Booyah

To thee the laurels belong,

Best car, because the starriest!

Merrily live, and long!

Newsflash!

David Brooks said something smart, or at least intriguing: Every society has to engird capitalism in a restraining value system, or else it turns nihilistic and out of control. To engird means to encircle, and the first two google-returned definitions identify the word as archaic, so you shouldn't feel any worse than your faithful 'Dlogger for not knowing it.

But Brooks thinks that western European countries do this to capitalism by law and that we United Statesians do it with "quasi-religious spirituality," and the Glenn Beck rally was about re-kindling that spirituality. (I have no idea whether Beck would agree.)

Is this true? First, that capitalism must be girdled? Second, that it is ineffectively girdled in the USA? Third, that ineffective girdling is responsible for our current economic distress? Fourth, that a renewal of Judeo-Christian spirituality can be that girdle?

Discuss.