Monthly Archives: October 2017

Our Malignant Ruling Class (and Its Enablers)

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in American Federalism, Localism, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

plutocratsMy Facebook Memories reminded me today that I shared this piece by John Stossel exactly a year ago.  Given what’s transpired over the past year, it’s worth revisiting.

Stossel observes that America has historically been bereft of the “old aristocracy” of Europe, but this hasn’t stopped many self-anointed meritocrats – at least, those who pass as such – from upbraiding the rest of us about our moral, ethical and social failings.

This script plays out day after day, not only among elites but also among those of the countless millions of ordinary Americans who are influenced to one degree or another by this imposed ethos.

I’m reminded of an especially annoying account shared with me a few years ago by a very talented former co-worker.  A native Alabamian with a palpable but cultivated Southern drawl, he enrolled in one of New York’s highly regarded Research I universities to complete a second graduate degree in his field. The course of study was an applied curriculum and he frequently was called upon to prepare projects to present to one of the classes.

The professor prefaced one of his presentations with the denigrating remark, “Let’s hear what Billy Bob has to say.”

Now, imagine the sh*t storm that would have erupted if this professor had prefaced a Muslim student’s presentation with something like “Let’s hear what Muhammad has to say” or an Indian Hindu student with “Let’s hear what Apu has to say.”

Granted, this professor technically can’t be defined as a member of the ruling class – he just rates as an enabler –  but this kind of brazen elitist contempt for people in so-called Flyover Country and particularly the South certainly reflects the cultural legacy of our ruling class.

We Southerners have shared these accounts among ourselves for years. A relative related to me a few months about about how her daughter-in-law, who developed rather flat General American accent in the course of growing up as an army brat, always feels compelled to intercede on behalf of high school teacher who conducts an annual student tour of New York City.  The teacher possesses a pronounced Appalachian twang, which frequently invokes the contemptuous obstinance of museum directors, tour guides and head waiters.

Granted, museum directors and tour guides do not rate as ruling class members, but their expressions of palpable aversion to this hapless educator and others speaks volumes about how successfully our self-anointed elites have sewn contempt for Southerners and other perceived bumpkins over the course of generations.

As I’ve said before, folks, I’m no Trump partisan, but I certainly understand and sympathize with the anger that has given rise to the Trump phenomenon.

Perhaps the serious blows dealt recently to Big Entertainment via the Harvey Weinstein revelations and to Big Media following new discoveries about DNC connections with the Trump Dossier will go a long way toward changing this dynamic.

Maybe the day is fast approaching when all or most of the facets of the Establishment left will be held to thedame level of contempt as Harvey Weinstein.

Yes, things may be changing – one can hope, at least – but for now, though, the ruling class still occupies the driver’s seat.  As Stossel stresses, it still decides “which ideas are acceptable, which scientific theories to believe, what speech is permitted.”

Pushed into a Corner

26 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Mainstream Media, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

tucker-carlson“You get a volatile society when you change it overnight, and you don’t give people a chance to weigh-in on whether they like it or not.”

This was Tucker Carlson’s response last night to Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a journalist who contends that white nationalists David Duke and Richard Spencer constitute a bigger threat to democracy than Islamic Jihadism.

I’m no more of a Duke or Spencer fan or white supremacist (whatever the hell that means) than anyone else who values simple human fairness and decency.

Even so, within the last decade elites in America and Europe, often using extralegal means, have undertaken a rapid and virtually wholesale demographic transformation of the West. And this has been accompanied with a strategy of using official or quasi-official media sources to call out any dissent as rank expressions of racism and white supremacy.  Recall the widely reported account of Angela Merkel asking Mark Zuckerberg near an open microphone about what could be done to repress Facebook criticism of her immigration policies.

These elites have placed all of us firmly on terra incognita. To my knowledge, no demographic change in history has taken place this rapidly and on such a vast scale. We can scarcely predict the social and cultural upheaval that will follow this change, though it sure strikes me as excellent cover for the imposition of more soft authoritarianism on the part of our elites.

