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☆ America Is Writing Checks That Mere Optimism Won’t Cover - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Interest rates have risen. According to The Wall Street Journal, America is expected to spend $870 billion, or 3.1 percent of gross domestic product, this year on interest payments on the federal debt. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the government will spend more on interest payments than on the entire defense budget. When money is tight, as it is now, government borrowing competes with private borrowing, driving interest rates up for everybody. ratio results in an increase in interest rates of two-tenths to three-tenths of a percentage point.

Organizations: Wall Street Journal, Federal Budget, Social Security Locations: America

☆ The Question of Transgender Care - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

It is about what the health care approach should be, and how best to help the growing number of children and young people who are looking for support from the N.H.S. For reasons that are also not clear, adolescents who were assigned female at birth are driving this trend, whereas before the late 2000s, it was mostly adolescents who were assigned male at birth who sought these treatments. One is that greater social acceptance of trans people has enabled people to seek these therapies. A third is that the rise of teen mental health issues may be contributing to gender dysphoria. In her report, Cass is skeptical of broad generalizations in the absence of clear evidence; these are individual children and adolescents who take their own routes to who they are.

Persons: Hilary Cass, Cass Organizations: National Health Service, Britain’s Royal College of Pediatrics, Child Locations: England, Cass

☆ In Praise of Middle Managers - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Nobody writes poems about middle managers. So how do these managers work their magic? Let me give you a few features of ethical leadership:Knowing that moral formation is part of the job. When I was starting out at “PBS NewsHour” and I said something he thought was smart, his eyes would crinkle with pleasure. When I said something he thought was crass, his mouth would turn down in displeasure.

Persons: I’ve, Tucker Carlson, Ted Lasso, Lasso, fellas, Jim Lehrer Organizations: PBS

☆ Technology Hates Me - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-04 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I am compelled to confront this ugly possibility by the fact that from time to time my electronic devices seem to fall under demonic possession. Now, I should start by saying that I am not someone with a natural animosity toward personal technology. I have been known to be completely reasonable when the supermarket self-checkout machines refuse to let me proceed until I place my last purchased item into the bagging area. I patiently explain, sometimes with dramatic physical re-enactments, that, in fact, I have placed the product directly in the center of the bagging area, and even into a bag itself. Let me describe the events of last Friday, when technology was especially mean to me.

Persons: it’s, Lucifer Locations: Chicago

☆ American Families Look Different Now. Good.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-28 | by ( Kelli María Korducki | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

In 1970, more than two-thirds of American adults between 25 and 49 lived with a spouse and at least one kid. For a society structured around the ideal of the nuclear family, its demise has left everyone wondering: What happens now? Without one partner focused on full-time housekeeping, the amount of work required to run a nuclear family isn't really feasible. It doesn't take much of a mental leap to see why capitalism and the nuclear family make for such cozy bedfellows. Coontz, a leading historian of the American family, notes that every family structure comes with its own set of distinct weaknesses, strengths, and possibilities.

Persons: Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, O'Brien, David Brooks, Moira Weigel, Brooks, Charles E, " O'Brien, Stephanie Coontz, Kristen Ghodsee, Ghodsee, coparenting, Mark Boster, Coontz, — Organizations: Pew Research, Elon, Labor, Getty, University of Pennsylvania, Brookings Institution, Pew, Los Angeles Times, Guardian Locations: The, California, Somerville , Massachusetts

☆ Opinion | The Great Struggle for Liberalism
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-28 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 1978, the Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave a commencement address at Harvard, warning us about the loss of American self-confidence and will. “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today,” he declared. The enemies of liberal democracy seem to be full of passionate intensity — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, campus radicals. He shows how it was created by real people in real communities who wanted richer, fuller and more dynamic lives. The Dutch merchant fleet was capable of carrying more tonnage than the fleets of France, England, Scotland, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and Portugal combined.

Persons: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ”, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Fareed Zakaria’s, Zakaria doesn’t Organizations: Harvard, Republicans, Trump Locations: Russian, West, Dutch Republic, Dutch, France, England, Scotland, Empire, Spain, Portugal, Paris

☆ Imagining a Different Gaza War - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-24 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

There seems to be a broad consensus atop the Democratic Party about the war in Gaza, structured around two propositions. Which leads to an obvious question: If the current Israeli military approach is inhumane, what’s the alternative? The thorniest reality that comes up is that this war is like few others because the crucial theater is underground. The tunnel network, according to Israel, is where Hamas lives, holds hostages, stores weapons, builds missiles and moves from place to place. Its server farm, for example, was built under the offices of the U.N. relief agency in Gaza City, according to the Israeli military.

