February 25, 2009 3:01PM # David Brooks Unhinged By [Michael D. Tanner](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-d-tanner) --- SHARE David Brooks went completely off the deep end last night in [critiquing](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/02/david_brooks_jindals_speech.html) Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s Republican response to Barack Obama’s address to Congress. According to Brooks, “in a moment when only the federal government is big enough to actually do stuff- to just ignore all that and just say ‘government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,’ it’s just a form of nihilism.” Now, I thought [Jindal’s speech](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/02/jindal_responds_obama.html) was rather banal and poorly delivered, but since when is it nihilism to oppose “corruption, earmarks, and wasteful spending”? Apparently, government should just do “stuff.” It doesn’t really matter whether that “stuff” is good or not, whether it will actually stimulate the economy or not. And of course, there is no problem with the fact that that “stuff” includes a government takeover of our health care system, an unworkable and expensive energy policy, an extension of a federal education policy that has failed to educate our children, higher taxes, greater debt, and more spending on just about everything. To oppose all of that is “nihilism.” Then count me as a nihilist – or maybe I just believe in liberty. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).