The 53rd post on the Journal of American Greatness originally published in April, 2016.

When you write an pseudonymous blog backed by no money and little promotion, any attention is welcome.  We are therefore delighted to have been attacked by “A Real Character” at Wheat & Weeds.  While we freely admit to a taste for Socratic irony, we mean this in earnest.

He asserts that we are “making waves among political theorists sorting through our weird presidential cycle.”  Are we?  The pond still looks pretty glassy to us.  But we are vain and like praise.  So thanks!

Beyond this, he scores some good points.

But before getting to that, he writes: “Jag … exaggerates the positions of its opponents (especially the folks at National Review).” No citations, quotes or evidence for this claim is offered.  He does assert that “National Review come[s] in for withering mockery” by us, which we will not dispute.  Does he disagree that they deserve it?  He doesn’t say and we don’t know.

His deeper point is that we “make claims [he] can’t take seriously.”  Our specific assertion to which he objects is that we can’t remember quite why we still prefer Romney to Obama, even though we would still vote for Mitt again if we had to relive 2012.  Note that he seems to think we said there is no difference, which we didn’t say.  We said that the differences seem to us, in the cold light of 2016, a lot less significant than they did in the klieg lights of 2012.

The core of our pro-Romney claim was that we think he would have at least gone slower than Obama in pushing the far-left multi-culti agenda.  The core of our “who-cares” argument was that we think Romney probably would have gone faster than Obama in implementing the Slave Power agenda.  Romney is after all a private equity baron.  This is a tribe that is only slightly behind hedge fund viscounts in evangelizing for open borders, open trade and endless war.  Opposition to that agenda has long been stronger in the Democratic than in the Republican Party.  Recall that NAFTA was passed with Republican votes, over Democratic opposition in a Democratic administration.  One of the founding principles of the Democratic Party was opposition to radical wealth and income inequality.  The Democrats have been the party of peaceniks since at least 1972, and really since 1968.  The only aspect of the Davos agenda to which the Democrats are more committed than the Republicans is mass immigration, and then only slightly.

RC2 then gives a list of specifics.  Let’s go through them (some cuts for space; ours in bold):

1. [D]oes he imagine that it was in the interests of the United States, in the face of a terrorist enemy that only understands force, to precipitously draw down troops in Iraq such that a war (whatever you think of its having been started) that was won was deliberately lost — at the forfeit not only of American and allied lives, but of the meaning of those sacrifices? Would Romney have done that?
   Maybe not.  The right position, in hindsight, on the Iraq War was to have been against the initial invasion but pro-Surge once the die was cast.  Obama unquestionably threw away a significant victory over our Islamist enemies.  But it’s not clear what Romney would have done.  He might have stayed too long and tried for too much.
2. Would Romney have given us Justices Sotomayor and Kagan?
   No.  But who would he have appointed?  Would they have necessarily been any better than Burger, Blackmun, Powell, Stevens, O’Conner, Kennedy, Souter, or Roberts?  In the last two generations, the Democrats have always gotten the Justices they want.  In this period the Republicans have had 12 tries, of which 8 have been dismal failures.  Why pin such unrealistic hopes on Romney?
3. Would Romney have used the IRS for political purposes?
   Probably not.
4. Would Romney have turned the Department of Justice into an office of political vendetta?
   Probably not.
5. Would Romney have imposed the HHS mandate? Would he have used the might of the American justice system against the Little Sisters of the Poor?
   Very likely not.
6. Would Romney have behaved so fecklessly in Egypt and Libya?
   Highly likely. Romney was surrounded by neocon advisors who believe that more war is always the answer. Many of the very same people who egged Obama and Hillary into their foolish actions in Egypt and Libya advised Romney and still advise Republicans such as Ted Cruz.Would Romney have abandoned his own ambassador to torture and murder?
   Perhaps not as blithely.  But when presented with the national security bureaucracy’s deliberately constrained menu of options, would he have had the wisdom to realize that he was being played, or the depth of knowledge to know what his true options were?  Would he have made a difference?  That said, we doubt he would have been nearly as shameless in trying to cover up the ensuing disaster.
7. Would Romney have been so feckless and incompetent as to call ISIS the junior varsity and be surprised by its strength?
   No, in our view, his rhetoric would have been much tougher, but his actions more or less equally ineffective.
8. Would Romney have turned the State Department into an LGBT rights organization, actively seeking out gay and trans diplomats — no matter how much they offend our allies?
   Probably not.  But he would also have been too afraid to really oppose that agenda.  He would, instead of pushing it from conviction, have allowed himself to be bullied into allowing it from fear.
9. Would Romney have hired as CIA director a man who doesn’t believe in spying?
   Maybe.  Just not Brennan.  But the Intelligence Community is so corrupt that all top candidates are functionally the same.
10. Would he have allowed the humiliation of the U.S. being driven from a NATO country?
    What could he have done about it?  Two decades of US policy plus 75 years of history have made this inevitable.
11. You seriously going to suggest Romney would have given us the Iran deal — or the national humiliation of our sailors on their knees, apologizing to the Mullahs?
    No.  But the deal, while bad, has little meaning.  Demonstrating this requires a long exegesis on nuclear matters, which I am prepared to write, but not in this post and not tonight.
12. Would he have treated Ft. Hood and Boston and San Bernardino as matters for the police?
    No.  But he also wouldn’t have done the one thing most needful, which Trump has promised: HALT MUSLIM IMMIGRATION!
13. Would he have heightened racial tensions by jumping into “beer-gate” and the Trayvon Martin case?
    Probably not.
14. Would Romney refuse to call Islamic extremism what it is?
    No.  But Obama, for all his considerable faults, eagerly drones Islamic terrorists to death even if he refuses to call them what they are.
15. Would he be threatening North Carolina over its sensible protection of women and girls in bathrooms?
    No.
16. If he had been President, would we still have Obamacare, or would a Republican congress have been able to act?
    Ah.  Tough one.  First, you know that Obamacare passed before the 2012 election, right?  Second, you must know that Romney’s own Massachusetts health law was the model for Obamacare?  You know that.  Right? This is one big reason why Romney was held by many to be a less than ideal opposition candidate in 2012. Now, to be sure, in 2012, he campaigned on repealing Obamacare, but how believable was that?  Beyond all this, the core issue right now—in 2016—driving the votes of disaffected Republicans is market-driven uncertainty.  Universal health care at least seems to alleviate this basal concern.  However flawed it may be in concept and implantation, all Republican alternatives sound to vulnerable voters like throwing them back to the insurance company wolves.
17. What changes might Paul Ryan and a GOP Congress have been able to make to the budget and spending if there had been a President Romney to support them and sign their bill?
    We have a hard time taking any reference to Paul Ryan seriously.  Have you noticed what he’s been up to lately?  And what if that budget were implemented?  See above what we said about “market-driven uncertainty.”  That’s exactly what the Slave Power pushes and what the (still, for now) free population resists—at least as long as their economic prospects, thanks to the Slave Power, remain so precarious.  So what good would that have done?

