Institutional Failure - A Conservative Concern

The late, great American historian Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989) stated during an interview toward the end of her life that she feared institutional failure in America. What does institutional failure mean? It means people withdraw their support from and confidence in the organizations and conventions that orchestrate their lives. An example of this is the Weimar Republic in Germany after World War I. Rampant inflation destroyed public confidence in the democratic political institutions of Germany, which, in turn, opened the door to extremists solutions to the institutional failure - the Communists and the Nazis. When institutions fail they create vacuums. Extremists, the opposite of prudent Conservatives, are likely to fill these vacuums. The result is the society is worse off. In other words, the devil we know is better than the devil we do not know. Therefore, public opinion polls that show only 10% of the American public have confidence in the Congress of the United States of America today ought to be a red flag to Conservatives that the country's political institutions may be in a meltdown mode. What will replace them? Will it be, for example, a dictatorship as an escape fromthe chaos that follows institutional failures? In 1976, I had the good fortune to have lunch in Kingston, Ontario, Canada with the late Canadian political leader Dalton Camp (1920-2002). He explained why he had become a political Conservative. He was a veteran of World War II, and he was a student of the causes of that disaster. For him it was in the institutional failure of the German Weimar Republic; he did not want history to repeat in Canada. Tuchman and Camp agree. To risk institutional failure is to open the door to extermists who usually create dictatorships of some kind, overtly or covertly. I am amazed that the members of our Congress show no concern for public perception of them. What might be the alternative to the present Congress? Would it be direct action in the streets until the public demands resotration of order at any cost of liberty? Recall the French Revolution of 1789. The institutions of the monarchy failed in France. What filled the vacuum was chaos and terror. To stop the terror and chaos, the people welcomed the military dictatorship of Napoleon, who solved political issues with grapeshot in the streets against demonstrators. Tuchman feared we are edging toward such a moment in America. I share her concern. By destroying traditional order we are opening the door to disorder that will lead to desperate measures to restore order, and that new order is not going to be run by sugar plum fairies. The rampant greed that is undermining our American institutions is going to take us into the night - and not too far in the future at the rate we are degenerating.