The Quest for Community

Sociologist Robert A. Nisbet, usually labeled a conservative, believed that our emphasis on individual freedom ignored the human need for connections, for community.  His most famous book, first published in 1953, was entitled The Quest for Community.  I’m currently discarding many of my books.  When I pulled that one out of the shelf, I wondered if it was as good as I remembered it.  I’m re-reading it.  

In 1953, of course, the major fear was Communism.  World War II had ended eight years earlier, and Fascism was also on peoples’ minds.  Nisbet wrote about how the “communal state” was attempting to control people’s lives.  And above all other forms of political association it is the totalitarian Communist party that most successfully exploits the craving for moral certainty and communal membership.  In it we find states of mind and intensities of fanaticism heretofore known only in certain types of religious cult.

We don’t worry so much about Communism.  What I’d like you to do is where Nesbit wrote “Communist party,”  substitute “MAGA movement.”  

Look at the people at a Trump rally.  Look at the way they hang on to his words.  People who attend those rallies talk about how unified the people are, how happy, how connected.  I believe most of them are people who lacked ties, who felt alienated.  Now they have a purpose, and they have a community.  You can’t compete with that using logic and facts.