Bottom line, when we peruse this list, we’re not all that impressed with the concessions we had to make.  Yeah, you left some welts. But to quote JAG’s motto, what difference,at this point, does it make?  President Romney would have respected the girly x-chromosomes of the Ladies Room.  We support that!  So what?  Will that save the republic?

Probably nothing will.  We admit to being gloomy.  But the surest path to a brighter future is a clear understanding of the present. “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.”

—Decius

The 52nd post on the Journal of American Greatness originally published in April, 2016.

The 50th post on the Journal of American Greatness originally published in April, 2016.

We’ve received a few ear tweaks along the lines of “How do you like your boy now!?!”  Said in a taunting, gloating tone, of course.  The occasion being (also of course) Trump’s septimana horribilis plus his rather stinging loss in Wisconsin.

We can only presume that these gloaters are not careful readers—at least not of JAG.  We’re not lying or joking when we say that we hold no brief for Trump personally, that (had we the power) we would have chosen a different vehicle for Trumpism, and that we care more about the ideas animating his campaign than about the man himself or even his candidacy.

We can hear some of our friends snickering at the mere mention of the words “Trump” and “ideas” in the same sentence.  Laugh all you want, but secure borders, economic nationalism and America-first foreign policy are not merely ideas—they’re better ideas than any other political figure on the right has presented to the American people in at least 20 years.  And they’re ideas that speak directly to the most pressing concerns the country faces right now.

All good catechismical conservatives have memorized one line from Reagan’s first inaugural: “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”  Does anyone remember the first clause of that sentence?  I do!  It was “In this present crisis.” In this present crisis.

In other words, Reagan knew something his present-day followers don’t realize or deny: his program was specifically meant to address the problems of his time, not of all times.  There could be other crises for which government might be the solution to the problem.  Is there a single writer at National Review who understands this?

In our present crisis, an effective government working for the interests of the American nation is essential to securing the border, enforcing laws such as visa overstays and employer sanctions, and rationalizing our out-of-control immigration system.  Effective government will be essential for implementing trade and economic policies that benefit the American people and not the Slave Power. Effective government—a national security bureaucracy run by clear-sighted patriots—will also be necessary for the vigorous reassertion of strict considerations of America interests.

But let’s get back to the taunting.  Peter Brimelow has pointed out that “Cruz basically has Trump’s positions now. It’s just a question of who you trust.”

“Trust” and “Trump” also no doubt strike our friends as two words that don’t even belong in the same dictionary, much less the same sentence.  If so, it would appear that we are being asked to trust two equally untrustworthy vessels to carry these positions.  Most conservatives who attack Trump for his inconsistencies ignore, gloss over or deny Cruz’s.  Trump’s strike us as less worrisome, more the product of an inexperienced politician and a man used to winging it and winning.  Cruz’s flip-flops, on the other hand, seem calculated down to the penny.  Beyond this, on all three issues that count, Trump was there first, showed their popularity and power, then Cruz followed.  So who is really more likely to follow through?

We couldn’t say whether or not the much-prayed for Trump melt-down is finally upon us.  Certainly, his chances of winning the nomination seem more remote than they have in months.  Trump still seems to us like a more likely general election winner than Cruz. We’ve seen all the polls.  We know.  But can you imagine the base-pleasing beauty pageant contestant, that ossified red state ideologue Cruz winning a single state that Romney lost?

If Cruz is the nominee, I at least will vote for him—fat lot of good that will do him, considering where I live.  But I would have little to no expectation that he will pursue secure borders, economic nationalism and America-first foreign policy.  He may be unpopular with Senators but this hardly constitutes the radical outsider perspective he claims for himself and which the Party and our politics so desperately need.  It’s all-too-plausible to envision Cruz, as President, buffaloing the base with fine speeches while Finlandizing back into the arms of the Washington Establishment that rejected him more than a decade ago and for which he is still so plainly in the throes of unrequited love.

Trump may well be the disaster that his detractors say he is: the most unpopular major party nominee since … ever.  That’s what the polls say, anyway.  But at least he offers the prospect of scrambling the electoral map and realigning the electorate around the pressing issues of our time.  Can anyone say that with a straight face about Cruz?

