theamericanconservative--2020-10-02--Forecasting a Nightmare: Viereck and the Nazis

In the preface to the 1961 edition of Metapolitics , Peter Viereck assured the reader that the book in its present expanded condition was “ coming into its own.
” Not only because Viereck was in his 20s when he first wrote it , but because it had overcome considerable controversy from the first time around .
Published just a few months shy of the Pearl Harbor attacks , the book ’ s “ linking of nazism ( sic ) with German romanticism was considered anti-German war-mongering by many German intellectuals and by some fellow Americans also.
” Among those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book confirmed “ latent prejudices … some possibly useful to practical ends of pugnacity and group cohesion.
” Even his original publisher Alfred A. Knopf had misgivings when a consultant suggested the removal of the original concluding section for its “ unrealistic exaggerations which the pig-headed young author would regret 20 years from now.
” 20 years hence , Viereck “ pig-headedly ” reinserted it .
It would be fair for any reader of Metapolitics in 2020 to see it mostly as a document of vindication .
Its exaggerations have since become historical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hitler , the overt militarism and antisemitism of Mein Kampf , the opportunistic misuse of Nietzsche for stoking German nationalism , the anti-Christian and anti-Western bent of Nazism , the presence of “ rehabilitation camps , ” and the complicity of the “ honest , unsadistic German majority ” that brought Nazism to power .
But rather than gloat , Viereck restored the text in part as a tribute to and in vigilance for the triumph of West Germany ’ s task to “ achieve authority without authoritarianism.
” That is , leaving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bohemian ” romanticism behind in favor of “ un-daemonic limits of the Judeo-Christian ethics ” and “ freedom-revering conservatism.
” And at the same time in vigilance against “ the present American mood of smugness in general and the forgetfulness of Nazi evil in particular.
” Metapolitics is a peculiar , chimerical book .
It combines the doctoral dissertation , which indeed is its genesis , with the agitating pamphlet , condensing centuries of German history and intellectual activity with sober expository prose and resolute moral purpose .
It is , on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coalmine bringing a dire warning , and on the other hand a cryptozoological anomaly that is obscure to most , appears occasionally , and is not always understood .
Not least of all because Viereck ’ s aim is paradoxical : an intellectual history of how a European nation came to embrace book-burning and genocide .
In writing the book , Viereck rejected “ ‘ scientific ’ sociologies ” and “ ’ realistic ’ economic motivations ” for his indictment of Hitler , preferring instead “ moral choice and evil.
” That this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ PhD at Harvard is a little hard to believe , yet Viereck ’ s polemical agenda had to share space with his immense learning on the subject at hand .
Metapolitcs conducts itself almost like a learned but foreboding “ It ’ s a Small World ” ride of a collective mind coasting to barbarism .
He sets several dichotomies : Protestant vs. Catholic , Nordic vs. Mediterranean , French vs. German , Kultur vs. the West , romanticism vs. rationality , and Prussian vs. not Prussian .
Of the French conflict , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , some long forgotten , their disparate talents and temperaments converging on the same end of Teutonic ascendency .
Johann Gottfried Herder conceived of a benevolent aesthetic nationalism while Johann Gottlieb Fichte made it more aggressive and programmatic .
Historian and politician Heinrich von Treitschke became an eloquent publicist for Bismarck ’ s Prussian hegemony and against Jews for “ undermining the foundations of state , church , and society ” with “ French ideas ” like free press and democracy .
Viereck dedicates an entire chapter to the pre-Nazi nationalist Friedrich Ludwig @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ the first stormtrooper ” and “ the German Jacobin.
” Considered by many to be a liberal reformer , a figure of the 1848 revolutions , and a founder of gymnastics , “ Father Jahn ” is revealed by Viereck to be a model demagogue whose rough but ferocious rhetoric offended polite society in the early 19th century but energized German university students to found militarized fraternities and burn books .
Jahn was instantly recognizable for his primitive dress and long , flowing beard , affectations his followers imitated .
Viereck ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ Jahn himself , while a student , lived for a while in a cave , scorning such decadent artificialities as houses.
