing to strict enforcement even in the future. The rouge is to keep repeating emotional arguments when simple questions are asked. So shouting "Amnesty" seem like a valid counterpoint.
As a first generation Legal immigrant citizen of the US, I worry about the waves of illegal immigrants coming to country and making its economy populist (tax and redistribute) and culture conservative (Latin Catholics). I don't think US should turn into a part of Latin America on any account.
3
Great piece, Mr. Brooks. But, come on, Stephen Miller didn't become who is because of the "stifling conformity" he found at liberal universities. We have footage of who he was when he ran for student body government in high school. He just is who he is. How he was "formed" is beyond my capacity to know. And, I would respectfully suggest, beyond yours.
19
The best opinion yet on what is happening with this tangled issue. 45 can't stand still for complex. Just hit the problem with a club and go on to the next thing while declaring victory. Done and done. After all he cleared up the nuclear threat in just 1 meeting, right!
2
A party slowly losing its humanity? Slowly? The destruction of Republican ideals has been rapid, and complete.
The Republican party has existed for 164 years. This descent into madness can be somewhat properly laid at the feet of a) Newt Gingrich and his Contract on America, and b) the formation of an immigrant billionaire's conservative propaganda cable news outlet. Both of those events, only (roughly) 25 years ago, started the rather incredible shift of the GOP from being the party of patriots and of the rule of law, to the the party of "power before patriotism, party over country".
Those in charge of running the GOP will say anything, and do anything (including disenfranchising as many voters as they feel they need to) to stay in power. They claim to worry about non-Americans ruining our nation? I worry about them, the UN-Americans.
9
"People like Stephen Miller are not steeped in conservative thinking and do not operate with a conservative disposition. They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities. "
This is a good insight. It applies to me as well. My core beliefs and indeed behavior are liberal. The large majority of my friends are liberal. But the self-righteous, holier-than-thou shouting from the progressivist camp keeps alienating me and pushing me, against my will, to the right.
With respect to immigration, there must be a compromise somewhere where the opportunistic border crossing is discouraged (eVerify!!!) and there is a systematic guest worker visa program that encourages legal applications from much needed worker bees.
4
This is a powerful statement carefully described as an indictment of the world we are becoming: the merciless reality of totalitarian rule as it devours American history. Before they became thugs or their enablers, among the leaders in the Republican party were many men, some of them colleagues or friends of David Brooks. How did their transformation take place? People don't simply change clothes overnight to become cogs in a machine of destruction of all the great qualities which made us a Democratic Republic. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin was correct,'we were a Republic but we couldn't keep it'.
2
Government good when it does what we like, it's bad when it doesn't.
For decades, the United States offered amnesty to any Cuban who could reach American soil, and Castro emptied his jails and mental institutions. The right cynically insisted this policy was humanitarian, but it also provided a mass of supporters, and eventually voters, for conservative policies and candidates. If America is suddenly full, we have the same constituency now braying about immigration to thank for it.
5
Sorry David. The conservatives are not slowing losing their humanity. That horse left the barn 2 years ago.
3
Mr. Brooks, I respect your intellect, compassion, and perspective. I’ve used your essays for my community college English classes, but, “slowly losing its humanity”?
I think the radical right captured the heart and soul of the Republican Party quite some time ago. Trump is the epitome of all that hatred, misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. He is is the slow cooked reduction of the me-first meanness, boiled down to its essence.
That is why so few are willing to oppose him. Deep inside he is doing what they have always wanted to do, hate the “other” openly and viciously.
I sincerely hope someone comes along and brings some humanity back to the Republicans, but I won’t hold my breath.
2
Mr. Brooks, you're so fortunate to have a platform that reaches millions. What a shame that, in the face of the terrible, reckless things this current Republican-controlled government is doing, you choose to devote that platform to defending "conservatism." Stop fretting about what's happening to "conservatives" and write meaningful columns about real topics, like what's being done to immigrants, to the air we breathe, to the stability of the global economy, and our ability to face real challenges with real fact-based policies.
BTW, real conservatives like GOP "sage" George Will are still out there denying climate change.
3
Very well said. And I allow David’s comments regarding liberal universities. We must all accept a little criticism to move forward together against this great evil.
1
The whole Third World wants to come to America. With David Brooks attack on the rule of law -- as devoid in nuance or the making of difficult and necessary distinctions as he claims is the case with the "Amnesty Thugs" -- they will. The result of his sloppy sentimentalism is that the United States will become unrecognizable. It will morph into a Third World country. One more point: while it's likely that most Americans are understandably agonized by the unnecessary policy of separating illegal aliens from their children as they seek to steal into America (let them be detained together and then deported together) a VAST MAJORITY of Americans do not share David Brooks elitist view of immigration -- and I suppose that's because unlike him, their jobs are on the line. A recent poll conducted by Harvard's Center for American Political Life and Harris finds fully 76% of Americans want immigration radically reduced -- in fact, they want it reduced by a half. As a past president of the elitist Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs wrote, immigration is the "perfect policy storm" because no other issue in American public policy divides the fiscal and political elite from ordinary Americans more than immigration. To which I'd add that ordinary Americans who bear the consequences of this tsunami of low-skill low-education immigration understand it far more than our vaunted "elites."
5
If Republicans *really* wanted to take their party back from 45 and his sick cronies they could do it immediately. Two House votes to impeach 45 and Pence and two Senate votes to convict them. Paul Ryan, the supposed GOP wunderkind, would be in the Oval Office. Certainly there is enough graft and abuse of office at this point to justify such a move.
3
Any system that claims to speak for a just society in the abstract...while destroying the individual in the process, is 'evil' and ought not be tolerated. Such is the devious and cruel 'doctrine' of the Trumpian world. There is nothing wrong about amnesty as such, especially when real immigration reform never arrives according to the needs of the country...and the need to allow clemency for persecuted victims. The United States is a rich country (though segregated and unequal, to it's loss), precisely because of the talent of their immigrant population. Why are we so petty, so smallish, and so stupid, to allow injustice to rein? Can't we see that Trump is a hideous 'criminal' gloating in his irrelevance, an empty shell, trying to divide us and conquer the spoils of this suffering democracy?
2
Please don't claim Stephen Miller as being the fault of the university experience. By all accounts, he was already a creep in high school.
4
David, I always love the way your arguments circle back to exonerating conservatives and blaming liberals, for the actions of the conservatives. More often than not, you argue from a position of elevation that keeps your own elite education and philosophical ramblings separate from the other elites whom you blame wholeheartedly. When you start saying "we" when referring to the blameworthy, I might take you more seriously.
16
We need a two tier approach to the illegal immigration problem.Compassion and border security.President Trump proposed to triple the number of people covered by DACA from what Obama did.Criminal illegals need to go back to their country period.Amnesty for residents should be made available.Please we need border security it can be a combination of high tech low tech but before amnesty we need to secure the border.We need to eliminate loop holes in our system.Lottery,"family" unification for not immediate relatives,fear of gangs and abuse or fear off by partners.If the liberal elite and Democrats accept a secure border amnesty will come.
1
Yes, there are the amnesty thugs that Mr. Brooks notes.
But should amnesty be granted to ALL citizens of Central America and Mexico who wish to immigrate to the US?
South Chicago is a dangerous place. Should citizens there apply for amnesty in Canada?
5
We should all apply for asylum in Canada.
1
Bill, you go first. Please!
Live TV....Internet posts, feeds...Social Media produced Flash Mobs............it all works to amplify emotions beyond control.
One early example is the horrible picture of the Vietnamese secret police blowing out the brains of a Viet Cong double agent. America immediately "lost the war"......and Vietnam continued down the path of total depraved authoritarian rule.........Now today we are allowing some very real problems to be amplified into a seemingly out-of=control situation. No longer do we tell ourselves there's nothing to fear but Fear itself........we tell ourselves Be Very Afraid.
1
“Amnesty!”—the conservatives use; because of its strategic value. Its impossibility guarantees a continued success of status quo or stalemate; as isn’t that what every conservative wants, if only by definition—resistant to change. So, it’s the liberal’s turn to move; and so far, it seems they have none. They seem to be fresh out of anything but emotional outcries at Trump; decrying him for his manners, which are above board absurd and ludicrous, etc. But belittling has no strategic value; it deflects off Trump like bullets to Superman. If the liberals want a way, out—better to start using some good old–fashioned Enlightenment Reasoning, than to sit at the round table quibbling over the Trump demagoguery that feeds off the impassioned appeals, prejudices and emotions of the populace, which, I might add—includes the liberals.
1
A bizarre take on the issue, blaming liberal universities for producing monsters like Stephen Miller and making conservatism falsely compassionate. This issue is grossly oversimplified by Brooks, who seems to see it as nothing more than a game of semantics while, in fact, a brutal administration is committing an atrocity best defined as white nationalist.
3
For decades now, whenever conservatives do something horrendous, there are always "principled" conservatives who denounce them as "not 'true' conservatives". The sub-text is that conservatives are, by definition, virtuous, wise, and good, and can never do anything stupid, cruel, or unjust.
I'm sorry, Mr. Brooks, but for every hand-wringer like you, there are 100 conservatives saying, "Sure, he's a corrupt, lying, racist thug, but he's cutting taxes on the rich, isn't he, so he's our boy!"
Trump is the true heart and soul of conservatism.
9
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity." Slowly?!?
4
Or they scream "taxes," Mr Brooks. Or they holler "free market," as you have been known to do.
Your argument is far too facile and blind to the complex realities of actual political debate. St Ronnie, himself, started us down that path with his blanket demonization of government. You have been a willing enabler of that Orwellian -- government bad, market good -- obfuscation for decades.
Your words on this issue are welcome, yet you might reflect on the work you did to bring us here.
10
To quote a distinguished Roman general:
''Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?''
Donald Trump isn't some aberration from mainstream conservatism. He's the logical conclusion of a two-decade effort by the GOP leadership to court the support of racists, conspiracy theorists, and oligarchs.
Policy-wise, Trump is neither engaged enough nor intelligent enough to come up with agendas of his own, other than 'build a wall'. The policies he's enacting are one which mainstream Republicans have been tossing to their base like chum for years. In 2016, the majority of conservative candidates doubted the science of climate change, wanted to refuse refugees from Syria for security grounds (because Muslims are terrorists), hated public healthcare, wanted to reduce corporate taxes, and demurred on the birther conspiracy.
Mike Pence supported conversion therapy and hates Palestinians because he thinks they're fiends from Revelations.
Trey Gowdy, now alarmed by Trump's authoritarianism, spent most of the last three years frothing at the mouth at the mention of the word Benghazi.
Mainstream conservatism isn't disappearing, it's having its heyday. The inconvenient truth is that conservative policies hurt huge swathes of people by design, and now that the Democrats can't block all of the cruelty and snake oil being peddled by the GOP, conservatives are being forced to face their Faustian bargain.
8
...QUICKLY losing their humanity, not slowly.
3
I just love the way you somehow manage to fault "the liberals" for the stunted and immoral worldview of trolls such as the repulsive Stephen Miller, who is rebelling against "the stifling conformity" of liberal college campuses. Have you seen the video of Miller, still in high school, publicly spouting his nasty, hyper-privileged invective as a teenager? This creep came up with his twisted ideas long before the "campus liberals" had a chance to "stifle" him. Trump and his minions are vile all on their own, and no "stifling liberal" college campus is to blame for this. Find another bogeyman.
2
Brooks is basically correct here, but he forgets so much GOP history that he thinks TRUMPISM is a new thing. It isn't new except in this way—it is a difference in degree, not kind. Brooks, let us recall, considers St. Reagan a hero...the guy whose Administration wanted to declare ketchup a vegetable, dog-whistled racists regularly, tried to get rid of federal support for childhood vaccinations, thought trees created air pollution, and broke the Constitution when he sold weapons to Iran but claimed to have not known. GOP deviancy has indeed gone downward to a very low level, but it is not a new thing in any respect just because Brooks thinks it is.
1
Okay, even if we “liberals” in the academy created this truly evil monster in Miller, we can organize to vote his enablers in Congress and the White House out of office and out of decent and honorable society. Let’s get to work.
1
This article should be read by all students in the social sciences and professional schools who want to help bad people win.
Because it illustrates how to accomplish nothing while believing one is doing a lot. Mr. Brooks cannot call it (he is rather sympathetic to Mr. Miller). Yeah, he loves his enemies, the enemies of decency (because, you see, he thinks there is a chance he is Jesus). Sociopolitical viruses and pathogens of Mr. Miller's ilk thrive on this type of discourse.
