Who's the simplistic one here?

or, Michelle Malkin was right about David Brooks:

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

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

For a supposedly educated person, Brooks certainly makes a poor argument here. In fact, he really doesn't make an argument at all -- save for a kind of argument from authority, wherein he says that "educated people support this." He just leaves it at that and doesn't bother to back it up. In fact, he NEVER has. In all the David Brooks columns I have ever read, I have never once seen him make a coherent, convincing argument as to why "the educated" would support what they allegedly (according to Brooks) do. He seems to say here that they support it solely by virtue of their formal education. He seems not to mind the least little bit that a deeper, EDUCATED examination of whatever "this" is often reveals it to be something not worth supporting, like gun control. Furthermore, an educated look at the tea party demonstrations will show anyone -- anyone, that is who's willing to see and observe -- what the demonstrators support as opposed to just showing what they're against. One wonders how a supposedly "educated" person like Mr. Brooks can be so consistently and spectacularly wrong. Once again, we have an ivory-tower elitist putting opinions out there and expecting his audience to take those opinions seriously just because of his identity and not what is backing up those opinions. I suppose there are still those out there who take David Brooks seriously because of where his opinions appear, but I'd like to think that most of them reside within about an hour, maybe two, of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. You never can tell...

And thanks for that link, Sabra. :-)