Didn't Mao try this already, David?

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Tuesday, January 31. 2012

Didn't Mao try this already, David?

If David Brooks isn't being facetious here, then he's gone nuts:

I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.

If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass.

Mao called it the Cultural Revolution, enforced by the Red Guard at gunpoint. It did not work out well. And what's with "mass"? I think he is calling my parents the "mass." He ought to meet them sometime. They sacrificed everything, and worked two jobs, to put us kids through U Mass (we all had jobs during school to help out) and have never had any money to spare or to save. Good habits and decency, however.

Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects, Our Essays at 19:34 | Comments (33) | Trackbacks (0)

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"We" need to "force"? Just who the hell is we? Maybe "we" need to force David Brooks to swim to Cuba.

#1 ccoffer on 2012-01-31 19:43 (Reply)

Liberals love to tell other people what to do. They think nothing of "experimenting" with other people's lives.

#2 ChrisP on 2012-01-31 20:11 (Reply)

As a boomer, I usually get liberal boomers off these bandwagons by mentioning what I would have thought of this arrangement in 1971, when I was 18 and Nixon was president.

They get the point quickly. And it's amusing for you, too. You're smiling already, just thinking about it, aren't you?

#2.1 Assistant VIllage Idiot (Link) on 2012-01-31 23:04 (Reply)

Brooks lives in a bubble. I do not. I interact with and enjoy (or do not enjoy) people of all sorts every day.

Of course, the creepiest part is "force." OK, I suggest forcing Brooks to move to Jerome Avenue, and forcing me to take over his job. That would work.

#3 Bird Dog on 2012-01-31 20:28 (Reply)

Jerome Ave - haha. Around 1970 or so, I drove a truck in the Bronx and college at night. Got the best grades ever. Maybe Mr. Brooks could go around the corner to Featherbed Lane - lots of union guys there /s.

#3.1 Charlie T. on 2012-01-31 21:10 (Reply)

Marxist dogma.
I haven't a clue why many who benefit most from this wonderful country are working overtime to destroy it.

#4 PacRim Jim (Link) on 2012-01-31 21:16 (Reply)

The idea of "forc[ing] members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together" is called "the Draft". I don't think we need a draft, but perhaps something similar would be appropriate.

Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" depicted a future in which nobody - NOBODY - could run for political office without completing a term of military service. You didn't have to serve; you couldn't be drafted. But nobody could try to run the country without serving first. I still like the idea.

#5 Ken Mitchell on 2012-01-31 21:17 (Reply)

They say draft is too expensive (training is lengthy these days), and that they don't need people. Got all they need.

#5.1 Bird Dog on 2012-01-31 21:23 (Reply)

Wasn't Ken's point, I think.

#5.1.1 XRay on 2012-01-31 22:13 (Reply)

Indeed. The point is that only people who've served, put their lives on the line for liberty, freedom, etc., get to have a say in running the country.

btw Heinlein didn't restrict this to running for office, he restricted it to voting in elections as well.

#5.1.1.1 J.T. Wenting on 2012-02-01 06:44 (Reply)

Pol Pot got it done when he emptied the cities.

#5.1.1.1.1 NJSoldier on 2012-02-01 08:28 (Reply)

And Nevil Shute wrote a story in which citizens who excelled/achieved excellence in their professions were given extra votes, to a limit of seven, by the Queen. Horrible right-winger, I guess. Oh, wait - didn't he write "On the Beach" - - -

#5.2 Claritas on 2012-02-01 07:51 (Reply)

It wasn't military service, it was federal service. Didn't have to be military, might be research somewhere, might be bean-counting. After the bug war started though, the chance of military service went WAY up...

#5.3 JLawson on 2012-02-01 10:08 (Reply)

"It wasn't military service, it was federal service. Didn't have to be military,...."

True, but Heinlein's point was, YOU DIDN'T GET TO CHOOSE. You volunteer, and the "Federal Service" put you where they thought you were most valuable. You could always quit - but then you'd never become a citizen, never run for office, and yes, never get to vote either.

If the tinpot tyrant wannabes like Mike "Nanny" Bloomberg had to actually do something useful rather than just BUYING the office, the country would be better off.

#5.3.1 Ken Mitchell on 2012-02-01 23:45 (Reply)

Ccoffer: How about a slow boat to China. I'll contribute for his ticket to the west coast. Jeeaz! Get these idiots off the TV/newsprint/Internet! Who's paying them?

#6 jma on 2012-01-31 22:22 (Reply)

"If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass."

Well, that's a pretty far-out assumption. Instead, perhaps the lumpen masses and the effete elite would come to despise each other even more than they do now. As is often said, familiarity breeds contempt. I offer a more helpful suggestion: if the elitists in this country agree to leave us serfs alone to live our lives as we choose, then we the unwashed promise to put our pitchforks and torches away and not to mob the gates of the elitists' castles.

