Our Institutions

I wonder if Fareed Zakaria understands the implications of the argument he’s making in his latest Washington Post column? He opens by taking note of the crises unfolding in South Korea and France and then turns to the United States:

The common theme is that people increasingly do not trust traditional democratic institutions and the elites who run them. In a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 85 percent of U.S. adults said elected officials “don’t care what people like me think.” Eighty percent said they felt anger or frustration toward the federal government. This sense of rage about the governing elites is not limited to the United States. Mainstream political parties everywhere — from Germany to Japan — are being battered in the polls.

We are living through a period of rapid change, what I have called an “age of revolutions” — economic, technological and cultural. Old patterns are being cast aside. South Korea now faces a new era of slower growth and demographic decline, all combined with greater social aspirations. Europe faces a new era of threats from Russia, economic competition from China and an America less willing to be a generous leader.

Here’s his conclusion:

Liberal democracy has been marked by its emphasis on procedures, not outcomes. We honor the process even when we dislike the outcome. The drive to quickly get what we want, even at the cost of bypassing procedures and undermining institutions, is deeply dangerous. That is true when it is Trump appointing slavishly loyal apparatchiks to head key departments of government. And it is true when Joe Biden pardons his son after promising the American people he would not interfere with the workings of the justice system. If, out of frustration with our current, transitory problems, we give up on the enduring institutions that have built liberal democracy, we will be turning our backs on one of humankind’s most significant achievements in modern history.

Let’s go back to my opening sentence. Taken that way Mr. Zakaria’s assertion of the centrality of procedures over outcomes is a frontal assault on “equity” as it has come to be defined: equal outcomes. The emphasis on equity has been a cardinal feature of the Biden Administration.

Procedures over outcomes isn’t the only institution that underpins our liberal democracy. Among them I would list the English language, the traditional nuclear family, the significance of churches and various fraternal organizations, the rule of law, a stable currency, the practices that deTocqueville called out nearly 200 years ago, and others. Which institutions does Mr. Zakaria think need bolstering? Just the emphasis on procedures over outcomes? I would add that there is a significant fraction of our society that believes that fundamental change is necessary and urges throwing all institutions over the side.