Temerity at the Top

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/opinion/brooks-temerity-at-the-top.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 9:14 AM
Subject: re: Temerity at the Top
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
   In a shoddy bit of rhetorical bait and switch, David Brooks
proposes to defend elites, but spends his column extolling ambition.
The case for ambition was made  more eloquently fifteen centuries
before Mr. Brooks. Nachman ben Samuel wrote ""Were it not for
ambition, man would not build a house, or take a wife, or beget a
child, or engage in business". So what shall we say of Mr. Musk? As an
immigrant and  millworker who went on to shape American transportation
in the 21st century, he does not represent our elites. But he embodies
the ambition that enriches any nation.
Barry Haskell Levine