Equally disturbing, most of this has taken place with comparatively little public input or debate. And on the few occasions when dialogue has occurred, dissidents haven even been told to emigrate themselves if they do not find this demographic upheaval to their liking. (Read Douglas Murray’s “The Strange Death of Europe” for more details).

When people, especially free people in societies that purport to be democracies, are pushed into a corner, their natural response is to express anger and outrage. Yet, virtually all protest is countered by elites with allegations of racism and white supremacy.

Small wonder why the little people in Deplorablia are growing so restive.

The United States of Bananas

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Hillary-clinton3

Hillary Clinton

We really seem to be living in a banana republic – the United States of Bananas, as I’ve come to call it.

A friend has upbraided me constantly for voting for Trump, characterizing him as a pathological liar and a narcissistic vulgarian. Say what you will about Trump – he ultimately may prove to be the most morally and ethically challenged chief executive since U.S. Grant – but he pales alongside the Clintonian crime syndicate, especially in light of what has been revealed in the last couple of days.

A year ago, I was set on supporting the Libertarian Johnson/Weld ticket purely as a protest vote. But the realization eventually dawned on me: How could I, in good conscious, even contemplate a protest vote when American freedom, at least what remains of it, seemed to be hanging by a thin and perilously frayed thread?

And, frankly, I don’t understand how anybody can read the latest news and not conclude that this country has come to resemble more and more a Latin American-style Banana republic.

Yes, Trump’s juvenile public statements and Tweets trouble me as much as the next guy.  They have arguably eroded American public discourse – I’ll readily concede that. But the alternative was even more unpalatable: a gang of criminals that not only seemed hellbent on constructing an ideological echo chamber – using the mainstream media and, increasingly, the federal judiciary and elements of the Deep State to marginalize or even silence dissent – but also running the government as something resembling an organized crime syndicate.

If there is any silver lining to this, it’s the prospect that our malignant ruling class may be washing its hands of the pernicious Clintons, who may soon go the way of Harvey Weinstein.

One can hope.

The Great Western (and Liberal) Dilemma

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

pro-immigration-demonstrators

Photo: Courtesy of Rhododendrites. 

In his new book, “The Strange Death of Europe,” British author, editor and political commentator Douglas Murray relates a remarkable account of Edward Pusey, an Anglican priest and a founder of the Oxford Movement,  who encountered for  the first time the works of Gottfried Eichhorn and other German scholars that challenged many of the historical accounts of the Bible. 

Not surprisingly, Pusey came away profoundly disquieted by these discoveries, observing later in life to his biographer that the British people were scarcely prepared their long-term implications: “I can remember the room in Gottingen in which I was sitting when the real condition of religious thought in Germany flashed upon me.  I said to myself, ‘This will come upon us in England; and how utterly unprepared for it we are!'”

His forebodings were confirmed over time.  Two centuries later, Britain and the rest of the continent of Europe are still recovering  from the psychic shock that settled in over time. And the effects have been felt here in America, too, though not as acutely.

Sometime thereafter, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would write about the “death of God” and its implications for Western civilization.

European demographic decline is one of the more tangible effects of this shock. One of the many advantages orthodox Christianity conferred on the continent and Western culture as a whole was a sort of civilizational confidence and sense of  focus and purpose. And as more than one scholar has observed, this sense of focus and purpose was reflected in Europe’s high fertility rates. Indeed, these high fertility rates were a major factor behind Europe’s conquest and colonization of much of the world and the Westernization that followed in its wake.

The case could be made that no civilization can be built or sustained without high fertility rates.

One rather remarkable effect that has followed the decline of orthodox Christianity is the rise of the consumer culture and the Western welfare state. Westerners seem to have concluded that if there is no afterlife, no effort or expense should be spared to enhance the choices and material quality of our mortal lives. But as we have learned over the last few decades, the material benefits and entitlements of this lifestyle simply can’t be sustained without adequate birthrates.

