SOURCE: “Robert Nisbet's Quest,” in Weekly Standard, Vol. 2, No. 3, September 30, 1996, pp. 14-15.

In the following essay, Brooks praises Nisbet's analysis of the sources of increased political centralization and the inevitable effects of this centralization on social institutions.

Robert Nisbet was ailing when Hillary Clinton uttered the most remarkable line of the presidential campaign—“it takes a president” to raise a child. Nisbet died on Sept. 9 of prostate cancer at the age of 82, ending a distinguished career as a sociologist and public intellectual. But his life's work is a refutation of Mrs. Clinton's declaration. Nisbet was a devastating critic of the politicization of everyday life, of the way family, friendship, and community have been suborned by the state. He anticipated, by nearly half a century, much of the current talk about family, neighborhood bonds, and reducing the size of government. And many of the answers he gave, starting with...