Two essays by eminent observers.
1. David Brooks writes,
the values of the Millennial and Gen Z generations that will dominate in the years ahead are the opposite of Boomer values: not liberation, but security; not freedom, but equality; not individualism, but the safety of the collective; not sink-or-swim meritocracy, but promotion on the basis of social justice.
. . .The stench of national decline is in the air. A political, social, and moral order is dissolving. America will only remain whole if we can build a new order in its place.
Brooks argues that a decline in social trust does not just happen all by itself.
High national distrust is a sign that people have earned the right to be suspicious. Trust isn’t a virtue—it’s a measure of other people’s virtue.
Like Yuval Levin, the Brooks sees our only hope as building formal institutions.
Over the past 60 years, we have given up on the Rotary Club and the American Legion and other civic organizations and replaced them with Twitter and Instagram. Ultimately, our ability to rebuild trust depends on our ability to join and stick to organizations.
The issue here is thus not whether progressive illiberalism exists, but rather how great a long-term danger it represents. In countries from India and Hungary to the United States, nationalist conservatives have actually taken power and have sought to use the power of the state to dismantle liberal institutions and impose their own views on society as a whole. That danger is a clear and present one.
Progressive anti-liberals, by contrast, have not succeeded in seizing the commanding heights of political power in any developed country. Religious conservatives are still free to worship in any way they see fit, and indeed are organized in the United States as a powerful political bloc that can sway elections. Progressives exercise power in different and more nuanced ways, primarily through their dominance of cultural institutions like the mainstream media, the arts, and large parts of academia. The power of the state has been enlisted behind their agenda on such matters as striking down via the courts conservative restrictions on abortion and gay marriage and in the shaping of public school curricula. An open question for the future is whether cultural dominance today will ultimately lead to political dominance in the future, and thus a more thoroughgoing rollback of liberal rights by progressives.
This is part of a new project of Fukuyama’s, called American Purpose. Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
I have quoted the paragraphs with which I most disagree. Fukuyama’s entire essay is excellent, and almost every paragraph was tempting to excerpt. But I put a greater weight on cultural breakdown–see the David Brooks essay–than political breakdown, and so I am more concerned with the threat from the left.
nationalist conservatives have actually taken power and have sought to use the power of the state to dismantle liberal institutions and impose their own views on society as a whole.
When I read something like this, I always wonder what the author has in mind. In this case, which liberal institutions does he think that Trump has “dismantled?”
+1 Exactly.
I see Trump as a moderate Republican with the lone exceptions being the Twitter trolling and narcissistic tendencies.
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, ACB, corporate tax reform. These will go down as his most significant accomplishments. How precisely are these anti -liberal? And, has he not spent like a drunken sailor on COVID relief?
>—-“How precisely are these anti -liberal?”
“These” are not anti-liberal. “These” are straw man arguments.
Asking your Justice Department to lock up the political opposition to long prison terms for treason IS what is anti-liberal.
Refusing to commit to accepting any election result other than your own victory IS what is anti-liberal.
Maintaining that you cannot even be investigated for possible crimes as a siting President IS what is anti-liberal.
Claiming you can pardon yourself for any and all crimes while admitting that your supporters wouldn’t care if you shot someone on Fifth Ave IS what is anti-liberal.
Thanks for using all caps in certain instances. My silly MAGA head would not have been able to understand your feelings otherwise.
Most of what you mention is just trolling and meaningless threats. He was impeached after all was he not? And, do we not have robust institutional safeguards against such threats? And, didn’t Hillary already come out on the record indicating that we should not accept the election results?
Where we probably agree: the strange orange man is not a decent human being. And, it’s sad to see.
Where we probably disagree: I’ll take four more years of the strange orange man over Biden. The latter will not be an adequate safeguard against the socialist woke left and I’ll avoid this at all costs.
Lastly, I look at the results that we’ve gotten (mentioned above) vs. what we would have gotten under Hillary. I’m quite happy, even if I have to hold my nose.
>—“Thanks for using all caps in certain instances. My silly MAGA head would not have been able to understand your feelings otherwise.”
Well, if you are that traumatized by these few capitalizations you had best not expose yourself to any Trump tweets.
>—“He was impeached after all was he not? And, do we not have robust institutional safeguards against such threats?”
Yes, he was impeached and the Senate Republicans refused to even have evidence presented at his trial. So much for institutional safeguards. If a Democratic Senate ever did that to protect a Democratic President your head would explode.
>—“And, didn’t Hillary already come out on the record indicating that we should not accept the election results?”
No. She said that under no circumstances should
Biden concede before all the absentee ballots are counted. This was in the context of Trump saying that the count should be over by the end of election day. She did not say, and did not mean, that Biden should refuse to concede after (whew, barely resisted the urge to capitalize there) all the ballots were counted if he lost.
>—-“The latter will not be an adequate safeguard against the socialist woke left and I’ll avoid this at all costs.”
Your best protection against the socialist woke left would be a moderate wing of the Democratic Party not a moderate wing discredited with two consecutive losses to one of the most unpopular Republican candidates in history.
