thebulwark--2020-08-15--Can the GOP Avoid the Fate of World Championship Wrestling?

The world of professional wrestling in America is ruled today by Vince McMahon ’ s World Wrestling Entertainment ( WWE ) , with a handful of smaller operations such as Ring of Honor and All Elite Wrestling vying for talent and viewers .
Though it ’ s fair to say WWE defines professional wrestling in the American imagination , the company spent the better part of the 1990s fighting off Ted Turner ’ s World Championship Wrestling as WCW ’ s flagship program Monday Nitro went head to head with the WWF ’ s Monday Night Raw in what became @ @ @ @ @ @ @ World Championship Wrestling was an odd duck ; it grew out of Jim Crockett Promotions , a southern company that originated from Mid-South Championship Wrestling , Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling , and Georgia Championship Wrestling , all territories that were part of the National Wrestling Alliance .
The home of wrestlers such as Ric Flair , Dusty Rhodes , the Road Warriors , and the Midnight Express , JCP stars were as popular in their own territory as more well-known figures such as Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant were nationally .
Backed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exposure , WCW initially struggled to balance its roots in the South with the national exposure brought about by cable television .
The Monday Night Wars helped change all that , particularly WCW ’ s introduction of the villainous NWO—headed by Hulk Hogan , playing heel for the first time since his rise to prominence in the WWE—in 1996 .
It ’ s hard to overstate how popular WCW was .
At its height in 1998 , a main event segment on WCW ’ s Monday Nitro scored a 6.0 Nielsen rating , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ program at the time .
Yet three years later , the company was in such dire straits that the WWE was able to buy it on the cheap .
Ratings were in free fall for months , ticket sales were abysmal , and talented young wrestlers were jumping ship to WWE or overseas promotions at the first opportunity .
There are some interesting comparisons between WCW ’ s decline and that of the modern Republican party .
Why did WCW collapse ?
A couple reasons stand out .
For starters , the company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one man : Hulk Hogan .
After Hogan ’ s gimmick became stale in the WWE ( then WWF ) in 1993 , he signed with Turner ’ s WCW in early 1994 .
For the next several years , WCW programming revolved around Hogan ’ s NWO .
The company put other top-tier talent around him—Randy Savage , Kevin Nash , and Scott Hall—but all of these characters were still yoked to a single , central storyline .
This one error compounded several others .
Because the company willingly tied its fate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his running buddies , it was unable to innovate when needed .
The fixation on Hogan ’ s character limited the number of stories that could be told , even as fans grew cold to Hogan ’ s act .
It also stymied the elevation of other talented performers .
Many of these wrestlers—guys such as Chris Jericho , Chris Benoit , Eddie Guerrero , among others—went on to great success in the WWE .
The present state of the Republican party bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the late stages of WCW .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOP revolves entirely around the personality of Trump to such an extent that it is nearly impossible to support one without supporting the other .
As viewers tired of Hulk Hogan , they slowly abandoned WCW .
The danger for the GOP is that as voters grow weary of Trump , they will grow out of the party , as well .
The centrality of Trump has a similar effect on the GOP ’ s talent pool .
Just as WCW failed to grow and develop talented stars to take the place of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOP has squandered four years of talent development at the congressional level .
Bright young Republicans have spent enormous energy on tasks that revolve around Donald Trump ; trying to pass legislation without incident , avoiding a primary for a more Trumpist challenger , or carrying water for the president in an attempt to curry his favor .
Not only has the party failed to grow serious talent during the last four years , it has failed to produce policies that are responsive to the moment in which we live .
Just as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the national GOP is giving voters fewer and fewer reasons to turn out for elections .
There is a final reason WCW failed .
Significant figures in company leadership—in the front office and the locker room—did not respect the institution of professional wrestling .
Perhaps embarrassed by its roots as a southern promotion , WCW thought that it could survive on star power alone .
The company forgot that their business revolved around exciting characters and compelling stories , not cartoonish personalities and flash-in-the-pan gimmicks .
The Republican party has spent the last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s personality with all the Barnum-like capital he accumulated through years of appearances in tabloids , reality television , and , you got it , World Wrestling Entertainment .
And while the number of boat parades for him may be numerous , the hard work of reaching out to voters beyond the base has been ignored .
World Championship Wrestling wasn ’ t able to survive its decline .
If the GOP hopes to avoid that fate , it will probably have to move away from personality politics and once again put thoughtful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of its coalition .

The world of professional wrestling in America is ruled today by Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), with a handful of smaller operations such as Ring of Honor and All Elite Wrestling vying for talent and viewers. Though it’s fair to say WWE defines professional wrestling in the American imagination, the company spent the better part of the 1990s fighting off Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling as WCW’s flagship program Monday Nitro went head to head with the WWF’s Monday Night Raw in what became known as the Monday Night Wars.
World Championship Wrestling was an odd duck; it grew out of Jim Crockett Promotions, a southern company that originated from Mid-South Championship Wrestling, Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, and Georgia Championship Wrestling, all territories that were part of the National Wrestling Alliance. The home of wrestlers such as Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, the Road Warriors, and the Midnight Express, JCP stars were as popular in their own territory as more well-known figures such as Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant were nationally. Backed by Turner’s money and massive television exposure, WCW initially struggled to balance its roots in the South with the national exposure brought about by cable television. The Monday Night Wars helped change all that, particularly WCW’s introduction of the villainous NWO—headed by Hulk Hogan, playing heel for the first time since his rise to prominence in the WWE—in 1996.
It’s hard to overstate how popular WCW was. At its height in 1998, a main event segment on WCW’s Monday Nitro scored a 6.0 Nielsen rating, a staggering number for a cable television program at the time. Yet three years later, the company was in such dire straits that the WWE was able to buy it on the cheap. Ratings were in free fall for months, ticket sales were abysmal, and talented young wrestlers were jumping ship to WWE or overseas promotions at the first opportunity.
There are some interesting comparisons between WCW’s decline and that of the modern Republican party.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Why did WCW collapse? A couple reasons stand out. For starters, the company focused too tightly on the personality of one man: Hulk Hogan. After Hogan’s gimmick became stale in the WWE (then WWF) in 1993, he signed with Turner’s WCW in early 1994. For the next several years, WCW programming revolved around Hogan’s NWO. The company put other top-tier talent around him—Randy Savage, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall—but all of these characters were still yoked to a single, central storyline. This one error compounded several others.
Because the company willingly tied its fate to the career of one man and his running buddies, it was unable to innovate when needed. The fixation on Hogan’s character limited the number of stories that could be told, even as fans grew cold to Hogan’s act. It also stymied the elevation of other talented performers. Many of these wrestlers—guys such as Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, among others—went on to great success in the WWE.
The present state of the Republican party bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the late stages of WCW. Like Hogan in the WCW, the GOP revolves entirely around the personality of Trump to such an extent that it is nearly impossible to support one without supporting the other. As viewers tired of Hulk Hogan, they slowly abandoned WCW. The danger for the GOP is that as voters grow weary of Trump, they will grow out of the party, as well.
The centrality of Trump has a similar effect on the GOP’s talent pool. Just as WCW failed to grow and develop talented stars to take the place of Hogan and other aging wrestlers, the GOP has squandered four years of talent development at the congressional level. Bright young Republicans have spent enormous energy on tasks that revolve around Donald Trump; trying to pass legislation without incident, avoiding a primary for a more Trumpist challenger, or carrying water for the president in an attempt to curry his favor. Not only has the party failed to grow serious talent during the last four years, it has failed to produce policies that are responsive to the moment in which we live. Just as fans eventually turned away from WCW, the national GOP is giving voters fewer and fewer reasons to turn out for elections.
There is a final reason WCW failed. Significant figures in company leadership—in the front office and the locker room—did not respect the institution of professional wrestling. Perhaps embarrassed by its roots as a southern promotion, WCW thought that it could survive on star power alone. The company forgot that their business revolved around exciting characters and compelling stories, not cartoonish personalities and flash-in-the-pan gimmicks. The Republican party has spent the last four years living on Donald Trump’s personality with all the Barnum-like capital he accumulated through years of appearances in tabloids, reality television, and, you got it, World Wrestling Entertainment. And while the number of boat parades for him may be numerous, the hard work of reaching out to voters beyond the base has been ignored.
World Championship Wrestling wasn’t able to survive its decline. If the GOP hopes to avoid that fate, it will probably have to move away from personality politics and once again put thoughtful policy and enduring principle at the center of its coalition.