And one of the unintended effects of rising educational and income levels within the 70 years following the end of World War II has been a steady decline in replacement births.

This has presented the West with an acute threat, perhaps the greatest one it has faced since the Battle of Tours in 732: America, Europe and Japan all are dealing with “perfect demographic storms.” They either must find a way to compensate for this demographic decline or face a rollback of the material benefits that have distinguished these countries from much of the rest of the world.

With the exception of Japan, governments have fostered high rates of immigration within the last few decades to fill this gap. But increasingly, the demographic transformation of the West has sewn deep divisions as whites have begun to reflect on the long-term cultural, social and political implications associated with newcomers who share little cultural affinity with historic Western values.

As Derek Thompson, senior editor of The Atlantic, related recently,  these new realities present an especially acute challenge to liberalism, which has supplied the ideological foundations for Western consumerism and the welfare state over the last century.  Post-war liberalism, particularly as it has developed within the United States, has been expressed as pluralistic social democracy, resting on the twin pillars of diversity and equality.  Indeed, American and European political elites not only have affirmed that both values are essential to the West’s future but have also insisted that they be inculcated in emerging generations throughout primary, middle, secondary and even post-secondary education.

Recently, though, growing numbers of ordinary Westerners increasingly are calling these values into question.  Some even regard these two concepts as mutually antagonistic.  And this raises the question: If this post-war liberal fusionism is no longer tenable, what does this portend for the future of the West?  Equally important, what will ultimately emerge to replace it?

Rehabilitating Reagan, Bush and Other GOP Chuckleheads

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in American History, The Passing Scene, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Ronald-ReaganWhy should we find it at all surprising?

George W. Bush, our 43rd president, once written off by the pundits and comedic agit/prop of the ruling class as the biggest presidential cipher since Warren Gamaliel Harding, is now portrayed as a thoughtful former president and statesman, one whose ruminations even should be taken seriously.

Yes, folks, in less than a generation, George W. Bush, once excoriated as the greatest menace to liberty and decency since, well, Ronald Reagan a generation earlier, has finally undergone rehabilitation.

But, again, why should we be surprised?

The current occupant of the White House, Donald J. Trump – Potus45, as he’s known in Twitter parlance – has been characterized as the greatest presidential menace since, well, Potus 43, George W. Bush.  So, the Establishment media, in true Soviet-style, had deemed it appropriate to upstage Trump with Bush, much as Dubyah was upstaged by Reagan, whom the media once excoriated as history’s most conspicuous presidential empty shirt.

Indeed, almost two generations ago, Ronald Reagan, now regarded as one of the most successful presidents of the 20th century, sat approximately where Donald J. Trump does today.  He was characterized as an entirely new presidential phenomenon, one lacking intellectual heft – half-educated, a bit gauche and provincial –  not only intellectually limited but a dire threat to the safety of planet Earth.   In fact, some media pundits characterized the former actor as the greatest existential threat to the planet since his intellectual godfather, Goldwater, the 1964 GOP nominee, who incidentally, was also dismissed as a reactionary chowderhead.

And I  still recall the large collection of Reaganite malapropisms the Establishment media compiled to support all these characterizations.

Today, though, Ronald Reagan is lionized by the Establishment media as the embodiment of Republican presidential statesmanship – a man who “grew” into the job.

Also telling to me is how media pundits resort to speculating about the I.Q. differences between Republican and Democratic presidents, especially during presidential campaigns.

In fact, have you ever noticed how the left, a political tradition supposedly wedded to egalitarianism, almost seems obsessed with the subject of a I.Q.’s and scholastic attainment, especially in terms of how this relates to Republicans presidents?