Because the article illustrates the naive believe that American literate hold: i.e., if we appeal to basic decency of Americans, we will prevail. Never mind that there is absolutely zero evidence that this occurs. Barring a few exceptions such as apartheid Africa, no country had a government enforce segregation, tolerate lynching while sending men to the moon. What evidence of decency is drawn from half of voters loving a genital grabber? American decency may be more temporary, and more selective than we assume.
Because the article refers to Stalinism. The right has found the sweet spot representing the craziness band of 'Alex Jones - Limbaugh - religious right-Fox." They stay within it without approaching downright Nazism or Stalinism, to very favorable outcomes. The left knows of no such nuance; their knee jerk response is a mix of outrage and articles like this - based on zero evidence of its efficacy. There is a great point in there about "amnesty" - but it is buried under pap.
"The sign of a party slowly losing its humanity".
A sign? Slowly? You must be kidding.
Trump is no different than he was during the Republican primaries, the Republican convention and as the Republican nominee for president.
Trump is a Republican monster. He's yours Mr Brooks. You own him. We are well beyond signs and into a dangerous reality of a party and its leader threatening all of us.
13
Desr Mr. Trump,
You want zero tolerance? Let's try some "zero tolerance" with those taxes, those emoluments, those sexual abuse charges, that collaboration with Russian agents, etc.
Oh, and how about some "zero tolerance" on lying?
4
"Slowly losing its humanity"? There's nothing to lose.
As usual, Brooks tries to duck out from under the inevitable consequences of Right-wing rule.
What he lauds as "real" conservatives have always resisted efforts to increase the power of and improve the lives of working people.
When did conservatives ever support a union? Or the ACLU?
This week's column is powerful, and I don't disagree with any of its well articulated points. Brooks is a good writer.
It's just too bad that when it comes to owning up for his own past policies, he's a hypocrite.
10
David, do your homework. Stephen Miller's puerile politics were not formed in reaction to "stifling conformity" at a liberal university. He was a "conservative" in high school. Among other things, he told his classmates that he was sick and tired of being told to pick up his own trash when they had janitors to do it for them. You and your ilk have created a hall of mirrors and now it confuses you. So-called political correctness was a dismissive catchall term created to put people with certain beliefs on the defensive and helpfully give conservatives a way to not listen to others they disagree with. We hear a lot about issues with so-called "stifling conformity" in universities; hilariously, conservatives don't mention it in the military. Zero credibility.
1
The Republicans slide every so slowly, but steadily, toward their own brand of Nazism as the Democrats continue to be relatively meek and completely hapless when it comes to staunching this tragedy. If ever there was a time for a viable third party to emerge in America, it is now. The two-party system has failed us all, especially these children.
1
I went back to school and got my university degrees later in life. I was past my formative years, and I waa conservative. As I gained an education, my views changed, and I adopted a more liberal out look. There was no "stifling conformity", but my professors encouraged critical thinking, and I read and learned more about the world around me, and the two combined to create a liberal outlook on life. To state that a liberal university created Stephen Miller, is just another attempt to paint over the fact that conservatism has always been more interested in statism than liberalism. Liberalism produced the enlightenment, while the conservative elements of society, such as the Catholic church and other religious institutions were vehemently opposed to it. There are many more examples I could use, but that one will suffice. Conservatism is just as stifling as any philosophy on this planet.
2
Whatever the conservatives Brooks is referring to have done for centuries - and it wasn't as benign as he imagines - the Trump Administration is accurately described as conservative in the context of contemporary American politics.
Brooks' expressed shock at the behavior sounds like an attempt to deny the fact that Trumpism is a product of American conservatism and has its roots deep in that movement. This is understandable. Brooks would have to, just once, concede that he and the people he spent much of his career with, have some responsibility for the rise of Trump.
Donald Trump and his supporters did not fall from the sky in 2016.
4
Colleges that include Humanities in their programs , which are most, except the Bible-touting simpletons' institutions, teach what is really moral, humane, kind, and one could even say, arise from the allegories in the Bible. They were intended to teach how humans should treat one another; not to denigrate others. So let's cut out this untrue tale of so-called , liberal colleges. These in fact offer some of the best educational experiences in this country and produce some of our most productive and fair-minded people in the world. That is the real proof of their highly significant contribution. University of Mich Law grad.
2
I wholeheartedly agree, except for the part about "slowly losing their humanity." They have already lost it, and they lost it rapidly.
6
Mr Brooks has one eye open today. Maybe it's not too late to expect that he'll wake up and see the full picture some day. The problem is the Republican party, David. This administration could not get away with all the atrocities if the Republican Congress were doing its job.
3
A thoughtful piece. David Books seems to be of vanishing breed - a conservative with principles and compassion.
2
The words that the new GOP uses to denigrate compassionate concern would fill a dictionary and are not limited to amnesty. Tree hugger comes to mind for some one concerned about the environment. Or welfare cheat for someone who accepts help when they need it. But the words change their meaning as time goes by. For instance draft dodger used to be a favorite term of those seeking justice in the Vietnam War, but is no longer used by Trumpsts as their standard barer now fits into this category. Standing for law and order among statists only applies to groups you want to suppress and mercy only to Trumpist 'Americans'. We indeed live in an Orwellian society where a lie is as good as any verifiable truth.
2
Thank you for an honest statement.
What concerns me most is the ICE agents who round up the "illegals" and separate them from their children, and the federal contractors who run the facilities where these dehumanized children are placed in cages, are just “doing their job." This is the “banality of evil” that Hannah Arendt warned us about when covering the trial of Adolph Eichmann. Evil is a faceless bureaucrat. It is us.
And we are not recognizing it.
3
Seemingly every Christian conservative might see and understand your point which is the utter evil in the Trump means and methods.
2
The problem with writers for the NY Times and their readers alike is that they're constantly worried about the rights of foreigners and not those of Americans. Why didn't Franco get his papers in order? He was married to an American. Why aren't these liberal hand wringers worrying about not allowing these asylum seekers and other migrants to come through our border so that their very passage across becomes our problem? If all these South American migrants, including Mexican, are all blocked at the southern border, ON THE MEXICAN SIDE, then Mexico will look bad dealing with them and not the USA. After all, it is Mexico that is enabling their passage to El Norte. The problem is OUR TOUCHY-FEELY LAWS! As for our separating children from their parents, if they don't come over the porous border, then Mexico will have to do a better job keeping them together, yes?
3
That's bigly not true. The Left is the only champion of the rights of Americans.
It's the Left that pushes for a higher minimum wage and higher wages in general, for union representation of working people, for a strong safety net, for equality for all races and sexes, for easier access to voting, for checks on deadly guns in the streets, for no tax giveaways to the rich, and for freedom from theocratic rule by religious fanatics.
Conservatives love to try to justify a religious interpretation of US laws by citing the freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment. But how many of them have joined the ACLU, whose sole purpose is to protect that amendment?
It's deplorable to blame Mexicans for Trump's monstrously inhuman policy of separating parents and children. For a traumatized child, it's a form of torture. Is that really what you want to justify?
"The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice."
William Shakespeare; The Merchant of Venice
3
As usual, there's a lot of twisted "logic" and gratuitous sniping at Liberals in today's installment of Brooks' pundicratic blathering....
Brooks posits:
"Statism, conservatives have argued, has a tendency to become brutalist and inhumane because a bureaucracy can’t see or account for the complexity of reality. It tries to impose uniform rules on the organic intricacy of human relationships. Statist social engineering projects cause horrific suffering because in the mind of statists, the abstract rule is more important than the human being in front of them."
- This argument can be completely reversed: Substitute "theocracy" for "statism," and you get precisely the argument that liberals have against conservatives who force their own theocratic beliefs onto other people's lives.
"People like Stephen Miller['s] primary orientation is not to conservative governance but to owning the libs. In power they take the worst excesses of statism and flip them for anti-liberal ends. Here’s how you can detect the anti-liberal trolls. Any serious reform has to grapple with tangled realities, and any real conservative has an appreciation for that complexity. But if you try to account for that complexity before an anti-immigration troll, he or she will shout one word: Amnesty!"
- And before this, anti-Liberal trolls have been shouting "Benghazi" and "Kenyan" and "Death Panels" and "Swift Boat" and "Willie Horton" and "Clinton conspiracy."
This what your party has been doing all along!
2
Rise of the amnesty thugs or just the Republican Party governing circa 2018? Time for conservatives to own the what they've allowed to fester and maybe do something to stop it? This didn't happen overnight.
1
David Brooks, whether or not you believe in climate change - as most Republicans do -- calling it a hoax or fake, as Trump calls the legitimate media "fake" -- ICE is taking over the morally impaired diktats of President Trump by separating toddlers and children from their asylum-seeking parents at our southern border. Trump's long-sought and promised (to his ignorant loyalists) mega-billions$$$ wall to keep out immigrants from Mexico and Central America and keep all the angry white Republican, Tea Party, Evangelical American voters in. 'Splain that, Lucy!"
Under Donald Trump, what was once the White House has become the House of Darkness.
As regards the last sentence in this article: "slowly"?
1
Slowly? It's gone.
Words, words, words...We, the People, are being suffocated in the Words
of our ubiquitous "President-Elect". Despite his bonafide diagnosis of
"Sociopathic Personality Disorder", his words are self-pronounced as
Sacrosanct. He is Diagnosable.....we, the People, are Sick, He is
above reproach. We are swimming in the Swill of His Lies. Meanwhile, He
is in full enjoyment of being the absolute Center of Attention.
Our CEO is our COA. Meanwhile, we, the People, are Led by Sociopathy!
Once again, law-abiding American taxpayers are expected to pay the bill for every human on the planet who destroyed their own country and now seek to bring their pattern of failure to our homes.
The sign held by the lady in the picture says it all. Perhaps she could turn it around so the Spanish version is more easily read, and display it on the Mexican side of the border. I’m sure the Mexican people will enthusiastically bear the financial burden of Latin America’s economic problems.
4
I have been thinking about this eventuality since the election, mainly in the abstract, but now it appears that the time if not here now, is making its inexorable way to the front of the line....I’ve told many Anglo friends over the years, that the 50 million legal Latino Americans in this country will not sit by while jack booted ICE officers and police thug their way to a repeat of the Japanese-American concentration camps of WWII. Perhaps it will soon come to a point where armed resistance is the only way. I was never a Jeffersonian believer in the merits of occasional revolutions. I have always been Hamiltonian in my beliefs. But Donald only understands the NY way of fighting, and that is not a pretty sight. He needs his nose bloodied and perhaps he is pushing for this kind of reaction, to get us to take arms, like he supports for all the white folk out there. Well - perhaps I will be getting my concealed carry permit sooner than I thought, to protect myself and my family from the jackboots and perhaps more. Know this is harsh, extreme, possibly stupid, but at what point does polite resistance stop and something different take over.
2
Did you feel the same way when Obama deported 2 million--at an unprecedented rate? Why or why not? You think there wasn't suffering and misery for families then? This is not really a Republican/Democrat thing. This is The Same Old Thing with a more emotionally powerful and propagandistic press. Republicans and Democrats have acted TOGETHER in failing to pass just and humane immigration law. They do it deliberately. They fail and fail and fail. It allows them to polarize voters and consolidate their bases. It makes things worse instead of better.
2
Good column David, welcome to the Resistance.
Miller was railing against the Latino janitor at his public high school. Trump was surrounded by debilitating leftists at ... Wharton. Sessions got his law degree from that bastion of liberal thought, University of Alabama. Sorry. You can’t blame the choices of these cruel, heartless men on liberals. This is the natural progression of Republicans since at least Gingrich.
3
"This illustrates something crucial about this administration. It is not populated by conservatives. It is populated by anti-liberal trolls. There’s a difference."
I would add it isn't populated by Christians either.
3
Why should we tolerate illegal entrants and accommodate their needs? Money would be better spent on providing better benefits and services for Vetetans. Mexico should build and maintain holding pens on their side of the border. Let them footbthe bill.
2
The Republicans have been the obstacle to increased funding for veterans.
That potential money is gone, not because it's being spent on poor immigrants, but because of the GOP's criminal tax break for the rich.
2
Correction on the last sentence in this piece: It’s the sign of a party RAPIDLY losing its humanity.
2
Disengeuous characterization has been one of the first tools out of the Republican bag of tricks for many years now. Couple it with a few racist dog whistles, depending on the issue du jour, of course, and the upright "Conservative" is well on his way toward subdoing those pesky Liberals. C'mon David, face it, you've jumped on that bandwagon hoping that nothing too repulsive actually splashed on you. Now here we are, feckless barbarians are in charge, speaking in biblical tongues with attitudes ranging from impish shrugs to arrogant scorn, aryanesque spokespersons are lying through their teeth, and the Wizard presides over it all, Clem Kadiddlehoppers evil twin, and the way it rolls next is anyone's guess. You, like the rest of us David, and you faithful readers, must reflect on what we did to get us here, and how, in the name of all that's holy, we can walk it back!