Beyond this, in the memorable words of this Journal’s Mission Statement, what difference, at this point, does it make?  Cruz is not going to Save the Constitution.  Trump almost certainly won’t either.  We’ve explained some of the reasons why.  To recap in brief: mass immigration, radical modernity, and the cycle of regimes.  All you most opposed to Trump are a big part of the first and second. You’ve not so much as stood athwart history yelling stop as stood beside the left whispering “not quite that fast, OK?  Also, we’re not racists!  Please like us!”

The agenda—secure borders, economic nationalism and America-first foreign policy—is what matters.  We have our doubts whether that—or anything—can save us now.  Since nobody has any better ideas, or anything better to do (in the political realm), why not try it? Same-old is a sure loser, electorally and pragmatically.

—Decius

The 48th post on the Journal of American Greatness originally published in April, 2016.

Dear Disaffected Republican Voter:

We, the undersigned members of the Republican Establishment—elected and appointed officials, National Committee members, state and local chairs, donors, pundits, journalists and intellectuals—are sorry.

We failed you.  We weren’t consciously trying to fail you, but your reaction to us and to our agenda in this 2016 election cycle has now made it undeniable even to us that we have.  As we’ve moved through the stages of grief, our outbursts to and about you haven’t always been fair, kind, true or reasonable.  We’ve blamed you for our having failed you—in essence, we’ve tried to flip the script and blame you for having failed us.  That’s wrong and we’re sorry for that, too.

We offer the following not as excuses but by way of explanation.  Many of you have accused us of doing the bidding of our donors.  We now realize that’s very largely true.  We can only say that it really didn’t occur to us that doing so was selling out your interests. Certainly, we didn’t do so in order to sell you out.

Rather, we thought: here is a wonderful instance where our own self-interest, the interests of our constituents, and those of the country all coincide!  Just like Tocqueville’s “self-interest, rightly understood.”  We though that our donors were just people who thought the same as we, but who have more money.  We were naturally grateful for their support, because we couldn’t have run candidates, won elections, supported think-tanks, or published money-losing magazines without them.

(Also, to the extent that some of us are donors, a similar dynamic applies.  Of course we knew that the policies we pushed, and demanded that those we support push, are in our self-interest.  We were just sure that our interests and your interests were identical. We thought we sought the good of the country, and you are part of the country, and so it would all work out.)

We also now realize that our policy agenda is ill-suited for 2016.  The tax code hasn’t been the foremost problem facing the US economy since Reagan was president.  Sure, it could be simpler and less costly to administer.  In an ideal world, we could fix that without spending all our political capital to do so.  But we just couldn’t bring ourselves to hear from you that it’s not even near the top of your priority lists.  Even worse, as we prioritized tax reform, we did so around the same old agenda of upper income and capital gains tax cuts, not reforms that would actually help you the most.

On trade, we believe our position is more defensible, but still didn’t serve your interests.  We honestly believed—and still do—that free trade is the best policy for the economy, the country, and (at the end of the day) for everyone.  But we failed to take into account a number of caveats.  First, the benefits have been spread unevenly.  While everyone enjoys lower consumer prices, the marginal effect of these lower prices is least impactful for those earning lower incomes and who thus must spend a greater percentage of their incomes on necessities such as housing and food, necessities whose prices not only haven’t declined but have increased.  Related to this, while the economy has grown under free trade, growth has been much slower than the historic average for the US, leading to wage stagnation and un-, under-, and declining employment for your communities.  We honestly don’t believe that tariffs would solve any of this.  But we concede that we haven’t made any serious effort to try anything else, and have even shut down debates over trade.  Meanwhile, our wealth has continued to shoot up as your prospects have dimmed.  Second, we almost completely failed to understand the gigantic difference between free trade today—with billions of people in the developing world suddenly entering the competition—and free trade among more or less comparably rich economies.  In the latter case, comparative advantage generally works to the benefit of all.  In the former, the benefits accrue overwhelmingly to developing nations and to people at the top over here.

Again, we don’t think protectionism is the answer.  And we know that’s what many of you want.  We don’t apologize for thinking it won’t work.  But we do apologize for dismissing your concerns and refusing to engage you honestly on the issue.  We especially apologize for ginning you up over hopeless crusades we either had no intention of following through or knew in advance we couldn’t win, as a way of motivating you to vote, all the while ignoring your real concerns.

On immigration, our record—we must admit—is much worse.  You’ve been telling us that you don’t want “comprehensive immigration reform” at least since the idea was first leaked by Karl Rove in the summer of 2001.  Even though you’ve said “No!” loudly, every time, we’ve come back to try to ram it through, sometimes via stealth, at least a half dozen times.  Each time we’ve been caught in the act and forced to stand down, but we’ve always come back to try again.

In our defense, we do believe, or at least worry, that being anti-immigration in any way will permanently alienate Hispanic voters and doom the Party.  That’s the lesson we drew from 1994’s Prop 187 in California.  We (or a few of us) have read the counter-arguments and not been convinced.  We (or a few of us) also realize that, for now, Hispanics vote against us about 2-1.  We think that’s attributable at least in part to the party’s perceived hardline stance on immigration.  We also believe that Hispanics are “natural Republicans” who will come our way if we stop gratuitously alienating them.  We (or some of us) have heard all the arguments against this expectation but we haven’t changed our minds.