In a two party system no party is much more than one recession from power. Bush (41) was one of the most popular Presidents in history right after the first Iraq War. That wasn’t enough cushion for him to survive a recession a couple years later. If the woke left ever does take power you will then realize how unwise some of the authoritarian precedents set under Trump have been.
>—“Lastly, I look at the results that we’ve gotten (mentioned above) vs. what we would have gotten under Hillary. I’m quite happy, even if I have to hold my nose.”
It is always easy and impossible to disprove to claim that you have offered a better alternative than some imaginary counter factual. That’s why this is the weakest form of argument. In any event, the issue now isn’t do you prefer Trump to HRC. It’s do you prefer Trump to Biden for the next four years.
@Greg G
Thanks for the reply!
“It is always easy and impossible to disprove to claim that you have offered a better alternative than some imaginary counter factual. That’s why this is the weakest form of argument.”
It may be an imaginary counter factual, but I’m thinking these thoughts:
1) HRC would have never nominated anyone like Kavanaugh, Gorsuch or ACB. Isn’t it uncontroversially obvious or have I missed something?
2) HRC would have never supported corporate tax reform similar to what we got. Do you have anything that indicates otherwise? And, after 8 years of complete non-action from Obama?
And, to your point, what does Biden have up his sleeve? Never ending lockdowns, green new deals, woke social justice, more Russia conspiracies? Thanks, but I’m going with something different than this.
Hans,
I don’t doubt you would have been much less satisfied with HRC’s court picks and corporate tax policy.
I do think that the Senate and Supreme Court will be a much more effective check on Biden (who isn’t that radical anyway. He is a classic establishment figure.) than on Trump in the next four years. Trump has captured his entire party in a way that no Democrat ever captures their party. Even if the Democrats do eke out a Senate majority many of those new Senators will be from states where they have a fairly conservative electorate that those Senators will be concerned not to offend. You can count on most politicians to put their own interests first.
Nothing could be more certain to put the Democratic Party into the hands of the people you fear most and further radicalize them than another four years of Trump. I am arguing that you are misjudging where the real danger of ultimately empowering the people you most fear will come from. A real conservative should fear the increased executive power that comes with the norm breaking that Trump routinely indulges in. Even if you did trust Trump to wield that power (which you shouldn’t) you will certainly regret it if AOC/ Bernie wing of the Democratic Party ever comes to power. And unless you are envisioning a one party state, another Trump term will increase the odds of that. Many, if not most, elections come down to referendum on the status quo rather than a battle of ideologies. That’s why so many people voted for both Obama and Trump.
The argument against this is what happened with the Affordable Care Act. The Democrats did get a number of their members to vote against their interests. Several senators were willing to sacrifice their political careers in order to pass it, and the party was willing to give up its senate majority in order to pass it. You can say they didn’t know that for sure, but it was all pretty predictable since at no point did the ACA ever poll well.
Everything that you mention is just trolling or baseless threats. Yes, it is troubling, but at the end of the day it amounts to nothing.
Do you have any actual documented cases of these abuses? Do we not have robust institutional safeguards against these? He was impeached after all (based on nonsense) was he not?
Where we probably agree: the strange orange man is not a decent human being.
Where we probably disagree: I’ll take four more years of the strange orange man over the woke socialist left.
At the end of the day, I look to the results (mentioned above) vs. what we would have gotten under Hillary. I’m happy with this.
Has anyone been locked up for treason? Has he not left the whitehouse after defeat? Etc. I think you have supported the original comment.
He brags that he ordered the suspect in a crime to be executed before he could be tried. Pretty significant imo.
[Welcome to Greg C – we need more comments critical of Trump, tho more links would be better]
Both Brooks and Fukuyama are mostly correct about the lack of trust problem, as Brooks’ states:
Levels of trust in this country—in our institutions, in our politics, and in one another—are in precipitous decline.
He and Fukuyama, and our new Trump-hating Greg C (thanks for being here – you’re wrong about so much, tho!) add bad things Trump “says” without links, but not quite bad policies.
Brooks is quick to target “white nationalists who helped bring Donald Trump to power” with no mention of the far far larger Tea Party conservatives unsatisfied with the establishment. Of course, the lying press falsely demonized the law abiding, peaceful, litter-cleaning up conservative protests. So much less bloody than the dirty Occupy movement which soon followed, and included multiple reports of rape and other crimes. And the media’s lying about “mostly peaceful” protest riots of looting and destruction show how Trump is correct that the media is an “enemy of the people”.
And more Trump-blaming: Donald Trump is in the process of shredding every norm of decent behavior and wrecking every institution he touches. Brooks lists complaints of irresponsible behavior, non-protection from COVID infection, lies about his own health; undermines the basic credibility of gov’t, and
threatens to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy in November and incite a vicious national conflagration that would leave us a charred and shattered nation.
As usual with elite liberals, not quoting Trump’s actual words, but instead claiming that what he meant was terrible. None of the criticisms are cited, nor specific enough to refute individually. Unlike Obama’s big lie: “You can keep your doctor”. Clear. At least 32 times. False. And known by Obama to be false.
