Hi Ken
I also enjoyed our conversation and would enjoy touching base more often. Intellectual discourse is hard to come by these days.
In that spirit expect an longer than required reply about the Brooks video…..
David Brooks is an uncomfortable and sometimes frustrating personality for me…. I have consumed lots of his work and developed fairly strong and consistent feelings about his work.
He is a truly a gifted orator and has a powerful intellect. Perhaps more importantly I find him to be very authentic; he presents himself as he is, not who he wants you to think he is.
When I listen to him carefully and read his articles I see his power of persuasion winning the day over his power of logic. He relies on his oratory skills and feelings to “connect the dots” rather than “logic” and because he is so authentic and smart, most people simply say “that makes sense”. His command of language often obscures his message but it’s not a “ploy”, it’s just how he talks and writes. Its who he is.
Brooks presents himself as a conservative but I consider him to be a very left leaning conservative. He talks too much about himself. He likes to remind people he is a conservative, his Ivy League education, and privileged upbringing. The left adore him because he is all these things and the positions he holds are close to theirs. History will be very favorable to him.
I respect him and simultaneously find him to be a conundrum. But enough about him.
Regarding the talk. I enjoyed the video; thanks for sending it. Yes, I agree he landed on a very key point… our culture has eroded and he (eventually) invites the audience to be leaders committed to cultural change. But in my opinion the strength of his message got lost in his drawn out historical culture observations where he never talks about the causes of the cultural changes he criticizes. He spoke as if culture changes on its own. His narrative for the first half of his talk sounded like he was blaming cultural rot on the citizenry. His rhetoric was moving but missed the mark; classic Brooks in my opinion.
My point is history is replete with scores of very specific actions taken by our government over the last 80 years that have caused the cultural shifts Brooks bemoans but he doesn’t make it part of his analysis, or his talk, or his call to action. I get frustrated when brilliant thinkers like Brooks carry the water halfway up the hill then stop to talk about themselves instead of the root problems instead of finishing the journey. But I have to be careful, because as I said he is just being his authentic self…. It actually is his view of the world.
Of course I could be wrong about all of this….. I am open to that possibility.
Assuming I am more right than wrong, that government actions have shaped our culture, the next question is why have they done this? There are many possible reasons but I will leave that for another day.
Be well,
Barry