February 9, The Idiot God. It's hard to imagine libertarianism flourishing as a political movement anywhere besides the United States. That disaffection manifests in a dizzying array of forms: the retreat into religious community or cultural chauvinism; the cynical anomie of many cosmopolitans and elites; the back-handed embrace of forms of corruption as being more human and reliable ways to obtain services.
Secularists worry about the sources and character of religious resurgence. I tend to think that what is going on is a little of all these things and more besides. They point to all the positive things that government does in America, and all the positive things that it might do. What is it that makes many Americans, as well as other societies in the world, receptive to the idea that government is more enemy than friend?
And why do I think that unease or antipathy is in complicated ways justified or understandable, that it comes from someplace authentic that I think liberals might learn to tap into and address sympathetically?
I came across two examples recently that brought this home for me in different ways, one relatively innocent, the other profoundly disturbing. This is a pretty common practice throughout the urban Northeast. You shovel a space, you mark it with a chair or a cone, and expect it to be yours when you come home.
The marking lasts for a few daysβusually until the city has managed to clear many streets and the parking situation in general improves. Municipal governments tend to disapprove of the practice for two major, somewhat divergent reasons. The first is on grounds of public order. When someone breaks the unwritten code, removes a chair or cone and takes the space someone else cleared, the possibility of retaliation, with all its potential for explosiveness, is very real.