Instead of truthful complete quotes of Trump, critics like these two and Greg C, have lists of his terrible words, without intellectual honesty. He’s right in his claim that Americans no longer trust American institutions. The cancer of distrust has spread to every vital organ.
But he totally fails to accurately lay the blame.
On Political Correctness. On PC lies. The lie that men are women are “equal”, when it’s obvious that they’re not. Yes, they should be treated equally under the law. And some minority of each type of person has one, some, or most characteristics of the other type of person. But they’re never “equal” in the most important biological reproductive functional ways.
Nobody should trust anybody who falsely claims equality between non-equal people. But the college elites are now indoctrinated with that untruth.
Brooks looks back starting from the “false summer of the 1990s”, like when The End of History… was published, cementing Fukuyama’s fame by his famously wrong book title of 1992. He correctly talks about the importance of trust, and how beneficial it is – and how trust in institutions have lowered it, identifying Vietnam, Watergate, Iraq war, financial crisis, election of Donald Trump [again Trump hate]. Yet he fails to name any of it government failure. And the contentious, Roe v Wade quasi-amendment is not mentioned.
There’s evidence to suggest that marital infidelity, academic cheating, and animal cruelty are all on the rise in America This seems true – with the first two supported, in practice, by rich and powerful Dem supporters like Pres. Clinton & Senator Ted Kennedy (cheating in Spanish at Harvard, as well as marital cheating), and Jeffrey Epstein [didn’t kill himself] and those who flew with him and had illegal sex with girls. No surprise, these examples not mentioned.
Black Americans have been one of the most ill-treated groups in American history; their distrust is earned distrust. Yes, and especially by the politicians they’ve been voting for. The Dem ex-KKK Party which keeps promising them easy better lives, but their lives are getting relatively worse (or, as a group, more Black individual kids have far worse family lives.)
Brooks goes on and on without mentioning some other highlights to increase distrust (like Tea Party above):
The election of Black man Obama was partly to prove America wasn’t too racist to elect a Black – the INCREASE in racism and calls of racism was a betrayal of this trust.
The “financial crisis” had many people lose houses or walk away from overpriced mortgages – but rich and responsible banks got Bush-Obama bailouts “to save the system”. To make most of the rich avoid most of the financial pain they deserved.
Obama & H. Clinton attack Libya. “We Came. We saw. He Died” Clinton joked, although the murderous dictator had given up nukes and wanted better relations. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-on-qaddafi-we-came-we-saw-he-died/
Later the US Ambassador is killed by terrorists, but Clinton and Obama lie about – his admin claiming it was riots caused by a videotape for a week. Obama doing some CYA on mentioning general “terror” but clearly avoiding calling that attack terrorist.
Libya remains a mess, worse than Iraq.
Obama illegally gives guns to Mexican criminals – US border agent Brian Terry dies, Mexico waits for apology
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/05/11/mexico-is-still-waiting-for-an-apology-for-operation-fast-and-furious-n2568565
Obama’s IRS illegally denies tax exempt status to new (Tea Party/) conservative groups.
Sec. Clinton has illegal non-gov’t server for gov’t business, with illegal Secret documents. No trial, no indictments. Lyin’ FBI head says “no intent” to be illegal. Most evidence destroyed.
Clinton’s campaign colludes with some Russians to create false dirt on Trump, used against Trump in the election, and especially after. Illegal investigation, illegal name unmasking, an essentially illegal investigation – which did find some illegal activity from some of Trump people, but the illegal stuff unrelated to any Russian Collusion. Real crimes by the FBI / Obama admin folk – but no indictments (until this year, one minor admin guy admitted to lying in an email). His name? Where’s the publicity from the “enemies of the people”?
From an ex-Libertarian conservative PC-hater, these are big reasons to distrust gov’t. No intellectual who fails to list at least some of these illegal but unpunished actions by Obama & Clinton Democrats should be taken very seriously if they are talking about “trust” or “rule of law”. Because they are either intellectually flabby, or dishonest.
Fukuyama’s similar and similarly flabby effort talks about Liberal Democracy being under attack, from both Right and Left and he fears more the Right. He does a great job defining the Liberal part:
“The liberal part, by contrast, refers primarily to a rule of law that constrains the power of government and requires that even the most powerful actors in the system operate under the same general rules as ordinary citizens.”
And then he blindly, or with serious silliness, claims “the more insidious threat arises from populists within existing liberal democracies who are using the legitimacy they gain through their electoral mandates to challenge or undermine liberal institutions.”
No. NO NO NO.
The threat is from institutions who job is to make and enforce the rule of law, equally to all citizens. Ordinary, extraordinary, Republican and Democratic. Right now there are lots of examples where this doesn’t happen.
