QOTD: David Brooks
by digby
I would say, say you’re in college or say you want to give money, but we give money to bed mats, we give money to clean water, all that antipoverty stuff. But central antipoverty program is law and order. You can’t get rich if you’re afraid of getting shot in the back of the head at night. And so if you’re giving as an individual, if you’re thinking as a state, giving to law and order groups like International Justice Mission, things like that, that is essentially the basis to get an antipoverty program.
I’ll let Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog dispatch that in his own special way.
But when did David brooks start talking like Sarah Palin? I can barely make heads nor tails out of that.
Apparently, a lack of law and order is causing terrorism. And I suppose if you’re talking about Yemen that might make sense. But the terrorists last week were French. Does he think France isn’t orderly? I suppose so. But when you look at the level of gun violence here in the US, you’d have to say that we are even worse …
I guess we’re all a bit confused about this issue. My thinking has been evolving on it, I admit. But this observation by Brooks is just strange in this context. The French terrorists grew up in an advanced Western democracy with plenty of law and order — much of it directed at them. In fact, that may have been part of the problem.
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