thebulwark--2020-08-15--The Revolution of Bernard Bailyn

The Revolution of Bernard Bailyn

Bernard Bailyn , a historian celebrated both for his work on early America and for mentoring a generation of scholars who would go on to make their own major contributions to the field , died last week .
In a long career—he finished his dissertation in 1953 and his most recent book was published just four months before his death at age 97—Bailyn helped to revitalize the study of the colonial era and the Founding , bringing both lay readers and his fellow historians toward a richer understanding of the role of ideas and ideology in early American politics .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the reigning academic orthodoxy—inspired by Progressive Era historians like Charles Beard—held that the American Revolution was hardly revolutionary and that the complaints of tyranny coming from the patriots were really propaganda to disguise and defend their economic self-interest .
Bailyn disagreed : He had spent years studying the pamphlet literature produced by the colonists , and saw in their writings genuine conviction .
Bailyn noticed in these texts deep discourses on the nature of power , fear or even paranoia about liberty and tyranny , and any number of conspiracy theories .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writing and thinking back nearly a century .
The Whig radicals and the “ country ” opposition literature that could be found in English pamphlets during the days of the Glorious Revolution created the ideological and rhetorical lenses through which the American colonists would interpret the crises with Britain in the 1760s , like the clash over the Stamp Act and the stationing of British troops in Boston .
As Bailyn put it in the foreword to his most acclaimed work , The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution ( 1967 ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rather old-fashioned view that the American Revolution was above all else an ideological , constitutional , political struggle.
” At its core , the American Revolution was formed , fueled , and fought with ideas ; ideas that would have implications for and effects on the American people and the republic they would establish .
Through what Bailyn imaginatively called the “ contagion of liberty , ” these ideas would spread and allow other ideas concerning the abolition of slavery , the disestablishment of religion , and the expansion of democratic rights , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was awarded both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes for Ideological Origins in 1968—and that year he came out with The Origins of American Politics , a collection of three lectures , derived from a previous project on colonial politics , exploring just why in the first place colonial society had been so susceptible to ideological politics .
Then , turning from the patriots to the loyalists , Bailyn produced The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson ( 1974 ) , a sympathetic portrait of the last royal governor of Massachusetts Bay , for which he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fascinated by the connections and networks people made with one another through print and material culture , as well as the byways and movements of peoples across land and sea , Bailyn championed the field of “ Atlantic history.
” He would win a second Pulitzer for Voyagers to the West ( 1986 ) , a demographic study and social history of British immigration to the colonies on the eve of the Revolution .
In its spiritual prequel , The Barbarous Years ( 2012 ) , Bailyn would focus on “ the peopling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 17th century , highlighting the internal and external conflict among the British , Dutch , Swedish , Africans , and Native Americans .
Bailyn ’ s final book , published this past April , Illuminating History , offers reflections on his life as a historian , the art of history writing , and his final contributions to the study of colonial America .
Robert C. Maynard , the journalist and longtime editor of the Oakland Tribune , wrote in a 1990 column , “ One of the great regrets of my life , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of my life , concerns Professor Bernard Bailyn .
I had the opportunity to study with him at Harvard [ in the 1960s ] , and I passed it up to concentrate on the ‘ dismal science ’ of economics .
I have often regretted that decision.
” Studying with Bailyn certainly changed the course of many of his students ’ lives .
He trained a host of influential and award-winning historians of early America , such as Gordon Wood , Mary Beth Norton , Jack Rakove , and the late Pauline Maier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for producing one of the greatest cohorts of up-and-coming historians the field has ever seen .
But his tutelage extended well beyond his graduate students ; he also helped develop the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World , which sought to train younger scholars interested in Atlantic History .
For such an influential figure , it is striking that Bailyn rarely waded into the waters of present-day controversy .
Unlike many other historians who write regularly on contemporary affairs , you would be hard pressed to find opinion columns he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he was widely quoted by journalists and judges—including Supreme Court justices in their legal opinions .
And he did feel compelled to give voice to some of his concerns about the historical profession , including not just the academy ’ s trend towards hyper-specialization but also the sin of “ presentism ” —that is , interpreting the past in contemporary terms and with modern expectations .
In 1975 , at the International Congress of the Historical Sciences , Bailyn famously clashed with Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm and others who sought to link @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ There is always a need to extract from the past some kind of bearing on contemporary problems , some message , commentary , or instruction to the writer ’ s age , and to see reflected in the past familiar aspects of the present , ” Bailyn warned .
“ In the absence of critical control , this generates an obvious kind of presentism , which at worst becomes indoctrination by historical example.
” Rather than disparaging the American royalists as mere reactionaries or as detached conservatives , Bailyn sought to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his book on Thomas Hutchinson and encouraged historians to do the same when writing about the Russians who had stayed loyal to the tsar—encouraging compassion for the ‘ losers of history.
’ The balancing of historical sensibility , sympathy , and scrutiny was a recurring theme in Bailyn ’ s career .
And while he did not remark on current affairs with the frequency of some other historians , the occasions when he did are instructive .
In 1977 , when disputes arose about the historical accuracy of Alex Haley ’ s book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Bailyn commented , “ It ’ s a work of fiction .
.
.
and its importance is as a work of fiction and a very powerful one .
I don ’ t think its importance rests on whether or not such-and-such a ship was in such-and-such a place .
I don ’ t give a damn if they don ’ t find the ship he names .
It is a powerful book for other reasons altogether.
” In 1982 , when some pundits were bemoaning the supposed end of the American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cultural changes the country was witnessing .
No doubt drawing on his experience studying the paranoia of the American revolutionaries , Bailyn responded : “ That ’ s ridiculous .
.
.
.
There ’ s never been a time when people didn ’ t think the country was falling apart.
” In the early 1990s , Bailyn and his Harvard colleague Stephan Thernstorm were jointly teaching a course for which they used a diary belonging to a Southern slaveholder .
The students accused Bailyn of not giving equal time to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least according to an account of this incident reported in Playboy magazine—said no texts by slaves of the era existed .
Bailyn and Thernstorm reportedly dropped the class from their teaching assignments .
Over the years , Bailyn was accused in various reassessments of his work of not appreciating enough the role of women in the Revolution , as well as understating the darker elements of the Founding era , such as slavery and the clashes with Native Americans .
He was sanguine about such criticism , however , writing : “ Succeeding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should.
” In 2017 , a conference was organized at Yale to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Ideological Origins .
Some of Bailyn ’ s most acclaimed students , as well as leading younger scholars like Joanne Freeman and Steven Pincus , presented papers on the book ’ s still-provocative thesis .
One famed Bailyn alumnus , Richard D. Brown , commented that after fifty years of intense debate , the verdict was in : “ Bailyn ’ s insight was accurate : Revolutionary ideology redirected the arc of American history toward liberty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently discovered rare copy of the Declaration of Independence in England was timed to coincide with the conference to honor Bailyn ’ s contributions to Atlantic history .
Surrounded by former colleagues , students , friends , and the newest generation of early American scholars—I was fortunate and honored , as a graduate student , to be there myself—Bailyn defended his thesis against its critics , old and new , and offered some “ confessions ” about the book ’ s enduring legacy .
He said he stood amazed and humbled by his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ His ultimate reflection , however , centered on the nature of power and early Americans ’ obsession with it .
His final comments were about the Constitution : “ It did not solve the ancient and persistent problems of power—nothing could—but it created a system for their resolution that would last as long as officials ruled within the boundaries of the Constitution and that an informed , alert , and uncorrupted electorate was committed to preserving the freedoms of a republican state.
” In addition to his Bancroft and Pulitzer prizes and National @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prestigious awards was bestowed upon Bailyn by various universities , historical associations , and journals .
And in 2011 , President Barack Obama honored him with a National Humanities Medal for “ for illuminating our Nation ’ s early history and pioneering the field of Atlantic history.
” Bailyn ’ s passing last week at his home in Belmont , Massachusetts , marks a watershed in the historical study of early America .
Thanks to Bailyn and those who came in his wake , it is now generally accepted that ideas were indeed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The challenge today is understanding exactly what those ideas were and what were their repercussions .
The debate continues .
Rather “ than generate clear resolutions , ” Alan Taylor writes in American Revolutions ( 2016 ) , the American Revolution “ created powerful new contradictions.
” Echoing Bailyn ’ s discussion of the “ contagion of liberty , ” Taylor argues that “ the revolution generated clashing contagions , of slavery and liberty , and pitted them against one another ” and which one would win out was far from obvious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s “ 1619 Project ” centered slavery in the minds and hearts of the patriots , claiming the Revolution was fought in defense of slavery ( although the Times eventually published a “ clarification ” walking back that assertion ) .
Sean Wilentz , in his latest work , No Property in Man ( 2018 ) , defends the Founding and examines the anti-slavery attitudes that went into the framing of the Constitution—for which he attracted fierce criticism .
A Bailyn student , C. Bradley Thompson , has also sought to defend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mind ( 2019 ) , connecting the moral principles of the revolution with the Lockean Enlightenment .
Thompson ’ s detractors from the illiberal right say his interpretation of the Founding reveals the “ moral and intellectual bankruptcy ” of libertarianism .
Meanwhile , Gordon Wood—critical both of Taylor ’ s book and the 1619 Project—has zeroed in on a key question : “ Can a revolution conceived mainly as sordid , racist and divisive be the inspiration for a nation ?
” Answering this fundamental question—a question that all Americans must consider—will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

