SOURCE: “Robert Nisbet vs. the Nanny State,” in American Enterprise, Vol. 7, No. 6, November-December, 1996, pp. 17-18.

In the following essay, the editors of the American Enterprise argue that Nisbet's focus on the need for strong social institutions has become a dominant theme in American conservatism.

Just as “big government” has become anathema and “community” and “civil society” all the trend, America has lost one of her pioneering thinkers on the connection between the two: former AEI scholar and academic advisor Robert Nisbet.

The state grows not primarily because of conniving special interests, or ideologues, or irresistible historical or economic forces, Nisbet maintained, but because it is a lazy solution to mankind's deep hunger for community—our enduring need “for a clear sense of cultural purpose, membership, status, and continuity.”

By absorbing the functions and authority of smaller and more intimate associations that have historically supplied community—families, neighborhoods, churches...