THE DEATH OF AUTHORITY?

At first, I thought this alarmist column was just silly. Then I began wondering, is there some truth in it?

We fools thought that votes could be fairly counted, that elections measured and formed the popular will, and that the law was a shield to protect our elections, not a sword to shred them. We thought we were most Americans. But others, dangerous strangers, people alien to our sense of ourselves, have homegrown in our midst. They have usurped us in our own country. They are Americans by birth, but they might as well be Martian reptiles for all the moral kinship they have with us.

Al Gore and his band of terrorist lawyers are plundering our innocent laws, and are cynically using those very laws to render meaningless the election those laws were meant to protect. In the past week it has become quickly fashionable to claim that we have plenty of time, that they just want a full and fair count of the votes, that no harm can come from these little manipulations of the process. But to paraphrase Albert Camus: No one should think that an election victory torn from such convulsions will have the calm, tame aspect that some enjoy imagining. This dreadful travail will give birth to a monster.

By the time I read the conclusion, I was almost convinced:

The corrosive cynicism of the last half-century, the deep sense of irony that sees all things at an angle instead of straight on, abetted by the swift and massive flow of supporting evidence in our information age, has remorselessly undermined respect for our great institutions — religion, church, parents, the military, business, Congress, the courts, the presidency, heroes. We have seemingly taken these blows in stride. Now this denigrating impulse is hitting bedrock — our fundamental organizing mechanism, the elective process itself. It is time for wise men to tremble.

I'm almost convinced. It sounds a lot like Chapter 6: The Death of Authority, in Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy At Home And Abroad.