A few yeas ago, the media reported extensively on a study compiled by University of California-Davis professor that projects the I.Q.’s of every U.S. president since Washington.  The study ranked John F. Kennedy, with a projected I.Q. of 158, as the third most intellectually gifted chief executive, just behind Thomas Jefferson.  Bill Clinton, with a projected I.Q. of 156, came in fourth.

That is an interesting assessment, considering that Kennedy tested out with a bright but far from singular I.Q. of 117 at Choate Academy, his secondary school.  By contrast, Richard Nixon, his GOP opponent in the 1960 presidential election, scored a genius-level I.Q. of 143 while a student at Whittier High School.

Interestingly,  perhaps tellingly, Nixon does not rank among  the 15 smartest U.S. president in this survey, nor does any other 20th century Republican president, with the exception of the GOP maverick Theodore Roosevelt.  However, five Democratic presidents do: Kennedy, Clinton, Carter, Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.

Yet, one can make the strong case that the 20th century produced some unusually cognitively gifted Republican presidents.

Herbert Hoover was a Stanford graduate who became conversant, if not fluent, in Mandarin while he lived in China. He was considered the Bill Gates and Elon Musk of his generation – the greatest logistical planner in the world, though his personality was, to be sure, somewhat mordant and colorless, which proved the kiss of death to his presidential fortunes.

Dwight Eisenhower not only ranked first in his class in the Army’s Command and General Staff College but also attained the Army’s equivalent of the doctorate upon completing the War College. Moreover, he oversaw  the planning and execution of the most complicated military alliance in history – not to mention, the most logistically complex land invasion in history.  As President, Ike undertook a thorough modernization of the White House national security structure. He is now increasing ranked by scholars as a great or near-great president.

And I would be remiss if I did not return briefly to our 37th president, Richard Nixon, who not only tested with a genius-level I.Q. at Whittier High School but also was admitted to Harvard, though he was unable to raise the money to support himself.  He excelled at Whittier College and later graduated from Duke University Law School on a full scholarship. Among other achievements, he significantly altered the geopolitical balance of power through his brilliantly conceived and executed China strategy.

It’s also worth pointing out that George H.W. Bush, frequently depicted by the media during his presidency as an airhead and an egregious violator of English syntax, was a Phi Beta Kappa economics graduate of Yale University and also served in the cognitively demanding role of director of the Central Intelligence Agency, not only overseeing intelligence efforts over a global scale but also managing employees who had taken a demanding cognitive exam to serve in the agency.

Sorry for this long history lesson.  But I do think it’s an instructive and enlightening way of illustrating how the Establishment media are constantly engaged in cultural warfare, even if this involves departing occasionally from egalitarian orthodoxy to call the cognitive capacity of conservative presidents into question or to alter history by elevating previously discredited Republican presidents at the expense of others, typically the sitting one.

If California Wants to Go, Let It Go

23 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in Devolution, Federalism, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Yes_CaliforniaA year or so ago a liberal friend of mine implied that I was a right-wing kook and crypto-racist for even broaching the idea of disaffected states one day seeking a path out of the Union.

Just this weekend, though, none other than the chief legal officer of the nation’s largest state, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, offered a remarkably tepid response regarding California’s continued formal ties with the American Union.

“California is the economic engine of the United States of America, we on our own, as a state, could be the sixth economic power in the world,” Becerra stated yesterday in a Fox News Sunday interview.

“The U.S. needs California as much as I believe California needs to be part of the United States.”

Talk about a full-throated endorsement of American unity!  It sounded to me more like a Catalan official affirming unity with Spain.

If Bercerra’s statements aren’t intriguing enough, consider the yawning apathy all of this California separatist talk has generated in the nation’s broad red-state hinterland.  More than one friend of mine has stated they they would stand at the Nevada border happily waving off a new California Republic.

I think that goes for a lot of us here in the red heartland.  If our experience with rising levels of divorce over the past 50 years has driven home one thing, it’s that acrimonious marriages are better off terminated.  And, frankly, these federal bonds, which Lincoln extolled as “mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land,” seem increasingly and irreparably frayed.