He comes close to admitting this near the end of his mostly very coherent yet strictly PC note:
“There has been a sustained intellectual attack on liberal principles over the past three decades coming out of academic pursuits like gender studies, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and queer theory, that deny the universalistic premises underlying modern liberalism. The challenge is not simply one of intolerance of other views or “cancel culture” in the academy or the arts. Rather, the challenge is to basic principles that all human beings were born equal in a fundamental sense, or that a liberal society should strive to be color-blind. These different theories tend to argue that the lived experiences of specific and ever-narrower identity groups are incommensurate, and that what divides them is more powerful than what unites them as citizens.”
Republicans were willing to admit that Nixon was wrong in his coverup in Watergate. Democrats were unwilling to admit that B. Clinton committed perjury in his sexual harassment suit, and have been unwilling to admit to the illegal actions and lies of Obama noted above. Democrats have successfully demonized Republicans, including dishonest “Borking” of SCOTUS nominees Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Kavanaugh in 2018. So most students from Dem dominated colleges distrust Republicans, often for emotional more than rational reasons.
Dishonesty in practice from Dem dominated organizations and “leading”/famous Dems, makes more folk distrustful of such institutions.
The Dems continued support for dishonest candidate Joe Biden, and dishonest PC junk & Critical Race Theory junk, will make normal folk continue to distrust Dems more. As well as the Dem dominated orgs which promote the dishonesty.
It’s actually good that normal folk are increasingly distrustful of dishonest elite Dem dominated orgs. It’s bad that the orgs continue being dishonest.
Moo Cow – are you talking about Trump’s drone strike on a terrorist?
Or what? Link?
I’m not so keen on war by drones, but it’s coming sooner than we think.
hate to sound like a hedgehog, but it all goes back to envy. Helmut Schoeck got it right in Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior. Illiberal progressivism is nothing but socialism and envy powers socialism. Christianity suppressed envy for a couple of centuries and made innovation and economic growth possible. But the West has abandoned Christianity for the past century and so envy has exploded. See my article here: https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/rogermckinney/2020/10/01/socialists-attack-on-greed-is-really-concealed-envy-n2577284
I also try to understand what the Dems fear will happen if the GOP has control, and what the GOP fears will happen if the Dems have control.
I understand what the GOP fears: packing the Supreme Court, eliminating the electoral college, heavy-handed gun control, adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, heavy-handed climate change legislation, reparations for slavery, large tax increases, erosion of religious liberties, open borders, and a return to Obama-era foreign policy.
What do the Dems fear? 1) that Roe vs. Wade will be overturned, 2) that fewer immigrants will be allowed to come to the U.S., and 3) that environmental standards will slip.
What am I missing? What else do Dems fear?
Well, here’s one personal incomplete compilation:
Immediately, that if there is no Democratic trifecta, Republicans will allow no action, including no further coronavirus-related relief, and indeed will actively sabotage any positive efforts to make Biden look bad. Say what you will about the efficacy or wisdom of Democratic proposals for stimulus, but if passed with the President’s support they would have made him look good politically.
That the right to vote will be curtailed in through (further) targeted suppression, obstacles, gerrymandering, etc.
That the majority of the populace will become (more) disconnected from the results of the electoral system due to the structure of the Senate and Electoral College.
That the deficit will be exacerbated by further tax cuts and used as an excuse to enact drastic cuts, the kind included in each proposed executive budget or Paul Ryan budget, to the welfare state, which will undoubtedly be unpopular but can be snuck in in various ways (such as reimbursement cuts to traditional Medicare).
That the current and future Supreme Court will stop all efforts at national regulation on issues such as climate change by (for all intents and purposes) overturning Chevron deference. Generally speaking, that ill-defined, unelected, lifetime power is a bad way to run a country.
Perhaps most fundamentally, that a party that can nominate and a polity that can not only elect, but re-elect, someone who is to the most minimal observation not competent at or interested in governing, who glories in making national division worse, and who is a prototypical purveyor of Harry Frankfurt’s definition of bullshit.
I think we need USAexit.
Sorry, but this seems like full blown case of TDS. Maybe I’m not following the correct sources, but I know no one from the GOP advocating for any of this. Please provide links.
Hans-
You have pulled this several times in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Rather than go over every element in the list Helmholtz provided, let’s just do a little test to see if you can accept any evidence of any kind.
https://ballotpedia.org/Chevron_deference_(doctrine)
Please share your thoughts on this one point. Advise if you think it is unfair to say that Republican efforts to weaken Chevron deference is “Fake news” or a legitimate characterization of current administration efforts.
In the long-winded list of conspiracies, interesting to see that you’ve only picked out one issue.
Question: how many times over the last few days was the Chevron deference brought up by Democratic Senators in their questioning of ACB?
In other words, if it’s such a vital issue for the future of the republic, why such little time devoted to it?
Hint: probably because it’s a strange far left wing fetish or your Senators are guilty of gross negligence for not having brought it up.
In any event, the deference that the Supreme Court owes to Congress or administrative agencies is far from settled law. That’s why you’re having to rely on a single 1980s decision vs. a robust consensus on the matter.
Separately, still waiting for you to accept my bet on the Rittenhouse matter. As stated previously, I’ll give you whatever terms you’d like.
Hans-
I told you why I picked out one issue. I wanted to see if you would defend your comment in good faith. There was no point in discussing any number of other complex issues if you can’t be open to anything. Ever.
