Virtuous America!

Anyone read David Brooks' Latest Op-Ed in Last Sunday's New York Times?

Here is a juicy excerpt...

"The decline in family violence is part of a whole web of positive, mutually reinforcing social trends. To put it in old-fashioned terms, America is becoming more virtuous. Americans today hurt each other less than they did 13 years ago. They are more likely to resist selfish and shortsighted impulses. They are leading more responsible, more organized lives. A result is an improvement in social order across a range of behaviors."

Here is my Letter to the Times.

"America is becoming more virtuous" crows David Brooks in "The Virtues of Virtue" (8/8/05). I, for one, am very relieved to hear this. You see I was under the ridiculous impression that we had become a violent, crass, mean-spirited culture. I don't know about family violence statistics but it wasn't that long ago when you could drive your car without being the victim of road rage. We left our doors unlocked. I walked safely by myself back and forth to elementary school each day. America believed it was virtuous not to torture POWs, regardless of what our enemies did. Naive? Maybe. But to turn around and tell us how much more virtuous we are today reflects a level of denial that would have made Ozzie and Harriet proud. "

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Not only do Republicans want to turn the clock back, they are now delusional enough to think they have succeeded. I feel like Dr. Miles Bennel in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or Joanna Eberhart in "The Stepford Wives". Take your pick. Either way I'm surrounded by unblinking Conserva-droids telling me how wonderful our brave new world is....ugh. Are these people being manufactured by Halliburton, or what? Maybe that's the REAL news story. It's not so far fetched actually. Perhaps oil is so expensive because we're using it all to run the 24/7 Conserva-droid factories in Iraq? Maybe Robert Novak's public meltdown was a malfunction of his Conserva-droid processing unit? (he is an older model, you know).

I'm going to do some more digging on this story and keep you all abreast of these developments!