Bernard Bailyn, a historian celebrated both for his work on early America and for mentoring a generation of scholars who would go on to make their own major contributions to the field, died last week. In a long career—he finished his dissertation in 1953 and his most recent book was published just four months before his death at age 97—Bailyn helped to revitalize the study of the colonial era and the Founding, bringing both lay readers and his fellow historians toward a richer understanding of the role of ideas and ideology in early American politics.
Early in Bailyn’s career, the reigning academic orthodoxy—inspired by Progressive Era historians like Charles Beard—held that the American Revolution was hardly revolutionary and that the complaints of tyranny coming from the patriots were really propaganda to disguise and defend their economic self-interest. Bailyn disagreed: He had spent years studying the pamphlet literature produced by the colonists, and saw in their writings genuine conviction.
Bailyn noticed in these texts deep discourses on the nature of power, fear or even paranoia about liberty and tyranny, and any number of conspiracy theories. He traced the pedigree of these modes of writing and thinking back nearly a century. The Whig radicals and the “country” opposition literature that could be found in English pamphlets during the days of the Glorious Revolution created the ideological and rhetorical lenses through which the American colonists would interpret the crises with Britain in the 1760s, like the clash over the Stamp Act and the stationing of British troops in Boston.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
As Bailyn put it in the foreword to his most acclaimed work, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), “Study of the pamphlets confirmed my rather old-fashioned view that the American Revolution was above all else an ideological, constitutional, political struggle.” At its core, the American Revolution was formed, fueled, and fought with ideas; ideas that would have implications for and effects on the American people and the republic they would establish. Through what Bailyn imaginatively called the “contagion of liberty,” these ideas would spread and allow other ideas concerning the abolition of slavery, the disestablishment of religion, and the expansion of democratic rights, to take root and grow.
Bailyn was awarded both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes for Ideological Origins in 1968—and that year he came out with The Origins of American Politics, a collection of three lectures, derived from a previous project on colonial politics, exploring just why in the first place colonial society had been so susceptible to ideological politics. Then, turning from the patriots to the loyalists, Bailyn produced The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (1974), a sympathetic portrait of the last royal governor of Massachusetts Bay, for which he was awarded the National Book Prize.
Fascinated by the connections and networks people made with one another through print and material culture, as well as the byways and movements of peoples across land and sea, Bailyn championed the field of “Atlantic history.” He would win a second Pulitzer for Voyagers to the West (1986), a demographic study and social history of British immigration to the colonies on the eve of the Revolution. In its spiritual prequel, The Barbarous Years (2012), Bailyn would focus on “the peopling of British North America” in the 17th century, highlighting the internal and external conflict among the British, Dutch, Swedish, Africans, and Native Americans. Bailyn’s final book, published this past April, Illuminating History, offers reflections on his life as a historian, the art of history writing, and his final contributions to the study of colonial America.
Robert C. Maynard, the journalist and longtime editor of the Oakland Tribune, wrote in a 1990 column, “One of the great regrets of my life, and it might have changed the course of my life, concerns Professor Bernard Bailyn. I had the opportunity to study with him at Harvard [in the 1960s], and I passed it up to concentrate on the ‘dismal science’ of economics. I have often regretted that decision.”
Studying with Bailyn certainly changed the course of many of his students’ lives. He trained a host of influential and award-winning historians of early America, such as Gordon Wood, Mary Beth Norton, Jack Rakove, and the late Pauline Maier. Bailyn’s mentorship is celebrated for producing one of the greatest cohorts of up-and-coming historians the field has ever seen. But his tutelage extended well beyond his graduate students; he also helped develop the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, which sought to train younger scholars interested in Atlantic History.
For such an influential figure, it is striking that Bailyn rarely waded into the waters of present-day controversy. Unlike many other historians who write regularly on contemporary affairs, you would be hard pressed to find opinion columns he wrote across the decades. That said, he was widely quoted by journalists and judges—including Supreme Court justices in their legal opinions. And he did feel compelled to give voice to some of his concerns about the historical profession, including not just the academy’s trend towards hyper-specialization but also the sin of “presentism”—that is, interpreting the past in contemporary terms and with modern expectations.
In 1975, at the International Congress of the Historical Sciences, Bailyn famously clashed with Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm and others who sought to link the American Revolution with modern Communist revolutions. “There is always a need to extract from the past some kind of bearing on contemporary problems, some message, commentary, or instruction to the writer’s age, and to see reflected in the past familiar aspects of the present,” Bailyn warned. “In the absence of critical control, this generates an obvious kind of presentism, which at worst becomes indoctrination by historical example.” Rather than disparaging the American royalists as mere reactionaries or as detached conservatives, Bailyn sought to tell the story from their perspective in his book on Thomas Hutchinson and encouraged historians to do the same when writing about the Russians who had stayed loyal to the tsar—encouraging compassion for the ‘losers of history.’
The balancing of historical sensibility, sympathy, and scrutiny was a recurring theme in Bailyn’s career. And while he did not remark on current affairs with the frequency of some other historians, the occasions when he did are instructive. In 1977, when disputes arose about the historical accuracy of Alex Haley’s book Roots and its hugely popular TV adaptation, Bailyn commented, “It’s a work of fiction . . . and its importance is as a work of fiction and a very powerful one. I don’t think its importance rests on whether or not such-and-such a ship was in such-and-such a place. I don’t give a damn if they don’t find the ship he names. It is a powerful book for other reasons altogether.”
In 1982, when some pundits were bemoaning the supposed end of the American Dream, a reporter asked Bailyn about the cultural changes the country was witnessing. No doubt drawing on his experience studying the paranoia of the American revolutionaries, Bailyn responded: “That’s ridiculous. . . . There’s never been a time when people didn’t think the country was falling apart.”
In the early 1990s, Bailyn and his Harvard colleague Stephan Thernstorm were jointly teaching a course for which they used a diary belonging to a Southern slaveholder. The students accused Bailyn of not giving equal time to the writing of slaves, to which Bailyn—at least according to an account of this incident reported in Playboy magazine—said no texts by slaves of the era existed. Bailyn and Thernstorm reportedly dropped the class from their teaching assignments.
Over the years, Bailyn was accused in various reassessments of his work of not appreciating enough the role of women in the Revolution, as well as understating the darker elements of the Founding era, such as slavery and the clashes with Native Americans. He was sanguine about such criticism, however, writing: “Succeeding generations will write different kinds of histories—and should.”
In 2017, a conference was organized at Yale to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Ideological Origins. Some of Bailyn’s most acclaimed students, as well as leading younger scholars like Joanne Freeman and Steven Pincus, presented papers on the book’s still-provocative thesis. One famed Bailyn alumnus, Richard D. Brown, commented that after fifty years of intense debate, the verdict was in: “Bailyn’s insight was accurate: Revolutionary ideology redirected the arc of American history toward liberty and equality.” The announcement of a recently discovered rare copy of the Declaration of Independence in England was timed to coincide with the conference to honor Bailyn’s contributions to Atlantic history.
Surrounded by former colleagues, students, friends, and the newest generation of early American scholars—I was fortunate and honored, as a graduate student, to be there myself—Bailyn defended his thesis against its critics, old and new, and offered some “confessions” about the book’s enduring legacy. He said he stood amazed and humbled by his book’s endurance and influence. His ultimate reflection, however, centered on the nature of power and early Americans’ obsession with it. His final comments were about the Constitution: “It did not solve the ancient and persistent problems of power—nothing could—but it created a system for their resolution that would last as long as officials ruled within the boundaries of the Constitution and that an informed, alert, and uncorrupted electorate was committed to preserving the freedoms of a republican state.”
In addition to his Bancroft and Pulitzer prizes and National Book Award, a slew of other prestigious awards was bestowed upon Bailyn by various universities, historical associations, and journals. And in 2011, President Barack Obama honored him with a National Humanities Medal for “for illuminating our Nation’s early history and pioneering the field of Atlantic history.”
Bailyn’s passing last week at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts, marks a watershed in the historical study of early America. Thanks to Bailyn and those who came in his wake, it is now generally accepted that ideas were indeed at the heart of the American Revolution. The challenge today is understanding exactly what those ideas were and what were their repercussions.
The debate continues. Rather “than generate clear resolutions,” Alan Taylor writes in American Revolutions (2016), the American Revolution “created powerful new contradictions.” Echoing Bailyn’s discussion of the “contagion of liberty,” Taylor argues that “the revolution generated clashing contagions, of slavery and liberty, and pitted them against one another” and which one would win out was far from obvious. Similarly, the New York Times’s “1619 Project” centered slavery in the minds and hearts of the patriots, claiming the Revolution was fought in defense of slavery (although the Times eventually published a “clarification” walking back that assertion). Sean Wilentz, in his latest work, No Property in Man (2018), defends the Founding and examines the anti-slavery attitudes that went into the framing of the Constitution—for which he attracted fierce criticism. A Bailyn student, C. Bradley Thompson, has also sought to defend the Founding with America’s Revolutionary Mind (2019), connecting the moral principles of the revolution with the Lockean Enlightenment. Thompson’s detractors from the illiberal right say his interpretation of the Founding reveals the “moral and intellectual bankruptcy” of libertarianism. Meanwhile, Gordon Wood—critical both of Taylor’s book and the 1619 Project—has zeroed in on a key question: “Can a revolution conceived mainly as sordid, racist and divisive be the inspiration for a nation?” Answering this fundamental question—a question that all Americans must consider—will be that much harder without Bernard Bailyn.


Natural Born Citizens

Kamala Harris was born in California—which no one disputes is part of the United States of America ( yet ) —but a group of what passes for legal scholars in Trump World want you to believe that she still does not meet the constitutional qualification of “ natural born citizen ” that would allow her to be sworn-in as vice president.The Claremont Institute ’ s John Eastman raised the issue in an op-ed for Newsweek Wednesday , suggesting that because Harris ’ s parents were foreign graduate students when she was born , her claim to be a natural born @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a new ploy in Eastman ’ s and the Claremont Institute ’ s fight against the Fourteenth Amendment ’ s guarantee that “ All persons born or naturalized in the United States , and subject to the jurisdiction thereof , are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
” They began years ago by challenging birthright citizenship for children born to immigrants who had entered the country illegally but have now branched out to embrace far broader restrictions that would limit citizenship exclusively to children whose parents were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Despite the faux scholarly arguments that Eastman and others offer , the issue is long settled .
I won ’ t go into a full refutation , but readers who are interested can read a lengthy back-and-forth between Eastman and me on the issue here .
Suffice it to say , nothing in the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment supports the notion that Congress intended to exclude the children of non-naturalized immigrants from birthright citizenship when the amendment was adopted in 1868—despite significant nativist sentiment during that period .
Nor did anti-Chinese @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Supreme Court held that Wong Kim Ark was indeed a citizen of the United States by virtue of his birth on U.S. soil , despite being born to temporary Chinese laborers who had returned to China following passage of the Chinese Exclusion Acts a decade earlier .
But even if Eastman et al .
were able to launch a new challenge to birthright citizenship in the courts , the idea that the Supreme Court would revoke citizenship from the literally tens of millions of living Americans whose parents were not U.S. citizens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pure fantasy .
So why raise the issue now with respect to Kamala Harris ?
It is little more than a thinly veiled effort to redefine who counts as a real American .
Trump and his minions find the idea of a multi-racial , multi-ethnic America threatening .
Trump ’ s goon squad have already made fun of Harris ’ s name , with Tucker Carlson willfully refusing to pronounce Kamala correctly .
Somehow Ivanka and Melania roll off the tongue for these guys , but they have more problems if the name @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Trump himself has even suggested that Harris ’ s fellow senator Cory Booker will soon be moving people who look like Kamala into suburbs in Trump Country if the Biden-Harris ticket wins , warning they will depress property values .
But their worries are a bit late .
Isabella has already become the fourth-most-popular female baby name in the U.S. over the last decade ; Sofia , Leyla , Gabriella , and Aaliyah are among the top 100 names for girls , and for boys , names like Angel , Jose , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ origins beyond our borders .
And the demographics of the suburbs have already changed , with brown-skinned people now more than a third of suburban residents in the country .
Already , 36 of the top 100 suburbs have minority populations of greater than 35 percent , and suburbs of Houston , Las Vegas , San Francisco , and Washington , D.C. , have had majority minority populations for more than a decade .
The future that Trumpists worry about is already here .
Kamala Harris is the face of America in 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She is as American as apple pie and hot dogs , as pizza and ramen noodles , as empanadas and samosas—and there is little Donald Trump or his apologists can do about it .

