Krugman is just brilliant almost all the time, indispensible. Dowd is a great writer even when she's infuriating. But Bob Herbert is the liberal heart of the NY Times, (if there is a liberal heart of the NY Times). He is like the steady non-flashy player who quietly excels consistently and while the fans don't wear his number, the team all looks to him for leadership. His voice is a conscience that we ignore too often.
He is not sexy but a must read.
Today's column is Pulitzer worthy.
http://select.nytimes.com/...
Dr. King's message of peaceful change notwithstanding, there is nothing more American than brutal violence. The country was built on it, revels in it and shows every evidence of clinging to it with the crazed, destructive strength of an obsessive lover.
If you want to be elected dog catcher in this country you have to show that you are tough on "national security," which is merely a buzz phrase for the military. Logically, rationally, national security is a many headed strategy involving myriad efforts at diplomacy, intelligence and preparedness, both at home and internationally. But for all intents and purposes in the political arena it means RESPECT FOR THE MILITARY and no squeemishness about using them to kill to solve problems.
We've honored Dr. King, but we've never listened to him. Our addiction to the joy of violence is far too strong. We'll search like hollow-eyed junkies all day and all through the night for a rationale, any rationale, to keep the killing going. Democratic politicians have suffered for years because they have been insufficiently insistent on violence as a solution to national problems.
Sending people to kill and die should be a necessary evil that you reluctantly do sometimes when absolutely necessary because every other way of remediation or pacification have been explored; but in America it's approached as evidence of manhood, resolve and patriotism. You get your national security bona fides by talking tough, promising not to ever waiver in your ability to throw away other people's lives.
How do we reconcile this with being one of the the most religious, most Christian nations on Earth? You can't.
Dr. King, Gandhi, Jesus all said that non-violence was the way, the answer, the path. Violence is simply not an option.
Thirty-seven years after the death of her husband (who was only 39 when he died), Coretta Scott King has been called home. Like her husband, she always believed that America's addiction to violence could be brought under control.
They were wrong. We love it much too much.
Sadly, we do. We throw away lives as if they're renewable resources. I've always decried the kind of movies where characters act as if death weren't permanent.
Our foreign policy has always been run like a Bruce Willis movie. Die Hard with a Vengeance, won't you?
A huge proportion of our population claim to be Christian, but we have about 100,000 real Christians in this country who actually follow the 10 commandments and the teachings of Jesus. The rest are pretenders who do not deserve the respect for their convictions that they constantly demand.
