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# Posted 9:21 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

DEFENDING BROOKS: I gave the NYT's newest columnist a big thumbs up for his first column and a big thumbs down for his second. However, John Coumarianos of Innocents Abroad thinks that I'm missing the point. John says:

I appreciate that it's not nice to be told you're part of a generation whose members exist to pad their resumes, but becoming more purely meritocratic has at least some disadvantages. There's really nothing to aspire to anymore, culturally or socially. Kids at better schools aren't social climbers anymore; and however distasteful it might have been when that sort of thing existed, at least there was a vision of a class to climb toward. Much better now to get your MBA than try to be a gentleman...

Additionally, although he's middle-aged, I don't think Brooks is part of the old generation as Adesnik implies; his generation is like the one coming of age now -- living in the wake of WASP-dom. I also think Adesnik overplays the "manliness" aspect of what Brooks seeks to remind us of. Brooks' larger point is that pure meritocracy has replaced a kind of faux aristocracy, and this has significant political and social consequences -- most of them good, but some of them not so good. He's not really talking primarily about prep school hazing rituals.

My response: At least since Tocqueville, American conservatives have insisted that mediocrity is the price of equality. But I don't buy it. Is it an accident that meritocratic America is both the most powerful nation on earth as well as the home of its most brilliant scientific and scholarly minds? I don't think so. As for having something to aspire to, I'm more interested in bringing democracy to the Middle East than getting an invitation to the local country club. Besides, I've heard that they don't accept applications from Jews and blacks.

UPDATE: Greg Djerejian has more.

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