America is coming to resemble a bad marriage, marked increasingly by acrimony and recrimination.

And all of this is likely to get even more complicated. Indeed, political activist and former presidential Chief of Staff Stephen Bannon is right to compare this growing secessionist sentiment in California with the South Carolina nullification crisis of the 1830’s.

Bannon recently argued that if the federal government fails to stop California’s sanctuary state efforts, California’s leftist leaders  “are going to try to secede from the union” in the next decade to 15 years.

While we may have thought this vexing issue was settled more than 150 years ago, California may be serving up a 2.0 version of secession. We really seem to be closing a very wide and contentious historical circle.  And contrary to my liberal friend’s fulminating, I really think that California may be the portent of a cascading effect among several states.

California presents this union with a special set of challenges- it arguably always has.  We’re talking about a state with several unique characteristics: for starters, its longstanding geographical separation from the other major population centers of the United States  and its location on the Pacific Rim, facing the region of the world where the overwhelming bulk of global economic growth is likely to occur over the next few decades.  Add to that California’s demographic transformation, one factor among many driving its return to its historical legacy as a region intimately linked with the cultural and economic the fortunes of Mexico and Latin America.

Under the circumstances, should we be surprised that California is evolving its own views of law and governance and that it’s begun to strain at its federal leash?

If California wants to go at some point,  let it go peacefully.  And that goes for any other state where a significant segment of the population has concluded that they are better off separate from than a part of the American Union.

Freedom of association should characterize our federal relations every bit as much as it should other facets of American life.   It is integrally bound up with living in a free society.

Just Go Away, Dubyah

23 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in Geo-Politics, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

The American people got treated to some Dubyah ruminations recently after a rather extended hiatus.

I apologize in advance for what I am about to say. No offense to my evangelical and other orthodox Christian friends, but I think that Dubya is an empty shirt who exchanged a drug addiction for a Jesus addiction in the 1990’s. He spent a decade furiously digging out of a deep pit of his own making – and partly succeeded only because he was the son of an ex-president.

I’ve had an extended dialogue with someone who has overcome drug and alcohol addiction. He contends that Dubya is a classic example of the millions of addicts who struggle furiously to overcome years of wasted time and deep-seated guilt.  I hope that Dubya has acquired some measure of peace from his struggle, but it is a travesty that he acted out this psychological drama on a national and world stage and on our time and tax dollars. And, yes, I’m to blame along with millions of other Americans because I voted for him and drank generously of his rhetorical Kool-aid.

In my humble opinion, Bush is responsible for a lot of this country’s current fiscal woes, which stem from his ill-conceived guns and butter policies. He acutely lacks any sort of intellectual curiosity. He thinks in absolutes.  He would be far better off keeping his mouth shut and concentrating on his newfound affinity for portrait painting.

As for his discussion of American culture and nationalism – yes, many people of many different ethnic and racial backgrounds have contributed to American culture and civilization. Even so, American culture is discernibly Western and when it ceases to be Western – well, we will be in a helluva lot of trouble, because the freedoms we take for granted in this country are inextricably bound up in our Western cultural inheritance.

Frankly, anybody contends that we can continue to enjoy our current material and cultural advantages in a society that is no longer grounded in the cultural values of the West is selling you a bill of goods.

In the meantime, Dubya, just stick to your portrait painting and leave the lofty thoughts to someone else.

An Open Letter to Sen. John McCain

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Conservatism, Federalism, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

John-McCain

Senator John McCain

I know that the world is complicated, Mr. McCain, and I know that the rest of the world has benefited immensely from American largesse.  And, yes, I know that your generation is deeply invested in the post-war American global legacy – small wonder why you would interpret the anger expressed last November as a harbinger of “half-baked, spurious nationalism.”

But we are 20-plus trillion dollars in debt. Our imperial burden is disproportionately imposed on the most immiserated segment of American society: the working class. And our government has come to resemble that of every other bloated, corrupt empire in world history – the very outcome our Founding Fathers took pains to avoid almost a quarter of a millennium ago.