Why not?  First, obviously, immigration is what our donors want.  Second, many of us are descended from immigrants and it just feels hypocritical to seek to close the doors behind us.  Third, many of us live in or even represent districts full of hardworking immigrants so it’s hard for us to see how immigration can be a problem elsewhere.  Fourth, we have personal friends who are immigrants or the children of immigrants and opposing immigration seems like an affront to those friendships.  Fifth, we really haven’t studied American principles or history with all that much care, so we turned out to be easy marks for leftist bullying about “racism” and rhetoric like “that’s who we are” and all that, which the left insists demands more immigration.  We’re embarrassed to have to admit that we fell for this last one.

On war, we also haven’t listened to you.  You want less, we wanted to stay the course.  You wonder why—with such overwhelming military power—America can’t seem to win any wars or hold any concrete gains.  Here, as with trade, we’ve believed we were on more solid ground.  Foreign affairs, war and peace have always been issues too complex for the broad range of the people—in any county—to fully understand and deliberate.  These subjects require expertise and experience.  To be blunt, we thought we had both and you don’t. Actually, we still think that.  But we’ve been forced to recognize that, even if it’s true that our grasp of the complexities and details is superior to yours (which it is), it’s possible that we haven’t done a great job at advancing our goals.  And, at a minimum, we haven’t done any sort of job at all of explaining to you why we think our policies are necessary.  So all you see are dead Americans, fruitless attempts to spread democracy to ungrateful peoples, and no end in sight.  No wonder you’re fed up.

You’ve tried to warn us—about trade, immigration, wars and much else—but we’ve consistently refused to heed the warnings.  After nominating a private equity baron in 2012, we wrote an out-of-touch explanation for his loss which argued, against the evidence and common sense, that the Party needed to pass “comprehensive immigration reform.”  We ignored Eric Cantor’s loss.  We ignored John Boehner’s downfall.  We tried to replace him with Kevin McCarthy and when you would have none of that, we succeeded with Paul Ryan—a decent man, but one whose every thought is how to pass the same agenda that you’ve told us time and again you reject.  We tried again with “comprehensive immigration reform” in 2013, ruining the career of perhaps our most popular and electable political figure in a generation.  We put all our chips on Jeb Bush, not just the son and brother of presidents—the very face of the Establishment—but the country’s biggest booster of open trade, open borders and endless wars.  And all that was just within the last four years!

Still, we didn’t wake up.  Until now.

It took this vulgar buffoon Trump to do it.  No, we’re not going to change our opinion about him.  He’s not conservative, not really a Republican, he’s embarrassing and unsuited to the presidency and so much else.  We may have ill-served you with our ossified agenda—it’s hard for us to admit that, but we’ve seen the light.  However, we still remain unalterably opposed to Trump.  He is just too flawed a man and has in him nothing of the great leader our great country deserves.

We do recognize, however, that we are partially to blame for his rise.  Had we heard your concerns earlier, had we not worked to drum all dissent out of the party, had we not accused and demonized as fringe and disreputable all doubts about our agenda, then the first successful challenger to that agenda would very likely not have been as disreputable and unsavory as Trump.  He is, in part at least, a monster we created.  But he’s still a monster, and we still can’t support him, even if he’s forced us to see the error of some of our ways.

The question for us—us the Establishment, and you the rank-and-file—is where do we go from here?  We’d like to patch things up.  We know that means we’re going to have to give up core items on our agenda.  We must pledge the party to fixing the immigration system. And that means enforcement first, across the board.  Enforce existing law, tighten employer sanctions and, yes, a wall.  We can debate what to do about the illegal population already here only after all that is accomplished.  It means no more upper-income tax cuts and closing the billionaire loopholes.  It means taking a much more skeptical look at trade.  We’re not going to promise across the board tariffs, but we will commit this party to trade deals that make sense for American citizens—and if we can’t get other countries to agree, we’re prepared to walk away from the table.  Finally, it means no more war without purpose or end.  We realize from painful experience that America lacks both the resources and know-how to democratize the world.  We intend to be tough in defense of American interests, but limited and precise in how we define those interests.

We fear, sadly, that it’s too late for 2016.  We still intend to try to stop Trump but we aren’t sure we can.  Even if we can, we’re not confident that we can implement this new agenda throughout the party that quickly.  Although, it’s certainly a good thing that of the alternatives to Trump, Ted Cruz comes closer to this agenda than any of the others.

But it’s likely that 2016 is going to have to be written off as the political equivalent of a “rebuilding year” (or, really, a rebuilding cycle). Let’s get to work, then, together, to ensure that in 2018 we elect Republicans at every level who support this new agenda.  And for 2020, let’s lay the groundwork for a serious nominee we can all be proud of and wholeheartedly support, who will advance these principles, plus the all those core Republican principles on which you and we have never disagreed.

We know we’ve let you down in the past and that you don’t have much reason to trust us.  So please give us a chance to begin re-earning that trust.

Sincerely,

The Republican Establishment

EDITOR’S NOTE: The reason you won’t read this anywhere but here is because, with the exception of the part about Trump being awful, not a single person in the Republican Establishment believes a word of it.  They would rather see Trump supporters leave the Party if keeping them requires changing the Party one iota in a Trumpian direction.  They would rather see the Party split or destroyed than belong to a party that supports secure borders, economic nationalism, and America-first foreign policy.