Kamala Harris was born in California—which no one disputes is part of the United States of America (yet)—but a group of what passes for legal scholars in Trump World want you to believe that she still does not meet the constitutional qualification of “natural born citizen” that would allow her to be sworn-in as vice president.The Claremont Institute’s John Eastman raised the issue in an op-ed for Newsweek Wednesday, suggesting that because Harris’s parents were foreign graduate students when she was born, her claim to be a natural born citizen is questionable.
It’s a new ploy in Eastman’s and the Claremont Institute’s fight against the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” They began years ago by challenging birthright citizenship for children born to immigrants who had entered the country illegally but have now branched out to embrace far broader restrictions that would limit citizenship exclusively to children whose parents were citizens at the time of birth.
Despite the faux scholarly arguments that Eastman and others offer, the issue is long settled. I won’t go into a full refutation, but readers who are interested can read a lengthy back-and-forth between Eastman and me on the issue here. Suffice it to say, nothing in the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment supports the notion that Congress intended to exclude the children of non-naturalized immigrants from birthright citizenship when the amendment was adopted in 1868—despite significant nativist sentiment during that period. Nor did anti-Chinese prejudice win the argument in 1898 when the Supreme Court held that Wong Kim Ark was indeed a citizen of the United States by virtue of his birth on U.S. soil, despite being born to temporary Chinese laborers who had returned to China following passage of the Chinese Exclusion Acts a decade earlier.
But even if Eastman et al. were able to launch a new challenge to birthright citizenship in the courts, the idea that the Supreme Court would revoke citizenship from the literally tens of millions of living Americans whose parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of their birth is pure fantasy. So why raise the issue now with respect to Kamala Harris? It is little more than a thinly veiled effort to redefine who counts as a real American.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Trump and his minions find the idea of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic America threatening. Trump’s goon squad have already made fun of Harris’s name, with Tucker Carlson willfully refusing to pronounce Kamala correctly. Somehow Ivanka and Melania roll off the tongue for these guys, but they have more problems if the name has roots in, say, India. Trump himself has even suggested that Harris’s fellow senator Cory Booker will soon be moving people who look like Kamala into suburbs in Trump Country if the Biden-Harris ticket wins, warning they will depress property values.
But their worries are a bit late. Isabella has already become the fourth-most-popular female baby name in the U.S. over the last decade; Sofia, Leyla, Gabriella, and Aaliyah are among the top 100 names for girls, and for boys, names like Angel, Jose, Mateo, Xavier and others that suggest origins beyond our borders. And the demographics of the suburbs have already changed, with brown-skinned people now more than a third of suburban residents in the country. Already, 36 of the top 100 suburbs have minority populations of greater than 35 percent, and suburbs of Houston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., have had majority minority populations for more than a decade.
The future that Trumpists worry about is already here. Kamala Harris is the face of America in 2020, the tawny-skinned child of immigrants. She is as American as apple pie and hot dogs, as pizza and ramen noodles, as empanadas and samosas—and there is little Donald Trump or his apologists can do about it.


thebulwark--2020-08-16--Love and Loyalty in the “Liberalocracy”

Love and Loyalty in the “Liberalocracy”

