Right, my point was that I understood “institutional erosion” to mean “damage to norms that are central to our constitutional order.” I didn’t understand it to mean more literally reducing the funding or personnel of any government body. For example, if Congress passed an act tomorrow closing the Smithsonian, I wouldn’t consider that “institutional erosion” in the sense we’re talking about.
Likewise, if an administration legally wound down ICE, the Education Department, or whatever, that isn’t what I mean by “institutional erosion.” If the HHS secretary believes that vaccines cause autism, that’s also not what I mean. People sometimes use the term so loosely that they imply that it’s “institutional erosion” to do things that create tons of outrage from the prestige media, as if a core norm of our constitutional order is not to pass policy that contradicts that class.
Right, my point was that I understood “institutional erosion” to mean “damage to norms that are central to our constitutional order.” I didn’t understand it to mean more literally reducing the funding or personnel of any government body. For example, if Congress passed an act tomorrow closing the Smithsonian, I wouldn’t consider that “institutional erosion” in the sense we’re talking about.
Likewise, if an administration legally wound down ICE, the Education Department, or whatever, that isn’t what I mean by “institutional erosion.” If the HHS secretary believes that vaccines cause autism, that’s also not what I mean. People sometimes use the term so loosely that they imply that it’s “institutional erosion” to do things that create tons of outrage from the prestige media, as if a core norm of our constitutional order is not to pass policy that contradicts that class.