When I was listening to some of the speeches at the Republican National Convention, I was troubled by something. The same thing troubled me while I was reading through the Libertarian Party website. Well, David Brooks hit the nail on the head. Hopefully this link works:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12brooks.html
What's so bad about being a community organizer, anyway?
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2 comments:
Tim, that was a great article. This is an issue I've thought a lot about, especially during my recent interest in the first half of the 20th century. When I read about American history during WWII the thing that strikes me the most is the spirit of collective endeavor. Everybody was working for the same thing and everybody felt some kind of stake in the outcome. It's something I think is rarely seen in our society these days. It would be nice.
Thanks for writing on your blog again. Maybe I should follow suit.
Les, you're right--when a group sacrifices for a common cause, the group bonds together. During WWII, the stakes were so high and the objective so clear that people really came together. In our current "war on terror", most people have some notion that the stakes are high, but, to me, the objectives are far from clear. That there is no clear national understanding of our objectives is a function of two things, in my opinion: 1) the complexity of trying to squeeze international terrorist organizations into paradigms of conventional warfare (Country A versus Country B), and 2) lack of leadership, i.e. the President's failure to lay out clear, measurable objectives. Finally, most people haven't really been called on to sacrifice at all, really. Maybe the fight against terrorism isn't that important after all--or maybe it's just important to our grandkids, who will be the one's paying for it (don't worry, we'll try to take care of some of the interest for you).
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