I did not pick it because it was most important, only that the answer was so obvious.
BTW, I don’t think the position of the Trump administration on this is particularly controversial, and my only gripe with it is that I prefer that we tighten regulatory discretion in a more straightforward way.
I vehemently disagree with what I consider to be absurd claims of asymmetrical intolerance, which I see in volume on both sides. This has apparently caused you to confuse me with a Progressive. I’m not. I just usually disagree with you. There’s a difference.
Calling this assertion a “conspiracy” and deflecting, when many a Republican would have no problem with the characterization shows the nature of your stance.
Finally, I didn’t accept your bet on the Rittenhouse matter both because I don’t care to engage with you on that level, and also because I didn’t disagree about his chances of avoiding a conviction. I believe I told you that at the time.
@ Tom DeMeo
I quite like your comments, so thanks.
I made two points to your original question:
1) if the Chevron deference is worth talking about, then why wasn’t this brought up over the last few days? ACB was grilled over multiple days on many many topics.
2) what deference does the SC owe to Congress or the administrative branch. Based on precedent, I’m guessing not much, but you can correct me. It is a point of contention.
Can you please address these vs. a meta-analysis of the sorry state of my ideology?
Lastly, I’m indifferent on your status as a progressive, conservative or however you want to self-identify.
Hans-
I won’t answer your questions because you have refused to answer mine.
I haven’t addressed your ideology. I addressed your ability to discuss your ideology.
@ Tom DeMeo
“I won’t answer your questions because you have refused to answer mine.”
Sure – how can I help? Which questions would you like to see addressed?
And, yes, I’m a silly MAGA conservative with a small mind. Please pardon me.
The current administration has more or less totally surrendered the issue of entitlement reform. I’m utterly incredulous that Democrats are worried about deficits in their own right.
There’s also no reason to expect a conservative Supreme Court would stand in the way of any sane climate change policies (e.g., a carbon tax). If climate regulation means speech laws proscribing ‘climate change denial’ or national ‘climate lockdowns,’ those the SC would probably stop, and well they should.
There’s also nothing Republicans can do to ‘further disconnect’ election results from the popular vote. The electoral college and the existence of the senate are just facts of the status quo. It’s also only an indirect ‘fear’ in the sense that Democrats fear not being able to fully come into power.
Voter ID laws (aside from not being voter suppression by any coherent definition of the term) haven’t had the effects predicted by doomsayers on voter turnout.
By and large, I think Trump has been pretty underwhelming as an antagonist, who’s deviated little from the platform of a moderate Republican, other than in ways where he’s been ineffectual (failing to stem immigration) or Democrats aren’t in serious disagreement (protectionism and deficits). Which is why 90% of outrage over Trumps is over things he says, tweets, or does personally (or with his staff) rather than actual public policy.
On entitlement reform, they keep putting it in the proposed budget every year. Of course, they don’t want to actually suffer the political consequences of their ideas–no doubt they’d rather try to force it through on a Democratic president’s watch and then blame it on him or her–but what can we do except go on what they say?
A conservative Supreme Court could certainly reverse the case that upheld the Clean Air Act justification for climate regulation. Would they want to? I don’t know, but 4 wanted to then and it is far from impossible that 5 or 6 will now.
Regarding the Senate and EC, of course, they likely will not by new policy widen the disconnect between the majority and the rule. The point there is that merely by regularly winning under such circumstances, things will get worse. To quote from the Federalist Papers, “It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the People of America; and two thirds of the People of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller.”
Voter ID laws are only a small part of voting restrictions. When the people of Florida chose to restore the rights of felons to vote, the legislature responded by requiring them to pay back fines and then not making it available to know how much the fines are.
I agree that Trump and the conservative movement have been pretty ineffectual in the last few years. He doesn’t give a shit, the movement overreaches, and they can only seem to focus on judges and taxes. Well, fine, they’re bad at using their power, for now. But being bad at being bad is not really reassuring.
“He doesn’t give a shit, the movement overreaches, and they can only seem to focus on judges and taxes.”
+1
This is probably true. But, I’ll take it over Russian conspiracies, the green new deal and never ending lockdowns.
Brooks and Fukuyama are representatives of two sleazy, illiberal segments of the public relations industry: journalism and think tanks. Often working hand in hand, both deal in public relations control and manipulation, disinformation, political mud slinging, doing end runs around campaign finance, and lobbying work outside the regulatory framework. Dark money paymasters, sometimes from abroad, call the shots (see
https://static.wixstatic.com/ugd/3ba8a1_4f06e99f35d4485b801f8dbfe33b6a3f.pdf ).
With tech firms able to directly censor political opponents (see Amazon canceling Shelby Steele’s film), both journalism and the tanks have had to compete harder to stay relevant and maintain finance and funding. “Go broke, get woke” as ? observes, explains the dynamic. New outfits like American Purpose -whatever type organization it might happen to be – ratchet the competition for donor dollars even higher. I suspect google and/or another member of the alphabet keiretsu is funding them.
