"...The old adversary culture of the intellectuals has turned into a mass adversarial cynicism. The common assumption is that elites are always hiding something. Public servants are in it for themselves. Those people at the top are nowhere near as smart or as wonderful as pure and all-knowing Me.
You end up with movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Parties that try to dispense with authority altogether. They reject hierarchies and leaders because they don’t believe in the concepts. The whole world should be like the Internet — a disbursed semianarchy in which authority is suspect and each individual is king.
Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following. Democratic followership is also built on a series of paradoxes: that we are all created equal but that we also elevate those who are extraordinary; that we choose our leaders but also have to defer to them and trust their discretion; that we’re proud individuals but only really thrive as a group, organized and led by just authority.
I don’t know if America has a leadership problem; it certainly has a followership problem. Vast majorities of Americans don’t trust their institutions. That’s not mostly because our institutions perform much worse than they did in 1925 and 1955, when they were widely trusted. It’s mostly because more people are cynical and like to pretend that they are better than everything else around them. Vanity has more to do with rising distrust than anything else..."
I think this is a good time to bring up "true free men don't need leaders."
The New York Times. Where free minds come to die.
As for the claim that OWS and the Tea Party "try to dispense with authority altogether" all I can say is bah-humbug.
The Tea Party, as far as I can tell, never ONCE called for the dispensing of authority. They certainly don't want goverance to be like the Internet. And quite frankly, without the internet, man would no rediscover his own private identity and his place in the world. The world Brooks and his statist cohorts defend is dead.
The overwhelming, over-arching issue with the TP was fiscal responsibility. But we live in a time where even that is an 'extremist' position. They did not seek to overthrow anything. OWS - ironically given it was supported by liberals who treat government authority as though it's a pleasurable dildo to be stuck up their arses - probably contained more an element of dispensation to the extent anarchists may have been part of the movement.
Anyway.
What is "just authority' anyway?
Brooks can't possibly, with a straight face, suggest Americans support this crop of politicians in Congress. Has he seen the list of cronies and crooks in the ranks? Shoot, just look at the people of character "leading' Massachusetts.
It's outrageous, if not immoral, for Brooks to lament the fact no one chooses to give into their authority. Maybe the people are right. Why should they be blindly led by such people?
The hierarchy he attempts to defend is corroded and crusted over with corrupt self-serving minds.
The NYT better get its ass in high gear and start thinking or else it really will die a slow, hideous death.
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