Arnon Grunberg

Transformation

Soulcraft

I haven’t quoted David Brooks for a couple of weeks maybe even months, but when autumn kicks in it’s a good time for Brooks again: ‘This is how you fortify a compelling moral identity, which is what all of us need if we’re going to be able to look in the mirror with self-respect. This is the cultural transformation that good policy can sometimes achieve. Statecraft is soulcraft.’

Read the column here.

Look with self-respect in the mirror or lose some privileges and entitlements, if you cannot bring evidence of self-respect for more than a year to your sheriff you might become stateless.

Brooks’ belief that policy can change history or adjust is more than reasonable, but his arguments are, as often, so pompous that this pomposity becomes frivolity and his earnestness sheer satire.

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