Yet, there are disadvantages that come with being a global behemoth. A generation or so ago, I had the great privilege of reading most of the writings associated the noninterventionist Old Right. Virtually all of these Old Right sages offered trenchant observations of the  consequences that would follow from America’s spreading its tentacles throughout world as the self-anointed global hegemon.  Indeed, much of what they wrote proved to be prophetic. Many among the New Left dusted off those books and re-read them in the late 1960’s to marshal an effective critique of the American war in Vietnam.

None other than Dwight Eisenhower, one of the principal architects of American globalism, warned of the attendant risks associated with the military-industrial complex. The national security complex that has grown out of the Cold War strikes me as especially unnerving , especially now that there appears to be ample evidence that it increasingly is being used by the political class to monitor and even to silence U.S. citizens.  Equally alarming, this apparatus has apparently, if not inevitably, developed its own interests, some of which appear to run counter to traditional American views on the divisions and limitation of power.

Before I close, I’ll return briefly to Dwight Eisenhower. The second and last volume of his presidential memoirs deals with the wide range of international visits he undertook at the conclusion of his term. The turnout among common people in many of these post-colonial, developing countries was quite astonishing – a million, as I recall, during one visit. Even Eisenhower, an old hand at diplomacy, expressed surprise, if not astonishment, at the levels of enthusiasm he encountered. But should he have been surprised? At the time, America represented the most successful former colonial country in history. Even as the struggle with communism escalated, the United States still enjoyed a lingering reputation of a constitutional republic that not only was anti-colonial but also opposed to imperialism. Recall that our behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts played a significant role in wrenching India free of the British Empire.

Yes, there have been positive achievements associated with Pax Americana – I’ll not deny that – but we have paid a price, – an egregiously heavy price. And considering that noninterventionism and anti-imperialism have been long and revered intellectual traditions, I do consider it a grave injustice that our political class express shock and outrage that millions of Americans are asking probing questions about the legacy of the American globalist undertaking.

I’m not so much affirming Trump as I am the anger and frustration of much of the American working class.  Many of the divisions in this country are inextricably bound up with how one defines nationhood. Many of our Founding Fathers viewed the American nation as an Enlightenment experiment, but all of them to a man conceived the United States as a republic focused first and foremost on its national and economic interests. That is the crux of the American Experiment, and working and middle-class Americans deserve more than its being whittled away through a series of executive orders and agreements carrying, in many cases, the force of treaties.

To express it another way, Mr. McCain, the vast majority of working-class and middle-class Americans still view the American Experiment within the traditional nation-state terms – as a commonwealth. Many of them are weary of being lectured as provincials and even crypto-racists for holding that the nation-state remains the greatest guarantor of their liberties and economic well-being.

Why Is Secession Such a Terrible Word?

13 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in American Federalism, American History, Devolution, Localism, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

John-Stossel

Libertarian pundit and author John Stossel. Photo: Courtesy of Gage Skidmore.

Libertarian author and pundit John Stossel is mystified by all the smack talk about secession.

“Why do so many people see secession as such a terrible thing?” he asks.

Stossel cites the recent Catalonian push for secession, stressing that the struggle is about Catalans taking charge of their own affairs.  As he stresses, no government is perfect, but local governments, generally speaking, are “more responsive to the needs of constituents.” Moreover, by keeping government closer to home, citizens secure a greater likelihood of keeping their governments under close watch.

So, why all the agonizing over secession? he asks.

Short answer:  because the people in charge of big governments are seldom willing to give up power.

I wholeheartedly agree with Stossel: Why is secession such a terribly unspeakable word among so many of us? As he stresses, secession is by no means alien to the American experience. Indeed, the United States is an outgrowth of a secession struggle against the British Empire.

But I wonder: How many of us are aware that the the post-constitutional United States is a product of secession, too?

