A moral rot has been spreading through the politics of our cities and our suburbs for the last few decades, a rot dressed in earnest language about “community character,” “environmental review,” and “local control.” This is the rot produced by the ethos of NIMBY — Not In My Backyard — a rot that has been the relentless force methodically hollowing out our democracy, all while its perpetrators proclaim themselves nothing less than its last hope and final rampart. NIMBY Democracy is a civic order in which the very people who posture as progressive, virtuous guardians of the public good (those who live in the upper middle class suburbs of metropolitan areas, and those who are energetically gentrifying large stretches of our inner cities) devote their political capital not to championing the material betterment of the least among them, but to assiduously undermining and crippling that very public good by defending exclusive neighborhoods, protecting property values and blocking homes for the working poor. The result of their tenacious “civic engagement” (they will proudly post on their …