Reinhold Neibor and the American Present

David Brooks and E.J. Dion: Reinhold Neibor was an excellent corrective to what is going on. If you have a view of human nature that is people are born with certain tragic qualities, they could be religious or not, the policies flow from that. The Harlem Children's Zone is an intense all-purpose 360-degree effort to surround kids with responsible bourgeois adult institutions. And during the campaign, Obama was very drawn to this model; he wants to create something like this in a lot of cities around the country.