We believe the Establishment and its court intellectuals are sincere in their dislike of Trump and honest in their complaints about his temperament, lack of knowledge, bad character and general unsuitability.  But we also believe that these objections are secondary to their core objection, which is to his program.  Had that program been championed by a statesman with the gravitas of Washington, the learning of Jefferson, the intellect of Hamilton, the rhetorical skill of Lincoln, the rectitude of Coolidge, and the decorum of Reagan, we believe the Establishment would still be opposed.  In a way, the rise of Trump has been lucky for them.  No doubt, they would have preferred no challenge at all.  But if there had to be a challenge, how much better for them that it has been mounted by a man they can dismiss as a clown, vulgarian, demagogue and charlatan, and who they can insist has no platform or program at all. A superior statesman would have been much harder to dismiss—though they would have tried just as hard, and possibly harder, given the greater degree of difficulty.

The Republican Establishment will not change.  It is too “established” or conservative in the narrow sense.  It must either be defeated and replaced or the Party itself abandoned in favor of a new party.  Either way, we already have the seeds of necessary new ideas. What’s needed next are new people.

—Decius

The 46th post on the Journal of American Greatness originally published in April, 2016.

“They don’t grade fathers, but if your daughter’s a stripper, you &@^#ed up.”

~Chris Rock

The Bible and the ancient Greek philosophers (Republic 343b; Laws 694e; Cyropaedia I 1.2, &c.) alike employ a lot of shepherd analogies.  What can we say?  When everywhere you see sheep, perhaps many things start to look like flocks.

The analogy of shepherding to governing, among the most prominent in philosophy, raises several question, the central being: What makes a good shepherd?  Looking out for the interests of the flock?  Or himself?  (Or the owner, if the shepherd is a hired hand.)  Can their interests be made to coincide?

The sheep analogy is used, though for different purposes, in contemporary political discourse as well.  At the one extreme you have the cynics, who insist that everywhere the people are “sheep”, easily misled, fooled, tricked, exploited, etc. and so must be ruled firmly for their own good because left to their own devices they will just as soon commit mass suicide as secure any semblance of a common good.  At the opposite extreme are the doctrinaire libertarians who insist that people are not sheep, that they should be left alone to govern themselves, that any government beyond the minimal requirements of basic defense and the enforcement of contracts is an insult man’s free will and native intelligence and thus inherently tyrannical and fit only for sheep, which again men are not.

The classical view was somewhere in the middle.  In fact, even as the classics employed the sheep analogy, they acknowledged its insufficiency owing to the differences between men and sheep.  The latter, lacking λόγος, must be ruled absolutely (not to say tyrannically).  The former, at least in the right circumstances, are capable of participating in rule and generally do not thrive but chafe under absolute rule.  Men (or most men) are not wise enough to govern themselves in all things without any external restraint.  But most are also not so animalistically heedless that they require being ruled like sheep to avoid mass catastrophe.

The outlines of this debate could help illuminate a controversy highlighted by Trump’s supporters and opponents.  Both agree that Trump’s success arises from his appeal to globalization’s “losers.”  The core difference is in how they interpret that last word. Supporters say that while it’s a fact that the working class has lost out in globalization, this is less their fault than the result of impersonal forces they can’t control.  Opponents counter that the word “loser” describes these people to a “t.”  It’s the responsibility of every man to evaluate his circumstances and adapt when necessary.  Bad things that happen to him—with the possible exception of instances of blind chance, like a shark attack or tornado—are thus always his fault.  And even those exceptions might not hold.  Why were you swimming in the ocean, or living in Tornado Alley, in the first place?  Certainly, if your neighborhood, community, hometown, region, and local industry collapse all around you and you don’t rally and move away and found a start-up, you deserve what you get.  We may call this latter view Williamsonianism.

The truth in this case is neither one extreme nor the other but a mean.  And moreover, a mean like Aristotelian virtue—one that is not precisely central but is closer to one or the other extremes depending in which virtue we’re talking about.  E.g., courage is closer to rashness than to cowardice and liberality closer to profligacy than to parsimony.

Similarly, whether more or less paternalism is appropriate in a given circumstance depends on the character of the people in question. The sort of folks who populate libertarian chat rooms can for the most part be counted on to govern themselves without getting into much trouble.  At least not the kind of socio-pathological trouble that spreads disorder out to the rest of us.

The lower and working classes are another story.  If they possessed a super-abundance of intellectual, human and cultural capital, they wouldn’t be lower and working class, now would they?  Indeed, those with above-average endowments of these traits who happen to be born into such milieus tend to leave for better prospects, don’t they?  The persistence of lower and working classes in all societies throughout history would, you’d think, suggest the permanence of varying degrees of capacity among humans.  Which would, you’d think, suggest to libertarians that what works well for them doesn’t and can’t work for everyone.  You might think that, but you’d be just as dead wrong as the libertarians themselves.

The American Founders, to whom nearly every anti-Trump conservative pundit appeals for authoritative support, understood this better than their ostensible followers today.  It’s not enough merely to set conditions, get the institutions right, “level the playing field,” “unleash human creativity,” and “let the market work” (feel free to add your own favorite conservative clichés).  The moral conditions of society are every bit as important—indeed, foundational—to the free government that these “conservative” claim to cherish.  To quote but one of a thousand such utterances from the Founders: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”  Eh, one more: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Then there are the social conservatives, who will protest that they’ve known this all along.  OK, fine.  But where were you as the moral conditions of freedom were being hollowed out over the last 30 years and more?  On the front lines, you say?  Oh, right—fruitlessly protesting abortion and homosexual marriage but also siding with the cultural left as often as not.  And crucially, either supporting or saying nothing about open borders, job-sucking trade and the rest of the Davoisie “creative destruction” agenda.  Of which the American working class sure can see—and feel—the destruction, but the creativity?  Not so much.  Is it any wonder that they have so little use for you or your preaching?

