Thank you for first sharing a difficult story. It underscores exactly what Fukuyama argues—that institutions are not abstractions but the ground on which liberty either stands or collapses.
Still, I want to resist the now-common assumption that the best way to be political is to be personal. The glorification of “the personal” has become sentimental, even misleading. Face-to-face encounters don’t inherently build civic trust; they can just as easily corrode it through humiliation, anger, or abuse of power.
“Closeness," a dinner invitation, and a pleasant weekend, are the oldest tricks in a lobbyist’s playbook—transparency turned into performance, exploiting the American weakness for instant familiarity. In the end, democracy survives not on closeness but on distance—institutions strong enough to keep power from preying on the weak.
I have found Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” chastening—and, more so, Teresa Bejan’s magisterial “Mere Civility” about the limits of toleration and the accommodation of hatred.
Thanks for another post on matters directly affecting us all. I write as one of your paid subscribers. I want to save civility from the positive thinking industry’s endless day of wine and roses—where disagreement drowns.
Thank you, Mr Green, for your post and for opening the civility discourse up a little more, to the “personal” rather than the “public”. I read Alexandra Hudson’s story about her brief jailing with a sadness because, as a woman, I well recognized the experience of being helpless before unjust authority, of having to be rescued by someone more powerful, by someone who cared.
One story that I have kept close to my heart, a little story, was of my mother. She was, to every outward eye, a “normal” 1950s era housewife, someone who never would march in a protest, never grace the boardroom of a powerful corporation. But what I remember of her was the day that she came home from substitute teaching and told us that she had faced down a principal who was about to strap the hand of a scared little six year old boy. She called him to the reality: “You’re a big man, and he’s a little boy. Are you really going to do this?” He didn’t, instead he gave the little boy a stern lecture on his behavior and walked away.
While I was not physically there, her recounting was so powerful that I see it in my mind’s eye 65 years later. Her in her best dress and stockings, sweeping the little boy behind her as she faced the 6’ principal in all his authority. And it inspired me, on so many occasions, small occasions, to protect the vulnerable with simple actions; sometimes something as simple as topping up an obviously needy person’s money at the grocery till. To be that woman who recognized her own power in that moment.
Thank you for responding as you did. I’m glad you shared this story—its force is evident. My own intent had been to emphasize the public as much as the personal, since institutions safeguard liberty when individual courage alone is not enough. But I value how your example shows the two dimensions meeting in lived experience.
I agree about the public side. As I re-read our exchange this morning, something occurred to me. Strapping a child is no longer permitted in publicly funded schools. Training about child neglect and abuse is now mandatory for public school employees. So, as a society, we have progressed from relying on individual consciences, such as my mother’s, to “do the right thing” to ensuring a code of conduct to protect, not only the weak, but also to educate those who might not understand, or would ignore, the consequences of their actions.
Thank you for first sharing a difficult story. It underscores exactly what Fukuyama argues—that institutions are not abstractions but the ground on which liberty either stands or collapses.
Still, I want to resist the now-common assumption that the best way to be political is to be personal. The glorification of “the personal” has become sentimental, even misleading. Face-to-face encounters don’t inherently build civic trust; they can just as easily corrode it through humiliation, anger, or abuse of power.
“Closeness," a dinner invitation, and a pleasant weekend, are the oldest tricks in a lobbyist’s playbook—transparency turned into performance, exploiting the American weakness for instant familiarity. In the end, democracy survives not on closeness but on distance—institutions strong enough to keep power from preying on the weak.
I have found Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” chastening—and, more so, Teresa Bejan’s magisterial “Mere Civility” about the limits of toleration and the accommodation of hatred.
Thanks for another post on matters directly affecting us all. I write as one of your paid subscribers. I want to save civility from the positive thinking industry’s endless day of wine and roses—where disagreement drowns.
Thank you, Mr Green, for your post and for opening the civility discourse up a little more, to the “personal” rather than the “public”. I read Alexandra Hudson’s story about her brief jailing with a sadness because, as a woman, I well recognized the experience of being helpless before unjust authority, of having to be rescued by someone more powerful, by someone who cared.
One story that I have kept close to my heart, a little story, was of my mother. She was, to every outward eye, a “normal” 1950s era housewife, someone who never would march in a protest, never grace the boardroom of a powerful corporation. But what I remember of her was the day that she came home from substitute teaching and told us that she had faced down a principal who was about to strap the hand of a scared little six year old boy. She called him to the reality: “You’re a big man, and he’s a little boy. Are you really going to do this?” He didn’t, instead he gave the little boy a stern lecture on his behavior and walked away.
While I was not physically there, her recounting was so powerful that I see it in my mind’s eye 65 years later. Her in her best dress and stockings, sweeping the little boy behind her as she faced the 6’ principal in all his authority. And it inspired me, on so many occasions, small occasions, to protect the vulnerable with simple actions; sometimes something as simple as topping up an obviously needy person’s money at the grocery till. To be that woman who recognized her own power in that moment.
Thank you for responding as you did. I’m glad you shared this story—its force is evident. My own intent had been to emphasize the public as much as the personal, since institutions safeguard liberty when individual courage alone is not enough. But I value how your example shows the two dimensions meeting in lived experience.
I agree about the public side. As I re-read our exchange this morning, something occurred to me. Strapping a child is no longer permitted in publicly funded schools. Training about child neglect and abuse is now mandatory for public school employees. So, as a society, we have progressed from relying on individual consciences, such as my mother’s, to “do the right thing” to ensuring a code of conduct to protect, not only the weak, but also to educate those who might not understand, or would ignore, the consequences of their actions.