At any rate, that they openly target functional democracies that enjoy great popular support amongst their electorates is all you need to know to conclude that they they are illiberal and dishonest. They repeat the same old vague general accusations of authoritarianism with no specifics. The same tiresome ludicrous repeat a lie a million times business.
When one reads a book like The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman by Caroline Robbins, one can’t help be struck by the vast numbers of important, original thinkers who contributed to political debate eloquently and thoughtfully. Where are such voices today? We live in a dark age of gross propaganda.
If the new generations wish to free themselves and avail themselves of opportunity, the most efficacious steps they can take are to deregulate campaign finance to starve the dark ecosystem of journalism and think tanks that profit from the inability of donors to act directly, and to eliminate tax exemptions for these businesses. They are selling a product like any other and should be taxed accordingly. The tax exemptions allow many fine young minds to get lured into these shadowy and dishonest worlds where their potential to make meaningful contributions will only be thwarted and their minds poisoned.
The nice part about David Brooks is his consistency over the years. For every societal shortcoming, in this case a breakdown in trust, there is always a top down government program to solve the issue.
Just hold on to your wallet because it’s going to be expensive and most likely ineffective. The fact that trust grows and recedes organically is completely lost to him.
I liked the characterisation in both essays of liberalism as “culturally thin”, ie saying nothing about the meaning or purpose of life, ethics or morality beyond a vague, bland, tolerant prosociality.
People need more than that, as both authors agree. It’s the usual clash between scalable social protocols and the variants of biological human nature which don’t react well to ‘value atrocities’! Hence social justice as well as regressive patriotism.
Where I differ is that I don’t think there are “fixes”, only best-guess predictions about how social conflicts are likely to play out. A renewal of strong economic growth leading to new employment and career-progression prospects would do a lot to transcend some of the sillier ideologies currently informing mass protests. Sadly there is no route from here to there which doesn’t plunge a lot deeper into the abyss.
I think the winning formula might be a combination of strong state (authoritarian, with the political support to deal ‘robustly’ with dissenting social groups) along with an emphasis on communitarian values and transfer payments (which you could call ‘levelling up’). I don’t call for such a solution, I merely observe that that’s the direction of movement.
Fukuyama does a pretty good job of summarizing difference in outlook in allocation of concern, in the long term, over illiberalism on the right vs. left. To classically liberal-minded people more concerned about the right, the current administration is the focus. To those more concerned about the left, long term cultural trends are what matters most. To the latter group, the idea that politics is downstream of culture is the key point. From this perspective, Trumpism (and the GOP more generally) has probably hit its high watermark, we’re just waiting the cultural and demographic shift to finally hit electoral politics. Moreover, the capacity for leftist cultural power even without political power to affect our daily lives has been impressive in its own right. I worry way more about offending (for career reasons even) out-of-power progressives than offending in-power conservatives. Information sources censoring the right seems more of an issue than censoring the left. Ironically, some people who are much more concerned about the right, like Scott Sumner, seem to agree that Trumpism is on its way out and is rapidly losing appeal, as indicated by polls.
People more concerned about the right, I gather, believe that the extreme ‘woke’ movement is either a temporary fad, or basically harmless; that there’s little risk they’ll ever obtain real power, or if they do, they won’t actually try to restrict speech or enact the far-reaching racially discriminatory policies they verbally endorse. It’s possible it’ll turn out to be an ephemeral fad; maybe it’ll be like the 1968 generation that was ultimately followed by the Reagan era. But maybe the ideology of people like Ibram Kendi is basically where the gay marriage movement was 15 or so years ago (not saying changes in attitudes on gay marriage were a bad thing, but it’s a good case study in how rapidly political attitudes can shift). Just how far left the Overton window lurched in the last 6 months alone is foreboding. A year ago, affirmative action was something on which reasonable people could disagree. Now public opposition to it is considered unambiguously racist and can get you fired. It’s thus easy to imagine how still fundamental liberal views (like opposition to ‘hate speech’ laws) could be socially unacceptable in a few years.
For two years the GOP controlled all three branches of government. All they managed to do in that time was to pass a tax cut.
I really don’t understand the level of fear on the Dem side. What terrible thing do they think Trump is going to do?
I seriously want to understand. Helmholtz mentioned “voter suppression.” I suppose by this he means asking voters to show an ID. Does that really justify the level of paranoia we have been seeing?
As long as voters don’t punish political parties on the margin for intentional exaggeration, expect to see more of this from both parties.
Dear Lysander, you are free to ask what I meant!
Voting suppression includes things such as:
1) Voter ID laws when not combined with national free access to permissible ID, but rather allowing only some IDs (come on, not even State-run college IDs?)
2) Closing of voting locations, particularly targeted towards minority communities
3) Ever-finer gerrymandering intended to disenfranchise minorities and the other party
4) Purging voters from the rolls using extremely inaccurate methods.
5) As I mentioned in an earlier post, subverting the re-enfranchisement of felons.
Please note, I don’t claim every attempt is completely invalid, suppresses many votes, or swings an election. But they make it fairly clear what they want to do.
