A conservative discusses food stamps

Conservative columnist, David Brooks recently appeared on television and discussed a column he was planning to write about the food stamp program:

And I was going to do a column, because the Republican critics are correct that the number of people on food stamps has exploded. And so I was going to do a column, this is wasteful, it's probably going up the income streams to people who don't really need the food stamps. And so, this was going to be a great column, would get my readers really mad at me, I would love it, it would be fun.  

But then I did some research and found out who was actually getting the food stamps. And the people who deserve to get it are getting. That was the basic conclusion I came to. So I think it has expanded. That's true. But that's because the structure of poverty has expanded in the country.

You can read the transcript here.

Today's political parties and the Donatists

Conservative columnist David Brooks was recently interviewed by Gail Collins of The New York Times. The subject was religion, although it strayed into politics. Mr. Brooks compares today’s Democrats and Republicans with the Donatists:

Did you know that even though they lived roughly 1,700 years ago, the Donatists were just like our two parties today. They were more interested in following their accepted doctrine than in looking at reality. Augustine smoked them in debate.

We hope that strikes you as interesting, and that it leads you to the rest of the interview, here.