He wrote,

Systems are hard. Institutions are hard. If your goal is to replace the current systems with better ones, then destroying the current system is 1% of the work, and building the better ones is 99% of it. Throughout history, dozens of movements have doomed entire civilizations by focusing on the “destroying the current system” step and expecting the “build a better one” step to happen on its own. That never works. The best parts of conservativism are the ones that guard this insight and shout it at a world too prone to taking shortcuts.

Thanks to a commenter for recommending the post. Martin Gurri’s fear in The Revolt of the Public is that exactly the form of nihilism that Alexander fears is what the Internet facilitates.

Here is a thought: If you could push a button that would destroy everyone’s faith in government, in order that they would become receptive to libertarianism, would you do it?

Maybe the question is too ill-specified. But my answer would be “no,” and in that sense I am conservative. I certainly would like to see people change the way that they think about government, so that they wish it to take on more less responsibilities and face fewer more constraints, but I do not want to blow things up so that we can start over.

My view on Clinton vs. Trump has been different. I see Trump’s authoritarian tendencies as almost certain to be restrained by the media, by left-wing elites, and by important elements of the Republican establishment. Even if we grant that Clinton is cautious, how would she react to, say, a government debt crisis or continued escalation of he costs of Obamacare? My guess is that her response would be authoritarian, with more regulation and controls. And there would be no effective institutional opposition.

However, it is not an easy call. I agree that a Trump victory would probably harm conservatism and libertarianism more than a Trump defeat. And that is worth taking into consideration.