Ward on Words

David Brooks was probably feeling very smart and intellectual and clever when he posted his most recent column . He links a great John Ford Western with a look at manhood today in America; he covers current unemployment stats, reflects on boy culture and school culture; he quotes the American Enterprise Institute along with lines from The Searchers . It's all in there. The column is a muddled mess. He opens with a rather vast claim: "As every discerning person knows, The Searchers is the greatest movie ever made." Now I think we can say that discerning people know The Searchers is one of the greatest movies ever made. [I make that claim myself here .] But to assert as fact that it is the very greatest film ever made and to note that if you don't get that fact, you are not a discerning person - which is disdainful and argumentative - is perhaps not the best way to open this column. He goes on to note that the close of the West has left American manhood in a...

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a day filled with symbols of our great American mythology. Our founders, the European settlers, yearned for a new life free from the restrictions of Europe, so they got on those rickety boats and crossed an ocean to reach an unknown land. The Pilgrims, in their quest for religious freedom, sought Nirvana far from home. The place they landed on was harsh, unforgiving, a landscape that required skill and knowledge in order to survive. And instrumental to their survival, according to the American mythology, were the inhabitants of the "New World." As we all know, the Pilgrims shared a harvest feast with the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. The modern American Thanksgiving dinner not only gives us the opportunity to give thanks for our blessings, but commemorates the cooperation between Native Americans and foreign born visitors who sought new life in a new world. Of course, cooperation turned into warfare not long after. Another component of America...