In David Brooks recent comment on the need for more authoritarianism and less democracy, he deploys the phrase "just authority" on more than one occasion and it seems to be an attempt to deflect claims that he is, in fact, arguing that Americans need to be more docile. The word just in this context can have a variety of meanings one, of course, would be just in the sense of "just war," which would mean something like morally sound because it adheres to a set of principals engraved by God or nature on the hearts of men. Another meaning might be something like formally just, sort of legal positivism's notion that a law that follows the proper legislative procedures is a just law even if it stinks in the nostrils of decent folks.
Either way it is clear that Brooks wants great obeisance to authority. One wonders when his sharply worded attack on the reporter interrupted Obama during a press conference today., not exactly the first time this has happened.
So David Brooks the time has come to let the louts have it.
If we all would just listen to wise old white men everything would be fine
ReplyDeleteYou what is even so odder is that Brooks whole career is built on both lies and a willingness to tell his betters, which includes -- if we go by integrity and intellectual acuity -- nearly everyone in these United States, why they are wrong, stupid, and, possibly, evil.
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