Like many young people, I was charmed by Buber's book as a late teen. As I mature, I learned that relationships are far from binary and that all exist on some spectrum of intimacy, from zero to the excessive. Really, how many people does anybody want to be emotionally intimate with?
David Brooks somehow tries to connect the Buber view with the politics of today and produces pure silliness. "Thous at every level"? Please, enough with the sanctimony. This is politics, which is war at every level.