Keel of Authority

Do you feel buffeted by crazy viewpoints on both sides? Stop the Steal. Anti-vaxxers. Cancel King Lear. America is evil.

Mass idiocies are amplified by social media, but all this nonsense is enabled by something else: the progressive disempowerment, since the 1960s, of people in positions of responsibility. University presidents, school principals, public officials, and others are no longer allowed to uphold institutional values. Who are they to judge? Their authority to assert boundaries of reasonable behavior has been replaced by a procedural framework striving for a utopia that is value-free.

The resulting vacuum of authority is filled by extremists. Instead of burning out, their passions are stoked by zealots on the other side.

Your freedom is being ripped away by fringe activists who deny free speech, assault the institutions of democracy, and compromise public health with unscientific beliefs. Nor can any school, police department, or other institution work sensibly or fairly if the people in charge are disempowered from acting on their best judgment.

There is one solution: People in charge must take back the authority to uphold core institutional values — including free speech, acceptance of election results, mandates for public health, and accountability all around. Here is Philip Howard's column in Newsweek explaining why a free society cannot long survive, or move forward, without the keel of authority.

  • Writing in the journal Democracy, Professor Beth Simone Noveck, author of Solving Public Problems, argues “there is an urgent need to upgrade the public sector’s capacity to tackle existing challenges and to train public servants to solve problems more effectively.”

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