” Jahn ’ s book burnings were “ consciously imitated ” by the Nazis though Nazi Germany itself “ would horrify Jahn personally.
” Herder ’ s own nationalist influence would not prevent him from being “ jailed as a pacifist and internationalist if he lived in Germany ” in 1941 .
Nazism is both the culmination of every nationalist and romantic impulse of German culture and an inflammation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nazism sets aside more common figures like Himmler , Göring , and even Goebbels , focusing instead on incubators of its racist vision like Houston Chamberlain , Wagner ’ s son-in-law and “ Hitler ’ s John the Baptist.
” He spends two chapters on a mostly obscure but important figure , Alfred Rosenberg , an Estonian of German ancestry who became the Nazi court philosopher despite having no degrees in philosophy .
Though a very dull orator compared to his rival Goebbels , Rosenberg was an effective journalist and an overhauler of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racism ” as a valid science .
Yet Nazi culture as directed by Rosenberg was a haven for the “ semi-educated , ” pedantic busybodies who were “ pathetically sincere , whose pride is the glib Kultur-lingo ” that sounds “ Wagnerian , high-falutin , half-digested , irresponsible , super-heroic , and , above all , vague.
” Viereck mocks the pretensions of this audience ’ s magazine The World-Battle : A contemporary reader seeing such passages will be tempted to make contemporary parallels .
Not least of all in the wake of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of The Plot Against America , set in the time and political atmosphere in which Metapolitics was published .
But as a how-to in teasing out fascism generally , Viereck ’ s book is not helpful .
Indeed , Viereck uses “ fascism ” infrequently and with little precision ; it is not even listed in the index , compared to “ romanticism , ” which takes up nearly a page .
Looming authoritarianism is nothing new to American political discourse .
Instances of “ fascism ” and “ Weimar ” have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tendencies in our leaders whether contemporaneously against George W. Bush and Sarah Palin or retroactively against Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln .
The unreality Donald Trump ’ s presidency imposes on American imagination , let alone the actual act of governing , has made the sense of creeping fascism more acute .
This approach is a mistake , however , because it turns a historical event into a crude predictive formula that obscures more than it clarifies .
This is , moreover , to gloss over the most substantial lesson of Metapolitics : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the arc of Trumpism usually ends in finding who , besides Russia , is more to blame .
Is it Samuel Francis ?
Rousseau ?
Kids posting frogs on 4chan ?
Even without explicit conspiracy theories , the accumulated result resembles a yarn-webbed bulletin board .
Metapolitics was pretty clear on whom to blame : the German people .
What Viereck wanted to show was how , over the course of centuries , those people could become accustomed to a certain kind of authoritarian rule .
Authoritarianism is possible anywhere , but its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ habits , and weakness within certain borders .
It ’ s almost as if to combat one form of nationalism one must be a better nationalist .
Yet Viereck ’ s answer to countering the vulgar , particular nationalisms was a refined , universal conservatism .
As he wrote in The Atlantic in 1940 , “ Conservatism must include what Thomas Mann calls humanism : the conservation of our cultural , spiritual , and individualist heritage.
” Viereck was more famous for his heterodox stance against the burgeoning ideological conservative movement of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Viereck ’ s “ new conservative ” merely demonstrated “ how you can be a Conservative and yet agree with the Liberals about everything not demonstrably unimportant.
” For all of Viereck ’ s foresight as to the Nazi threat , a resilient nationalist sentiment on the right today , amid a political atmosphere impatient with nuance , would render his humanist conservatism even more remote from American society that it was in the 1950s .
But Viereck viewed his conservatism less as a program to be handed down than as an historical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is always attempting to triumph , and always in need of vigilance from any reasonable , moral person : Chris R. Morgan writes from New Jersey .
He has been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books , Lapham ’ s Quarterly , and The Week .
Follow him at his blog and on Twitter @ CR_Morgan .

In the preface to the 1961 edition of Metapolitics, Peter Viereck assured the reader that the book in its present expanded condition was “coming into its own.” Not only because Viereck was in his 20s when he first wrote it, but because it had overcome considerable controversy from the first time around.
