Saturday, September 1, 2012

3 comments:

JP said...

Well, one positive aspect of the Mormon church is that it basically requires a certain amount of community involvement. Basically as a box that has to be checked in order to qualify as a "basic Mormon" and Romney was required to continue to perform this.

So, even if he was inclined to be "hyperindividualistic" he still has unavoidable obligations to community.

Anonymous said...

David Brooks complains that community was left out of the Republican view. He is, indeed, becoming infected with the dementia surrounding him.

Like so much of that about which the Left lectures, we are annoyed by the lecture, not because it is false, but because it is trivial. The Left wants to elevate community because they think it is something they recently discovered, like pre-teens who have just discovered World Peace. Republicans do not yap about community, not because they do not believe in it, but because it is so deeply embedded in the fabric of their being that yapping about it would be fatuous.

One does not go about waving what one does for the community like a flag, to win points. One does not, as Jesus said, "sound a trumpet before you, like the hypocrites do in the synagogues, so that they will be honored by men." One simply does it. It's part of life.

The greedy, self-involved Republican fat cat is an invention of the fervid, progressive mind. Such people seldom exist; and when they do, more than likely they're Democrats. The rest of us speak of individual responsibility because it's taken such a beating in our culture, but the community that we call home is something we take as a given. We don't ignore it, and we don't imagine it does not exist; we simply take it for granted, because we all know that it's our bedrock.

David Brooks probably understood that once. He should leave the Times. After a few months of recovery, he'll probably remember that he did.

Sam L. said...

I used to be slightly concerned because I couldn't keep straight the difference between David Brock and David Brooks. Having now found there is no real difference, my mind is at ease.

You say of Brooks, " He is enjoying the prestige that comes from being a Times columnist." And he doesn't seem to know the disdain that many have for Times columnists. He may not be as bad as Paullie "The Beard" Krugman, but he's catching up.