NY Times columnist David Brooks is a little bit more sympathetic toward the cause of social conservatism than I’m, but now and then he has interesting thoughts and opinions, for example on the issue of integration: “For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors lived in small bands. Surviving meant being able to distinguish between us — the people who will protect you — and them — the people who will kill you. Even today, people have a powerful drive to distinguish between us and them.”

“Maybe the health of a society is not measured by how integrated each institution within it is, but by how freely people can move between institutions. In a sick society, people are bound by one totalistic identity. In a healthy society, a person can live in a black neighborhood, send her kids to Catholic school, go to work in a lawyer’s office and meet every Wednesday with a feminist book club. Multiply your homogenous communities and be fulfilled.”

I guess this is something called Segregation Elite Plus, but yes maybe it’s the best of all possible worlds.