On that Brooks article, what a pretentious pile of crap.

I would begin my stab at understanding by acknowledging that I grew up in one era and they grew up in another. I came of age in the 1980s. In that time, there was an assumption that though the roots of human society were deep in tribalism, over the past 3,000 years we have developed a system of liberal democracy that gloriously transcended it, that put reason, compassion and compromise atop violence and brute force.

Mr. Brooks, you do realise there were real nations three thousand years ago. (Sidebar, is Mr. Brooks a creationist?)