3
I didn't know there was a difference between anti-immigration trolls and conservatives.
1
“I was just following orders.”
4
Anti-liberal trolls control not just the Trump Administrations but the Republicans in Congress, Trump voters, Fox mouth pieces and much of the right wing.
6
Slowly? Oh, and the stifling liberals made them do it!! Sadly, conservatives -selling themselves as the party of personal responsibility - have always been, and are, anything but. Own up. Your party has been intentionally appealing to and relying upon white racists and bigots to get elected for well over the past 50 years, using a slew of codewords fooling no one. And that has always been fine with you and other republicans.trump, steven miller etc. are you.Congressman Steve King is you. Far too late to disown them.And far too late to suggest that they have not been a central part of your party for many years.
2
So, Mr. Brooks, considering your party has been reduced to terrorizing children in the name of conservative ideology, are you still a Republican?
2
David you can try to convince yourself and your fellow "Conservatives" that you detest Trump's and his administrations policy of Ripping Children from their Mothers and Fathers but this is the your Republican party and sadly supported by most " Conservative Republicans " So all the words and moral outrage you express are meaningless...
2
It's YOUR party David, your conservatism and partially your fault that this is happening. Unless you change parties, you are just as complicit.
These administrators are mentally ill. And the storm troopers carrying out these kidnappings have no conscience. They will be the “just following orders,”when the trials eventually come, if the country we love survives.
If these men and women had any morality, they’d quit and find other jobs.
You can’t run away from the fact that these characteristics are the same, to a great degree, as those in fascist states.
There is a certain collaboration necessary for this behavior to be successful.
1
Glad to know that there is a place the Republican party can go it its cruel cynicism that even the professional moderate Brooks can condemn. I give him one more editorial before he somehow tries to split hairs between evil and just stupid cruelty.
While I know that editorialists rarely get to write the title to their pieces, is the NYT also so crass at to blame this problem on "Amnesty Thugs?" It's not just some hardline trolls driving this policy. The entire Rebublican party owns this through either active participation with Dear Leader or cowed submission to our deranged man-child president.
hey!hey! how can we shout our Fox and Friends to get this message out?
1
This is not an abuse of state power as presented....Its a revealing of current American budding fascism and a more firmly established plutocracy.
The latest form of American budding fascism and plutocracy is a Direct Result of Gerrymandering and the utter lack of Majority Rule, otherwise Clinton would be our president able to give us a much softer form of plutocracy via big business, big banks in bed with federal and state governments
1
"People like Stephen Miller are not steeped in conservative thinking...." David, your sentence would have been improved by removing the word "conservative."
2
"People like Stephen Miller are not steeped in conservative thinking and do not operate with a conservative disposition. They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities." Really? Have you bothered to look at Miller's history? In high school--before he EVER went to college--he was a flaming racist who told his childhood friend (Hispanic) that he would no longer be his friend because of his ethnicity. Yes--long "conservative" (read: right-wing) narrative: it's all the Libs' fault that we're the way we are....
3
" 'Amnesty' has become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate. It’s the sign of a [republican] party slowly losing its humanity."...……………. Slowly losing? Seems to me that, for the last 35-45 years, the powers of the republican party have had, at most, a 'shred' of humanity to lose -- and if they had even that, the "shred" has now been lost and discarded, not slowly, but on the snap of trump's fingers. [Add: Dishonorable mention goes to Miller, Sessions and too many others to 'report.'] ….. P.S. the description of republicans in general, and the "Freedom Caucus" types in particular, as "conservatives" is as illiteral and illiterate as the use (more or less a constant 'by now') of "incredible" as if it meant, at once, "credible" and wonderful." (The same condemnation is due potus's fixation on "strong" and ??? "strongly"??? as make-no-real-sense modifiers used to reference his affront-to-our-values "policies" -- and his beyond-habitual lies in respect thereof and in respect of his imaginary "achievements.")
No doubt, rather than asking "what would Jesus do?", Trump asks himself " what would Kim Jong Un do?" - and Voila...here you have it....ripping vulnerable, innocent children away from their parent(s).
3
I may be wrong, but Trump's policy of ripping crying children from the arms of their parents and then locking those children up in cages like farm animals strikes me as the kind of thing Jesus wouldn't do and wouldn't approve of.
5
This has happened before this not an aberration during slavery enslaved children were wrestled from the arms of their mothers and sold separately the more things change the more they remain the same
Even here, it's not really the Republicans' fault: "People like Stephen Miller are not steeped in conservative thinking and do not operate with a conservative disposition. They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities. Their primary orientation is not to conservative governance but to owning the libs."
Stephen Miller has been like this since high school. He's not the product of "the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities," unless what that "conformity" is "stifling" is behavior and attitudes like those we see in Mr. Miller today.
No, Mr. Brooks. This has been the Republican Party since Nixon's Southern Strategy, St. Ronald's "Young Buck" and "Welfare Queen," George the Elder's "Willy Horton," George the Dimmer's "John McCain's illegitimate mulatto daughter," Fox Noise, Rushbo, and Sarah Palin. It's the John Birch Society, Heritage Action, the Tea Party.
It's the Republican Party, who they are and have been for 50 years. Just now - it's out in the open.
1
Asylum Seekers
by Sabba Rabba
(from my BLOG, Poelitics.net)
It’s happening here at our Mexican border
Seeking asylum from horrible fates
They’ve traversed great distances simply in order
To live with their loved ones in these golden states
Then after cruel hardships, when at entry ports
They get turned away; no more room they say
So they enter illegally not at a port
Only to have their kids taken away
An evil new policy Trump has imposed
It’s called “zero tolerance” aimed at deterrence
“Asylum seekers, our borders are closed.
No longer the haven of refugee preference”
Some two thousand children removed from their parents
With records inaccurate: whose child is whose?
Some living in tents, desert heat that’s abhorrent
While Trump blames the Dems falsely for this abuse
It’s Trumpian policy easily reversed
It’s not but a bargain chip: Trump wants the wall
He’s ready to ruin lives; his wants come firsts
It’s time, to your Congressman please make that call
6/15/18
A Little tone deaf David? There are babies in wire cages in Texas. That’s the narrative.
Add Sessions cherry picked Scripture, ignored outright warning to never hurt children or die and burn forever.
Sec Nielsen, only Valkyrie in WH answered 4 ways til Monday why there are babies in cages, but ended with there are no babies in cages? Social services should check her children. Check on Baron too please.
One can only imagine how brutal and cruel the guards must be and how Child Protective services is so ineffective.
Seriously, this is monstrous. A concentration camp for babies and small children is the narrative. Your column is all thumbs.
When I was young and learned about various human atrocities, like the genocides against native Americans and Jews, I couldn't understand how such things could happen. Who can act so monstrously, killing innocent people including babies ?
Having gained wisdom in my adult years, I know that many of the people who become ICE, CBP and police are the same kinds of mindless thugs that gleefully donned brown shirts and red arm bands in Germany ~80 years ago. So many people find it so easy to hate. That will prove to be the fatal flaw for our democracy and indeed, our species.
3
David, I do agree with you that the term "amnesty" has been used as a club on the right for years, mainly for intra-party feuding in the GOP. However, the hyperbole about "the children" is the sort of morally convenient tripe I expect to find on the HuffPost. For goodness sake, do you really want to release these kids into the custody of people who may not be their parents? Do you realize the immigrant smugglers are counting on people like you to make the use of a child a guaranteed ticket to an over the border? And really, did you are your fellow columnists who are in such an uproar ever give a hoot to the kids who were trafficked and abused via the catch and release program? Is that what you want to return to?
3
Well. well, well... mark this day on the calendar, and be sure to instruct your children and grandchildren to tell their children and grandchildren about this momentous day: For the first time in over two decades, David Brooks has written a column I almost agree with in it's entirety! Halle-flipping-lujah, and Amen!
Which is why it almost (and only almost) makes me feel bad to raise one, big, quibbling, point:
If you had only written THIS column, say, about fifteen or so YEARS ago, when "Amnesty" first started to "become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate", your party's slow loss of it's "humanity" might have been arrested, and we may never have arrived here. Because this column would have been as relevant then, and additionally, been "useful". Unlike now.
But, hey... I guess today I'll give you points just for finally deciding to "show up". There ya go, Dave. Don't worry, though... I'm sure by your next column, you'll have gone back to finding new and interesting ways of disappointing me.
1
This is a party that isn't losing its humanity -- it has lost it's humanity. Their leaders are self-interested, self-serving cowards and scoundrels. To quote the top coward, "So sad."
1
"What’s most significant is this: The Trump administration immigration officials have become exactly the kind of monsters that conservatism has always warned against."
No, Bobo. These are exactly the kind of monsters that were the inevitable result of movement conservatism.
You built this, boyo. Own it.
2
If only the cruel enforcement of immigration law could be applied with the same enthusiasm to tax evaders. Seize their money at the border when they try to bring it in from the Cayman Islands, and put their children in cages in an old Walmart!
11
Please don’t say that people like Stephen Miller are formed as a reaction to the “stifling conformity of liberal colleges” I’m sick of hearing “liberal colleges” being blamed for the behavior of these idiots.
These people are radicals who either had a terrible upbringing or just hate America as I have known it all my life (56 years).
3
Why do you keep refusing to run my comments when I quote David Brooks exact words on his weekly PBS appearance (heard them myself) praising Rush Limbaugh (an arch "amnesty thug") as "a good Republican who just wants to win." Mr. Books has also made quite clear he never reads these comments, so surely you are not simply out to spare his feelings. But why spare Mr.Limbaugh? Mr. Books said it, but never wants to own it, and you enable him to duck accountability.
Brooks says: “Amnesty” has become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate. It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
SLOWLY?!!!!! Are you kidding me? If you call yourself a Republican these days you are RESPONSIBLE for this policy because Trump announced his racist ways on the first day of his candidacy.
Your reflex, Mr. Brooks, is to blame "stifling liberal universities",amazing!
3
A party losing its humanity and perhaps a country too. Does anyone really doubt that if these were white, blond-haired children this would not be happening? Of course not.
6
Powerful.
What will these trolls tell their children?
"I was just following orders".
How will that go over?
1
“Slowly”?? You really haven’t been paying attention.
1
It is the sign of a party that needs to be beaten so badly at the polls that it all but ceases to exist. If these wanna be fascist only had a hundred and thirty seats in the House they would be a quaint joke. With a majority they are a threat to civilization. People might to think about that in November.
Anti-liberal trolls in the White House, not conservatives? I don't see the difference and I don't see the conservatives attacking their brutal policies. So, they are the same.
"This illustrates something crucial about this administration. It is not populated by conservatives. It is populated by anti-liberal trolls. There’s a difference."
That's where you're wrong David. In Donald Trump's Republican Party, there is no difference. Conservatism has no purpose other than owning the libs and trying to kick out all the brown folks. And you're complicit.
2
In a very weird and distorted way, Steven Miller may have a point. He is, after all, the product of amnesty given the arrivals from Europe by the native population of this continent 500 years ago, followed of course by the genocide wrought on those very tribes as a demonstration of the white man's gratitude for the native's generosity.
so david, are you finally going to vote democratic? maybe just once?
Once again David Brooks wakes up shocked by the reality that the Republican party is full of Republicans. The conservatism Brooks (and the NYT) has lit a candle for, hasn't existed for at least thirty years, if it ever did. Why else did Reagan announce his run for POTUS in Philadelphia Mississippi, known primarily as the site of the murder of Freedom Riders, with a theme of "states rights?"
Mr. Brooks your feigned ignorance of what conservatism really is (a cobbled together set values that equates morality with wealth, enshrines racism and white supremacy; various forms of bigotry against anyone who isn't male, white, heterosexual and christian; and demonizes the poor) is old and very threadbare.
2
Among many Trump supporters, hatred of liberals takes precedence over love of country.
7
Not many.
All.
Glad your eyes are opening Mr Brooks, better late than never.
And how do you "classify" the likes of Norquist and Gingrich who famously arrived in Washington with an actual list of Orwellian buzzwords designed to turn brain matter into cement promoting raw emotion over rational thought. And the tea party cranks whose public policy consisted of "Obama is the devil, a Muslim one"?
Sorry, but I think you fail, once again, to recognize the authoritarian tendencies that the party of "law and order" has fostered since Reagan, and the basic b/s that the republican party has been selling in pursuit of raw power.
