Shorter David Brooks: Millennials Need A Good Clean Civil War

by evanmcmurry

For the love of:

These letter writers, and many of the men at Gettysburg, were not just different than most of us today because their language was more high flown and earnest. There was probably also a greater covenantal consciousness, a belief that they were born in a state of indebtedness to an ongoing project, and they would inevitably be called upon to pay these debts, to come square with the country, even at the cost of their lives.

Makes today’s special interest politics look kind of pathetic.

I get the feeling the David Brooks of 1860 would write countless editorials against nogoodnik Union troops and their “followership” problems. Amazing what 150 years of hindsight can do for the riffraff.

(This is to say nothing of the “special interests” that might have been at work in a civil war; I feel like Brooks plays with a permanent handicap on that account.)