It’s not hard to see that authority has fallen on hard times in American public life. For generations, activists on the cultural and political Left have exhorted us to “question authority” and Hollywood has served up a steady diet of heroes and heroines to model for us such courageous non-conformity. Conservatives, while somewhat more likely to stand up for religious and perhaps parental authorities, have not hesitated to lay their own axe to the tree of political authority, preaching a political gospel of liberation from “big government”—a term elastic enough to encompass the Social Security Administration and the small-town zoning board. Even the so-called “New Right,” which loves to mock the libertarianism of the Old Right, tends to be authoritarian only when fantasizing on Twitter; in real life, most of its adherents are as likely to jaywalk or open-carry as anyone.
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