Worst Brooks Ever?
By No, but that’s an all too common subject line in my sent mail file over the past couple of years.
Erik at Alterdestiny has a nice takedown of David Brooks latest effort:
First, Brooks makes the statement that the physical landscape influences our view of politics and the world. Fair enough, I think, this could be interesting. And then Brooks’ usual simplistic view of the world takes over. He goes on to argue that the sparsely populated South and West are more likely to have a Goldwaterian view of the world, meaning individualistic with little government interference in their lives. Well this would be a legitimate view if it actually made sense. What are the problems here? Well, the South isn’t sparsely populated. Has David Brooks ever been to the South? Even the rural South has very few areas where people live miles apart from each other. Second, the South and West look nothing like each other. The landscapes of the South and the West have, approximately, nothing at all in common.
Next, Brooks decides that this dualistic frame of mind applies to how people view foreign policy. So somehow living in the same region as the Monument Valley means that people automatically think that the US should go alone in foreign policy and those in South Boston believe America should build international alliances before going to war. I shouldn’t even have to discuss how this makes no goddamn sense.
Read the whole thing. Better than reading a Brooks column.