Institutions Have Consequences

philnotfil · Nov 14, 2022

Some interesting thoughts on the role of institutions in shaping political thought. And the consequences of the elimination of so many of our institutions.

Institutions Have Consequences – James M. Patterson

However, Tocqueville noted that Americans did not always succumb to general ideas, and the reason for this was their institutions. Because Americans participated in local government, civic associations, and religious activities, they were well aware of the details behind the events in their lives. Moreover, their experience of self-government taught them that behind the Geist directing History was a bunch of schlubs holding a meeting. These conditions are largely missing from the lives of many Americans, especially conservatives working in elite institutions, and the result is that they have little understanding of republican self-government and, hence, a sense of bewilderment about how their country is so different from what they were raised to believe it was.
Click to expand...

Contemporary American conservatives understand that ideas matter, but they often do not have any experience in these kinds of self-governing institutions. Yes, ideas matter, but institutions matter, too. Indeed, the ideas that conservatives seek to conserve emerged in a feedback loop between improving institutions and the ideas about why they improved. For example, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations came after he and other Scots recognized the improvement in the quality of life in Scotland and sought to explain it. Indeed, a contemporary reader might expect Smith’s magnum opus to be brimming with explanations for their present ills. They are there, but they are often situated in concrete details of 18th-century trade, taxation, and currency. Smith requires careful study, of the kind that dispels general ideas, but democratic peoples have little patience for this. As James W. Ceaser notes, “Without recourse to general ideas, no science…would be possible” yet “[p]olitical science is the careful construction of knowledge in which general ideas are founded not on abstract principles from self-contained intellectual systems, but on the painstaking study of particular cases.”
Click to expand...

After conservative collegiates graduate and make their way into public life, they cannot find the institutions where people express ideas—except online. The online forum is a poor institution for, well, anything. Online audiences are attracted to conflict and pornography (or both). The digital device often has a small digital screen, making it hard to read anything longer than 240 characters, especially when there are limitless alternatives waiting in one’s feed. The experience of social media is inherently isolating, since one must silently look at a phone. These features should remind us of the problem of individualism that Tocqueville feared. I remember meeting some young, upwardly mobile Washington Zoomers whom I largely knew through social media, and our conversation inevitably was about social media. When our talk reached a natural pause, all of them reached for their phones.
Click to expand...

When young conservatives operate under these conditions, it is no surprise that they have latched on to paranoid pathologies that once operated at the fringes and now have found their way into serious discussion. Without political parties hashing out policy priorities and vetting candidates, congressional committees transforming political preferences into statutes, and civic associations forcing social media addicts to “touch grass,” every fight comes down to identity politics. Conservatives always had these fissures, but they are hyper-charged into anarcho-syndicalist, Catholic integralist, neo-Hapsburg monarchist, Chestertonian distributist, Lee-statue-defending neo-confederate, and ever-more insane permutations of this sort.
Click to expand...

Log in

Welcome home, fellow Gator.

The Gator Nation's oldest and most active insider community

Institutions Have Consequences

philnotfil GC Hall of Fame

Log in

Chat

Forums

Insiders Only

Free Sports

Plaza

Members

Welcome home, fellow Gator.

The Gator Nation's oldest and most active insider community

Institutions Have Consequences

philnotfil GC Hall of Fame