David Brooks Tells His Readers They've Fucked America Up

I don't read David Brooks any more, but I happened onto this via Instapundit (and without warning, damn that Reynolds character!).  Here's a nugget for you...

But it’s increasingly clear that sympathy is not enough. It’s not only money and better policy that are missing in these circles; it’s norms. The health of society is primarily determined by the habits and virtues of its citizens. In many parts of America there are no minimally agreed upon standards for what it means to be a father. There are no basic codes and rules woven into daily life, which people can absorb unconsciously and follow automatically.

Reintroducing norms will require, first, a moral vocabulary. These norms weren’t destroyed because of people with bad values. They were destroyed by a plague of nonjudgmentalism, which refused to assert that one way of behaving was better than another. People got out of the habit of setting standards or understanding how they were set.

Truer words have not been spoken or written.  Funny though, the relativism has been unleashed and the norms have been destroyed by the very type of people who employ Brooks at the Crimes and the people who read it.