Zakaria begins by adopting the epic straw man of an arrogant American who thinks America is 100% perfect. Using the pronoun “we think” repeatedly he asserts:

Whenever we have a problem, we tend to think that our Constitution is the best ever created in the history of the world. The people who wrote the Constitution were demi-gods, it never needs to be changed. Our political system is the best in the world. The truth is we have a pretty complicated, antiquated system that’s grown pretty dysfunctional.

Wow, when you put it like that Mr. Zakaria, it’s a wonder we even made it out of the 19th century. Let’s go point by point.

First, the reason Americans revere the Constitution was that it, along with the Declaration of Independence, represented the first time people threw off the chains of a tyrannical government and truly put power in the hands of ordinary people. It was an intellectual revolution more than a physical one. From 1776 and 1789 on, numerous countries have taken our system and used it as a template for change in their countries. We have good reason to be proud.

Next, no one believes that the founding fathers were “demi-gods.” They were extremely smart men who charted a new and different course of human history. They framed the intellectual revolution. No one asserts they’re godly, but again, we have good reason to be proud and honor those men.

Third, no one says the Constitution should “never be changed.” The writers of the Constitution knew that the document would have to be changed from time to time. That’s why they had an amendment procedure, and indeed passed a slew of them themselves. Civics 101, Mr. Zakaria.

Finally, Zakaria frames America’s rise to world dominance as circumstantial: “We are a successful parochial country. We’re a large country with two vast oceans, two weak neighbors, with a history of success. Those are bad conditions from which to learn.”

Zakaria frames America as unspectacular, unexceptional whose rise was purely coincidental or by luck. However, what he fails to answer in this laundry list of what American’s “think” is the why? Why are we a nation “with a history of success”? Why are we so rich? Why are we so large? The reason we are these things is that when you unleash the human spirit in a free nation, you allow humanity to grow and progress. Read The 5000 Year Leap and you’ll see why human advancement has grown at an exponential rate in the last 200 plus years.

I, for one, am of the opinion that America is indeed that great.

Yesterday I pointed out that three high profile network newspeople–Katie Couric of CBS, George Stephanopoulos of ABC, and Charlie Rose of PBS–had attended a party at the New York home of a convicted sex offender named Jeffrey Epstein. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, suffice it to say that Epstein isn’t your average offender. He’s a billionaire money manager who was accused of paying more than 40 teenage girls for sexual favors and, as I noted in yesterday’s post, transporting at least one teenager around the world as a party favor for his adult friends. Thanks to a plea deal offered by the FBI, he spent less than 18 months in jail.

As a father of two daughters, this is the kind of thing that gets me upset. It’s even more upsetting that reporters who should know better continue to treat him like a respectable member of high society. So yesterday I sent out tweets to the three news people who attended the party, asking them if they had any comment and/or explanation for their decision to socialize with a convicted sex offender. Late yesterday afternoon I received a message from Katie Couric in response. Because her response was made via a private channel, I believe she has an expectation of privacy. However I can characterize what she said as a sincere expression of regret. I still think Couric deserves criticism for attending the party, but she also deserves credit for not ducking the issue now that she has the benefit of hindsight.

The same cannot be said however for George Stephanopoulos or Charlie Rose. They have apparently decided one of two things. Either they don’t regret accepting the dinner invitation or, more likely, they hope by not addressing this that it will go away and they won’t have to deal with it. On a personal level I find this disappointing. I don’t know George (though once long ago he asked a friend of mine for a date) but I do know that, like me, he has daughters. It’s hard to imagine he would knowingly associate with someone like Epstein. Then again, he’s a reporter. How could he not know anything about the man whose house he was invited to visit?

Personal feelings aside, the sexual exploitation of teens is not a faux pas that can be ignored when it becomes convenient to do so. If Barack Obama or John Boehner attended a party thrown by a notorious sex offender, both Charlie Rose and George Stephanopoulos would volunteer to be the first to ask them why. They would want to know, as I do, why anyone would willingly associate with such a person. I don’t think it’s unfair to expect Rose and Stephanopoulos to hold themselves to the same standard to which they routinely hold other public figures. If they’ve made a mistake, now’s the time to say so.

Katie Couric has already stepped up, gentlemen. Frankly, she’s making you look bad.

Biden, the usually reliable, one-man-gaffe-machine actually came out and validated Israel’s actions against the flotilla saying;

Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interests.

Only Fox News seemed to notice.

Saying the following to Charlie Rose, the Vice President displayed great clarity on the issue and deep knowledge of what actually happened, as opposed to what has been reported on MSNBC and CNN:

They (Israel) have said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.” So what’s the big deal here?