Libertarians may grudgingly admit that morality and virtue are not quite irrelevant to human happiness, but they doctrinally insist that government has no business saying or doing anything to support either.  And if all other policy and social forces work in concert to undermine both, well that’s just the market being itself and its judgments are infallible.  Strong men adapt and losers lose.  SoCons exalt morality and rail against corruption but can’t seem to see that, or how, other elements of “conservatism” (to say nothing of thoseelements of liberalism they uncritically accept) undermine what they claim to love.

Let’s get back to the Greeks and their sheep for a moment.  In Plato’s Gorgias (515a-520e, more or less; but as you kids say on the ’Net,read the whole thing), Socrates tangles with Callicles (perhaps his most brilliant opponent in any of the dialogues) over the questions of a ruler’s responsibilities and how to judge success or failure.  To summarize without coming to close to doing full justice to all the subtleties, the core argument is: if your rule has made the people worse and not better, then you failed.  That doesn’t mean people lack all moral agency. It doesn’t mean they share no part of the blame for their plight.  It does mean that those who seek and take on the responsibility to govern men must assume, and not disingenuously duck, their share of said blame when things go badly.

Things have been going very badly for a long time for a large part of the American nation.  All of this has happened contemporaneously with the ascendance of what we have only half-jokingly likened to the Slave Power.  In almost every case, that power has gotten the policies it wants.  The result is a great deal of misery.
Man being the social and political animal, he needs government.  Good government makes him better and not worse.  It allows for and promotes the flourishing of the virtues which lead to human happiness as it works prudently to suppress or discourage those vices that lead to human misery.  Government must be administered by men who deliberate about what is good and bad for those under their rule.  At this, the Davoisie has manifestly failed.  It rules exactly as Aristotle says an oligarchy rules: with a view to its own interests, in indifference and even in opposition to those of the whole or of the common good.

Guess what, libertardian and So-Con intellectuals: you deserve much of the blame, too.  I know you’ll all heatedly deny this, just as the Republican Establishment denies not merely that they’re the Republican Establishment but even the existence of a Republican Establishment.  Preposterous! you’ll say.  We bear no responsibility!  We’re mere onlookers!  If we libertarians had been in charge, there’d be no FDA and the police would be privatized!  If we SoCons had been in charge, there’d be prayer in public schools!  Let the absence of these and our other dream palaces stand as proof of our powerlessness!

Yeah, yeah.  But on the issues that matter most to the working class whom libertarians and SoCons alike tut-tut for their moral failures, you’ve both either supported the Davoisie or been AWOL.  You’ve taken it upon yourselves to shape the political deliberations about good and bad, better and worse.  At best, you’ve manifestly failed to prevent grave harm to those whom your deliberations are ostensibly supposed to help.  At your worst, you’re the Ministry of Truth to the Slave Power.  The key decisions, to be sure, have mostly not been yours to make.  But you’ve enabled and defended them and smeared all opposition.  Which is what you continue to do now, under the cover of objecting to Trump’s “vulgarity” and “unsuitability.”

Let us hasten to clarify that we here offer no argument that Trump is not vulgar or that he is eminently suitable to the office he seeks. But, once again, on the big issues that matter most right now, he is right and you are wrong. You’ve failed the very people you excoriate for their failures.  As shepherds, you suck.  Or, in Rockian terms, all your daughters are on the pole.  And you blame them without so much as a cursory glance in the mirror.

—Decius

The 44th post on the Journal of American Greatness originally published in March, 2016.

Drawing on James Fenimore Cooper, Bauer intelligently locates the roots of–or at least partial responsibility for–demagoguery in the rigid, snobbish, and Dionysiokolake adherence to antiquated doctrine among the so-called intelligentsia.  He writes:

If a nation’s governing elites prefer their private idols to the public’s challenges, the public will more be inclined to support anyone who at least pretends to listen to them. Looking out of their manicured citadels at a mob led by a hair-on-fire tribune, princely doctrinaires might be inclined to become even more dismissive of public demands. A vicious cycle commences, as demagogues grow even more outrageous and doctrinaires tut even more self-righteously.

Tellingly, responsibility begins with response; a key duty of authority is to be responsive to events. The doctrinaire falls short of this important obligation. He confuses enduring principles with policies that are the applications of these principles. He makes a dogma out of old facts and uses slogans as intellectual swaddling clothes. If the demagogue appeals to the resentments of the masses, the doctrinaire appeals to the narcissism of the powerful, assuring them that what truly afflicts a troubled nation is an ungrateful public….

The conventional wisdom around Trump’s campaign has lurched from one soon-disproved truism to another: he would never run, he would fizzle out, he would win no more states than Pat Buchanan, winnowing the field would destroy him, attack ads would crush him, and, if rival candidates would just muster the courage, they could cut him down to size with personal insults….

Meanwhile, Republicans have struggled to advance policies that will reach out to, and address the concerns of, anxious Americans. Disco died over thirty years ago, but some Republicans remain wedded to policies formulated when Donna Summer ruled the pop charts. Some on the right have been tempted to retreat to the comfortable orthodoxies of trade deals, entitlement reform, and capital-gains tax-cuts, but it is far from clear that a majority coalition can be built on that policy trinity alone….

Read the whole thing.  We wish we would have written it, and, to be fair, in some forms we did, but neither as eloquently nor as charitably.

And credit to the Weekly Standard for publishing it.  Perhaps it is not too late yet for a conservative awakening, though much more evidence is required, and much more work to be done, before we cheer too loudly.

— Plautus

The 43rd post on the Journal of American Greatness originally published in March, 2016.