Persons: Biden’s, I’ve Organizations: Democratic Party Locations: Gaza, Israel, Gaza City

☆ Opinion | Surviving the Ugliness of It All
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-07 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

People are just tired out from the endless national crises, their dread of the 2024 presidential campaign, the ugliness of it all. Many people I talk with seem passive, discouraged, and are trying, mostly in vain, to shut out the political noise. It’s almost as if people have been so beaten down by the last decade, they’ve lost the self-confidence to wish for more. In these circumstances I turn to two leaders who knew something about projecting hope in exhausting times: Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Churchill’s strongest sense was his romantic attachment to Britain’s past.

Persons: I’ve, they’ve, Winston Churchill, Franklin D, Roosevelt, Duke of Marlborough, Churchill, Edward Gibbon, Samuel Johnson

☆ Trump’s View of America and the World Is Nothing New - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-29 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

He seems to have been a very good father, but his political worldview was predicated on a deep pessimism. The Republican Party in the 1920s, ’30s and early ’40s was steeped in pessimism, and that pessimism showed up as it often does: as nativism, isolationism and protectionism. As World War II loomed, Senator Gerald Nye urged the passage of several neutrality acts to keep us from exporting arms to warring nations and opposed Lend-Lease to Britain. That version of the Republican Party ended in 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower defeated Taft for the Republican presidential nomination. Howard Buffett was so dismayed by the outcome that he refused to endorse Ike, his party leader.

Persons: I’ve, Warren Buffett’s, Howard Buffett, Franklin Roosevelt, George Marshall, Buffett, Johnson, Gerald Nye, Robert Taft, Dwight Eisenhower, Taft, Ike Organizations: Democrats, Republican Party, Reed, Lease, United States, Marshall Plan, NATO, World Bank, Republican, John Birch Society Locations: Nebraska, United States, Britain, America

☆ Opinion | Can Culture Be Society’s Savior?
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-17 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

To the Editor:Re “How to Save a Sad, Lonely, Angry and Mean Society,” by David Brooks (column, Jan. 28):As a published author married to a writer/filmmaker, I deeply appreciated Mr. Brooks’s column. It pains me to witness the modern-day devaluation of the arts and humanities. When I was a child, my art history major mother dragged me to many of the world’s great museums: the National Gallery of Art, the Met, the Louvre. I may have protested after the first hour, but certain works left indelible impressions: the terrifying passion of Klimt’s “Kiss,” the seductive movement of the Calder mobile. Likewise, literature plunged me into different perspectives.

Persons: David Brooks, Ingalls, Brooks, MeiMei Fox, David Brooks’s Organizations: Gallery of Art, Met, Calder, mater, Stanford University, “ College Locations: Louvre, “, MeiMei Fox Honolulu

☆ Opinion | The Cure for What Ails Our Democracy
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-15 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

What do we have to do to rectify this situation? Well, a lot of things, but one of them is this: More of us have to embrace an idea, a way of thinking that is fundamental to being a citizen in a democracy. That idea is known as value pluralism. It’s most associated with the British philosopher Isaiah Berlin and is based on the premise that the world doesn’t fit neatly together. We all want to pursue a variety of goods, but unfortunately, these goods can be in tension with one another.

Persons: Isaiah Berlin, Damon Organizations: University of Pennsylvania Locations: America, British, Berlin

☆ Trump Came for the Republican Party and Took Over Their Souls - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-08 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I thought I was beyond shockable, but this week has been profoundly shocking for me. I spent the bulk of my adult life on the right-wing side of things, generally rooting for the Republican Party, because I thought that party best served America. They have to mouth the Trumpian prejudices to survive in this era, but somewhere deep inside, the party of Reagan still lives in their souls. Donald Trump has owned this party for years. If he told them to kill the immigration compromise because he needed a campaign issue, they were going to kill that proposal.

Persons: Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Reagan, Eisenhower, McCain, I’m, Trumpism Organizations: Republican Party, Republican, House Republicans, cynically, Trump Locations: shockable, America, Ukraine, Israel

☆ Opinion | How Art Creates Us
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-25 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Recently, while browsing in the Museum of Modern Art store in New York, I came across a tote bag with the inscription, “You are no longer the same after experiencing art.” It’s a nice sentiment, I thought, but is it true? Or to be more specific: Does consuming art, music, literature and the rest of what we call culture make you a better person? Ages ago, Aristotle thought it did, but these days a lot of people seem to doubt it. Since the early 2000s, fewer and fewer people say that they visit art museums and galleries, go to see plays or attend classical music concerts, opera or ballet. Thanks to Hurston she had a new way to see, a deeper way to connect to her own heritage.