Where is this gentle, compassionate or even principled "conservative" you speak of: I haven't seen one, heard one speak in more decades than I care to remember. Even though Flake and McCain dare now to speak out about Trump they still can't bring themselves to call out the right-wing fringe now running the show.
Say what you will but liberals would never have raised up a trump, installed him in the White House and then jockeyed to be first in line for the daily bowing and scraping before His Vileness, His Corruption, His Immorality and His Lies, omg, the lies...just like Gingrich.
Miller and his ilk who run this presidency aren't just trolls: they're on a mission to save the homeland from the brown hoards and liberals who shame them by wanting virtuousness and justice to play a part in government and civil society, and if that takes an ever decreasing number of like minded whites ruling over the majority, then so be it.
Now we are seeing the Administration's racist behavior that can easily be compared to the police actions toward identified minorities by the National Socialists in Germany starting in the 1930s....and look where that ended up!
this is the first column you have ever written that i am sharing. not one word rang false.
Please- do not try to separate "conservatives" or "republicans" from the stoking of xenophobia from their parties candidates.
They ("conservatives" and "republicans") have sat by and supported this administration by either silence or direct support in every action it's taken. Most of which are inhumane- starting with their (not my) presidential candidate kicking off his campaign with nastiness against a group of people off the bat after questioning a black president's nationality in a conspiracy theory before that.
You and "the party" are 100 percent responsible for what we have- you can dance around an ideology that once was, but the realpolitik is what we have that You on the right support by the lack of a spine to stand up to the administration. This administration's actions are wholly consistent with the rhetoric and ideology you supported by voting for them. Completely consistent.
The right is pathetically inhumane in every turn- and all it took was a bribe from tax cuts to silence dissent from the enlightened wing of your stupid party.
This article and sentiment is pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
2
Thank you David!
Mr. Brooks thinks that the GOP is "slowly losing its humanity." I would venture to say that this more recent policy shows that it has already lost its humanity. There's none left to lose, unfortunately. When you dehumanize the "Other" any measures against them become possible, as history has shown all too often.
1
What I cannot understand is how ICE agents whom, I would assume are in majority decent and humane individuals, can look at themselves in the mirror when they get home and not be nauseous about the work they have doing that day. I understand the need for a paycheck, but when does their humanity kick in and say NO.
2
If you don't like the law, change the law!
The Democrats missed the opportunity in 2008-10. They passed the Affordable Care Act, but wouldn't take action on much needed immigration reform.
Then, rather than fixing the system, they looked the other way for the next 6 years, and magically, undocumented immigrants end up that much more entangled into society.
I do value the rule of law. Doing the easy thing isn't good governance. Sit in a city court room when the judge hears eviction cases. Case after case - tragic story after tragic story, but then the judge follow the law, upholds property rights and makes the hard choice.
I favor adding productive immigrants to our country. I favor a more compassionate imagination system. I favor some form of amnesty, but no, I would never apologize for enforcing the laws of the land.
Let's not pretend that the hardship we have today wasn't created by 30 years of in-action and cowardly governance.
The current law does not mandate separating families at the border.
It's policy, not law
Never has been, never was
Thank you, very thoughtful. I'm reading Edmund Burke because Brooks mentions him often. In the thoughts of Burke, history is a struggle between order and chaos. Unfortunately, we've elected someone who adds to the chaos.
7
In linguistics, there's a saying: "use defines meaning."
For the past several years, David Brooks has been engaged in a project to redefine the word "conservative" to exclude the horrible people his party of choice has found itself in bed with. And it's true, if you take conservative to mean what Brooks wants it to mean, these people aren't conservative. Unfortunately for Brooks (and, I suppose, for the brand of conservatism he touts), that's not how anyone else actually uses the word. And to go by the linguistics view, that's not what it means.
David: you strike me as a man in conflict, a man who is on the one hand basically decent but on the other hand really wants an easy label to stick on himself without the implication that he's a fascist. If you want to heal this rift within yourself, this aching need to have a coherent identity that can be summed up in a paragraph, trying to persuade everyone that they're using words wrong isn't going to cut it. You're going to have to move on. You're going to have to realize that the people you insist are not conservative have been taking shelter in your conservative political movement since at least the 1930s. And you're going to have to admit that you're pretty much a Democrat.
6
Or at least an Independent.
No one may like what is happening at the border but the migrants are instrumentalizing the children. I spent a long time in Honduras and the people are desperate to get out. The land is grossly overpopulated and degrading rapidly due to clear cutting and loss of forest cover. The patriarchal society is toxic to women and children. There are no jobs. At least Trump is doing something. Doing nothing is not a solution. Kicking the can down the road is not a solution. The best solution would be to integrate Honduras and, for that matter, the rest of Central America into the US. That way the taxpayer would benefit from the economic development and the people of Central America would get a better, although not ideal, government. Another option would be for the whining open border advocates to advocate for cutting the defense budget in half and allocating those funds to support the people in Central America. Another option would be to raise taxes and send even more money south of the border.
Nothing is free. Practically speaking the people of Central American to include Mexico are the future of the US. The residual white people will die out or be bred out in 50 to 100 years. But no one seems to want to stand up and offer a solution. Trump is providing a relatively unsophisticated and short term one.
people have been advocating for more foreign aid for years. let's do it.
"...the migrants are instrumentalizing the children."
This is the sad fulcrum of the debate that NYT Op-Ed columns keep omitting.
"People like Stephen Miller are not steeped in conservative thinking and do not operate with a conservative disposition. They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities. " And what does this have to do with the stunning lack of humanity being demonstrated by Sessions and sanctioned by Trump? As I recall it was not the liberals who created the Red Scare of the 1950s. A Republican was in office when AIDS became an epidemic. It was the likes of Nixon and McCarthy. And I can say from personal experience that zealots on either side of an issue tend to be intolerant.
What is being exhibited here is the excuse of "I was only following orders". That may be true of the rank and file but the higher ups are supposed to have some intelligence and understanding. The only thing our current administration and GOP run Congress appear to have is undisguised contempt for the average man, woman, and child and any immigrant they don't like. In fact, judging by their actions since Trump took office, I'd say that the GOP should change its name to the Party of Persecutors. The only ones they don't ignore or deliberately hurt are the rich or those they can use to prop up their feeble claim to humanity.
When will they ever learn? They won't and they don't intend to. They worship power and money.
2
We live on the Texas Gulf Coast near Houston. When driving through areas where there is road construction, it is clear that the preponderance of workers are Hispanic. Likewise, the same goes for roofing crews, carpenters, and a host of other labor intensive jobs. We won’t function without these folks, legal or otherwise. We have to be more discriminating in who stays and who goes. No question that we need to figure out how to get a handle on controlling immigration, but the answers are not simple, and there is no reason to penalize people who are not serious threats to our country.
3
There is now the Trump Party, the remnants of a once, so called, Republican Party and the rest of us. In every speech, tweet and deed, Trump bellows that we are either with him or against him. We are his people and he has terrible powers to bend us to his will. Once he is gone no one will give Miller, Sessions or Bannon a second thought, but within two generations America will be only another province on China's map.
And yet 40% of Americans stand firmly behind this man and his policies, purging any critics from the ranks of the Republican Party.
Being pretty uniformly white, that 40% represents close to 60% of white Americans.
Imagine that! Almost 2 out of every 3 white people you see in the super market or your church or on the subway or in the mall, are supportive of this man and his policies.
The issue is not Trump so much as it is white people and what they are willing to do.
This is what makes the elections in 2018 and 2020 truly frightening if the people of color and the tolerant 40% of white people dont get out and vote.
David, the world has many shades of grey, but photos of children stolen from their parents and locked away in cages is an affront to humanity and is state sanctioned child abuse. Decent people whether conservative or liberal are appalled at the cruel excuse, "we're simply following the law". We need to remind the fringe like Miller and Trump that simply following orders didn't work well in Nuremberg Trails, either. The tragedy happening in our great country should alarm any decent person whether conservative or liberal.
I was arrested in 1978 along with thousands of others protesting construction of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire. The police housed us in large warehouses in the area. None of us were put in cages like we see today. We could walk freely throughout the warehouse unlike the barbarism these children suffer.
We're in this together, and we need to focus our revulsion on cruelty by government agents AND private contractors. Private companies are holding children in prisons, and it's their policy that employees cannot hold and comfort a wailing child.
Bravo Mr Brooks, for pointing out the structural brutality & cruelty of Trump policies. But you left out the vast fabric of lies and deception that make these policies so damaging--even beyond the tragic consequence for the young & innocent people that we have detained.
Trumps policies are founded on make-believe. The make-believe crisis of immigration, where every statistic cited by Trump spokespeople--when they even bother to cite numbers--is fabricated to deceive. The make-believe crisis of trade, where a roaring economy with historically low unemployment will somehow be improved by trade wars and immolation of long-standing treaties. And the make-believe "solution" to North Korean's nuclear ICBMs, where Trump's boundless flattery of Dictator Kim Jong Un supposedly resolved all danger.
Truth is though, that conservatives have sown make-believe for decades. Now that they have a leader who can supposedly bring all they have wished for to magic fruition, some of them are finding the harvest quite bitter.
The damage done by constant deception and make-believe is killing the roots of American democracy. When the majority of Republicans refuse to own this, they transform make-believe crises into genuine peril.
1
If we offer a green card to Ludvin Franco, it tells others who want to come here, without permission, that it could work out. All they would have to do is avoid detection for a decade and marry an American or have children here. It is not clear if Brooks would narrow his amnesty to those who marry Americans or to those who have children here, or require both. And how many years would one have to stay before being legally accepted? Are 10 years necessary? What about 7? What if an unauthorized migrant managed to come here, marry an American, and have a child in just 2 years? Would he merit a green card?
Come to think of it, why would he have to marry an American? What if he married another unauthorized migrant from a different country or from his own country, and had children? Or, what if he hasn’t married, but has fathered one or more children here? What if he has married, but has not yet had children? (Maybe he recognizes that the world is over-populated and has made the ethical decision not to have children. Should he be discriminated against for not having children?) Where do you draw the line? This sounds very subjective.
The bottom line is that offering amnesty to some people gives hope to all other undocumented migrants that they, too, could eventually qualify. It also encourages even more people to come here illegally. The result is the chaos of “open borders”.
2
Media has created hysteria on this issue. It's unwarranted. In fact, it plays to the narrative of Trump's portrayal of main stream media.
Then there is a Christian fundamentalism along with vote bank politics at play here. Will these people suggest applying the same "morality" & "biblical values" to other non-Christian immigrants from other parts of the world (e.g. Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Rohingiys in Bangladesh, Sub Saharan Africa etc), where situation is far worse than any Latin American country?
What should we tell to those law-abiding potential immigrants whose visa/green card/citizenship was denied and they returned to their countries? Should we tell everyone in the world that they can come and live in the US if they can bring a kid with them and somehow arrive at the US border or enter USA illegally?
There has been a 600 percent increase in illegal immigration at that border in one year after the few with children were released here, while adults without children were held for hearings and then most likely deported. The critics of the administration enforcing the law offer no alternatives. There are loopholes in our immigration laws that these people are exploiting.
I think all the people "crying eyes out" should open their homes to sponsor/shelter a family caught illegally entering the country and watch them to ensure they show up for all hearings etc -- through the entire process. While we are at it, we can deal with homelessness in the US, too.
1
When you buy something from a store and a month later you find that its price has been cut, do you whine because you were treated "unfairly"?
Legal immigrants are not harmed by illegal immigration and refugees.
What you can tell refugees from overseas who are denied entry is to keep trying, and to pressure your own government to let them in.
We seek to improve humanity, not push people down to the level of those receiving the worst treatment.
I cannot fathom the mindset of anyone who is not moved by the sight of a lonely, traumatized child crying for his/her parent.
1
"...a party slowly losing its humanity." Slowly losing?? Lost, David Brooks, lost. Gone. When we shrug at the suffering of children, when we ignore any common sense response to mass shootings of children, when we look away from the state lead poisoning of children -- it's not only the GOP, it's all of us. Our moral compass is so broken that we coolly walk away from that one unifier that really matters -- that we love and care for one another -- that we don't harm one another -- ever. We should be in mourning; we are not. I heard Tucker Carlson say that the "liberal" concern for children is not credible, bacause many in the opposition don't even have children. The assumption, of course, that the cries of a child cannot reach the hearts of childless people. This takes my breath away.
3
What exactly are the problems being caused by illegal immigration?
Who has real numbers sans the angry bigoted assertions?
Why haven't the reporters explicitly asked for the specific law being enforced in each individual case?
Where when and how the individuals were picked up?