One of my favorite left wing arguments…voter suppression!
Need a license to operate a motor vehicle….check
Need an id to fly on a plane….check
Need a passport to travel across the border…check.
Need an id to sign a mortgage or pretty much any other legal document…check.
Need some form of id to vote…hold on! We need to explore this further!
yes, Hans – the voter suppression “fear” by the Dems is mostly dishonest.
It’s an attempt to make fraud easier.
So don’t trust that critique reason.
Dem hypocrisy, and untrustworthiness, not mentioned by Brooks, is why trust has gone down so much. When more than 10% of Blacks vote Trump, indicating they trust Trump more than Dems, will Brooks say it’s because Dem mayors & governors have been promising and failing to help Blacks?
Brooks will not say that – which is why we shouldn’t trust him.
[purely personal attack. trying to keep those off this blog. –ed.]
The point about progressive antiliberals not having gained political power is telling.
Progressives fr Nehru to FDR enthusiastically dismantled liberal constitutionalist limits on their power but their fans are happy to labelresult “liberal”.
This environment has spawned an even more illiberal left, but that’s because the existing elite culture exalted safety and equality above liberty.
It’s also a lie. James Damore being wrongly fired by Google, and the gov’t accepting that firing, shows the prog anti-liberals have gained lots of power already.
Every professor getting fired for free speech is further proof.
CA gov. Newsome is against judging people as individuals.
I’m sorry if I crossed the line, but I don’t think it is unfair to point out hypocrisy and inconsistency.
For example, we are all being told that we should feel sorry for Hunter Biden for his substance abuse problems. However, it seems fair (at least to me) to point out that his father was proud of being a drug warrior, and pushed hard to make the penalties for crack cocaine much worse than for other forms of cocaine. So it seems fair to point out that Hunter’s dad did not seem to have much sympathy for those with substance abuse problems.
In the case of Brooks, his essay is primarily about trust. I won’t say any more.
Brooks mentions Robert Putnam a couple of times, but he does not mention one of Putnam’s most famous studies on social trust. There is a reason Brooks is welcome at the NYT and The Atlantic.
A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?
It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.
But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam—famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement—has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.
The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation’s social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam’s research predicts.
https://wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/downside-diversity
Sorry, Arnold. I laugh at the paragraphs from Brooks and Fukuyama that you quote in this post. Also, I laugh at Tyler Cowen’s last two columns in Bloomberg. Too many words to say nothing, or worse. Yes, we want to make sense of what is happening and may happen, but they are just promoting vague, unfounded solutions. Unfortunately, these days we can laugh at the ideas of too many eminent observers.
If we want to talk politics we should not forget that politicians compete for power. What they say and do has to be analyzed in the context of such competition.
And if we want to understand the economy and speculate about the future we cannot forget politics.
This is David Henderson’s critique of the last Tyler Cowen’s column on GBD.
https://www.aier.org/article/is-cowen-right-about-the-great-barrington-declaration-part-1/
I agree with David. More importantly, I think it’s a terrible column because Tyler fails to consider explicitly what has been going in the U.K. where now the Labor Party has opted for lockdowns and the government for what looks like Tyler’s vague position summarized in the idea “we are against the virus, not against vulnerable people” which is mostly a critique of herd immunity than a serious position.
I have been living in continental Europe (Germany) for the past 8 years. Brooks’ description of the new generation is what is already in place here. Values emphasizing:
“not liberation, but security; not freedom, but equality; not individualism, but the safety of the collective; not sink-or-swim meritocracy, but promotion on the basis of social justice.”
This is an uncanny description of the European mentality which in my experience completely transcends country lines: from Italy, to Germany and Scandanavia, to Poland.
Take what you will from this observation with regards to any predictions about both the US and Europe.
Oh, it’s very much the case here, too.
I thought Brooks’ explanation why (that they grew up in tumultuous times) seemed plausible, too.
Disagree. I look at the last 40 years as the greatest period of peace and prosperity the world has ever known.
I think this has produced fragile kids.
Here is what Robert Noyce, co-founder of Intel, was doing when he was 12:
Robert Noyce, American physicist and electronics entrepreneur, was born on December 12, 1927. A tinkerer by inclination, he gained notoriety in his hometown of Grinnell, Iowa when, at the age of twelve, he and his older brother built a glider with an 18-foot wingspan, which they launched off the roof of a barn. Noyce survived the plunge and wrote about this experience in his application essay to Grinnell College.
https://www.lindahall.org/robert-noyce/
That’s a fair point, but at least one of his points is that so many children do not have a stable family environment these days, which is probably a major contributor to what is going on.
Like the monster in a bad horror movie, the demon of collectivism just seems to be come back again and again.
There is unfortunately a lot more heat than light in the comments threads to this post. I think I should get my review of Levin’s latest book out of mothballs (I was holding it for a contest, but that’s taking too long).
There are two main ingredients to maintaining effective, trustworthy institutions: accountability and neutrality.
If an institution or its members can perform poorly and nothing bad happens to it or anyone, then it won’t perform well.