Persons: ”, Aristotle, They’ve, George Eliot, I’m, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Hurston Organizations: Museum of Modern, tote, College, Workers Locations: New York

☆ Nikki Haley Is Tougher Than the Rest - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-13 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Donald Trump was tough, mean and self-pitying (a nifty combination). And the woman who is now Trump’s chief challenger, Nikki Haley, is one of the toughest politicians in America — by which I mean confrontational, willing to hammer her foes. When you read accounts of her days in South Carolina, her bellicosity fairly ripples off the pages. In a fantastic 2021 profile in Politico Magazine, Tim Alberta quotes a former South Carolina Republican Party chair: “Listen, man. Nikki Haley has a memory.

Persons: Abraham Lincoln, —, Reagan, Obama, Donald Trump, Biden, Nikki Haley, Tim Alberta, Haley, “, I’ve, ” Organizations: White House, Politico Magazine, South Carolina Republican Party Locations: America, South Carolina, Alberta

And I write about politics, I write about culture, I write about social science, and from time to time, I write about world events. Because the Middle East is so contentious, a lot of the brutalism is right here in our own country. So I wanted to learn from the wise people in the past, how do you stay humane in times that are inhumane? It’s dangerous to be gentle and open-hearted in hard times, but it’s also dangerous to shut off your heart. And then I flicked down my social media feed, and I see an old video of James Baldwin being interviewed.

Persons: David Brooks, I’ve, we’ve, We’re, Homer, Agamemnon, Achilles, Max Weber, ”, James Baldwin Organizations: The New York Times Locations: Gaza, Athens, Jerusalem

☆ Sam Altman Is Back at OpenAI. I Have a Question for Him. - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-23 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

One of the nice things about OpenAI is that it was built on distrust. It began as a nonprofit research lab because its founders didn’t think artificial intelligence should be pioneered by commercial firms, which are driven overwhelmingly by the profit motive. As it evolved, OpenAI turned into what you might call a fruitful contradiction: a for-profit company overseen by a nonprofit board with a corporate culture somewhere in between. Many of the people at the company seem simultaneously motivated by the scientist’s desire to discover, the capitalist’s desire to ship product and the do-gooder’s desire to do this all safely. The events of the past week — Sam Altman’s firing, all the drama, his rehiring — revolve around one central question: Is this fruitful contradiction sustainable?

Persons: OpenAI, Sam Altman’s

☆ Opinion | Inclusion and Exclusion on Campus
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-21 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Literal gated communities and figurative glass ceilings exist to highlight this divisiveness in bluntly metaphorical fashion. WilliamsBurlington, N.J.To the Editor:While I commend David Brooks’s stand on inclusion, it’s a bit late. The uproar should have started on the day that universities started to cancel speeches by speakers who leaned to the right so as not to offend some vocal student groups. Rather than allow an intelligent back and forth with those they might disagree with, these people were not allowed to come to their campus. They also celebrate the virtue of humility, a virtue that is notably absent in the world of higher education.

Persons: David Brooks, David Brooks’s, Rich Corso, it’s, Andrea Economos Hartsdale, Mitchell, Fuller Organizations: New, Diversity, Equity Locations: New Jersey, Williams Burlington , N.J, N.Y, Ill

☆ Opinion | Universities Are Failing at Inclusion
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-16 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Over the past five weeks, Jewish students on America’s campuses have found themselves confronted with those who celebrate a terrorist operation that featured the mass murder and reportedly the rape of fellow Jews. They see images of people tearing down posters of kidnapped Jewish children. At M.I.T., Jewish students report that they were told by some faculty members to avoid the university’s main lobby — which had been the site of a pro-Palestinian protest — for their own safety. I’ve been teaching on college campuses off and on for 25 years. It’s become increasingly evident to me that American adolescence and young adulthood — especially for those who wind up at elite schools — now happen within a specific kind of ideological atmosphere.

Persons: Rabbi Nomi Manon, Hillel, ” Shabbos Kestenbaum, I’ve, It’s Organizations: Cooper Union, University, Albany, Albany Times - Union, “, Harvard Divinity School, ” Universities Locations: M.I.T, American

☆ What Democrats Can Learn From Joe Biden and Poll Numbers - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-09 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The median voter rule still applies. The median voter rule says parties win when they stay close to the center of the electorate. The Democrats’ strong showing in elections across the country this week proves how powerful the median voter rule is, especially when it comes to the abortion issue. This year, Democrats and their supporters effectively played to median voters, with, for example, an ad in Ohio in which a father who grew up in the church castigated the G.O.P. And if you’re truly living out your faith, you’re not playing into these anger and hatred games.”

