Followers, yes. Leaders?

Everyone had a good laugh earlier in the week when Clare Malone, writing at FiveThirtyEight, relayed a story involving my colleague Yuval Levin, whose excellent new book, The Fractured Republic, argues that the Right and the Left both are paralyzed by nostalgia for a misunderstood post-war economic and political order. When Malone asked members of the Republican Freedom Caucus what they thought about Levin’s argument, the answer was a sneer from Representative David Brat of Virginia: “We’re supposed to respond to this guy? How many followers does he have?” Malone: “There was silence for a moment; it was difficult to discern whether he meant Twitter followers or policy acolytes.”

All publicity is good publicity. All followers are good followers, and they’re the only thing that really matters. It doesn’t matter what’s being said — it only matters that people are talking about you. Etc. That those views are childish and borderline insane does not mean that they are not useful. Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, and Kim Kardashian all are rich for the same reason, and Trump is the Republican presidential candidate for the same reason that he’s rich. He is the parasite, and we are the host, because we, as a culture, have agreed to be the host. Maybe we did not set out to do that, but that is what we have done, in much the same way that while nobody ever sets out to become a drug addict, nobody becomes one exactly by accident, either.

“Populism” isn’t much more than a polite term for mob rule, but it is the mood of the moment, and Republicans are, to their discredit, embracing it with great energy. They may even make something of it. But they’ll lose something, too. The presence of followers does not, as it turns out, imply the existence of leaders, properly understood. Political liberty under the rule of law is a fragile condition, and it requires us to be better than this.