Dying To Save The System: David Brooks Freebases Drain Cleaner

[roo_ster]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/opinion/when-wolves-attack.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1

All around, the fabric of peace and order is fraying.

Despite Brooks being all sorts of impressed with the crease in Obama's pants.

I help teach a grand strategy course at Yale

I think I can see part of the problem...

The weakness with any democratic foreign policy is the problem of motivation. How do you get the electorate to support the constant burden of defending the liberal system?

You don't.  The "liberal system" is nothing more than some loose agreements by some of those in power to act in particular ways.  "Mothers!  Send your son's to die in Lower Slobbovia to uphold the legitimacy of UN Resolution 478 and the international community!"  Yeah, not so much. 

OTOH, getting support for actions that are in the interests of the nation(1), such as survival, can usually be done.

Moreover, people will die for Mother Russia or Allah. But it is harder to get people to die for a set of pluralistic procedures to protect faraway places.

No *expletive deleted*it, Sherlock.  I am not keen to see my boy die for some chickenshit international agreement between feckless organizations or for the benefit of some boy-child-raping savage.

The liberal pluralistic system is not a spontaneous natural thing. Preserving that hard-earned ecosystem requires an ever-advancing fabric of alliances, clear lines about what behavior is unacceptably system-disrupting, and the credible threat of political, financial and hard power enforcement.

Bold face statement is true.  The rest is bunk.  We can only count on keeping our own house in order(2).  Other nations elsewhere will need to see to their internal order.  We may, at times, band together for mutual self-interest.  Assuming it is more than that is self-delusion.


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Go read the whole thing if you can stomach such self-delusion and cheerleading for others to do the bleeding while Brooksie and his sort commute between New Haven and Manhattan.



(1) Nation != Go'vt and Nation != Polity. 

3. A people who share common customs, origins, history, and frequently language; a nationality

(2) But not if we open the flood gates to aliens who care not for America and we are not willing to beat them into line.

[Balog]

David Brooks is everything that's wrong with the GOP. Loathesome, pathetic little man.

[RevDisk]

Moreover, people will die for Mother Russia or Allah. But it is harder to get people to die for a set of pluralistic procedures to protect faraway places. It’s been pulling teeth to get people to accept commercial pain and impose sanctions.

If everyone sees no value in what you have to offer, it's probable what you offer is worthless. Sure, history is filled with counterexamples. But most pluralistic procedures tend to suck, hence why folks dislike them.

[SADShooter]

Since when has "the fabric of peace and order" not been frayed or fraying? 1945-1991? 1939? 1914? 1860? Just to address the last odd century and a half.

Technocratic, intellectualist apparatchiks like Brooks persist in the delusion that they are better, smarter, more evolved and thus less inclined to basic human motivation than their ancestors. "If we can just package the message properly, we can avoid all the strife and suffering of the past. Trust us, we know what we're doing." Unfortunately, the world around their rarified brain-bubbles hasn't gotten the message, because it's too busy acting on those basic human motivations.