On the PBS NewsHour, New York Times columnist David Brooks is somehow expected to be identified as the conservative (or at least center-right) pundit, and he keeps sounding like a leftist instead. On Friday, he came out for reparations because "we're in a make-or-break moment on race" due to "the election of Trump."

DAVID BROOKS: On reparations, I support them, but not for the reasons Joe Biden says. It's not an act of guilt. It's not an act of, we did something wrong. It's a show of respect. It's a show of respect for the injustices that minorities, members of the African-American community have suffered in our society for hundreds of years, not just slavery, but red-lining and all the way up to the president. So we show respect, and we do it as an act of regard and as an act of resetting. And I have just come to the conclusion. I changed my mind about it, because the practicalities of doing it are really hard. But I changed my mind about it because it just feels like we're in a make-or-break moment on race. The election of Trump, the atmosphere this has created has created a movement where aggressive gestures have to be taken to show that we're all part of the same country.

Elsewhere in the show, PBS produced an eight-minute segment on the Democrats discussing reparations -- "40 acres and a Tesla" -- and included an old 1975 quote from Joe Biden that expressed the classic opposing view on reparations: Why should today's Americans pay for a 300-year-old injustice?

Brooks was so far to the left that the Democratic columnist Mark Shields shot the idea down as impractical and a "nonstarter" and not a real issue for most voters.