Why not confront the government with the fact that they have chosen this method of enforcement whatever the law being "enforced" is, when they could easily choose other methods? Why not point out that the interpretations they are asserting are wildly out of proportion to reality and precedent and confront the lies Sessions, Miller, Kelly, and El Trumpo are spinning to change the story about these people from south of the border who require little assimilation beyond learning to speak English. Their culture is Western culture, with some customs US citizens are not familiar with.
"The Trump administration immigration officials have become exactly the kind of monsters that conservatism has always warned against." I have to disagree here, this is exactly who Conservatives have always been. It is only now, today after decades of slowly wearing down societal standards drip by drip that it has become safe enough for Conservatives to act this way as they have always wanted to, openly. Conservatism NEVER warned against this, it was advocating for it all along as that eradication of reality is the basis and only way this sick idea the GOP calls Conservatism can exist at all as it is pure fantasy.
1
David (and other readers),
What shall we call the party of trump, so the GOP can become a conservative party and Make-America-Great-Again?
Or should the GOP just admit that they are all for trump and those who would rather be conservative find a new name?
What is that name? ? Conservatives ?
Conservatives for a Better America?
1
Terrific column. Let's hope that, come November, voters punish people who treat fellow human beings as though they were numbers. Not holding my breath. Like Kathleen Parker of the Post, I don't recognize my country.
Nice try, David. You really can't separate out the people who are coming up with these policies (Anti-liberals - I question this tag) from the people who are going along with it to get what they want (Conservatives/Republican party). If you aren't making a law against this, you are complicit (I'm looking at you, Susan Collins). This is the new face of conservatives. This is the new Republican Party.
1
Thank you for writing about the many contributing members of our society who have been arrested and deported. There are also horror stories about retired Caribbean people who, after decades of work here, were wrested from bed to go back to countries they haven't seen since childhood.
Most of these folks don't have the advanced facility in English to read the NYT and participate in comment sections. Nonetheless, their loss is keenly felt in their families and in their (our) local communities.
How does it benefit us in the end to have fatherless, traumatized families among us? Do we think that the American kids just wake up and go to school as if nothing had happened? What has ICE just done to American families and their ability to thrive?
We wring our hands and pontificate about immigration law reform, but the iron laws of economics rule. We need laborers (gardeners, nannies, construction workers) and people in other parts of the world need work. And so workers will relocate to where work is available, immigration laws or no. Our President himself used undocumented Polish workers on the Trump tower site in the 70s.
The irony is that the poverty, lack of economic development, lawlessness and danger in Central America is related to the seemingly bottomless appetite for cocaine, marijuana, etc, here in the USA, a fact which we studiously ignore. Same mechanisms at work in far-away Tajikistan, most of whose men work illegally in Russia for pittances.
2
The reason “amnesty” is used in this way is because it summarizes, in one word, the leftist propensity (and desire) to ENCOURAGE more illegal immigration.
If people believe the act of illegally entering this country will eventually be forgiven, then more of them will make the decision to enter this country illegally. That’s why “amnesty” is a forceful word. It lays bare the consequences, which is an increase in illegal immigration.
Changing the language does not change reality, David.
If one follows your reasoning to its inevitable conclusion, there can never be forgiveness for anything, as it will only "encourage" more wrongdoing.
In the Right-wing mind, kindness and compassion must be avoided, as they promote more crime.
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity." Slowly? They have been losing their humanity for forty years. The Republican Party Incorporated is just another corporation in the business of taking and keeping political power for the oligarchs and assorted cults that tend to authoritarianism. This isn't something new.
1
SLOWLY??? "It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity." It's taken a bit over 500 days for the Republican party to turn into the Trump Party and the weak response to what the American Government is doing on the border is proof of that.
3
Americas immigration policies being formed by twisted beings like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump should be looked at closely. "Consider the source" is important.
They are misanthropes and disconnected men even from normal and respectful relationships at the level of their own families.
Having no functioning morality should have been a deal-breaker for EVER letting these men near power.
3
Liberals have long warned that American conservative dogma, as preached in recent decades, was a stalking horse for statist authoritarianism. Mr. Brooks cannot absolve today's conservative standard-bearers, and those to whom they pander, by simply redefining them as "not steeped in conservative thinking".
7
The humanity has already been lost. It might have been slow but it is gone.
2
It's unlikely Stephen Miller was formed by his "rebellion against the stifling conformity" of Duke University; he was deeply involved in right-wing politics even before he graduated high school, as Mr. Brooks surely must know. Nor is Mr. Miller now an "anti-liberal troll". The unfortunate fact is that Mr. Miller is a senior policy advisor to the president of the United State. He's not writing screeds for publication in the online wilderness; he's in the White House crafting policy for the Trump administration -- the sorts of policies that have empowered ICE sweeps of immigrant communities, family separations, little kids being terrorized as leverage in Mr. Trumps fights with Congress. These are the policies of a Republican president, being carried out with the acquiescence of the Republican majority in Congress and a great many prominent conservatives. Mr. Brooks may not like the Trump hardliners any more than I do, but it's too late to pretend they aren't part of the club.
3
There are seemingly endless varieties of conservatives. And some are all about distinguishing "their kind" from others. It appears, however, that many varieties of seeds lead to the same rotten fruit. But there is rottenness in other quarters. Immigration is partly about demographics and voters - and that issue also plays among Democrats.Where is the court case that could stop this in its tracks like in the case of the "Muslim ban"?
Were the Republicans advocating human torture conservatives? I'm just curious. I remember Abu Ghraib getting published in 2004. Rumsfeld took Guantanamo off the leash in 2002. George W. Bush was a conservative, wasn't he? I think the popular term was "compassionate conservative." Bad is bad even when Trump is worse. David Brooks isn't getting a free pass no matter how compassionately he writes now.
2
Nothing in Mr. Brooks' op-ed today matters other than the following text.
"His wife, Anne, is from a Pennsylvania Dutch family that has been in this country for generations. They were married in 2013 and have three American children, Max, Javier and Valentina."
In their absolutism, nothing matters; not even marriage. Also, given this instant example, marriage to an American woman does not confer citizenship in America anymore.
Keep watching, folks. It will get worse.
1
Congress, you've gone along low enough. Hit bottom. Defy the man who cages kidnapped child hostages as bargaining chips.
Trump used the rehearsed word, "amnesty" in the presidential debate to sum up Clinton's immigration-reform position.
In rebuttal, citing Trump's campaign position that every undocumented person would be subject to deportation, Clinton spelled hers out: "I don't want to rip families apart. I don't want to be sending parents away from children. I don't want to see the deportation force that Donald has talked about in action in our country."
Act on hers, not his.
2
“slowly losing its humanity”?
The Republican Party lost its humanity during the Reagan years. What do you think George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” was about? True, he forgot all about that after being elected, but even then, people were noticing that the Republican Party contained people who were cruel and practiced “us against them” politics, and it’s only gotten worse.
Trump is simply the culmination of nearly 40 years of regarding some groups as inferior, and there are too many in the Republican Party that agree with him and the rest are too frightened by his base to do anything about it.
David, Perhaps you have forgotten that with the Trump Administration, the "rigid rule of law" is only selectively adhered to. Namely, it does not apply to Donald J. Trump, his businesses, or his associates. Worse still, House Republicans and many Republican Senators appear to be active abetters of the Administration's now long-running obstruction of justice. The "law and order" party?
Also worth mentioning are some of Trump's more interesting pardons. The pardoning of Joe Arpaio not only demonstrated Trump's contempt for the rule of law, it is of a piece with his current dishonest contention that he is forced now to follow the cruel "Democrat" law that the Democrats have cruelly refused to change. What we are seeing from Trump and his party is not blind beaurocracy at work, but something far more hideous and threatening to our nation and the public good.
Old-fashioned and meaningless notions of "conservative" and "liberal" no longer apply in this nation except when used for obfuscation and as weapons. The White House and the national Republican Party are simply an authoritarian criminal enterprise, too rapidly approaching in kind Putin's government in Russia and other such jolly concerns now popping up with alarming frequency in the world, and which, in distinction to the world's democracies, are plainly the darlings of Donald J. Trump.
5
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity." Slowly? this is the party that gave us "Welfare Queens in Cadillacs" to quote Ronald Reagan nearly 40 years ago.
1
The Republican Party "is slowly losing its humanity." Slowly? The Republican Party has been losing its humanity since Richard Nixon.
2
"People like Stephen Miller are not steeped in conservative thinking and do not operate with a conservative disposition. They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities."
When will Brooks get over himself and this false narrative? Miller is an easy dispellable example (anyone can google "Stephen Miller high school" for any number of articles on or videos of his teenage, pre-Duke lunacy), something Brooks himself well knows. Miller and others may be trolls, but they were trolls well before they attended and "rebelled" against liberal universities. This the-left-made-them line has gotten pathetic. Conservatives need to reform the Republican party--and that begins with accepting the blame for enabling Miller and others as they dragged the party down to its current state.
2
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
Not so slowly, David. Trump has separated 2000 kids from their families in the past TWO MONTHS ALONE. Compare that to 700 separations in all of 2017 (Trump’s first year in office). That is more than a 1700% increase in forced separations since April.
1
Compare that to the 2 million human beings Obama deported. We don't even know what happened to those families. This story is both a true report on the misery and suffering that accompanies migration across borders and a complete propaganda piece in the way it makes this a partisan issue.
There's only one reason for most implementation of a "zero-tolerance" policy. It makes life easier for the folks within the bureaucracy who don't want to have to think on the job. Exercising discretion involves analyzing each situation, determining the risk/reward of an enforcement action, and [OMG] often justifying your decision. "Zero tolerance" involves only two questions: Is there any adverse "criminal history/" and Is the person undocumented? Speeding ticket a decade ago, no naturalization certificate? Lock him up and throw him out of the country.
The current administration's entire immigration policy seems philosophically based on the following conversation in Dickens' A Christmas Carol,
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
2
Welcome to the world of Donald Trump and his supporters, and it isn't pretty. They work on the idea that their ills are all caused by "those people", that affirmative action for example has meant that "white men" can't get jobs because it goes to them, or that issues like drug use among their kids is because of 'those' people selling drugs to their kids, etc.
Quite frankly, they see what ICE is doing and they are loving it, because to them, this is the first step into telling "those people" they aren't welcome in the US (and you can bet if the GOP ever passes an immigration revision law, that it will be like the exclusionary laws like the act of 1920, that favors "good" immigrants like whites from europe, and maybe Asians and South Asians to a certain extent. They think that this brutality is going to 'return their country to them' ie make America a place where being white is the only thing required for success, and more importantly, where they don't have to see non white faces.
The sad part is that they have legimitate arguments, that for example illegal immigration has taken away good paying jobs, 30 or 40 years ago you could make a decent wage as a construction laborer, thanks to the flood of illegal immigrants and unscrupulous construction companies using that to pay bare bottom wages. Rather than fix the immigration system, and holding employers accountable, this just makes it even easier for owners to cheapen wages, they can say "take this pay, or I'll call ICE"
I was with Brooks until he tried to blame liberals and universities for the cruelty of Trump and Miller. The vile people are the logical outcome of decades of Republican/Conservative politics, that places power over governance, wealth for the few over the common good, racial division over tolerance, social conflict over unity, and Orwellian propaganda over facts. Only the Congressional Republicans have the votes to end the cruel separation of children and parents.
4
Beware the term "Zero Tolerance". It is always a euphemism for cruelty and injustice. Solomon the Wise would never judge a human being based on the philosophy of zero tolerance. It just doesn't work.
2
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity." Slowly?? I have some bad news - the GOP entirely lost its humanity a long time ago. We are witnessing the working out of this moral collapse: dog whistle racist politics, mindless repetition of empty mantras about tax cuts, the embrace of the NRA, the fulsome intrusion of religious bigotry and rejection of science into the public debate, and the nauseating embrace of foreign dictators. The United States as a nation will persist for centuries. So did Rome. But American _civilization_ appears to be dying. An unbearably sad spectacle. What comes next? Where does humanity turn for hope?
1
That's fine. So, what's your answer? That's right. You don't have one.
Where do the policies of the past take us? 40 million people illegally in the country? 80 million? Because make no mistake, nothing short of an aggressive enforcement of America's right as a sovereign nation to determine who does and does not live within its borders will stop the tide of illegal immigration into this country until the ability of our health care systems, schools and social networks to care for American citizens is destroyed. The federal government already spends more on illegal immigrants than on anything besides the military.
So don't waste our time with pallid criticisms and hand-wringing moralizing. Tell us how to stop every person on earth determined to plug into America's health care systems, schools, food stamps and social programs from doing just that.
