There’s much more tolerance for serious freethinkers — the Johns Hopkins scholar Eliot Cohen was just hired at State. ~David Brooks

Is Brooks trying to be funny?  Did he just use the words “serious” and “freethinker” in the same sentence with Eliot Cohen’s name?  This Eliot Cohen, who wrote this?  If he’s a freethinker, what on earth does a mindless conformist look like?  I didn’t realise that Eliot Cohen now works for the State Department.  That is a very depressing thing to learn.