His agenda is already clear. That article you sent certainly makes it no less clear.
Although, I do find the below deliciously ironic:
Finally, there’s the lower class. The problem here is social breakdown. Something like a quarter to a third of American children are living with one or no parents, in chaotic neighborhoods with failing schools.
Many of these children have navigated the most treacherous of social environments. Abuse at home, gangs in the neighborhood, and no teaching at school. You'd think they'd be the intellectual highlights of our country. They're not, because everyone really knows that this is not sufficient, nor effective.
This article by Brooks is really saying two things, and is largely unrelated to his later article:
1) The free market doesn't work. People should forego higher paying jobs and do jobs that better help the country. Almost like a large-scale self-imposed socialism.
2) Businesses can't be bothered to train people that don't have college degrees. There are millions of people in the inner city that have the social skills, but not the book smarts or degrees.
Brooks's should put his money where his mouth is and implore businesses to swoop into Watts and hire the available talent. He won't though, because he doesn't actually believe that this is where the intellectual horsepower is. He thinks its at Harvard and MIT, but he'd like you to believe its in Smalltown USA.
From a couple of posts up: He's certainly part of the conservative right.
You believe this because he makes claims like this: The free market doesn't work. People should forego higher paying jobs and do jobs that better help the country. Almost like a large-scale self-imposed socialism.
So basically, Brooks is part of the conservative right because he is more or less pushing one of Obama's policy proposals [1]?
Those two points I give are meant to show the inconsistency in his arguments. One showing how he side steps free markets to argue against even a whiff of intellectualism.
Yet at the same time isn't willing to ask businesses to step up to the plate.
In other words, he's all about the subtext. He doesn't really believe that traditional measures of achievement are coginitively less demanding than 14 year old sleepovers, but he'll say that so that you value it less.
He doesn't actually believe in self-selected socialism (he loves free markets), but he'll attack Harvard grads so you value them less.
