"Gone is the civilized era when ‘you had liberals and conservatives instead of Republicans and Democrats,’ a time ‘before the parties devolved into teams,’ each espousing its own “values” in voices grown increasingly shrill."

-From Charles Ommanney’s profile of New York Times columnist David Brooks, in the “redesigned” Newseek

It’s pretty obvious that American politics have grown increasingly polarized, but I don’t think Brooks is right here. Both Democrats and Republicans are dealing with ideological factions within their own parties - liberals disgruntled with Obama seeming moderation, and the hyper-conservatives of the Tea Party.

Brooks may be lamenting the post-war decades of Dixiecrats and East Coast liberal Republicans (presumably more the latter). But that isn’t the same as saying that the current line-up of political coalitions amounts to an intellectual lobotomy.