Published just a few months shy of the Pearl Harbor attacks, the book’s “linking of nazism (sic) with German romanticism was considered anti-German war-mongering by many German intellectuals and by some fellow Americans also.” Among those critics was Jacques Barzun who thought the book confirmed “latent prejudices … some possibly useful to practical ends of pugnacity and group cohesion.” Even his original publisher Alfred A. Knopf had misgivings when a consultant suggested the removal of the original concluding section for its “unrealistic exaggerations which the pig-headed young author would regret 20 years from now.” 20 years hence, Viereck “pig-headedly” reinserted it.
It would be fair for any reader of Metapolitics in 2020 to see it mostly as a document of vindication. Its exaggerations have since become historical commonplaces: the influence of Wagner on Hitler, the overt militarism and antisemitism of Mein Kampf, the opportunistic misuse of Nietzsche for stoking German nationalism, the anti-Christian and anti-Western bent of Nazism, the presence of “rehabilitation camps,” and the complicity of the “honest, unsadistic German majority” that brought Nazism to power.
But rather than gloat, Viereck restored the text in part as a tribute to and in vigilance for the triumph of West Germany’s task to “achieve authority without authoritarianism.” That is, leaving the “mystic faith in the daemonic bohemian” romanticism behind in favor of “un-daemonic limits of the Judeo-Christian ethics” and “freedom-revering conservatism.” And at the same time in vigilance against “the present American mood of smugness in general and the forgetfulness of Nazi evil in particular.”
Metapolitics is a peculiar, chimerical book. It combines the doctoral dissertation, which indeed is its genesis, with the agitating pamphlet, condensing centuries of German history and intellectual activity with sober expository prose and resolute moral purpose. It is, on the one hand, a canary in the coalmine bringing a dire warning, and on the other hand a cryptozoological anomaly that is obscure to most, appears occasionally, and is not always understood. Not least of all because Viereck’s aim is paradoxical: an intellectual history of how a European nation came to embrace book-burning and genocide.
In writing the book, Viereck rejected “‘scientific’ sociologies” and “’realistic’ economic motivations” for his indictment of Hitler, preferring instead “moral choice and evil.” That this began as a means to attain a PhD at Harvard is a little hard to believe, yet Viereck’s polemical agenda had to share space with his immense learning on the subject at hand. Metapolitcs conducts itself almost like a learned but foreboding “It’s a Small World” ride of a collective mind coasting to barbarism. He sets several dichotomies: Protestant vs. Catholic, Nordic vs. Mediterranean, French vs. German, Kultur vs. the West, romanticism vs. rationality, and Prussian vs. not Prussian. Of the French conflict, Viereck summarizes:
By winning [the battle of Jena] the French won perhaps the most Pyrrhic victory of modern times. Their physical victory, accompanied by their aggressive intellectual influence, became a social catalyst. This French catalyst changed German nationalism for the first time from aesthetic dilettantism to political dynamite.
He conjures many figures, some long forgotten, their disparate talents and temperaments converging on the same end of Teutonic ascendency. Johann Gottfried Herder conceived of a benevolent aesthetic nationalism while Johann Gottlieb Fichte made it more aggressive and programmatic. Historian and politician Heinrich von Treitschke became an eloquent publicist for Bismarck’s Prussian hegemony and against Jews for “undermining the foundations of state, church, and society” with “French ideas” like free press and democracy.
Viereck dedicates an entire chapter to the pre-Nazi nationalist Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, whom he describes as both “the first stormtrooper” and “the German Jacobin.” Considered by many to be a liberal reformer, a figure of the 1848 revolutions, and a founder of gymnastics, “Father Jahn” is revealed by Viereck to be a model demagogue whose rough but ferocious rhetoric offended polite society in the early 19th century but energized German university students to found militarized fraternities and burn books. Jahn was instantly recognizable for his primitive dress and long, flowing beard, affectations his followers imitated. Viereck’s droll wit comes in surprising flares: “Jahn himself, while a student, lived for a while in a cave, scorning such decadent artificialities as houses.”
