SOMEONE CREATED THE EURO CRISIS. COULD IT BE ... SATAN?

As soon as I saw the title of The latest David Brooks column is on the eurozone crisis. As soon as I saw the title -- "the Technocratic Nightmare" -- I knew he'd find a way to fit this square peg into the round hole that is his one idea, namely that the world is divided into amoral elitists and reg'lar folks with genuine values. He didn't let me down. Did he actually get the notion of sin into a column on this subject? Well, he came awfully close:

At this moment of crisis, it is obvious how little moral solidarity undergirds the European pseudostate. Americans in Oregon are barely aware when their tax dollars go to Americans in Arizona. We are one people with one shared destiny. West Germans were willing to pay enormous subsidies to build the former East Germany. They, too, are one people.

"Moral solidarity"? Is that what Brooks seriously believes holds a heterogeneous political unit together? Yeah, right -- New York State includes one massive city, several smaller cities, suburbs, and sparsely populated rural areas that have more deer than people -- but we stay together because (I guess) we have a genuine sense of the nature of sin. Or something like that. (Though, given how this understanding of traditional morality has worn away since, oh, Woodstock, especially in Manhattan, I don't understand how that's possible.)

And by the way, residents of Oregon may not care that their tax dollars go to Arizona, but residents of, um, certain parts of Mississippi sure do care that their tax dollars are going to certain residents of Chicago, if you get my drift. (For that matter, they resent the fact their tax dollars go to certain other residents of Mississippi.) And yet America is still one country. At least so far. Must be the churchgoing!