1
The US has the least liberal healthcare and education systems in the developed world.
"The federal government already spends more on illegal immigrants than on anything besides the military."
Not true.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/01/donald-tr...
I agree with what you say about anti-liberal trolls using the word "amnesty" to shout down opposition, but I noticed something else too.
If 64% of the deported immigrants do not have criminal convictions, then 36% do. That's almost 1 out of 3. I don't care for heavy-handed tactics, but good riddance to the criminals.
Under previous administrations we were too easy on illegal immigrants, who seemed to have the attitude that if you can get here, you can stay. Under the current administration, perhaps we are being too tough. Hopefully we'll drift towards a balance in the future.
Meanwhile, our national mythology still says that we are the relief valve for the world's excess population. It's high time we question that fundamental belief. The world has to deal with excess population; we can't do it for them.
Please read more carefully. The report did not say that 64% of undocumented immigrants had no criminal convictions. It said that 64% of those arrested by ICE had no criminal convictions.
The DHS itself has estimated that, out of 11 million undocumented immigrants, fewer than one million had committed felonies or serious misdemeanors.
The Obama administration's policy was to prioritize the deportation of those undocumented immigrants who had serious criminal convictions (not traffic tickets).
Trump is ignoring that policy, so he is deporting many innocent people instead of the criminals. Hence, 64% of those he deports have done nothing wrong since entering the US. That's both shameful and a stupid policy, as it leaves most criminals free from deportation.
The US does not have an excess population. The birth rate has been steadily falling.
1
An illegal immigrant working for 10 years in the U.S. is not a "perfectly" productive member of society. He is an imperfectly productive participant in the current economic order. The imperfection lies in his displacement of U.S. citizen with a lawful claim to that job. The economy does not grow by one job for every citizen displaced. This isn't a justification for the barbarity of ripping babies from their mothers arms, but it an argument against amnesty.
1
I suggest an arrangement where the country of origin of the alien has to acccpt one of our evangelicals. In that case, I envision Mexico would welcome a wall
1
I’ll agree with your “They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities.“ if you agree with the stifling conformity they found at conservative military.
1
"People like Stephen Miller are not steeped in conservative thinking and do not operate with a conservative disposition. They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities."
It is understandable that Lord Brooks would like to distance himself from an obviously hateful sociopath like Miller, but those who knew him in High School suggest that Miller was a racist jerk well before he made his way to college. The truth is that while Miller may lacks the social grace that enable Brooks to enjoy a cocktail with his more liberal coworkers at the Times, his xenophobic and authoritarian views are well within the mainstream of American conservatism, which we should remember has been on the wrong side of every question from slavery to child labor to the right to join a union to Jim Crow to jailing people for being gay. The conservative hostility to "statism" that Brooks invokes here has historically been quite fickle -- limiting itself largely to state intrusions on the prerogatives of the rich and privileged and not at all shy about seeing the authorities crack heads to keep the rest of us in line.
Brooks has spent the past few decades advocating precisely the sort of policies that created the political environment in which Trumps and Millers could thrive. Rather than blaming liberal universities, he should own up to his own complicity and that of his co-thinkers at the Wall Street Journal and Fox.
3
I take exception to the word "trolls" used to describe Steven Miller, et al.
Like so many words and phrases commandeered by the Internet, "troll" has a humorous tinge left over perhaps from fairly tales read by folks of an older generation. Trolls lived under bridges and were nasty scary creatures, but we knew they were imaginary.
This current mob controlling our country is dead serious, cruel as only human beings have the capacity to be, vicious and feeding on its own sense of power. It manifests a nightmare scenario ripped from history that we thought we had overcome.
Call it by it's true name: unbridled evil.
David, Republicans have been headed in this direction for a long time. Did you aid and abet along the way? Did you raise your voice when Paul Weyrich, "Father" of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, etc. said in 1980 'We (Republicans) don't want everyone to vote'? When Newt sent training tapes to Republican candidates to teach them how speak about Democratic candidates in demeaning and derogatory words? Or when Reagan and GHWB used the stereotypes ‘Welfare Queens’, ‘Willy Horton’? Or about Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy”? Or the rise of 100's (perhaps thousands) of RW talk radio shows like Rush and groups like the Tea Party 'we want our country back', etc. that seemed to spring out of nowhere but really were financed and supported by wealthy RW conservatives through patriotic sounding organizations (Americans for Prosperity or Freedom Partners)? Or the 30+ year Republican crusade against the Clinton’s? Or the sanctimonious positions your party took that it was it was the only party of ‘American Values’, ‘Christian Faith’ and ‘True Patriots’? And when the relative quiet din of this Republican orthodoxy became a cacophony during the Obama administration did you raise the alarms about the road your party had taken? I doubt it, I bet you just blamed Obama for not saying the right words that would have quelled it. Now, a bit late, you are just beginning to recognize what the past 40 years of ‘conservative’ values have brought.
7
The conservatism has transformed itself in an anti-liberal Kabuki theater, where all the energy is spend on either ridiculing liberals or criminalizing them.
This is an absolutely essential element in understanding of the American divisions that have been created mostly by conservative movement last few decades.
When you turn on Fox or right wing radio one of the most repeated statements is “liberals are not going to like it” or “as we expected liberals hate it”, etc. no policy, value or principle stands on its own, its only value seems to be that liberals will hate it. There is little chance for sane gun safety policy simply because liberals would like it, eventhough most “conservatives” would support each element of the policy on its own.
This is as sick as it gets.
1
Excellent column, as usual. I'd only take issue with the ultimate sentence. "Slowly losing" should be "rapidly losing" -- if not "has lost."
The GOP has been the party of discrimination for a long time but they at least tried to mask the white supremacy with religion, conservative "principles," etc. This administration just turbo-charged it, dropped the mask to activate the outright bigots and zealots, and is seeing how far they can take it. When the Attorney General is quoting a bible passage stating the government should be obeyed because god ordained the government for his purposes, we move dangerously closer to every theocracy in history and the GOP continues to enable it because a white, Christian theocracy is acceptable in their mind.
1
While he makes a number of good points here, Brooks can't resist rolling out one of the shabbiest right-wing evasions of all -- that is, even when they're doing horrific things, "conservatives" are never wrong. It's always someone else's fault -- hence, we should blame inhumane immigration policies on "liberal universities" and their "stifling conformity".
Howzat??!
Come on, Dave...
4
I would only disagree with Brooks on one thing he said. The GOP didn't just start losing it's humanity, it happened when Newt Gingrich became Speaker. The Speaker of hate for the opposition.
1
Along with the "Amnesty" yawp is the "Open Boarders" short circuit. The talent Republicans have had for some time, among many that dumb down the citizenry, is to respond to every complex issue with simplistic extremes. Long gone are the days of W.F. Buckley intellectual arguments for conservatism. Instead, welcome to the world where Ann Coulter passes for an intellectual.
2
Brooks writes, " It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity." I question the "slow," but I will grant that Brooks is slowly coming around to seeing what has happened.
1
Any public criticism of the shameless Trump immigration policy by a high-profile conservative writer is a good thing, and should be recognized as such.
Criticism like this by Mr. Brooks will only help add to the steady drum beat of negative press and put more pressure on the feckless, do-nothing Republicans in Congress to take off their Trumpslaver mind-control glasses and take a stand for something truly worth standing for: bringing an end to the inhumane treatment of helpless children.
From the majority of comments so far, capitalism gone amok, open every door policy and identity politics, chaos rule.
United States of America, it is done.
Blaming Stephen Miller's approach on the liberals he encountered in college is a stretch and takes away from a good column.
2
Nice to see you calling a spade (Trump) a spade for a change. Please don't be so reluctant to call Trump out; you must do it more often.
It has been thus for a long time. G. Gordon Liddy railed against the intrusions of the State both before and after his arrest and conviction. Problem is that Liddy was acting as the intrusive state by his actions but that was deemed to be okay because it was in the service of the proper master.
Excellent article Mr. Brooks. The only disagreement I have is about the party slowly losing its humanity. The pace at which the GOP has lost its humanity has been frightening. One dictator wannabe can subvert and destroy an entire political party by threats, tweets, lies and bluster in less than 2 years. What used to be a robust two-party system has disintegrated to one party resembling what it has always been and on the other side, a mob of angry townspeople. The GOP mantra could well be "Let's Get 'Em!" This is how evil triumphs. People go along so they aren't the target of the mob.
1
The source, the origin, the very reason all of what is described here has occurred are the policies and perspective of those who believe lawlessness should have no consequences. Furthermore, such people, at their core, do not believe in our system of government and strive to undermine it. Allowing tens of thousands of people to simply walk into our country, regardless of the law, is the perfect example of how such people prefer to do things. Nevermind going to Congress, appealing for a change in laws, a change that would allow anyone and everyone to flood our country -- and at the taxpayers' expense. Now with regularity, we see right here in this paper, whose tradition isn't at all truth or even justice, we see the consequences of people who for decades have promoted and are now promoting lawlessness. Blaming this on Republicans, specifically President Trump, is like blaming lung cancer on the matches that lit the cigarettes. This problem was caused by liberalism. Liberalism is the cancer. Voting to build a wall, voting for normal and sane immigration laws is the medicine we all now crave.
1
"Slowly losing its humanity"?? Does the author mean to imply
that this has not yet already happened? What evidence
does he have of any remaining residual core of what can
commonly be understood as humanity? We curious ones
would like to know...
Re poor Mr Miller's traumatic experience at Duke, and "formed by [sic] rebellion against the stifling conformity [sic] found at liberal universities. Do you mean the sin of not rooting on the Blue Devils in a fraternity?
It is strange that a country that has 800 military bases in 70 foreign countries has/had left its own borders unprotected from entry by illegal immigrants for decades.
Eleven million illegals residing here by some count! How can that be?
A very simple intervention can discourage illegals from crossing our borders. Make it impossible for an illegal to obtain employment in the United States. That would require stiff penalties for employers who offer employment to the illegals.
Switzerland maintains a “Fremdenpolizei” - police for the aliens. It checks documents of aliens who are seeking employment in Switzerland. It also impounds their passports, easily retrievable when needed, but replaced with Swiss documents. I know because I worked in Switzerland for sometime.
Some illegals are self employed. How to catch them? That may be more difficult but not impossible. Introduce some requirement which proves legitimacy.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Separation of children from parents is cruel. It has multiple solutions.
1
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
Not that slow...
First, criminal prosecution in this form should be stopped. Immigrants who cross the border illegally should be directed into amnesty or immigration processing.
Second the hypocrisy around immigration is just staggering. This is not a Republican/Democrat issue. Obama deported 2 million people at a rate unprecedented in American history. Do you think there were no mothers, families, fathers, children impacted by that historic deportation? Do you think that was accomplished without terrible human suffering and misery?
Immigration is not a challenge that has a simply good guy/bad guy solution. Just study what is happening in Europe and the rest of the world.
The guilty party in our country includes elected officials from both political parties. They have, for years, failed and failed and failed to pass just and enforceable immigration law. And they have failed deliberately. Each side believes that it can use immigration as an effective political weapon. And so far each side has been right. That is evil and cowardly politics, but it is the politics that is working for now; refuse to pass legislation, then polarize and solidify the base.
Frankly, sometimes politics is disgusting.
I think if the Trump administration should track down the illegal immigrants of the Mayflower to get the point across that it is truly serious about the immigration issue. Get to the root of the problem!
1
In Mr. Brooks's mind the eternal truth remains: conservatism is always failed; it never fails.
1
"Slowly" losing its humanity? They threw it away when they got behind Trump.
2
"Amnesty" is not a sign of a party slowly losing its humanity. The Republican Party lost its humanity when it nominated Donald Trump to be its candidate for President of the United States. He is one of the most unqualified, dishonest and abhorrent individuals to hold that office. God help our country.
Aside from Trump's historical racist beliefs, the current crisis can be placed primarily at six feet--those of Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions and Steve Bannon. Their anti-immigrant mentalities are fueling Trump's basic impulses here. Much more print, cable and TV criticism/commentary should be directed at them.
2
A party slowly losing its humanity? I fear it is too late. That ship is resting on the Atlantic’s bottom.
John Boehner thinks the Republicans are off somewhere taking a nap. He understates their condition. They are comatose.
The GOP has been bludgeoned into unconsciousness by the unthinking, uncaring thugs who have overtaken it. If its moderates can find a scintilla of courage or a speck of decency they could stand up and say: “Stop it!” But are there enough of them with enough of what it takes to slow the free fall?
