A funny thing is happening even as conservatives seek to strengthen their strangle hold on America in November. The real world consequences of their dystopian world view are starting to get a little too big to ignore. David Brooks latest column is a screed decrying the loss of the "Organization Man" who believed in government and other institutions that helped bulwark society against collapse.
...It’s a failure of governance around the world. I wonder if we are looking at the results of a cultural shift.
A few generations ago, people grew up in and were comfortable with big organizations — the army, corporations and agencies. They organized huge construction projects in the 1930s, gigantic industrial mobilization during World War II, highway construction and corporate growth during the 1950s. Institutional stewardship, the care and reform of big organizations, was more prestigious.
Mr. Brooks is looking at ebola and ISIS, and is suddenly nervous that there doesn't seem to be any effective countervailing forces as were once found in the world.
The Ebola crisis is another example that shows that this is misguided. The big, stolid agencies — the health ministries, the infrastructure builders, the procurement agencies — are the bulwarks of the civil and global order. Public and nonprofit management, the stuff that gets derided as “overhead,” really matters. It’s as important to attract talent to health ministries as it is to spend money on specific medicines.
Gee, you think a man who has dedicated his life to advancing conservatism is somehow unable to make a simple connection? Is he unable to see that conservatism's aversion to government that attempts to do anything beyond protecting the property and power of conservatives has crippled our ability to deal with problems as a society? Is it possible a belief in "the markets" as the solution to everything is a false hope? Is it possible there is a "public good" after all? Is it possible the never-ending conservative assault on government has bad consequences?
All that, and he doesn't dare mention Global Warming?
As recent books by Francis Fukuyama and Philip Howard have detailed, this is an era of general institutional decay. New, mobile institutions languish on the drawing broad, while old ones are not reformed and tended. Executives at public agencies are robbed of discretionary power. Their hands are bound by court judgments and regulations.
emphasis added
Mr. Brooks for some reason is unable to name those who are at the forefront of the faults he decries. Unable to look in a mirror, perhaps?
His conclusion is stated with the artless banality at which Brooks excels.
When the boring tasks of governance are not performed, infrastructures don’t get built. Then, when epidemics strike, people die.
"Boring tasks of governance"? The stupid, it burns.