A Canadian-born (1961) American book author and political and cultural commentator. Though he describes himself as an ideological moderate, others have characterised him as centrist, moderate conservative, or conservative, based on his record as contributor to the PBS NewsHour, and as opinion columnist for The New York Times. In addition to his shorter form writing, Brooks has authored six non-fiction books since 2000.
His father taught English literature at New York University, while their mother studied 19th-century British history at Columbia University.
He got a bachelors in history at the University of Chicago.
He was raised Jewish, but not active as an adult. He's a Christian now.
Wikipedia
Some presentations, articles/talks I've had in my good reads/views list (No web page).
The Good and Bad of the Educated Elite
So we members of the educated elite did some good things. We created the internet, brunch and mocktails. You’re welcome. We did some bad things.
We designed a meritocracy designed around the skills we ourselves possess and rigged the game so we succeeded and everybody else failed. By age 12, American children of affluent kids are four grade levels above everybody else. By university age, rich kids are 77 times more likely to go to university than kids from poor schools. In adulthood, 54% of the people at elite workplaces went to the same 34 elite colleges.
So we ended up creating a caste system. People with high school degrees die nine years sooner than people with college degrees. People with high school degrees are five times more likely to have kids out of wedlock. People with high school degrees are 2.4 times more likely to say they have no friends.
So we created a caste system, even though we pretend to be egalitarian. But the worst things we did were not material. America has a very strong economy. The worst things we did were spiritual. We privatized morality and destroyed the moral order. George Marston is a great historian who said, what gave Martin Luther King’s rhetoric its power was the sense there’s a moral order built into the universe.
That if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. If segregation is not wrong, nothing is wrong. We took that essential moral order that holds people together and we decided it’s up to you to find your own truth. Find your own values.
Back in 1955, a great American journalist named Walter Lippmann understood this was going to be a big problem. He said “if what is right and wrong depends on what each individual feels, then we are outside the bounds of civilization.”