Somewhere along the line, the word “moderate” became pejorative among Republicans for anyone with compromising instincts, much like the word “amnesty” has become a shibboleth among nationalist hardliners. If there are any fair-minded, humane Republicans who can be aroused from slumber, now is the time to awaken them. But maybe the problem isn’t that they are asleep. Perhaps their problem is more anatomical.
Because until Republican moderates can locate their spines, the country will continue to spin toward oblivion.
1
I agree with every word you wrote. Thank you.
First time you I have seen you not blaming democrats as usually you are the king of False Equivalency. I am in shock. Well written column.
1
Wasn't what Trump provided Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Dinesh D'Souza a form of "amnesty"? Isn't what he has promised to provide any of his minions who find themselves behind bars as a result of the Mueller investigation a form of "amnesty"? Rule of law? Law and order president? Ha!
2
For once I was actually thinking I could agree with you, Mr. Brooks, until I reached this line and the inevitable attack on liberals:
"People like Stephen Miller are not steeped in conservative thinking and do not operate with a conservative disposition. They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities."
Sigh.
David Brooks offers no solution. Liberals suggest that unauthorized immigrants that either bring children across the border or have children in the U.S. should get a preference over immigrants that follow the rules.
There are always bad results when the government rewards bad behavior.
Mr. Trump seems to be right on this issue. The GOP legislation now in Congress should be passed. It is well balanced and much better than the non-solution of David Brooks.
1
There's nothing slow about the loss of humanity we're watching. It's well past the time for just watching and hand-wringing.
David Brooks argues that the GOP is "slowly losing its humanity." It is the only statement in this column with which I disagree. The GOP lost its humanity the moment it nominated Donald J. Trump, and fully embraced his anti-immigrant, nativist politics. Thus the party revealed to everyone it was suspending its humane values for the transactional purpose of victory at any cost. Trump has demonstrated throughout his life that he has no soul, and now they party he leads has lost its own.
1
Once in awhile, Brooks knocks the cover off the ball and he does so here.
From the comments I have read on some social media, Trump supporters are unmoved by ICE enforcement that lacks discretion, nuance or even common sense.
They're getting what they voted for and, as fully paid up members of the Fifth Avenue Bystanders Club, they couldn't be happier.
I am convinced that there are a large amount of Trump-loving Americans who have no empathy for other human beings, the way the used to have. This, I think, is due to the reduction of human interaction in favor of the passive watching of TV, internet surfing, social media, and even doing what I am doing now. I do not have much hope that things will change soon. There is too much emphasis on have obedient consumers who haven't the courage to question authority or think critically. Certainly our politicians do not.
1
One comment to a op-ed pointed out that the children of adults being deported were to be turned over to Health and Human Services to find family members to care for them as ruled by the court of appeals in 2016 as well as other rulings and agreements. In 2017 HHS resettled 7,635 from October through December 2017. It is not that simple. Some these children remain with HHS because the family members can't be found. HHS does not deny placement just because parents or family members are in the country illegally. At least some of the children are separated from from parents who have committed crimes. Other children are with HHS because they came here unaccompanied and HHS haven't found someone to place them with. Antidotal stories don't solve very much and paint a narrow picture of what is really happening. We need to understand how this works and where repairs can help solve a problem. Instead they are really being reported now because of November 2018 to help a return to power or to retain power. The problem was here before Trump became president. The anecdotal stories exploit the children reasons of power instead of working to repair where the problem are. HHS is working to resettle these children as the the 7635 placed in just three months indicate. it is not an easy task.
2
Mr. Brooks - the problem with your argument is two fold. You say it is ok for people to not follow the law if they are constructive to society. And you have little regard for people who follow the law.
When I got married in 1996, I already had a green card, after having come to the US on a full scholarship to attend graduate school in 1986. But the U.S. consulate in Bombay denied my wife a tourist visa to visit me. The underlying rule was simple. There was a good chance that she would overstay her visa and not return.
So I convinced my company to transfer me to Switzerland on a project. My wife and I lived our first years of married life six months after marriage in a third country. Almost a year later, we applied for a U.S. tourist visa for her in Bern and got it. But she never overstayed.
We played by the rules 100%. She got her Green Card only in 2000 after I became a U.S. citizen.
So, please spare us the heart throbbing stories from Propublica. We are immigrants too. But we were 100% legal. If we can do it, others can.
2
Great idea; these families should ask their employers to send them to Switzerland on a project.
1
I did not vote for Trump and dispise his policies. That being said, in the 1990's and early 2000's while working as printer in Texas there was influx of cheap and illegal labor from Mexico. I watched as good paying jobs slowly succumbed to low wages. I worked side by side with workers from Mexico that my employer eagerly hired, papers or not for half the pay. There are many who think that these immigrants are harmless to our society and only strengthen it. But until you see your wages suppressed by greedy employers exploiting desperate immigrants you'll never understand the anger of the Americans left to fend in a new low wage America. This is a very complicated issue.
7
Correct. But the ruling elite has no idea that the white working class still exists. Certainly the would like it to go away, as they do not vote as instructed. Since outright genocide is passé, the Elites will erase the Deplorables with the economic warfare of Open Borders.
Never occurred to you to blame the greedy employers? Nope, just the brown people.
2
I like your reference to Orwell regarding how authoritarian brutalists use words to eradicate, rather than illuminate, the complexity of reality.
But it’s not just anti-liberal trolls on the political right who have been using language this way. Political messaging from the right for the last 40 years has stigmatized generally non-military government spending and government regulations outside a law and order context.
We need to distinguish between government spending that is necessary or wise and government spending that is neither. We need to distinguish between government regulations that are efficient or unnecessarily burdensome, necessary or unnecessary, in service of private or public interests.
But part of the political capital possessed by the political right today consists of the political reflexes of millions of people strongly inclined to distrust government spending or regulation generally. The process of building that form of political capital didn’t start with the 2016 campaign. I don’t understand why the political left has not fully engaged to defend wise or necessary spending or regulations and the public processes by which we determine what’s wise or necessary; name calling and PC don’t get the job done.
A September 1, 2016, article by Nathan Heller in New Yorker magazine entitled “Trump, the University of Chicago, and the Collapse of Public Language” usefully discusses the topic.
1
And to be clear, what’s going on with immigration enforcement today is abhorrent. They need to stop ripping kids away from their parents before noon today.
Much of the poison in our political discourse traces back to Roe v. Wade. This was the tipping point, after which conservatives viewed their liberal adversaries not as misguided and ill-informed, but monstrous and evil. This opened the door to the scorched-earth tactics that we've seen time and again from the right.
So, there's no point in trying to shame Trump's cohort of thugs and trolls. They don't accord liberals any moral standing, since we're all baby killers.
2
Blaming liberals! You can't do better than that, David? No. Because your conservative Republican party is exactly what you raised it to be.
3
The Reagan Revolution hitched the American state to organized racism. Do you honestly think that Reagan's "coded messages" (his campaign manager's term) have nothing to do with the moral degeneration of the GOP? The Republican party ceased to be the party of Lincoln long ago. Stop pretending you have nothing to do with this.
2
Forget "family values" – our nation has reached a point where we no longer can even agree on what American values are.
Family values vary widely among countries. In some places the norm is to marry off your 12-yr-old daughter for a dowry. In other cultures parents enthusiastically encourage their children to become martyrs. Such is the diversity of "family values."
In this country, family values are an agreed-upon norm that fits into our larger context of American values. While I have every confidence that all American's still agree on what our definition of family values represents - the fact that our actions no longer gel with our words means we have lost not just our "family" values - but what it means to be an American.
Communism was revolutionary and fascism and nazism had aspects to them that with some stretching could be called conservative - like the harking back to traditional family values and the idea of the nation as family united under the cult of the leadership of a great leader. All three shared a basic disrespect for the individual, for democracy, for the laws and freedoms that underpin the institutions of a free society.....the behavior we are witnessing from so called conservatives today is more akin the the 3 monstrous “isms” of the 20th century.
1
A party slowly losing its humanity -- that's been gone since Donald Trump came down that escalator and called most Mexicans murders and rapists. I'm happy to see Mr. Brooks that you have finally stopped qualifying everything Mr. Trump does. He's a terrible person and frankly "terrible" is a weak word for him, he's vile in every way. He did not win this election, he's a mean little fraud who treats the American people and the people's voice (the press) as the enemy. This is just the beginning -- a person with his mental condition only gets more and more confident in their ugliness and cruelty. I weep for my country almost every day now.
1
You are a bit late Mr. Brooks; the amnesty thugs began rising to Ronald Reagan's genuflecting to their grievances in Philadelphia, Mississippi where he began his campaign in 1980. Does it ring a bell? The difference is only in degree, not kind.
2
Polls from a few days ago show that between 55 and 67 percent of Republicans support the Trump/Miller/Sessions policy of separating children from their parents. That's not just trolling, that's a troll army.
1
The GOP is not losing its humanity, it already lost it. It started with Tom Delay calling his fellow Democrat Americans his enemies and proceeded to its present Soviet-style lies and hate-mongering about "child actors".
I considered myself a conservative and supported the GOP up until 2007. Never again! The GOP of Reagan is dead and its corps stinks to high heaven!
1
Sorry David, no cigar. You may attempt to redefine these conservatives as not your conservatives, but the reality is that we would not have these trolls without the dog whistles by a succession of Republican presidents from Reagan to BushII to the darker elements of illiberalism, such as neocons lying about WMD, lying about trickle down economics, lying about the universal tolerance of traditional religions, and the demonization of immigrants and unions, both of whom the pocket book Republicans, who think they are only voting for lower taxes, have long accepted. The truth is more taxes funneled into social programs promote tolerance because people are more equal. Ever since Reagan ballooned the DOD budget from $87B to $300B, the US has promoted corporate welfare, and a solider for hire from the poorer classes, rather the the All for One Spirit with which Americans embraced military service during WWII. If you want to see what's wrong with "conservatism," take a look in the mirror. Real conservatism argues for balanced budgets, something no Republican has done since Dwight Eishenhower.
1
Are we going to have enforceable borders or not? Shall we allow uneducated Guatemalans, whose only training is a tutorial in how to claim amnesty, to redefine the concept of a nation-state? Are we truly convinced that all those who claim to be desperately in need of political asylum are actually not just economic migrants casually following the directives of some coyote? What a country: right wingers can't wait to destroy the desert in order to impose democracy; left-wingers foam at the mouth trying to open the borders to every Tom, Dick and Harry.
3
According to David Brooks: "This illustrates something crucial about this administration. It is not populated by conservatives. It is populated by anti-liberal trolls. There's a difference." Sorry David, it's a difference without a distinction. Trump and today's GOP party is the logical devolution of decades of "conservative" assaults on the lives of all Americans who aren't part of the white, straight, male economic elite. Trump screams what the GOP has whispered for decades: you're life doesn't matter if you're not a rich, white, straight Christian male. You're not human. You're life is disposable. You are a pawn: submit or get out.
7
Mr. Brooks, the Republicans own this horrible, inhumane policy. They have ridden anti-immigrant sentiment and racism all the way to the White House and both Houses of Congress.
Time for you to stop your Diogenes schtick oflooking for that mythical honest, compassionate conservative.
1
It hurts to watch David try so hard to pass the buck..."Oh, conservatives didn't do this, it was those other guys." Give me a brake. Who, if not Republican voters, put these people in office? On what ticket did these people run, if not Republican?
Let's face it--the Republican Party lost its soul a long time ago when they sold out to filthy lucre. All the Repubs are about is getting and holding onto more money and power. Do you, David, really believe this Party wants a government of, by, and for the people?
is it really that hard to understand the daily ebb and flow of life. Losing their humanity.....geez
1
What is "slowly" about the republican party's loss of humanity?
1
I wish you would stop repeating this myth: "They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities." It just validates the "we are victims" narrative of these trolls.
3
Amnesty was tried in the1980's. Democrats reneged on half of the agreement containing enforcment procedures.This has not been forgotten. Sanctuary cities manifests this bad faith as do the racist allusions.
2
One small editorial correction to the last sentence - a party RAPIDLY losing its humanity. Used to be a Republican.
Stephen Miller is a disgrace to my alma mater, which was hardly a "liberal" bastion.
How quickly Republicans forget that Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the GOP, himself offered amnesty to illegal immigrants.
David Brooks, the arrests are not indiscriminate—where are all the deportations if Europeans, Canadians and Asians who have overstayed visas? We know they are here. You helped elect this conman. You still have your own privileged white male blind spot.
1
"It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
Nothing slow about it, and the brutal, inhumane crushing of individuals by the police state of Trump appears to be accelerating ever faster. Viciousness feeds on cowardice -- that is the Republican party now -- cowards like Ryan or vicious, small minded meanies like McConnell.