On the July 23 , 2020 edition of his Fox News program , Tucker Carlson went after the Democratic Party .
He spoke in paranoid tones about the party ’ s new radicalism .
Democrats “ despise the country they seek to govern , ” he explained .
“ They plan to remake it completely .
These people want power with an intensity that you , as a normal well-adjusted person , can not even begin to understand.
” Even the most sophisticated and genteel actors on the Republican right indulge in these kinds of ugly fantasies , and have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and nationalist intellectuals whose ideas undergird Trumpism—men like Yoram Hazony , Patrick Deneen , Adrian Vermeule , and William Barr—regularly challenge liberals ’ capacity for basic human affections and devotions .
Their caricatures of whole swaths of the American citizenry are ugly , dehumanizing , and untrue .
Carlson might as well have taken his talking points directly from Attorney General Bill Barr , who has warned of the left ’ s “ holy mission ” against traditionalism , and of how “ secularists and their allies ” are engaged in an “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” “ This is not decay , ” he declared in a speech at Notre Dame last fall , “ it is organized destruction.
” He doubled down on the message in an interview last weekend , declaring that the left—Joe Biden ’ s left—has become a “ Rousseauian revolutionary party.
” He went on : “ They ’ re not interested in compromise .
They ’ re not interested in dialectic exchange of views .
They ’ re interested in total victory.
” It is striking that Carlson and Barr are willing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mismanaged pandemic tears through the country , federal troops descend uninvited upon various American cities , and the president openly undermines trust in the election .
Such a facility for distortion suggests a degree of ideological conviction that we underestimate at our peril .
And the conviction is mistaken .
At bottom , this group holds that liberal democracy destroys human relationships and so undermines the foundation for decent society .
While it ’ s true that the pandemic is straining social bonds—and revealing the extraordinary costs of America ’ s individualist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ core affections endure , even across partisan divides , and even in a liberal democracy under siege .
If they didn ’ t , none of this would be very hard .
The notion that liberal democracy destroys human relationships is jarring to contemporary ears , but it draws on ideas that are very old .
The core political tensions today ’ s illiberal reactionaries describe—between conservative traditionalists and innovative , freedom-loving progressives—are nothing new .
Early on in his History of the Peloponnesian War , for example , Thucydides shows how a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At one point a Corinthian envoy is trying to draw Sparta into the war , but rather than provoke the Spartans with tales of Athens ’ s strength , they raise the specter of her relentless dynamism .
The busybodied Athenians , we learn , are “ addicted to innovation , ” “ adventurous beyond their power , ” and “ daring beyond their judgment.
” They are something like the world ’ s first neoliberals : selfish , restless , “ ever engaged in getting , ” and never comfortable at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , suffer a “ total want of invention.
” They are fatalistic and slow to act , content with the peace of their rustic life .
The Corinthians argue that Sparta is in danger of underestimating imperial Athens .
Slowly but surely the Spartans come around .
In February 2020 , Yoram Hazony stepped onto a sterile auditorium stage in Rome and gave a rather Spartan speech about loyalty to one ’ s own .
Hazony is an Israeli-American scholar , the author of The Virtue of Nationalism ( 2018 ) , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conservatism movement .
The purpose of the Rome conference was to build solidarity on the new illiberal right ( Hungary ’ s Viktor Orbán was the conference ’ s star speaker ) .
Hazony clearly views himself as sounding a wake-up call to imperiled conservatives across the globe , and , like the Corinthian envoy , offers a Manichean vision of two fundamentally different tribes .
Hazony defines conservatives as those who understand the world of deep familial bonds and obligations : Hazony contrasts this deep , unquestioning loyalty with “ enlightenment rationalist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
While conservatives are capable of real human love and are loyal to the last drop , liberal internationalists are subject instead to Hobbesian individualism and selfishness , and are full of contempt for the ties that bind : “ They believe that the world can be reduced to free and equal individuals undertaking obligations only on the basis of consent.
” Again and again , Hazony asks “ What kind of people are these ?
” in reference to the liberal foe .
“ Can you be a decent human being if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ build your political theory from—on a structure , on a basis in which no one is loyal ?
” For Hazony , the situation is dire .
Liberals have been in ascendance for decades in global politics , media , and in schools and universities , the modern-day equivalents of the Athenian imperialists .
Such people—the leaders of the EU being his go-to example—are only capable of cold , contractual thinking about their fellow human beings , and they are unwilling to compromise with conservatives , he claims , because “ they do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Echoing the Corinthians ’ darkest pleas at Sparta , Hazony warns his allies in Rome that “ There is not going to be a gentle truce with these people.
” An essential difference between Thucydides and Hazony , however , is that , while Thucydides tends not to take sides , Hazony dares to speak to us directly .
That also leaves him more open to direct critique .
His February speech in Rome , it must be said , has not aged well in intervening months .
In the wake of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and in which nearly 200,000 Europeans lost their lives—Hazony ’ s attack on liberals and EU bureaucrats sounds tasteless , if not absurd .
Europeans came together , in solidarity , to protect one another .
Furthermore , Hazony ’ s binary rendering of modern peoples ignores some pretty basic questions .
Why , for example , is it so difficult for Hazony to conceive of loyalties that are simultaneously chosen and felt ?
As Anne Applebaum points out in her account of the speech in Rome , this leads him to exclude @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are patriotic , take care of their children , and feel attached to their local customs ” —i.e.
, those who understand that consent and loyalty , intention and love , can and do go together .
I also wonder why , for Hazony , it ’ s possible for conservatives to sustain such a diversity of loyalties all the way up to the nation-state , but so difficult for him to conceive of legitimate , non-universal loyalties beyond that .
Is a European ’ s commitment to the EU so completely different @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a believer ’ s love for creation make patriotism impossible ?
If some intermediary loyalties can coexist , why not others ?
Hazony takes it upon himself to be the arbiter of human loyalties , and then props up the idea that—in the year 2020—our relations ought to be more tribal and unthinking .
It ’ s an odd way for a scholar to present complex realities , but it got Hazony a round of applause from the crowd in Rome only a few months ago .
I can ’ t help but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with Europe ’ s major cities recovering from grueling lockdowns , and with so many dead .
Hindsight , of course , is 20/20 , and it ’ s not fair to dismiss the concerns of Hazony based on one bad speech .
His book is more subdued and thoughtful .
When I first read his critique therein of liberal internationalism , I was reminded of Thucydides ’ haunting account of the Athenian conquest of Melos .
Events at Melos take place some fifteen years into the Peloponnesian War .
The small @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the protracted conflict , but the Athenians insist on Melian surrender .
Annoyed even at the idea of compromise or negotiation , the Athenians make a harsh display of their rationalism , at one point confidently declaring that “ right , as the world goes , is only in question between equals in power , while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
” Much like the EU liberals of Hazony ’ s imagination , they mock the Melians for their naïve traditions and loyalties .
Melos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conquered—the men killed , the women and children sold into slavery .
Whether or not Hazony is right about modern liberal rationalism , it ’ s the kind of moment that should give us pause .
It ’ s hardly the last time that cruel fanaticism would lie on the side of purported reason .
Patrick Deneen wasn ’ t present for the national conservative conference in Rome , but he is chummy with Orbán , and a fan of Bill Barr , too .
His 2018 book , Why Liberalism Failed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Hazony likely admires .
Whereas Hazony ’ s focus is the impact of liberal ideas on national loyalties , Deneen is more concerned with how liberal rationalism destroys local communities and affections .
His argument is that liberalism ( by which he means the ideology that undergirds life in all modern liberal democracies ) acts as an inevitable solvent on all human connectedness and culture , because it is so singularly concerned with human freedom .
Liberalism , he writes , has Deneen argues that liberalism has achieved individual liberation , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ voluntary associations , political parties , churches , communities , and even family ” —and social forms .
Like Hazony , and like Barr , he speaks of contemporary society in absolutist , apocalyptic terms .
We are experiencing the “ evisceration of actual cultures ” as well as of “ local experience , ” and our capacity for self-government has waned almost “ to the point of nonexistence , ” having been replaced with an impersonal , technocratic tyranny .
Our universities , Deneen writes , prepare elite students “ for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ default condition is homelessness , ” Deneen laments , in terms that recall those unsettled Athenians of yesteryear .
I ’ m sympathetic to some of Deneen ’ s critiques of American society , though I tend to agree with Samuel Moyn ’ s generous view that the book would have been more valuable had it been rendered as a critique of neoliberalism .
Even so , it is written as a blanket declaration of the failure of modern liberal democracy .
And even as an account of contemporary America it strikes me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Deneen offers little actual evidence , and no historical baseline , by which to measure his extraordinary claims .
His assertions about liberal democracy ’ s failure leave me full of questions in a way , say , that Thucydides ’ treatment of Athens ’ long , complicated decline does not .
On a more personal note : As a mother of two very young children , it ’ s hard to take things like “ default homelessness ” and “ deracinated vagabondage ” very seriously .
These notions are just so divorced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ joys—of my own life .
I read Deneen ’ s rhetoric about “ individuated selves held together by depersonalized commitments , ” and I can ’ t help but think about every young parent I know—overwhelmed with love , and struggling to build a better future for our kids .
Do any of us know any actual “ autonomous individuals ” —or anyone who manages not to become attached to home ?
Deneen ’ s book was published in 2018 , and so pre-dates the destabilizing COVID-19 pandemic , but he has continued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I would counter that the pain we are enduring , and the evidence of solidarity that we have seen in recent months ( mediating institutions might be on the wane , but don ’ t social movements count ? )
, show that we haven ’ t quite reached the point of disconnected deracination , assuming that we ever could .
On some level , Deneen knows this to be true .
In one of the final chapters of Why Liberalism Failed , he reveals his awareness that middle-class lives like mine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ premises of his work .
He admits that there are major exceptions to his catastrophic rendering of liberal democratic life .
So many , in fact , as to constitute an entirely new “ Aristocratic ” regime .
Deneen observes that American elites ( whom he terms the “ liberalocrats , ” in a strictly nonpartisan sense of course ) are more likely to form lasting marriages , attain higher levels of education , and ultimately live fulfilling lives .
The real problem , it turns out , isn ’ t social dissolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instead of acknowledging that liberal constitutionalism hasn ’ t been a total failure , and then urging a consideration of how we might fight glaring injustices and growing inequities , Deneen digs a deep and cynical hole .
He argues that , while the new aristocrats enjoy the trappings of decency , everything they do—or we do , as the case may be—is in bad faith .
In the “ liberalocracy , ” “ friendships and even romantic relationships are like international alliances—understood to serve personal advantage ” ; education is purely transactional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mere façade .
And the system of stratification is no accident , Deneen explains .
It ’ s all entirely by design : “ this scenario was embraced by those of liberal dispositions precisely because they anticipated being its winners.
” When Deneen gets going , he sounds as conspiratorial as anyone .
Furthermore , his notion of a ruling liberalocracy sidesteps major tensions on the liberal left concerning class and economics , and ignores obvious signs of plutocracy on the right .
As Jamelle Bouie observes , Deneen ’ s mode of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in American politics : It ’ s hard to know where any historically marginalized people fit into Deneen ’ s bad-faith description of liberalocracy , let alone how black working-class voters fit with his empirical claims about contemporary conservatism .
But when it comes to people like me , the reactionary perspective is clear : Liberalocratic privilege renders us incapable of the most basic human decencies and devotions .
With regard to the pandemic , or racial injustice , or fate of the country—all those things I ’ m doing , those feelings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m raising—it ’ s all just virtue-signaling self-delusion .
Over the course of his History , Thucydides also discloses some ugly truths about the Spartans .
It turns out that one of the main reasons they stayed close to home was because they lived in constant fear of slave revolt .
The much-celebrated Spartan way of life depended on an especially ruthless form of slavery , by ancient standards .
They knew that if they were away at war for long , this way of life would collapse .
So it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that kept them home , it was also the harshest necessity .
Today ’ s reactionaries want us to believe that something equally sinister is going on with so-called liberal elites—that those doing well within a modern , democratic system are part of a straightforward project of exploitation , like the Spartans or Athenians at their very worst .
Any institution that inspires loyalty on the left is , deep down , insidious and oppressive .
Liberals and leftists might say they want to tax the rich and build out institutions of support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ means anything , it ’ s all just a pander for ( more ) control .
Thucydides—a thoughtful historian—sometimes deploys tropes and stereotypes as a way of drawing the reader in .
Over the course of the work , however , he presents a broader array of perspectives from which to see the world , and he introduces unsettling details that challenge earlier portraits and conceptions .
The Spartans weren ’ t just loyal and devoted fighters ; they were also ruthless and cruel .
The Athenian city was beautiful , its best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , hubristic , and power-hungry .
These are things to weigh and ponder .
No one , so far as I know , is calling Hazony or Deneen or Barr a Thucydides for our time .
But given how much the reactionary crowd likes to preen about dialectics and “ Western civ , ” it ’ s worth noting just how out-of-step their work is with that ancient approach and attitude .
Whereas Thucydides welcomes you into a world and then invites you to think for yourself , this crowd leads with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on all the way through .
Smug , rich liberal elitists ?
They live in contempt of the heartland and all that heartlanders love .
Urban-gentry liberals ?
They place their “ satisfactions ( financial and sexual ) ” ahead of the common good .
And where in Thucydides we see the temperaments of competing peoples contrasted , the reactionaries dehumanize huge swaths of their fellow citizens .
Anyone who looks at America today and responds with such distorted accounts of their compatriots ’ lives , with such hackneyed stereotypes and reduction , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
These might be the thinkers appropriate to Trump .
The rest of us—heartlanders , cosmopolites , and everyone in between—deserve more .
More thinking , more humaneness , more truth , and quite a bit more goodwill .
Sophisticated dehumanization is still dehumanizing .
And the love of freedom is a tradition , too .