Harry Jaffa liked to tell the story of how, while reading Plato’s Republic with Leo Strauss at the New School in 1946, he encountered a copy of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in a used book store near his father’s Greenwich Village restaurant.  Unable to afford the book, he read it piecemeal on several furtive visits and realized that the issue between Lincoln and Douglas—no slavery in the territories v. “popular sovereignty”—was identical to that between Socrates and Thrasymachus: natural right v. might makes right.

We see a similar similarity between Lincoln’s times and ours.

In the decade or so before the Civil War, a phrase in common use was “the Slave Power,” which described a trans-partisan (and even to a small extent trans-regional) alignment of interests to protect, promote and extend slavery in the United States and even in the Western Hemisphere.  The Slave Power was led by the big slave-owners themselves, of course, but was hardly limited to them. Through various proxies and fellow-travelers, they absolutely controlled Southern state governments.  They could also count on some federal officials, including—importantly—judges. They even had support in the North: the notorious “doughfaces.”  The growing influence of the Slave Power contributed mightily to the Civil War.  The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act alone destroyed the Whig Party and created the Republican.

But this is not meant to be a history lesson.  The point is that a numerically and proportionally small but economically and politically powerful oligarchy managed—for a time, anyway—to steer the nation in the direction of its own interests at the expense of everyone else’s and of the popular will. Sound familiar?

Nor do the similarities end there.  Is not the similarity between slavery and mass immigration obvious?  (Note to the hysterical that I said “similarity” and not “identicality.”)  They both serve the same fundamental purpose: sources of cheap labor to squeeze out the working class and enrich a few.

The fact that slaves are not free and immigrants are is, to be sure, a non-trivial difference—for immigrant and slave.  But what about the third man, William Graham Sumner’s “forgotten man”? In their effects on him, the two don’t seem so very different after all.  Nor are they supposed to.

A major source of opposition to the Slave Power arose from the Free Soil Movement: free men—American citizens—who wanted to earn decent livings without having to compete against slave labor that would undercut them at every turn.  Does that sound familiar? Nor is at any accident that the Old South was staunchly free trade while the free North was protectionist.  Is the theme becoming clearer?

Now it is probably too harsh to refer to our modern oligarchs as a new “slave power.”  Peter Brimelow’s “treason lobby” is not bad.  We’re partial to Walter Russell Mead’s contribution: Davoisie.

The fundamental similarity is however undeniable.  A trans-partisan and trans-regional, numerically small but economically and politically powerful elite—in our case, financial, technological and corporate—essentially control political debate and get their way on everything important, in defiance of popular will, in order to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.

We know how it ended the last time.  How will it end this time?

What makes our current overlords slightly more insidious (if only in one way) than their slave-master predecessors is their risible moral preening.  19^th century slaveholders really did have a difficult time affirming the justice of their “peculiar institution.” In addition to the obvious injustice of owning other human beings like animals, they knew from experience what Xenophon teaches in the Anabasis and Shakespeare in the Tempest: “when difficult things are commanded, harshness, and not sweetness, is needed in order to bring about obedience.”  Concerned to shield its reputation from intrusive, revealing sunlight, the Slave Power was not eager to advertise this necessity and the harsh treatment it necessitated.

By contrast, our overlords never tire of lecturing us about how virtuous they are.  I know of no record of a plantation owner claiming that his recent purchases at a slave auction show his goodness.  But every new immigrant—legal or otherwise—who takes an American job at a fraction of the recent wage, our masters trumpet as a sign of their superior morality.  Every American laid off and every job outsourced gets the same self-congratulation.  Recall the words of that hedge-fund high priest: “if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade.”

That sickly sanctimonious phrase—“lifts people out of poverty”—heard in every hotel conference room and lecture hall where the Davoisie meet to rub holy oil on each other’s backs, is the modern rhetorical equivalent of John C. Calhoun’s “positive good” and serves the same purpose.  Only it’s been much more effective.  The real aim of the Davoisie’s showy, skin-deep leftism is to confer upon itself the veneer of legitimacy necessary to preserving its status.  Well, that and divide-and-conquer.

Has there ever been a plutocratic class more adept at claiming the moral high ground for wealth and privilege achieved in large measure by the impoverishment of its fellow citizens and decimation of domestic industries?  If so, we can’t think of it.

Lincoln described the issue dividing Douglas from himself as:

the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

Thrasymachus to Stephen Douglas to George Soros and Paul Singer.  Plus ҫa change.
Since the Davoisie seized the commanding heights of the West (about 30 years ago), Trump is the only presidential candidate to oppose our equivalent of the slave power.  Granted, he’s not exactly a Lincoln in stature, temperament, virtue, intellect or ability.  We’d certainly prefer another Abe!  If you know where to find one, please send him our way.  In the meantime, we have no choice but to make do with Trump.

—Decius

The 41st post on the Journal of American Greatness originally published in March, 2016.

Consider these two items in parallel.

In a recent note, a Danish economist wrote that “the ratio between employee compensation to gross domestic product in the U.S. is the lowest in history and corporate profits are at their highest-ever point.”

Today, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said that the U.S. economy was “near full employment” and has been for years.  Lest you think that was a slip, or a Greenspanian malapropism misinterpreted, she said the same thing back in December.

Any questions?

—Decius

The 40th post on the Journal of American Greatness originally published in March, 2016.

The estimable Steve Hayward says of us (and more generally about other pro-, or anti-anti-Trump, writers on the right) that he’s “wondering if these interpretations of the Trump phenomenon aren’t trying to understand Trump better than he understands it himself.”  He seems to mean it as a criticism—if more of Trump than of us.  We won’t presume to speak for any of the others Hayward names.  But speaking for ourselves, we say: that’s absolutely what we’re trying to do!  Thanks for noticing!