1
As I read to comments on David Brooks article I realize what Plato must have realized when the Athenian Democracy put to death his mentor. The majority is often wrong.
And although they are wrong, they convince each other that they are right. Nobody dare question their authority, or that person is a racist or a bigot.
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote the Population Bomb. In 1972, a group of four authors presented computer simulations in the Limits to Growth.
They were laughed at by liberals and conservatives alike. All the people of the world could fit into Texas.
China took a different tack. Having seen tens of thousands die by starvation under Chairman Mao, they introduced a one-child policy. Yes China is still overpopulated. But the smaller growth rate has enabled China to raise living standards for a more slowly growing number of people.
Xi Jinping is an autocrat. A democracy would never vote to limit child birth. But China will soon surpass the US in GDP. And the US will no longer be the world hegemon.
Even Paul Krugman with his Nobel Prize is a little bit stupid. He accepts the group-think of the majority of liberals and believes that population is not a proper variable for study in macroeconomics.
Everlasting growth cannot continue. It is bringing the US to its knees as China rises. Because we cannot see that a few thousand children here and a few thousand there makes inevitable the rising seas that will inundate Florida and end our civilization.
1
No, David. Their brutality is their own choice, and it's their own fault; they alone are responsible for it. Are Trump and Sessions and Kelly, the authors of these atrocities, going to blame their liberal universities, too? What an absurd notion. This administration doesn't get to callously and violently abuse children and immigrants, then have you act as their stalking horse and apologize for them, pretending it is the fault of their stifling liberal universities. This is pure poppycock. They are responsible. Period. And, you know it. We're past the posturing now. Republicans have what they nurtured, and it's historically ugly. Maybe this is time for you to dive in with the appropriate condemnation, and not merely wade a few toes in while trying to save face.
2
GOP is now Trump's party and the great America is now Trump's country. Because Trump has no humanity, we are rotting from within.
1
Should have thought about all this a little sooner, David. Illiberal trolls, indeed. Like HUAC, the McCarthy hearings, COINTEL PRO, Reagan’s union busting, the militarization of police forces and implementation of mandatory minimums, three strikes imprisonment...that sort of illiberalism? And, let’s see, which party and which wing of that party inspired, encouraged and implemented most of this, all under the blanket of Nixon’s Southern Strategy that was the centerpiece of Republican family values.
Yeah, nothing to see (or understand) here, David, just step along and keep telling yourself it was those guys, the bad guys, not good Republicans like you that led to the dismantling of a democracy.
David, the Democrats have room for a principled Burkean Conservative. Time to face reality. The Republicans of Trumpistan not only don't want someone like you, they despise you. Time to come home to your roots, time to be a member of a party that still has a soul, time to be Democrat.
2
Maybe, um, some actual Americans need some help?
2
Wow! So are you suggesting that “liberals” and liberal universities are to blame for how likes of Stephen Miller forged his racist and misogynistic ideas, all in reaction to oppressive liberal dogma about equality, equal access to opportunities like an education or a job and civil rights of all people??! Now I see that you are unraveling and you are grasping at straws to find a way to distance yourself from your tribe, the ones you trusted were decent and right. Losing one’s faith and trust in everything you held dear is a painful thing and I am sorry for your loss. BUT...
More importantly...Why are conservatives never responsible for themselves and their beliefs and subsequent actions stemming from those beliefs?
What ever happened to that biblical belief often touted by religious conservations when they scream law and order especially when it involves people of color or women’s reproductive rights... you know that belief about FREE WILL that’s discussed in Bible?
Sorry David, you, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the rest of Congress and all the ICE officers, just like those immigrants crossing the border all have FREE WILL, to do or not to do the things they do and say, including their beliefs.
The only ones who don’t at the moment are the children kidnapped from their parents and put in cages.
1
The Repubs are not slowly losing their humanity - can't lose what they never possessed!
1
“It’s a sign of a party slowly losing its humanity.” Why do you say “slowly?”
2
David, you’re still in denial; “slowly losing its humanity” would have been accurate a long time ago. Trump is the result of a decline that’s taken place over the last 40 years.
Demonizing minorities and fomenting discord has been part and parcel of the Republican playbook for decades. While spouting hyperbole and rhetoric about values, Republican right-wing policies have steadily eroded them, leaving us far from Lincoln’s “better angels of our nature.”
Now we have a completely corrupt dolt in the White House who cares about no one but himself, and a gang of neo-fascists promoting his hateful, divisive, inhumane policies; none of which will do anything helpful whatsoever for the deluded souls who voted for him.
The transformation of your party is complete, David. It’s been in the works since the 1970’s. Game over.
My only hope resides in another observation of the greatest Republican of them all, Mr. Lincoln: “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
I pray we vote these people out in time, while we still can.
2
Has anyone noticed that Trump and his party support pardons from real, convicted criminals and deport people who have not harmed anyone, who pay taxes....?
4
So much power is now in the hands of the executive branch that our country is suffering from whiplash. We have Obama providing incentives such as DACA for illegals to bring their children into the country as political payment for support from Latino activists and Trump locking up everyone in sight to satisfy his base. In this whole discussion, Congress still cannot find a way to pass legislation that could provide one path through the slough.
1
Please take your share of responsibility for this - it is huge.
4
What´s your point here, Mr. Brooks?
- critizising "amnesty" instead of coherent suited laws or general rules? (most likely explanation)
- critizising recent ICE measures?
- critizising a "bureaucratic bureaucracy"?
- critizising the actual GOP that doesn´t remind you of the GOP of the 80ties or 90ties you have experienced in your personal social bubble?
- critizising actual Trump party candidates?
- critizising what you call "a party slowly losing it´s humanity"?
- critizising the abandonment of "true conservatism"?
What to discuss here? You should focus on one or two of these issues in your next column to give discussions a structure.
"They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities."
Yes, David. Just hearing someone talk about white privilege and someone else talk about intersectionality will drive people to put brown children into cages.
7
Too bad Germany did not allow Trump's grandfather, a draft dodger, back into their country. Do you Trump ever thinks about that? How ironic and how much better off this country would be if Trump was not the progeny of this displaced person unable to return home but welcomed here in the United States so long ago.
First they came for the Children.
2
I am not always n agreement with you, David, but this column exemplifies why I respect your opinions. You ar not locked into any Ideology.
2
"Statist social engineering projects cause horrific suffering because in the mind of statists, the abstract rule is more important than the human being in front of them." David, good article today. Here is a question for you. If it is, in fact, illegal to be in the United States without properly arriving here through the legal immigration apparatus, then, are those illegal aliens here without documentation breaking US Law? OK. Since we both know the answer is yes, now.....since all illegals are breaking US Law, not just some of them, what should we do? Ignore the law? Enforce the Law? or Change the Law? Trump has chosen to Enforce the Law because a lot of people in the US, (not liberals in the upper west side of all white NY City).....want to see immigration from Mexico brought under control. Illegal immigration IS impacting southern and western states in a negative way, and, existing Americans want change. Again, not wealthy, white, liberals in Northeastern white suburbs. So, what to do? Trump is doing something many, many people have asked for for 25 years.
2
Liberal west coast dem here. I deplore illegal immigration, mostly becasue it was part and parcel of the original Reagan amnesty act. They never intended to enforce the borders-- the rush only increased AFTER that amnesty. It was a wink wink nod nod to Big Business (right wing repubs, mostly) to allow them to turn over entire industries to illegals. (and no, I am not talking about AG jobs, where there is historic precedence for temporary back/forth migration) But when Americans of all stripes begged for border enforcement, we did not intend to have our country put people in cages and separate moms from babes. Not in MY name. I suggest you rethink if you really want our government to do this in YOUR name.
While karma (having its foundation in Buddhism and Hinduism), is not a 'christian' tenet, I really hope it finds a home with the 'animals' (a politically popular word these days) perpetrating the terrible acts so well articulated in this article.
Just remember, if one is not of 100% native American ancestry. i.e. true American, you are a mutt just like the rest of us.
1
One of the most inane supossitons I have ever read...Toady to Trump Miller was thrust into his brand of conservatism becuause of "stiffling conformity of a liberal university."
As a graduate of a Catholic college (Perhaps being taught about caring for others is liberal) and a public grad school, I never felt compelled to conform to anything.
Perhaps Brooks is proving that conservatives are overly sensitive sheeple.
1
Mr Brooks you sound upset.
Unfortunately your claims that the behavior of the current administration is un-conservative are just plain wrong.
Before vilifying immigrants conservatives vilified "communists" aka immigrants from "communist countries".
Then came willy Norton aka the vilifying of black people.
So the truth is the current administration is as conservative as they come.
You just don't like looking in the mirror knowing that this is what conservatism is deep down.
When conservatives talk about small government, they mean no government support for those immigrant, communist or black people.
Conservatism and Communism is the same garbage different box.
Please, David, when are you going to shorten your articles to simply: "don't vote Republican"? You have the intellectual history and audience to finally admit the obvious: the conservative values you respect are simply not present (and decades gone) in this beast of an entity called the G.O.P. It's now Trump's play thing. Please, please, please just say it!
1
Sooner or later, one of these innocent children will die in the custody of ICE. After that, all bets are off for any religious groups who are for Trump.
2
Kudos Mr. Brooks...well said sir...
1
A depressingly accurate argument. I would demur on one point. Your last paragraph reads: "“Amnesty” has become a club the trolls use in their attempt to stamp a rigid steel boot on the neck of the immigration debate. It’s the sign of a party slowly losing its humanity."
I would change "slowly losing" to "that has lost".
"The stifling conformity they found at liberal universities. Even when he's critical of conservatives, Brooks still has take his dig at liberals.
1
Nice article. However, within lies the classic moments of continuing false narrative being followed by Brooks. Conservatism headed this way a long time ago pal. It just keeps morphing from the slave era, to William F. Buckley to this current hot mess. It may be nice to wax about 'ol Ronnie now that he's passed on. But that feeble windbag did as much to crank up the dispassionate engine that is now the republican party (yep, Drumpf, he's yours!) as Dick Cheney did in being unapologetic in his not caring about what anyone thinks mantra. It's a party of "me first", with mean and nasty undercurrents that the new hero is just enough of a nut to just blurt out in the open. Look how they eat it up.
Universities are not stifling places of conformity that created Stephen Miller. He's a jerk. He's always been a jerk. He'll continue to be a jerk. Many bullies grow out of their obnoxiousness, but I imagine there is research around to show that some do not. Guess you'd have to ask his proud parents.
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Jeez. So David now seeks absolution from the unfolding disaster of Trump America by claiming a meaningful distinction between “conservative” and “anti-liberal troll”? He should stick to his sociological musings and go back to writing sunny columns on, say, the rumored emergence of community-level pluck and decency, and abandon political commentary entirely, if he is unwilling to acknowledge that it’s precisely his precious conservatives — embodied by the likes of Ryan, McConnell, McCarthy, Cornyn, Scalise and Thune, ably abetted by certain amen-choristers whom we need not name — who’ve brought us our current grief with their ceaseless quest for lucre (e.g., the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, “repeal and replace”), suburban white power (gerrymandering, voter ID) and Christianist patriarchy (attacking Planned Parenthood, justifying discrimination with “sincerely held religious belief”). This is what modern American “conservatism” amounts to, and as far as I see the only good to come of the last 18 months of embarrassing disgust is that conservative “principles” have finally been revealed bare for what they are and probably always have been — a noxious witch’s brew of resentments, prejudices, misdirections, inconsistencies, stupidity and non-sequiturs. Bye-bye to Burke, Buckley, witty banter, country clubs, rectitude and dry martinis. Hello to Conway, Miller, Sanders, Mnuchin, Ivanka’s Instagram, Fox News, blatant lying and “biblical” law enforcement. November can’t come quickly enough.
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Mr. Brooks, the republican party lost it's humanity the minute Trump was elected. Conservatives, as you picture them, have faded into the sunset. Republican electorate, brainwashed with lies and fake news, cheering the most malignant president in history. rapt in religious dogma, unable to distinguish right from wrong, ignorant of science, racist to the extreme, have allowed billionaire incompetents to lead them to slaughter. Watching Trump puppets this week spew utter nonsense has left me and others with morals and ethics can't wait until November to vote to restore humanity to our once proud nation.
This is the way refugees from Hitler were treated in the 1930s. The "stateless" were not welcome. Canada was the worst offender. After the Second World War, Canada changed and opened immigration but that did not undo the lives that were lost in the interim. The US had led by offering the better example - a nation of immigrants and proud of it. Now, what could be worse? Mr. Trump, have you no decency?
"Brooks is a Rhino," Trumpets scream. And with one word, reason and charity are dismissed.
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