I was a socialist in college. I read magazines like The Nation and old issues of The New Masses. I dreamed of being the next Clifford Odets, a leftie playwright who was always trying to raise proletarian class consciousness. If you go on YouTube and search "David Brooks Milton Friedman", you can see a 22-year-old socialist me debating the great economist. I'm the one with the bushy hair and the giant 1980s glasses that were apparently on loan from the Palomar lunar observatory.