Persons: MAGA, —, Biden doesn’t, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Andy Beshear, E.J, Dionne Jr, you’re, ” Organizations: Jackson, Health Organization, Gov, Democrat, Washington Post Locations: It’s, Dobbs v, Ohio, Kentucky

☆ Opinion | Learning to Become Openhearted
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Charles GoldbergNewtown Square, Pa.To the Editor:Kudos to David Brooks’s extraordinary lesson on being human. The only missing element was the power of humor, particularly when it is directed at oneself. Burdened by a debilitating stutter in my youth, I learned to laugh at it and myself. I found that self-deprecating jokes disarmed those inclined to ridicule me and invited in the compassionate. Armed with Mr. Brooks’s advice, I will try to devote my remaining years to listening, and speaking, with a human ear.

Persons: David Brooks, Brooks, “, Joe Posnanski, ”, Charles Goldberg, David Brooks’s, Tom Wilcox Boca, Robert Judkins Organizations: Concord Academy, Baltimore Community Foundation Locations: Pa, Tom Wilcox Boca Grande, Fla, Tenn

☆ Love in Harsh Times and Other Coping Mechanisms - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

In response, they adopted a tragic sensibility. You can try to avoid thinking about the dark realities of life and naïvely wish that bad things won’t happen. Or you can confront these realities and develop a tragic mentality to help you thrive among them. This tragic sensibility prepares you for the rigors of life in concrete ways. Third, this tragic mentality encourages caution.

Persons: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hal Brands, Charles Edel, Thucydides, Matt Gaetz Organizations: Hamas, Republicans

☆ In Israel and Gaza, Searching for Humanity - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-26 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The conceptual frames that many people use to organize their understanding of the world are crashing and burning upon contact with Middle Eastern reality. The first paradigm that failed this month was critical race theory or woke-ism. A group of highly educated American progressives cheered on Hamas as anti-colonialist freedom fighters even though Hamas is a theocratic, genocidal terrorist force that oppresses L.G.B.T.Q. American universities exist to give students the conceptual tools to understand the world. It appears that at many universities students are instead being fed simplistic ideological categories that blind them to reality.

Persons: Mounk, It’s, Israel, —, Boko Haram Locations: American, Nigeria

☆ How to be Human - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-19 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The really good confidants — the people we go to when we are troubled — are more like coaches than philosopher kings. They see who you are becoming before you do and provide you with a reputation you can then go live into. I think I’m more approachable, vulnerable. I know more about human psychology than I used to. I came across it in Kathryn Schulz’s recent memoir, “Lost & Found.” Schulz’s dad, Isaac, was apparently a cheerful, talkative man.

Persons: They’re, I’m, I’ll, Kathryn Schulz’s, ”, Isaac, Edith Wharton, “, ” Schulz, Schulz Locations: unsaid

☆ Elon Musk’s Savior Complex - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-21 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

These are what one psychologist termed “eminent orphans.”It’s easy to put Elon Musk into that category. He had no friends and lived in a world in which you either bullied or were bullied. But Isaacson’s account suggests that this is not the only or even the main impetus behind Musk’s extreme ambition. In the midst of that bleak childhood, Musk dived into science fiction, computer games and comics, and in some sense never left. In that world, Musk seems to have been gripped by a story just as fervently as a religious person is gripped by a holy book.

Persons: Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow, Hamilton “, I’ve, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, ”, Walter Isaacson’s, Musk Organizations: Elon Locations: South Africa

☆ Opinion | Mitt Romney Has Given Us a Gift
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-14 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It was the first day of the Republican convention in 2012 and I had nothing to write about, so I wrote a humor column mocking the Romney family for being perfect in every way. A few years later, before he was a senator, Romney asked me to come out to Utah to give a talk to a group he was convening. It’s a pain to write a speech and get on a plane, but I did it in penance for my sins. We all struggle to be the best version of ourselves we can be, and Romney’s struggle is now taking him into retirement and out of the Senate. On the way he gave us a gift, in the form of a series of conversations with The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, who has written a book on him, excerpted in the magazine.

Persons: Romney, Mitt Romney’s, I’d, Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, Donald Trump contemptuously Organizations: Republican, Republican Party Locations: Utah

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