NEW YORK, NY Sept. 30 (DPI) – David Brooks, hardly a flame-throwing partisan among NY Times columnists, offered a passionate case for passing the Democratic-led $3.5 trillion spending bill, which appears to be languishing in the nation’s sclerotic legislature.

“In normal times I’d argue that many of the programs in these packages may be ineffective,” Brooks wrote this week. “But we’re a nation enduring a national rupture, and the most violent parts of it may still be yet to come.”

Thus moderates like Brooks are coming around to a government spending package that directly addresses the gaping inequalities in today’s America’s. particularly longstanding gaps in prosperity across regions. And Brooks, largely quiet until now on the merits of new spending by a nation already saddled with public debt exceeding its GDP, surprised many readers with his position.

NYT subscribers who posted more than 1300 comments behind Brooks’s column were strikingly supportive of a columnist whose middle-of-the-road, establishment views often frustrated progressives.

The most popular comments:

While I’m exhausted from following every awful twist and turn in this slow-motion train wreck of a day in DC, I have got to simply say thank you, David Brooks, for this fine piece of writing.

Wow, Brooks has finally opened his eyes to the GOP’s false narrative and greed’s impact on the American dream. Now, if we could get a few Republican Senators to declare their independence and caucus with Democrats, we could save America from Britain’s fate.

Wow. David Brooks, (former) conservative, making a strong case for the Biden bills. I haven’t always agreed with Brooks, but I’ve always respected him as a man of principles. I respect him even more after this column. He sees the big picture, a country divided and in decline, and he understands big bold investments are critical now to put our country on a saner path.