On the July 23, 2020 edition of his Fox News program, Tucker Carlson went after the Democratic Party. He spoke in paranoid tones about the party’s new radicalism. Democrats “despise the country they seek to govern,” he explained. “They plan to remake it completely. These people want power with an intensity that you, as a normal well-adjusted person, cannot even begin to understand.”
Even the most sophisticated and genteel actors on the Republican right indulge in these kinds of ugly fantasies, and have done so for years. The conservatives and nationalist intellectuals whose ideas undergird Trumpism—men like Yoram Hazony, Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, and William Barr—regularly challenge liberals’ capacity for basic human affections and devotions. Their caricatures of whole swaths of the American citizenry are ugly, dehumanizing, and untrue.
Carlson might as well have taken his talking points directly from Attorney General Bill Barr, who has warned of the left’s “holy mission” against traditionalism, and of how “secularists and their allies” are engaged in an “unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.” “This is not decay,” he declared in a speech at Notre Dame last fall, “it is organized destruction.” He doubled down on the message in an interview last weekend, declaring that the left—Joe Biden’s left—has become a “Rousseauian revolutionary party.” He went on: “They’re not interested in compromise. They’re not interested in dialectic exchange of views. They’re interested in total victory.”
It is striking that Carlson and Barr are willing to spout such cant unironically even as a mismanaged pandemic tears through the country, federal troops descend uninvited upon various American cities, and the president openly undermines trust in the election. Such a facility for distortion suggests a degree of ideological conviction that we underestimate at our peril.
And the conviction is mistaken. At bottom, this group holds that liberal democracy destroys human relationships and so undermines the foundation for decent society. While it’s true that the pandemic is straining social bonds—and revealing the extraordinary costs of America’s individualist ethos—it’s also showing us that core affections endure, even across partisan divides, and even in a liberal democracy under siege. If they didn’t, none of this would be very hard.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The notion that liberal democracy destroys human relationships is jarring to contemporary ears, but it draws on ideas that are very old. The core political tensions today’s illiberal reactionaries describe—between conservative traditionalists and innovative, freedom-loving progressives—are nothing new. Early on in his History of the Peloponnesian War, for example, Thucydides shows how a similar dynamic shaped affairs in ancient Greece. At one point a Corinthian envoy is trying to draw Sparta into the war, but rather than provoke the Spartans with tales of Athens’s strength, they raise the specter of her relentless dynamism. The busybodied Athenians, we learn, are “addicted to innovation,” “adventurous beyond their power,” and “daring beyond their judgment.” They are something like the world’s first neoliberals: selfish, restless, “ever engaged in getting,” and never comfortable at home. The Spartans, in contrast, suffer a “total want of invention.” They are fatalistic and slow to act, content with the peace of their rustic life. The Corinthians argue that Sparta is in danger of underestimating imperial Athens. Slowly but surely the Spartans come around.
In February 2020, Yoram Hazony stepped onto a sterile auditorium stage in Rome and gave a rather Spartan speech about loyalty to one’s own. Hazony is an Israeli-American scholar, the author of The Virtue of Nationalism (2018), and a key organizer for the emergent national conservatism movement. The purpose of the Rome conference was to build solidarity on the new illiberal right (Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was the conference’s star speaker). Hazony clearly views himself as sounding a wake-up call to imperiled conservatives across the globe, and, like the Corinthian envoy, offers a Manichean vision of two fundamentally different tribes.
Hazony defines conservatives as those who understand the world of deep familial bonds and obligations:
A conservative knows that one’s first loyalty is to one’s parents, even though we didn’t choose them, and to our children, even though we didn’t choose them. . . . And to your grandchildren, who you didn’t choose, and to your parents and to your grandparents. . . . A conservative knows that these obligations are fixed, and that beyond the family . . . there are obligations to the local church and religious community, to the clan, and beyond that to the tribe and the nation.
Hazony contrasts this deep, unquestioning loyalty with “enlightenment rationalist liberals” in the starkest of terms. While conservatives are capable of real human love and are loyal to the last drop, liberal internationalists are subject instead to Hobbesian individualism and selfishness, and are full of contempt for the ties that bind: “They believe that the world can be reduced to free and equal individuals undertaking obligations only on the basis of consent.” Again and again, Hazony asks “What kind of people are these?” in reference to the liberal foe. “Can you be a decent human being if you have no loyalty? If you build your political theory from—on a structure, on a basis in which no one is loyal?”
For Hazony, the situation is dire. Liberals have been in ascendance for decades in global politics, media, and in schools and universities, the modern-day equivalents of the Athenian imperialists. Such people—the leaders of the EU being his go-to example—are only capable of cold, contractual thinking about their fellow human beings, and they are unwilling to compromise with conservatives, he claims, because “they do not deem us worthy of compromise.” Echoing the Corinthians’ darkest pleas at Sparta, Hazony warns his allies in Rome that “There is not going to be a gentle truce with these people.” An essential difference between Thucydides and Hazony, however, is that, while Thucydides tends not to take sides, Hazony dares to speak to us directly. That also leaves him more open to direct critique.
His February speech in Rome, it must be said, has not aged well in intervening months. In the wake of a global pandemic—in which everyone made sacrifices, and in which nearly 200,000 Europeans lost their lives—Hazony’s attack on liberals and EU bureaucrats sounds tasteless, if not absurd. Europeans came together, in solidarity, to protect one another.
Furthermore, Hazony’s binary rendering of modern peoples ignores some pretty basic questions. Why, for example, is it so difficult for Hazony to conceive of loyalties that are simultaneously chosen and felt? As Anne Applebaum points out in her account of the speech in Rome, this leads him to exclude “the many enlightenment rational liberals who are patriotic, take care of their children, and feel attached to their local customs”—i.e., those who understand that consent and loyalty, intention and love, can and do go together. I also wonder why, for Hazony, it’s possible for conservatives to sustain such a diversity of loyalties all the way up to the nation-state, but so difficult for him to conceive of legitimate, non-universal loyalties beyond that. Is a European’s commitment to the EU so completely different from her love of France? Does a believer’s love for creation make patriotism impossible? If some intermediary loyalties can coexist, why not others? Hazony takes it upon himself to be the arbiter of human loyalties, and then props up the idea that—in the year 2020—our relations ought to be more tribal and unthinking.
It’s an odd way for a scholar to present complex realities, but it got Hazony a round of applause from the crowd in Rome only a few months ago. I can’t help but wonder how it would go over today, with Europe’s major cities recovering from grueling lockdowns, and with so many dead.
Hindsight, of course, is 20/20, and it’s not fair to dismiss the concerns of Hazony based on one bad speech. His book is more subdued and thoughtful. When I first read his critique therein of liberal internationalism, I was reminded of Thucydides’ haunting account of the Athenian conquest of Melos. Events at Melos take place some fifteen years into the Peloponnesian War. The small island colony tried to remain neutral through the protracted conflict, but the Athenians insist on Melian surrender. Annoyed even at the idea of compromise or negotiation, the Athenians make a harsh display of their rationalism, at one point confidently declaring that “right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Much like the EU liberals of Hazony’s imagination, they mock the Melians for their naïve traditions and loyalties. Melos refuses to submit, and so is conquered—the men killed, the women and children sold into slavery. Whether or not Hazony is right about modern liberal rationalism, it’s the kind of moment that should give us pause. It’s hardly the last time that cruel fanaticism would lie on the side of purported reason.
Patrick Deneen wasn’t present for the national conservative conference in Rome, but he is chummy with Orbán, and a fan of Bill Barr, too. His 2018 book, Why Liberalism Failed, fleshes out a critique of modern rationalism that Hazony likely admires. Whereas Hazony’s focus is the impact of liberal ideas on national loyalties, Deneen is more concerned with how liberal rationalism destroys local communities and affections. His argument is that liberalism (by which he means the ideology that undergirds life in all modern liberal democracies) acts as an inevitable solvent on all human connectedness and culture, because it is so singularly concerned with human freedom. Liberalism, he writes, has
remade the world in its image, especially through the realms of politics, economics, education, science, and technology, all aimed at achieving supreme and complete freedom through the liberation of the individual from particular places, relationships, memberships, and even identities—unless they have been chosen, are worn lightly, and can be revised or abandoned at will.
Deneen argues that liberalism has achieved individual liberation, but at the expense of mediating institutions—such as “voluntary associations, political parties, churches, communities, and even family”—and social forms. Like Hazony, and like Barr, he speaks of contemporary society in absolutist, apocalyptic terms. We are experiencing the “evisceration of actual cultures” as well as of “local experience,” and our capacity for self-government has waned almost “to the point of nonexistence,” having been replaced with an impersonal, technocratic tyranny. Our universities, Deneen writes, prepare elite students “for lives of deracinated vagabondage.” “Our default condition is homelessness,” Deneen laments, in terms that recall those unsettled Athenians of yesteryear.
I’m sympathetic to some of Deneen’s critiques of American society, though I tend to agree with Samuel Moyn’s generous view that the book would have been more valuable had it been rendered as a critique of neoliberalism. Even so, it is written as a blanket declaration of the failure of modern liberal democracy. And even as an account of contemporary America it strikes me as histrionic.
For one thing, Deneen offers little actual evidence, and no historical baseline, by which to measure his extraordinary claims. His assertions about liberal democracy’s failure leave me full of questions in a way, say, that Thucydides’ treatment of Athens’ long, complicated decline does not.
On a more personal note: As a mother of two very young children, it’s hard to take things like “default homelessness” and “deracinated vagabondage” very seriously. These notions are just so divorced from the tangible realities—the daily labors and joys—of my own life. I read Deneen’s rhetoric about “individuated selves held together by depersonalized commitments,” and I can’t help but think about every young parent I know—overwhelmed with love, and struggling to build a better future for our kids. Do any of us know any actual “autonomous individuals”—or anyone who manages not to become attached to home? Deneen’s book was published in 2018, and so pre-dates the destabilizing COVID-19 pandemic, but he has continued to push his case against liberal democracy. I would counter that the pain we are enduring, and the evidence of solidarity that we have seen in recent months (mediating institutions might be on the wane, but don’t social movements count?), show that we haven’t quite reached the point of disconnected deracination, assuming that we ever could.
On some level, Deneen knows this to be true. In one of the final chapters of Why Liberalism Failed, he reveals his awareness that middle-class lives like mine and his call into question the basic premises of his work. He admits that there are major exceptions to his catastrophic rendering of liberal democratic life. So many, in fact, as to constitute an entirely new “Aristocratic” regime. Deneen observes that American elites (whom he terms the “liberalocrats,” in a strictly nonpartisan sense of course) are more likely to form lasting marriages, attain higher levels of education, and ultimately live fulfilling lives. The real problem, it turns out, isn’t social dissolution, it’s stratification. But instead of acknowledging that liberal constitutionalism hasn’t been a total failure, and then urging a consideration of how we might fight glaring injustices and growing inequities, Deneen digs a deep and cynical hole. He argues that, while the new aristocrats enjoy the trappings of decency, everything they do—or we do, as the case may be—is in bad faith. In the “liberalocracy,” “friendships and even romantic relationships are like international alliances—understood to serve personal advantage”; education is purely transactional; concern for social justice always a mere façade. And the system of stratification is no accident, Deneen explains. It’s all entirely by design: “this scenario was embraced by those of liberal dispositions precisely because they anticipated being its winners.”
When Deneen gets going, he sounds as conspiratorial as anyone. Furthermore, his notion of a ruling liberalocracy sidesteps major tensions on the liberal left concerning class and economics, and ignores obvious signs of plutocracy on the right. As Jamelle Bouie observes, Deneen’s mode of thinking also ignores the role of race in American politics: It’s hard to know where any historically marginalized people fit into Deneen’s bad-faith description of liberalocracy, let alone how black working-class voters fit with his empirical claims about contemporary conservatism.
But when it comes to people like me, the reactionary perspective is clear: Liberalocratic privilege renders us incapable of the most basic human decencies and devotions. With regard to the pandemic, or racial injustice, or fate of the country—all those things I’m doing, those feelings I’m having, the family I’m raising—it’s all just virtue-signaling self-delusion.
Over the course of his History, Thucydides also discloses some ugly truths about the Spartans. It turns out that one of the main reasons they stayed close to home was because they lived in constant fear of slave revolt. The much-celebrated Spartan way of life depended on an especially ruthless form of slavery, by ancient standards. They knew that if they were away at war for long, this way of life would collapse. So it wasn’t just restraint or virtue that kept them home, it was also the harshest necessity.
Today’s reactionaries want us to believe that something equally sinister is going on with so-called liberal elites—that those doing well within a modern, democratic system are part of a straightforward project of exploitation, like the Spartans or Athenians at their very worst. Any institution that inspires loyalty on the left is, deep down, insidious and oppressive. Liberals and leftists might say they want to tax the rich and build out institutions of support for the marginalized; none of that means anything, it’s all just a pander for (more) control.
Thucydides—a thoughtful historian—sometimes deploys tropes and stereotypes as a way of drawing the reader in. Over the course of the work, however, he presents a broader array of perspectives from which to see the world, and he introduces unsettling details that challenge earlier portraits and conceptions. The Spartans weren’t just loyal and devoted fighters; they were also ruthless and cruel. The Athenian city was beautiful, its best citizens magnificent—but they could also be fickle, hubristic, and power-hungry. These are things to weigh and ponder.
No one, so far as I know, is calling Hazony or Deneen or Barr a Thucydides for our time. But given how much the reactionary crowd likes to preen about dialectics and “Western civ,” it’s worth noting just how out-of-step their work is with that ancient approach and attitude. Whereas Thucydides welcomes you into a world and then invites you to think for yourself, this crowd leads with a hurdy-gurdy of stereotypes and lets it drone on all the way through. Smug, rich liberal elitists? They live in contempt of the heartland and all that heartlanders love. Urban-gentry liberals? They place their “satisfactions (financial and sexual)” ahead of the common good. And where in Thucydides we see the temperaments of competing peoples contrasted, the reactionaries dehumanize huge swaths of their fellow citizens.
Anyone who looks at America today and responds with such distorted accounts of their compatriots’ lives, with such hackneyed stereotypes and reduction, is, at best, profoundly naïve. These might be the thinkers appropriate to Trump. The rest of us—heartlanders, cosmopolites, and everyone in between—deserve more. More thinking, more humaneness, more truth, and quite a bit more goodwill. Sophisticated dehumanization is still dehumanizing. And the love of freedom is a tradition, too.