We may have more to say later on the aptness of the comparison.  Strauss’ brilliant formulation was intended for application to thinkers, not doers.  The modern obsession with placing all thinkers into “context” is intended, Strauss argued, to foreclose the possibility that a thinker could be out-of-step with or transcend or even (at the highest level) create his time—change history, in short. Hence summarizing (say) Locke as a “product of the Age of Reason” already assumes that Locke (and others like him) didn’t—intentionally—cause, through reasoned argument and subsequent widespread adoption, the very Age of Reason of which they are supposedly just products.

Strauss was quite clear that political actors, as opposed to thinkers, often or even mostly don’t have a coherent grasp of their own doings.  Who understood the Sicilian Expedition better?  Nicias?  Or Thucydides?

As we’ve argued, Trump is not an intellectual.  That’s no dig on him.  Most people aren’t.  Most politicians aren’t.  Even politicians who lead realigning movements tend not to be.  Strauss knew that.  Hence he would be completely unsurprised by Trump’s apparent lack of interest in theory, and—we hope—encouraged by our attempt to apply what little political education we have to the task of understanding Trump.

Still and all, we concede a non-trivial difference between being an intellectual and having a coherent, thought-through political program.  Reagan—also no intellectual—had the latter.  By contrast, no one can imagine Trump spending hours, over decades, writing out radio commentaries and speeches on yellow legal pads.  We nonetheless have our doubts that Trump’s program is as vacuous as alleged.  No doubt, to others, our mere “doubts” sound preposterous: we should be as certain as everyone else that Trump has no platform or program, much less a political philosophy.

We’re mostly there—but not quite fully.  Trump does seem to have at least the outlines of a program or an agenda, which we summarize as: secure borders, economic nationalism, and America-first foreign policy.  Granted, his positions are not well fleshed-out.  He seems not—yet—to employ the small army of “policy advisors” that most presidential campaigns find essential.  But this—along with his related lack of big-name, big-check consultants and DC celebrity endorsements—seems to be part of his appeal. Candidates with immense conventional political operations and experience have fallen one by one.

Was that primarily because of the slickness of their operations?  Or was it more fundamentally what they were saying?

Here we’re willing to meet Hayward and the other Trump-is-incoherent critics halfway.  We think the latter explanation is far more plausible.  Slickness surely can be a turn-off, as Ted Cruz has shown throughout this season.  Yet slickness—polish—done right is a plus.  As the old Hollywood saw goes, once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.

We think a Trump or a Trump-like candidate with the same issues, but with positions more fully fleshed out and more seamlessly presented, would have done just as well if not better than Trump.  After all, whenever Trump contradicts one of his own policy papers (a distressingly common occurrence, we admit), none of his supporters cheers him on because of the contradiction.  They rather wave away the contradiction and insist that Trump’s original position is the one he actually holds and intendeds to enact.  No one claims to support Trump because he gives a semi-coherent interview on foreign policy.  Rather, those supporters (who bother to read such interviews) hear things, even amidst all the incoherence, that make more sense to them than what the “principled and consistent conservatives” are saying.  Yet the intellectuals (not necessarily you, Steve!) scoff at Trump for not being able to dazzle the Washington Post editorial board on Syria but don’t seem the least concerned when his rivals spout neocon tropes frozen in amber from September 2002.

Similarly, the root of Trump’s appeal can’t simply be that he’s taking on the establishment.  Plenty of pols have tried that, including many in this cycle.  Nor can it be his political inexperience or outsider status.  Every cycle now includes as a matter of course at least a handful of candidates who see the presidency as an entry level job; this one was no different.  Nor can it only be Trump’s willingness to say allegedly outrageous things.

Surely that has helped, the way that showmanship typically does, but far too little is paid to the content of those allegedly outrageous sayings in comparison to the alleged outrageousness itself.  The commentariat and the Republican establishment is so deeply opposed to Trump’s message that they can’t admit, even subliminally, that it might be the primary factor in his rise.  So instead of considering the simplest explanation for Trump’s popularity, they grope for alternatives while denying that he has a message at all.  The very insistence that things so many voters find so sensible are outrageous is but another factor in Trump’s rise—and goes a long way toward explaining why no pol or pundit saw it coming.

Hence our project is less to understand Trump better than he understands himself than it is to understand the times, the necessary next steps, and the electorate better than the current class of professional political thinkers understands any of the three.  This has proven less difficult than we anticipated.

The point—we cannot emphasize this enough—is not ultimately about Trump.  He may win, he may lose.  He may win and then fail in office.  Who knows? We certainly don’t claim to.

What we can repeat with confidence is that Trump—and, for the moment, Trump alone—has shown the way toward renewal or rebirth.  Perhaps of the Republican Party.  Or perhaps of a new party.  Perhaps of America as currently constituted.  Or perhaps of something else.  However incoherent or unprepared he may be, on the biggest issues facing the nation right now, he is right—or closer to right, when he speaks rightly—and all his enemies and rivals are wrong.

Whatever level of renewal Trump may accomplish or open the way toward accomplishing, we don’t think he can do it alone.  Not just Trump but the effort itself needs help.  Intellectual help.  I.e., people to make the effort to understand these currents better than they are currently understood.  Right now, we appear to be among the very few so trying.  Socrates says in the Republic that the worst penalty to good men who decline to rule is to be ruled by someone worse (347c).  Without claiming the mantle of Socrates or philosophy, we can say that our motivation is similar.

—Decius