#7 Agent Cooper on 2012-01-31 22:53 (Reply)

And you think the elites would actually live up to their side of the bargain?

#7.1 ruralcounsel on 2012-02-01 08:22 (Reply)

You've got a good point there.

#7.1.1 Agent Cooper on 2012-02-01 13:32 (Reply)

We used to have something like this. It was called the draft.

#8 Dee on 2012-02-01 00:22 (Reply)

Also bussing comes to mind, how'd that work out?

Dennis

#8.1 Dennis on 2012-02-01 05:57 (Reply)

My thoughts exactly. Only without any deferments.

I'd like nothing better than see the sons and daughters of Congress-critters on IED patrol along some dusty dirt road in Afghanistan.

Or better yet, Obama's daughters walking point through Mogadishu or Tripoli.

I think it would create a whole different atmosphere around foreign policy.

#8.2 ruralcounsel on 2012-02-01 08:19 (Reply)

Let a thousand flowers bloom!

#9 Jim on 2012-02-01 00:28 (Reply)

Well, there you go, easiest way is to subsidize the poor and drug addicts in the gentrifying neighborhoods of NYC and DC. I'm sure we can find other urban displacements where we can keep the mass and the elite in daily contact.

#10 JKB on 2012-02-01 08:18 (Reply)

Then why is it that the "elite" like to put regulations in place to keep the "masses" from obtaining success through hard work and diligence?

Socio-economic mobility is a solution to Brooks' perceived problem.

So again I ask, why do the elites resist it so much?

#11 DrTorch on 2012-02-01 09:16 (Reply)

During WWII and even Korea and Vietnam, many upper-class young men put up with being drafted as enlisted members and rubbed shoulders with the lower-class conscripts. Dunno what they thought of it.
Even among officers, all of whom were pretty well educated, some were from elites and some from lower-class backgrounds. Dwight Eisenhower came from a middle- or lower-middle class family back when the academies were considered a way to get an education without having to pay for it.
"Force" is always a big problem. I like the idea of a service program that mingles all levels of society but not of forcing it.
Vaguely related: I've seen a number of suggestions over the years that people with DUIs should have to work in an emergency department to see the results of bad choices. Show them a movie. I've been a paramedic and I've been in major trauma events and I don't want a lookie-loo with no skills and nothing to contribute getting in my way.

#12 Geoff Brown on 2012-02-01 10:33 (Reply)

I have some discomfort with national service. I am reminded of the "community service" that many applicants to elite colleges perform in order to increase their chances of acceptance. I view that "service" as time-serving.

Similarly, many high schools are now requiring some "community service" as a requirement for graduation. Similarly time-serving and a waste of time.

#12.1 Gringo on 2012-02-01 12:05 (Reply)

Waitaminute - don't all you bitter clingers complain about the post-60s lib culture of narcissism and selfishness?

So what's wrong with a program of national service?

This very blog just linked a series of articles urging kids to put off college and "learn about the real world."

So what's wrong with a program of national service?

We're engaged in a battle to turn the entitlement culture back into a patriotic culture.

So what's wrong with a program of national service?

#13 Ben David on 2012-02-01 12:16 (Reply)

National MILITARY Service is about the only thing I would support. It takes a really substantive threat to the nation's existance and safety to warrant taking away people's freedom and forcing them into servitude. You have to balance the damage any coercive program cuses with the good it should create. Nothing less than improving the military responsiveness of the country is worth the destruction of individual liberty.

Certainly not just financial or economic mismanagement. Or because you want cleaner parks, cheaper teacher's aides, or more "community organizers" for the Feds to cause mischief with.

There is a huge difference between "urging" a course and requiring it.

#13.1 ruralcounsel on 2012-02-02 08:49 (Reply)

Ben David ... Nothing is wrong with a program of national service. The Swiss have had one in place for years. The young people end up with a better understanding of the real world, better manners to others, and a tasteful assortment of long guns and side arms with which to defend the family homestead against invaders.

Marianne

#14 Marianne Matthews on 2012-02-01 13:16 (Reply)

With the Democrats in charge, National Service would probably turn out this way:

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hitleryouth/index.html

#15 Agent Cooper on 2012-02-01 13:39 (Reply)

It's like the Settlement House movement - - - at the point of a gun.

#16 Amazed on 2012-02-01 15:22 (Reply)

Read "The Wild Swans" for a personal story about life in China under Mao and the Red Guards.

#17 lhf on 2012-02-02 06:58 (Reply)

[i]It did not work out well.[/]

I know, I know, but who wouldn't experience delightful schadenfreude at the plight of millions of American politicians and college professors learning through labor?

#18 ErisGuy on 2012-02-03 08:07 (Reply)

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Tuesday, January 31. 2012

Didn't Mao try this already, David?