The book will not be available for another month. My review is here. An excerpt:
His diagnosis blames both the left and the right for promulgating an untenable vision of an individualistic society under the umbrella of the central government. The result has been to demean and weaken mid-level social institutions, including local government, organized religion, and the charitable sector. He argues that such institutions are the best hope for addressing challenges that require collective action but for which the federal government is poorly equipped.
“Levin also argues that we have reached the limits of the benefits of the trend toward individualism that took off at the end of the 1960s. Indeed, he would say that in many ways we have gone beyond those limits, ”
When I see pseudo-trans-genders (by pseudo, I refer to that they aren’t even committing to a gender, we are creating a new category of people who we define as the privileges granted to them) being supported in being able to have an option on which bathroom to use (at a sports stadium do they get to pick the one with the shortest line? If so, now THAT’s progress!) I don’t define that as an extreme individualism. Extreme individualism would be all the who use that bathroom or dressing room getting an equal say in who gets to use the bathroom with them.
That’s not individualism, that’s democracy.
Democracy can have several meanings. I’d contend that The Supreme Court deciding how someone uses their bathroom is not democracy.
You said “all who use the bathroom . . . getting an equal say” in who else uses it. That would be democratic decision-making, not individualistic. I agree with you that having the Supreme Court make the decision is not democratic.
Whatever rule is decided upon for the bathroom, the decision is social in nature, whether everybody participates (directly or through representatives) in the deciding (democracy) or only members of an unaccountable body like SCOTUS or the EU commission. Either way, it is not an “individual” decision.
Of course, a private owner can individually decide who gets to use which bathroom on his or its property. But it the owner’s freedom of action in making the bathroom rules is a social determination. For example, owners in some parts of the country used to have separate black and white bathrooms. Obviously, that’s against the law now.
Yeah, I disagree.
I’m devastated.
The result has been to demean and weaken mid-level social institutions, including local government, organized religion, and the charitable sector.
Yuval Levin loves the pre-WW1 days. Haven’t these institutions be weaken since the Progressive era not just the post-war era? And in reality, it was not the Progressive Roosevelt & Wilson that brought these changes but basic technology changes that made more institutions national and then global. A small community could no longer be contained as people, companies and capital could move across state lines.
Frankly with corporations and capital less tied to a community, I don’t see how local government, organized religion, and the charitable sector can really grow. Levin sounds a bit like the displaced union worker, that the global economy ran down these local institutions.
In Japan people complain about these same trends too. They are global and technological after all.
At the same time, they have no crime, no dirt, no immigration. When a disaster like the nuclear reactor happened, everyone helped out. Even the Yakuza.
When New Orleans had a hurricane it became a nightmare. A sign that, should our scaled up systems of control ever break down, people in America will tear each other apart.
Trends can only go so far on their own. There is room for human action that has a meaningful impact on outcomes.
Oh come on. Everybody knows that Japan’s problems are the result of not having enough immigration from Guatemala!
> To put this another way, it is the cultural status of the administrative state that needs to be changed. Its (un-) constitutional status derives from its cultural status.
Yes … all these folks who propose laws and regs that have the force of law should work for Congress – not for the executive branch. Lawmakers should make the law. No rinky-dinks like Congressional vetoes.
Regards,
Bill Drissel
Frisco, TX
I agree with your assessment that Levin is just as guilty of the anachronistic nostalgia with which he charges both conservatives and liberals. “Burkean Conservatism Is Over”, sad to say.
Oh man, now I really do wish that I also had a review copy of the book and could engage in some structured debate with the thesis.
The final paragraph of your review:
“I worry that mediating institutions have lost their effectiveness.
The broad middle class has given way to a bifurcated society, with the highly-educated and the less-educated no longer attending the same churches or sharing similar life experiences.
The close-knit neighborhood has given way to the anonymous city, where local government is mostly responsive to powerful public sector unions and favor-seeking businesses. Perhaps this means that Levin’s vision is nearly as unrealistic as those that he criticizes. Restoring our mediating institutions might be yet another exercise in trying to squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube. ”
Let’s consider that first sentence of your final paragraph about “mediating institutions,” which are organizations:
“These organizations, consisting largely of personal relationships, we shall call we shall call “instruments” as long as they achieve the purpose of the [social need] level with relative effectiveness. But every such social instrument tends to become an “institution.” This means it takes on a life and purposes of its own distinct from the purpose of the level; in consequence, the purpose of that level is achieved with decreasing effectiveness. In fact, it can be stated as a rule of history that – ‘all social instruments tend to become institutions.’
“Every instrument consists of people organized in relationships to one another. As the instrument becomes an institution, these relationships become ends in themselves to the detriment of the ends of the whole organization.”
Carroll Quigley, “The Evolution of Civilizations”
(pp.101,102) [Liberty Fund Edition]
Those facilities (instruments) that came into being as a result of human interactions to perform “mediating” functions to which the return of the “toothpaste” is suggested are now largely “institutionalized.” (The “Education Systems,” e.g.) They have their hierarchies and “established orders.”
While we are beginning to see some (limited) developments of **new** or different facilities (Charter Schools?) to displace institutionalized instruments; they have not yet begun significantly to invade the provinces of those “mediating institutions [which] have lost their effectiveness.”
It is possible that “our” social order is losing what has been its forms of cohesion as new forms of facilities are needed and developed in the relationships of individuals who “recover” a sense of commonalities of motivations – and, that those who do not share those commonalities struggle to maintain the existing institutions.
Does this book compliment Martin Gurri’s “The Revolt of the Public” which I read based on your recommendation?
It seems from your review, they are seeing the same issue with a large central government becoming ineffective due to the impossibility of it being able to solve complex problems and both suggest to look outside of the government to smaller institutions for the solution.
Yes, I believe that Levin and Gurri share that theme.