Madison once referred to this secession as the “delicate truth” behind the current American union. In effect, 11 states seceded from the union of states founded on the Articles of Confederation to form the present union. Recall that Rhode Island and North Carolina had refused to accede to the new Constitution and were still out of the union when George Washington took the oath as the first president of the United States on March 4, 1789.

Quite a few of our Founding Fathers never lost their enduring affection for small governments. A few of our Founding Fathers even had a hard time envisioning a nation the size of the present-day United States.  Writing to Dr. Joseph Priestly on January 29, 1804, Thomas Jefferson observed:

Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children and descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation at some future day, yet I should feel the duty and the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within my power.

I concluded a long time ago that the American Experiment has essentially amounted to a forlorn attempt to force one part of the country to meld culturally and politically into the rest. And it hasn’t happened – not after almost a quarter of a millennium. Yes, I would like to see us soldier on as looser federation sharing common market and defense.  There are legitimate geopolitical threats, after all.  But this business of forcing a nation as geographically and culturally diverse as the United States to march in ideological lockstep is madness, sheer madness.

A Republic of Pluralism

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in American Federalism, American History, Devolution, Federalism, Localism, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

vermont-flag

The Green Mountain Boys flag: The past and future flag of the Vermont Republic?  Photo: Courtesy of Amber Kincaid.

A social media conversation this morning prompted a few thoughts on the egregious lack of pluralism that characterizes America in the 21st century.

One poster observed that the white nationalist provocateur Richard Spencer is attempting another visit to Charlottesville, apparently with the intention of stirring up yet another racial hornets nest.

Yet, as another poster stressed, the University of Virginia, as a public institution that receives substantial federal funds, can’t easily refuse his request to stage another protest.

I’m no legal scholar, but it seems to me that we can ascribe the university’s predicament to the Incorporation Doctrine.  The Bill of Rights originally applied only to the federal government.  It was extended to the states only through  incorporation, which was made possible by passage of the 14th Amendment. (Check me on this, but I believe I stand on solid ground.)

In time, I suspect the courts will formulatr some kind of compelling needs doctrine, which establishes some threshold for requests such as these, where there is the real risk of violence. Indeed, I presume that provisions such as these already are in place.

At this point, I feel compelled to offer a disclaimer: I am a free-speech purist – I think that open, robust speech is not only healthy but also vital to a free, open society.  But I also think that the prospect of federal authority extending its clammy fingers into every facet of American life is a grievous and dangerous thing and one that the Founders – the vast majority of them, at least – would have found abhorrent.

I am also as much a proponent for pluralism as free speech. Our Founders – certainly Jefferson – envisioned a very pluralistic “republic of republics” in which the state republics would conceive their own individual visions of ordered liberty.  While congenial to prevailing notions of liberty, these also would be adapted to local cultural, social and religious realities.

I’ll add a final disclaimer: I am as fervent a proponent as incrementalism as I am free speech and pluralism.   It seems to me that barring an Incorporation Doctrine all of the states in time would have adopted some degree of legal uniformity regarding free speech.  The openness required of federalism and a American common market would have necessitated such uniformity over time.

I know: I come off sounding like a  reactionary and a constitutional fossil – a so-called paleofederalist.  Most Americans would contend that we have moved far past that that quaint, bygone era when states functioned with many of the attributes of nationhood.  But Calexit, Texit, the Second Vermont Republic and other incipient sovereignty movements emerging across the breadth of America may be changing all of this.

The California National Party, which comprises one pillar of the California independence movement, seems to be demanding a new vision of democracy, constitutional law and identity that runs counter to much of the rest of the nation.

Who knows where all of this will lead?  These incipient autonomy movements may be pointing to a return to the original founding vision of American federalism. Maybe we ultimately will return to a constitutional arrangement in which states, at least, some states, will function as genuine sovereign states, with many of the hallmarks of nationhood.

Time will tell.