thebulwark--2020-08-16--Unplug from the Matrix

Unplug from the Matrix

There is so much agreement in America right now .
If you remove the extremes on the left and right who have been blinded by bias and hatred , you will find most of Americans agree about the basics : • We believe hard work and innovation should be rewarded .
• We believe everyone should play by the same rules , that the same laws should apply to all , regardless of race , religion , or background .
• We believe in opportunity , that everyone should have a fair shot to earn a sustainable living for themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans have not received that fair shot for a generation .
• We believe in laws and stability and want a competent , fair , and just legal system with enforcement that protects us all equally and is deserving of our respect .
• We believe in the right to hold opposing views .
• We believe in borders around our country and in a lawful , regulated , and humane immigration system .
• We believe that children from every community should have access to quality education .
• We believe the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been lifted from America , in spite of the great progress that ’ s been made .
• We believe affordable healthcare should be available to every American , regardless of pre-existing conditions , and that prescription drugs are too expensive .
• We believe in preserving our oceans , land , and skies for future generations .
We may disagree on the extent or degree of some of the above , but the overwhelming majority of us hold these values to be self-evident .
The main issues Americans are ideologically divided on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a government-funded right .
( But even on this issue , Americans are in agreement that it should remain legal with restrictions . )
• To what extent the rights of LGBTQ people are more or less important than the rights of those whose religions oppose such practices .
That ’ s it .
The rest is noise from the extremes .
Think Americans disagree on taxation ?
Nope , 76 percent think the wealthy should pay more .
Think the left is ruled by political correctness ?
Nope , 80 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , think political correctness , “ cancel culture ” is a problem .
So why do so many people believe the culture wars are tearing America apart ?
Why does the extreme 15 percent on either side make all the noise ?
Because four incredibly powerful groups want it to be that way : • Social media platforms and the tech giants who run them , who gain from creating division .
• Mainstream news media , which is ineluctably drawn to discord and noise , for the sake of ratings and ad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ division to raise money for their reelections .
• Lobbyists , who want us to believe we ’ re divided so we won ’ t rise up in righteous wrath when Congress passes laws benefiting corporations and special interests before people , laws that are only supported by a fraction of the population .
These groups have created a Matrix-like information universe that monetizes , thrives , and feeds on our dissent and pain , and keeps us compulsively focused on our few areas of disagreement rather than our overwhelming similarities , until @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And they have acted as enablers for the extremists on both sides , the tribalists , who have stoked fear and loathing among their followers , painting anyone who disagrees as evil and a danger to the Republic .
Twitter has become the center of this universe , so filled with abuse that users find themselves claustrophobic and alone , afraid to engage in the truthful discussions that would foster compromise , progress , and strength .
This matrix of fear and loathing has flooded our lizard brains for the last four years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from fiction .
We are all like Dorothy , trembling before the terrifying visage of the Wizard just before Toto pulls the curtain aside and reveals the little man behind .
It ’ s time for all of us to pull that curtain aside , to rise above the constant manipulation , unplug from this cycle of abuse , and end the illusion of winner-take-all tribalism .
The fact that we haven ’ t reflects the extent to which each of us has allowed ourselves—even just a little—to be corrupted by our own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and need to project our own shortcomings on the culture around us .
Division is a toxin that is seeping into all of us , and it will take immense collective will—and a profound shift in leadership—to stop it .
But we ’ ve done it before .
America has triumphed many times over divisiveness because of two traits that have defined us from the beginning : optimism and—even more important—level-headed thinking .
As Election Day draws near , America has the chance to stand up to the forces that would bleed away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ability to think for ourselves .
Because November 3 is not just about who we ’ re voting for , it ’ s about what we ’ re voting for .
Are we a nation defined by the few who profit from our pain , or are we a nation that stands together on the principles an overwhelming number of us agree on ?
Will the next four years take us further down the road of divisiveness until it is no longer an illusion but our lived reality ?
Or will we choose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , freedom , decency , strength ?

There is so much agreement in America right now.
If you remove the extremes on the left and right who have been blinded by bias and hatred, you will find most of Americans agree about the basics:
We believe hard work and innovation should be rewarded.
We believe everyone should play by the same rules, that the same laws should apply to all, regardless of race, religion, or background.
We believe in opportunity, that everyone should have a fair shot to earn a sustainable living for themselves and their family. And that working Americans have not received that fair shot for a generation.
We believe in laws and stability and want a competent, fair, and just legal system with enforcement that protects us all equally and is deserving of our respect.
We believe in the right to hold opposing views.
We believe in borders around our country and in a lawful, regulated, and humane immigration system.
We believe that children from every community should have access to quality education.
We believe the stain of slavery and racism has not been lifted from America, in spite of the great progress that’s been made.
We believe affordable healthcare should be available to every American, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and that prescription drugs are too expensive.
We believe in preserving our oceans, land, and skies for future generations.
We may disagree on the extent or degree of some of the above, but the overwhelming majority of us hold these values to be self-evident.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The main issues Americans are ideologically divided on?:
Whether abortion should be a government-funded right. (But even on this issue, Americans are in agreement that it should remain legal with restrictions.)
To what extent the rights of LGBTQ people are more or less important than the rights of those whose religions oppose such practices.
That’s it. The rest is noise from the extremes. Think Americans disagree on taxation? Nope, 76 percent think the wealthy should pay more. Think the left is ruled by political correctness? Nope, 80 percent of Americans, including a majority of liberals, think political correctness, “cancel culture” is a problem.
So why do so many people believe the culture wars are tearing America apart? Why does the extreme 15 percent on either side make all the noise? Because four incredibly powerful groups want it to be that way:
Social media platforms and the tech giants who run them, who gain from creating division.
Mainstream news media, which is ineluctably drawn to discord and noise, for the sake of ratings and ad sales.
Politicians, who use division to raise money for their reelections.
Lobbyists, who want us to believe we’re divided so we won’t rise up in righteous wrath when Congress passes laws benefiting corporations and special interests before people, laws that are only supported by a fraction of the population.
These groups have created a Matrix-like information universe that monetizes, thrives, and feeds on our dissent and pain, and keeps us compulsively focused on our few areas of disagreement rather than our overwhelming similarities, until disagreement is all we can see. And they have acted as enablers for the extremists on both sides, the tribalists, who have stoked fear and loathing among their followers, painting anyone who disagrees as evil and a danger to the Republic. Twitter has become the center of this universe, so filled with abuse that users find themselves claustrophobic and alone, afraid to engage in the truthful discussions that would foster compromise, progress, and strength.
This matrix of fear and loathing has flooded our lizard brains for the last four years, overwhelming our ability to differentiate fact from fiction. We are all like Dorothy, trembling before the terrifying visage of the Wizard just before Toto pulls the curtain aside and reveals the little man behind. It’s time for all of us to pull that curtain aside, to rise above the constant manipulation, unplug from this cycle of abuse, and end the illusion of winner-take-all tribalism.
The fact that we haven’t reflects the extent to which each of us has allowed ourselves—even just a little—to be corrupted by our own insecurity, confirmation-bias, dulled empathy, and need to project our own shortcomings on the culture around us. Division is a toxin that is seeping into all of us, and it will take immense collective will—and a profound shift in leadership—to stop it.
But we’ve done it before. America has triumphed many times over divisiveness because of two traits that have defined us from the beginning: optimism and—even more important—level-headed thinking.
As Election Day draws near, America has the chance to stand up to the forces that would bleed away our belief in the future and our ability to think for ourselves.
Because November 3 is not just about who we’re voting for, it’s about what we’re voting for. Are we a nation defined by the few who profit from our pain, or are we a nation that stands together on the principles an overwhelming number of us agree on?
Will the next four years take us further down the road of divisiveness until it is no longer an illusion but our lived reality?
Or will we choose the path of our own time-honored values—unity, freedom, decency, strength?


