David Brooks psychoanalyzes Snowden: he didn't visit his mother enough
Last edited Wed Jun 12, 2013, 12:58 PM - Edit history (1)
it actually strikes me as giving a decent insight into neocon teachings.
by the way, what is Brooks talking about regarding his mother? I can't find anything about it, maybe Brooks has inside info.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/brooks-the-solitary-leaker.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
From what we know so far, Edward Snowden appears to be the ultimate unmediated man. Though obviously terrifically bright, he could not successfully work his way through the institution of high school. Then he failed to navigate his way through community college.
According to The Washington Post, he has not been a regular presence around his mother’s house for years. When a neighbor in Hawaii tried to introduce himself, Snowden cut him off and made it clear he wanted no neighborly relationships. He went to work for Booz Allen Hamilton and the C.I.A., but he has separated himself from them, too.
Though thoughtful, morally engaged and deeply committed to his beliefs, he appears to be a product of one of the more unfortunate trends of the age: the atomization of society, the loosening of social bonds, the apparently growing share of young men in their 20s who are living technological existences in the fuzzy land between their childhood institutions and adult family commitments.
If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way: Life is not embedded in a series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world. Instead, it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state.
(...)
= new reply since forum marked as read
a Libertarian! 
Friedman explained that he reluctantly, only veeeeery reluctantly was willing to trade his own constitutional protections for additional security against whatever plot his imagination might generate. He was scared, and he used that word twice, of another attack and Snowden might be responsible for the next 911.
Now here is David Brooks saying the exposure of an integrated spy network used to monitor every American was a blow against an open society. He said it all without a trace of irony too.
Like Friedman he's also scared because now the secrets he never wanted to find out about will be even more closely guarded.
