By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — Harvard Business School professor Arthur Brooks, the featured speaker at Missouri Western State University today, says the problem facing the United States is the inability to talk across party lines, ideological lines, and class lines.
“It’s endangering the health and future of our country,” Brooks tells reporters prior to delivering the 27th annual R. Dan Boulware Convocation on Critical Issues lecture. “It’s effectively putting our country into a downward spiral of influence around the world and of prosperity and, most importantly, of happiness. This is not a new thing. Typically, we find a couple of times a century we get into these bad cycles of contempt and polarization and it’s in our hands whether or not it’s going to get worst or whether or not it’s going to get better.”
Brooks, former president of American Enterprise Institute, has written several books. His speech on the St. Joseph campus today focused on the contents of his most recent book: Love Your Enemies.
Brooks says the country has seen such crises before and has also united during them. Something he hasn’t seen during the coronavirus pandemic.
“What I’m disappointed about is that it wasn’t an opportunity to bring us together,” Brooks says. “A crisis should bring us together. We’re the most entrepreneurial country in the world by far. And the one thing that all entrepreneurs have in common is that where everybody else sees tragedy and everybody else sees disappointment, they see opportunity.”
Brooks says the country typically faces a crisis every 10 years. He points to the financial crisis of 2008 and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, adding the leadership at those times brought the country together, focusing residents on the shared pain they experienced.
Brooks tells reporters the country had an opportunity to unite in the fight against COVID-19.
“We could have had leadership in this country that brought us together through this crisis; that where the shared pain was an opportunity to stand together and help each other and love each other more,” Brooks says. “But, no, like everything else, our leadership and our media turned it into an opportunity for political bitterness that turned us against each other.”
Brooks says politicians believe division works in their favor, currying votes, while the national media sees dollar signs in division through increased ratings. He cautions not to get him started on the detrimental effects of social media.