thebulwark--2020-08-16--Belarus Protests: U.S. and EU Must Act Now

If the size of protests held across Belarus on Sunday is an indication , Aleksander Lukashenko is hanging by a thread .
It would be a massive blow to both the EU and to the transatlantic alliance if Lukashenko ’ s regime ended up being rescued by a Russian military intervention , as alluded to during the Belarusian strongman ’ s talks with Vladimir Putin , or by other forms of the Kremlin ’ s interference .
Unfortunately , there are few signs that that the EU and the United States are rising to the occasion .
Yes , governments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have understood the importance of the moment since the grotesquely rigged presidential election last Sunday , and were soon joined by Sweden , Estonia , and Germany , among others , calling for a concerted EU response .
Yet , it took the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy , Josep Borrell , several days a vague warning that the EU may “ tak [ e ] measures against those responsible for the observed violence , unjustified arrests , and falsification of election results.
” The meeting of the EU @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not even produce a joint statement .
“ Work begins on sanctioning those responsible for violence & falsification , ” Borrell tweeted afterwards .
Similarly , the Trump administration does not seem ready to act .
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has sought to warm relations with Belarus , even visiting Minsk this past February .
As the protests began following last weekend ’ s fraudulent election , Pompeo said that “ we want the people of Belarus to have the freedoms that they ’ re demanding.
” Beyond that statement , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will take action .
But this is not the moment for the EU and the United States to be complacent .
When Lukashenko ’ s regime appeared stable and even maintained a degree of independence from Russia , seeking to topple it was indeed a fool ’ s errand .
But , as of now , Western inaction can only lead to two scenarios , both of them terrible : Either Lukashenko maintains his hold on power with Russian assistance , or the democratic opposition temporarily prevails but will be vulnerable to Russian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ repressive , Moscow-connected regime on Europe ’ s doorstep or a weak democracy held in constant jeopardy by the Kremlin ’ s blackmail would be terrible news for both Europeans and Americans .
Western disengagement also provides an opening for China , which has been investing in Belarus at an accelerating pace .
No doubt , Belarus ’ s transition from authoritarianism is going to be an uphill struggle .
In Ukraine , protesters in 2014 fought primarily for Ukraine ’ s European future and only then against President Viktor Yanukovych .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up with the quarter-century of Lukashenko ’ s nostalgic post-Soviet despotism , without seeing a compelling alternative to the country ’ s geopolitical status quo , in the firm embrace of Putin ’ s Russia .
If the EU and the United States want to remain relevant in the region , they must not fall back on policy tools that failed to produce results in the past .
Broad-based economic sanctions against the country would be particularly counterproductive .
Ordinary Belarusians , who would be hit the hardest , did not democratically choose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the EU and the United States ought immediately to deploy “ smart sanctions ” freezing the assets of and prohibiting travel for Lukashenko ’ s inner circle , his political backers , and kleptocrats connected to the regime .
The EU discussed targeted sanctions during the meeting on Friday but there is only a short window of opportunity to put such measures in place before the regime cracks down on the protests .
That means that both the United States and the EU need to act now , without going through the pointless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , where China and Russia would block any effort to target the regime .
Most importantly , Belarusians must be able to see a tangible alternative future for their country than that of being an ever-closer ‘ Union State ’ with Russia .
While the appetite for future EU enlargements is nil , there is no reason not to extend visa-free travel to the Schengen Area to a democratic Belarus or to put a Ukraine-style free-trade agreement on the table .
There is also no reason not to use the energy infrastructure developed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Initiative to alleviate the country ’ s dependence on Russian oil and gas .
True , there are no guarantees that any Western effort can do the trick—Belarus ’ s economy and energy sector are tied too closely to Russia , the country has little experience with democracy and only a weak sense of national identity distinct from the legacies of the Soviet era .
But not even trying to help a country at Europe ’ s doorstep shed its authoritarian yoke would be the worst possible signal about the current state of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a green light in its efforts to further destabilize the West .

If the size of protests held across Belarus on Sunday is an indication, Aleksander Lukashenko is hanging by a thread. It would be a massive blow to both the EU and to the transatlantic alliance if Lukashenko’s regime ended up being rescued by a Russian military intervention, as alluded to during the Belarusian strongman’s talks with Vladimir Putin, or by other forms of the Kremlin’s interference.
Unfortunately, there are few signs that that the EU and the United States are rising to the occasion. Yes, governments in Vilnius, Warsaw, and Riga have understood the importance of the moment since the grotesquely rigged presidential election last Sunday, and were soon joined by Sweden, Estonia, and Germany, among others, calling for a concerted EU response. Yet, it took the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell, several days to issue a vague warning that the EU may “tak[e] measures against those responsible for the observed violence, unjustified arrests, and falsification of election results.” The meeting of the EU’s foreign ministers on Friday did not even produce a joint statement. “Work begins on sanctioning those responsible for violence & falsification,” Borrell tweeted afterwards.
Similarly, the Trump administration does not seem ready to act. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has sought to warm relations with Belarus, even visiting Minsk this past February. As the protests began following last weekend’s fraudulent election, Pompeo said that “we want the people of Belarus to have the freedoms that they’re demanding.” Beyond that statement, there is no indication that the United States will take action.
But this is not the moment for the EU and the United States to be complacent. When Lukashenko’s regime appeared stable and even maintained a degree of independence from Russia, seeking to topple it was indeed a fool’s errand. But, as of now, Western inaction can only lead to two scenarios, both of them terrible: Either Lukashenko maintains his hold on power with Russian assistance, or the democratic opposition temporarily prevails but will be vulnerable to Russian interference and destabilization.
An even more repressive, Moscow-connected regime on Europe’s doorstep or a weak democracy held in constant jeopardy by the Kremlin’s blackmail would be terrible news for both Europeans and Americans. Western disengagement also provides an opening for China, which has been investing in Belarus at an accelerating pace.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
No doubt, Belarus’s transition from authoritarianism is going to be an uphill struggle. In Ukraine, protesters in 2014 fought primarily for Ukraine’s European future and only then against President Viktor Yanukovych. In contrast, ordinary Belarusians are mostly fed up with the quarter-century of Lukashenko’s nostalgic post-Soviet despotism, without seeing a compelling alternative to the country’s geopolitical status quo, in the firm embrace of Putin’s Russia.
If the EU and the United States want to remain relevant in the region, they must not fall back on policy tools that failed to produce results in the past. Broad-based economic sanctions against the country would be particularly counterproductive. Ordinary Belarusians, who would be hit the hardest, did not democratically choose their current leader.
Instead, both the EU and the United States ought immediately to deploy “smart sanctions” freezing the assets of and prohibiting travel for Lukashenko’s inner circle, his political backers, and kleptocrats connected to the regime. The EU discussed targeted sanctions during the meeting on Friday but there is only a short window of opportunity to put such measures in place before the regime cracks down on the protests. That means that both the United States and the EU need to act now, without going through the pointless Kabuki theater at the U.N. Security Council, where China and Russia would block any effort to target the regime.
Most importantly, Belarusians must be able to see a tangible alternative future for their country than that of being an ever-closer ‘Union State’ with Russia. While the appetite for future EU enlargements is nil, there is no reason not to extend visa-free travel to the Schengen Area to a democratic Belarus or to put a Ukraine-style free-trade agreement on the table. There is also no reason not to use the energy infrastructure developed under the auspices of the Three Seas Initiative to alleviate the country’s dependence on Russian oil and gas.
True, there are no guarantees that any Western effort can do the trick—Belarus’s economy and energy sector are tied too closely to Russia, the country has little experience with democracy and only a weak sense of national identity distinct from the legacies of the Soviet era. But not even trying to help a country at Europe’s doorstep shed its authoritarian yoke would be the worst possible signal about the current state of the West and give the revanchist Russia a green light in its efforts to further destabilize the West.