Mr. Biden also stressed a need for a transparent look into the details of this incident.  Well done Joe Biden, well done.

Israel’s weekend actions were questioned by many, damned by the U.N. and obviously vilified by the Arab world and their various media outlets and fellow travelers. And yet, when the Vice President steps forward and explains it clearly, where is the reporting?

As noted above, Fox News put the story on the front page of their website.  While every news organization’s website covers the latest from the oil spill, MSNBC, CNN must have been watching something else as their front pages are focused on other breaking news items like:

MSNBC:

• A perfect mess: Blown call robs pitcher of rare feat
• Groin-punch game harms more boys
• Newsweek’s campaign for a black spiderman

CNN:

• Would Fed Intervention Make US Liable?
• More Urging Obama To Show Rage
• Another Gaza Showdown Looks Likely

Is it just that the rest of the MSM doesn’t give the VP as much credibility as they do Spike Lee, who told Anderson Cooper that he would like the President to “go off”?

I find it a bit frightening when the Vice President, the second most powerful man in the country, makes a fairly well-defined statement about America’s position regarding one of our staunchest allies involved in an incident with global ramifications and it is dismissed or not reported at all.

But thanks to MSNBC, we’ll all be up to day on the dangers of groin-punching games that are (allegedly) all the rage among teen boys.

But on his February 9 appearance on Charlie Rose, Brooks painfully revealed the limits of his understanding and the poverty of his vision.  These failings are not exclusive to Brooks — rather, they are typical of the class with which Brooks self-identifies, the hyper-educated coastal elite.

Of the Tea Party, for example, Brooks told Rose, “It’s not conservative, it’s not pro-Republican, it’s just a recoil from what’s happening [in Washington].”  Has Brooks actually convinced himself of this tripe?  The tea partiers recoil from Washington precisely because of their commitment to small-government conservatism; because Washington now represents the antithesis of their deeply held conservative principles.  Brooks would know this if he actually talked to some Tea Party members instead of viewing them with horror and barely concealed disgust from his Beltway offices.

Brooks confesses plainly that he has found the Tea Party movement “scary” because he feels it represents prejudice against his class.  It does not seem to have occurred to Brooks that his class, the bureaucrats, politicians, journalists, professors, and entertainers on the coasts, have 1) supported policies which have driven this great nation to the brink of fiscal disaster, and 2) have taken every opportunity to express disdain for the values and lives of the vast majority of the population.  The prejudice against his class which Brooks feels is real – and deserved.

And then there’s Brooks’ baffling and continued infatuation with President Obama, whose perfect pant leg transfixed Brooks from the very beginning.  Astoundingly, Brooks describes Obama as a pragmatist “still capable of greatness.”  Only someone with a serious man crush could look at Obama and not see a rank left-wing ideologue trying to socialize America – and failing spectacularly.

Brooks is singular is his talent for wrapping his self-superiority in a pungent package of preening faux humility, as when he actually told Rose that he believed in “epistemological modesty,” saying in other words that he doesn’t know much but in a way that leaves you little doubt that he knows way more than you do.

Or so he thinks.  During the interview, Brooks made several statements that were flatly wrong on their face, as when he told Rose that great social reform historically takes place in times of economic growth.  Huh?  The New Deal, anyone, the most radical social change in our history instituted during our worst financial crisis?  And Brooks has repeatedly shown himself to be in the thrall of preposterous academic theories, such how you can tell that a four-year-old will one day graduate from college based on whether or not he eats a marshmallow.

Brooks is especially fascinated by recent research concerning the human mind: apparently, academics are beginning to discover that humans are often motivated by visceral, rather than rational, forces, and that this explains many a bad choice.  Memo to Brooks:  Yes, some people do stupid and crazy things because some people are stupid and crazy.  This would come as news only to an intellectual.

The interview with Rose was painful for me to watch.  Not only have I often read and enjoyed Brooks’ columns, but I myself am partially a product of the same Ivy League coastal culture.  I went to school in New York City; I work in Washington D.C.

But I have been singularly unimpressed with the people I have encountered in those elite meccas.  Thankfully I was also born and raised in the Midwest, and can thus saywith authority that people on the coasts are not better, wiser, or more capable than the rest of us in “middle America.”

But they are in fact exceedingly given to folly, and particularly prone to destructive and dangerous ideologies, the consequences of which they then inflict with inimical glee upon the rest of the nation.

It’s high time that middle America rethink allowing these people to govern us.