If an institution can’t be relied upon to treat people equally, then people will suspect they can’t get a fair shake.
Since we are not angels, it is human nature to pick easy wrongs over hard rights unless one is under a lot of pressure, i.e., “properly incentivized”.
The trouble is, the incentives for most institutions are just all wrong now.
That’s why it is *not* “time to build”, because, whatever you build will just face and be corrupted by the same lousy and pervasive structure of bad incentives that characterize your whole society, culture, and civilization. There is this whole thing called “public choice” which has produced some good insights into why and how these things go wrong, and, more importantly, how it’s really fundamentally impossible to fix so long as you keep operating in the same general structure and framework.
Here is a way to understand. Imagine trying to fire a match in a storm. You strike the match against the grit, but the wind and damp won’t let it light. What you have to do is carefully cup your hand around it, protect it from the gusts and rain, and in that protected environment, then the match can be trusted to do what you need it to do.
Can you build a storm-proof match? With matches, maybe. With human, no. That’s like asking if you make angels, which you can’t. The metaphor is for institutions which you are building out of humans and social technology, and the problem with humans is that they don’t come in a rain-proof variety. If you titled a book “A Time To Build Angels”, people would laugh. If you title it, “A Time to Build [institutions]” people don’t laugh only because they don’t understand that the part in brackets is really [“institutions … which in the present social environment and cultural moment would have to be run by angels”].
Another metaphor is a garden. Gardens need weeding and fertilization. If you don’t do either, you will end up with depleted, infertile soil, covered in weeds. If someone tells you it is “Time to Plant!”, you will laugh, because without weeding and fertilizer, your seeds with get choked if they even sprout at all.
So, instead of a time to build, it’s time to restore good incentives. Time to tend the garden.
How do you restore good incentives? If the state is creating bad incentives (e.g., “too politically important to fail”), get the state out, or let people fail / get fired. If the bad incentives exist where the state isn’t (monopolistic situations, social pressures in favor of discrimination), get the state in, to insist on competition, fairness, de-politicization, and neutrality.
You don’t need to build better institutions, and you can’t in a bad environment. But if you fix the key incentives, and restore the right pressures, they will rebuild themselves automatically, spontaneously, across the board.
The trouble is that neither Brooks, Levin, nor Fukuyama want to say this, because they will get in trouble with people who prefer things the way they are.
These bad incentives are only bad from the point of view of having institutions which are competent and trustworthy. That is one master. But another master is ideology and a political agenda, and for people interested in that agenda, politicization at the cost of competence and trustworthiness is a feature, not a bug. It is yet another tool of power and control. No one can serve two masters, and institutions can’t do it either.
Institutions must be purely mission-focused to avoid this corrosion of trust and competence. There is no alternative. The temple is for worship, not commerce, so money-changers, get out.
But if you are going to say this, the money-changers are going to see you as their enemy, use all their resources to crush you, and, they can because, after all, they have the money. If you don’t want to make enemies, then you could always recommend someone build another temple down the block, and then just watch it fill up with money-changers too.
“I think I should get my review of Levin’s latest book out of mothballs (I was holding it for a contest, but that’s taking too long).”
Go for it! I, for one, don’t really care what Levin has to say as long as it’s more top down solutions to our problems. BTW – no one cares about joining the rotary club or any of the other nostalgic institutions.
My take: robust institutions are primarily built organically based on shared values. You aren’t going to be able to manufacture (or reform) them because no one knows how. Totally unrelated, but how is that nation building going in Iraq and Afghanistan? Have we been able to successfully export our institutions there yet?
That’s a heck of a thing for Brooks to write. Brooks has been advocating for the opposite of liberation, freedom, and individualism for as long as I’ve been aware of him.
His fuss is that the anti-liberation, anti-freedom, and anti-individualism ethos that has arrived is not the one that he wanted.
Indeed. Brooks lets the mask slip when he writes:
Countries that fell somewhere in the middle—including the U.S., Germany, and Japan—had a mixed record depending on the quality of their leadership. South Korea, where more than 65 percent of people say they trust government when it comes to health care, was able to build a successful test-and-trace regime. In America, where only 31 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Democrats say the government should be able to use cellphone data to track compliance with experts’ coronavirus social-contact guidelines, such a system was never really implemented.
Also, his constant reference to China as a “high trust” society gives him away. I assume he has been to China. Did he not see the surveillance cameras everywhere? They are not hidden. Every 30 yards or so in the cities there are poles with cameras sprouting from them. It is very creepy.
It is sad, because years ago I used to like Brooks. At one point in the mid 1990s I liked Krugman, too. The follies of youth.
[see my long critique above – somehow wrongly in reply to Moo Cow. Short reply there follows.]
Two kinds of justice mistake: wrongly punishing the innocent (false positive), and wrongly not punishing the guilty (false negative).
Both writers fail to discus how many of both types of justice fail have been happening, and especially how Trump & Reps are mostly innocent (not fully) but getting punished, while many Dems are guilty (Clinton emails, Comey Russion Hoax) without indictments; often with almost no investigation.