Ah, maybe you were using a looser definition of “institution.” I think it’s fine for the government to move toward dismantling the Department of Education, for example, because I don’t think of it as a core “institution” in the sense we’re talking about.
Do you think it’s institutional erosion when Biden withdrew from Afghanistan, or if a Democratic president were to abolish ICE in 2029?
I’m unclear what institution is directly implicated in the Afghanistan withdrawal, so I don’t have an opinion on whether it qualifies as erosion or not.
Abolishing ICE would be taking down an institution, I suppose. I take (what I assume is your implicit) point that preserving an institution isn’t per se virtuous. Perhaps ICE is beyond reform and would need to be abolished and replaced instead, and perhaps the same is true of the institutions Trump is attacking?
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.
Ah, maybe you were using a looser definition of “institution.” I think it’s fine for the government to move toward dismantling the Department of Education, for example, because I don’t think of it as a core “institution” in the sense we’re talking about.
Do you think it’s institutional erosion when Biden withdrew from Afghanistan, or if a Democratic president were to abolish ICE in 2029?
I’m unclear what institution is directly implicated in the Afghanistan withdrawal, so I don’t have an opinion on whether it qualifies as erosion or not.
Abolishing ICE would be taking down an institution, I suppose. I take (what I assume is your implicit) point that preserving an institution isn’t per se virtuous. Perhaps ICE is beyond reform and would need to be abolished and replaced instead, and perhaps the same is true of the institutions Trump is attacking?
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.