David Brooks' Sunday op/ed in the New York Times on the underlying tragedy in Haiti—poverty—attempts to tease out the real problems in moving forward in Haiti post-quake and what can be done to improve the situation. Matt Taibbi of True/Slant takes Brooks' op/ed to the digital woodshed as he "translates" what Brooks is really saying
The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.
TRANSLATION: I, David Brooks, am doing my Christian best right here at home. Look, I even used a capital “L” in the word “Lord.” And I wrote that thing about Obama’s Christian Realism a few weeks ago. So I‘m doing my part. Of course I’d volunteer to help, but intellectually I just don’t think volunteering really helps. I mean, there are studies and everything.
Ouch. The rest of the article goes on in that fashion and The Buzz finds it to be a rather interesting rebuttal. Thoughts?