Discussing national service and admissions, David Brooks agrees with Scott Galloway that no one can predict at 18 who will succeed. He recalls students who were electric at 21 but had lost their spark a decade later.
…reject kids. And we'll understand that the distinctions these days we draw between Princeton and, I don't know, Penn State, these are ridiculous distinctions. Williams and Amherst, you know, these are ridiculous. But we've built this hierarchy of status, which perverts and distorts all of society.
…in graduate school. And fortunately, Berkeley let me into graduate school at a 2.27 undergraduate GPA. And so these institutions are amazing, but why would they sequester this drug? Anyways, I'm sorry, a bit of a speech there. I'm curious what you think about the idea of mandatory national service.
…of your life. And I taught off and on at Yale for 20 years, and it's a wonderful place. I think it's a fantastic place. But I noticed this phenomenon with some of my students. They were electric at 21. But by the time I would have coffee with them 10 years after graduation, some light had gone out. They'd fallen into some career rut. They were not asking the big questions anymore. And so to me, I don't want to know whether you're shiny at 18. I want to know: are you capable of perpetual growth until you're 100? And that is a skill that you can't measure at 18.
Talk about one, do you believe that? Do you bind to this thesis that the idolatry of money has kind of overwhelmed and crowded out character, service, patriotism? Where do you stand on the thesis that it's the idolatry of money that has really, really hurt America?
Yeah, I would say it's that's a rhythm in American life where money becomes the dominant ethos. And you would say the 1880s, the 1890s, we were an incredibly materialistic society. But what you need is a moral system that stands against capitalism. So you live in the contest and the tension between…
Let's try and move to solutions, a spiritual and personal disconnection. How do you think we repair this? If you, I imagine, get called a lot by probably not this White House, but you probably have a lot of influence and get asked a lot. What are the two or three programs you believe warrant real…