Jahn’s book burnings were “consciously imitated” by the Nazis though Nazi Germany itself “would horrify Jahn personally.” Herder’s own nationalist influence would not prevent him from being “jailed as a pacifist and internationalist if he lived in Germany” in 1941. Nazism is both the culmination of every nationalist and romantic impulse of German culture and an inflammation of them:
[I]s it not, by this very fanaticism, a sort of Indian summer of nationalism? Is it not the last violent rigor mortis [he might have meant convulsions] of the senile concept of autonomous national sovereignty—a nationalism to end all nationalism?
A strictly intellectual examination of Nazism sets aside more common figures like Himmler, Göring, and even Goebbels, focusing instead on incubators of its racist vision like Houston Chamberlain, Wagner’s son-in-law and “Hitler’s John the Baptist.”
He spends two chapters on a mostly obscure but important figure, Alfred Rosenberg, an Estonian of German ancestry who became the Nazi court philosopher despite having no degrees in philosophy. Though a very dull orator compared to his rival Goebbels, Rosenberg was an effective journalist and an overhauler of German education to teach his “highbrow racism” as a valid science. Yet Nazi culture as directed by Rosenberg was a haven for the “semi-educated,” pedantic busybodies who were “pathetically sincere, whose pride is the glib Kultur-lingo” that sounds “Wagnerian, high-falutin, half-digested, irresponsible, super-heroic, and, above all, vague.” Viereck mocks the pretensions of this audience’s magazine The World-Battle:
But apparently no truly nordic (sic) shopkeeper is getting his money’s worth of world-philosophical lore unless the prefix Welt is being generously squandered. How glorious to feel that even though you are a sturdy folkic shopkeeper and not a dirty intellectual you can still flaunt a great big Weltanschauung … with the best and fight in a Weltkampf …, and even experience Weltschmerz …, a Kitsch for which we prefer to coin the word Weltschmalz.
A contemporary reader seeing such passages will be tempted to make contemporary parallels. Not least of all in the wake of David Simon’s explicit parallel-making adaptation of The Plot Against America, set in the time and political atmosphere in which Metapolitics was published. But as a how-to in teasing out fascism generally, Viereck’s book is not helpful. Indeed, Viereck uses “fascism” infrequently and with little precision; it is not even listed in the index, compared to “romanticism,” which takes up nearly a page.
Looming authoritarianism is nothing new to American political discourse. Instances of “fascism” and “Weimar” have been deployed across the ideological spectrum to denote tendencies in our leaders whether contemporaneously against George W. Bush and Sarah Palin or retroactively against Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln. The unreality Donald Trump’s presidency imposes on American imagination, let alone the actual act of governing, has made the sense of creeping fascism more acute. This approach is a mistake, however, because it turns a historical event into a crude predictive formula that obscures more than it clarifies. This is, moreover, to gloss over the most substantial lesson of Metapolitics: the need for national self-examination.
Assessing the arc of Trumpism usually ends in finding who, besides Russia, is more to blame. Is it Samuel Francis? Rousseau? Kids posting frogs on 4chan? Even without explicit conspiracy theories, the accumulated result resembles a yarn-webbed bulletin board. Metapolitics was pretty clear on whom to blame: the German people. What Viereck wanted to show was how, over the course of centuries, those people could become accustomed to a certain kind of authoritarian rule. Authoritarianism is possible anywhere, but its emergence is peculiar to the history, habits, and weakness within certain borders. It’s almost as if to combat one form of nationalism one must be a better nationalist.
Yet Viereck’s answer to countering the vulgar, particular nationalisms was a refined, universal conservatism. As he wrote in The Atlantic in 1940, “Conservatism must include what Thomas Mann calls humanism: the conservation of our cultural, spiritual, and individualist heritage.” Viereck was more famous for his heterodox stance against the burgeoning ideological conservative movement of the mid-20th century. To Willmoore Kendall, Viereck’s “new conservative” merely demonstrated “how you can be a Conservative and yet agree with the Liberals about everything not demonstrably unimportant.”
For all of Viereck’s foresight as to the Nazi threat, a resilient nationalist sentiment on the right today, amid a political atmosphere impatient with nuance, would render his humanist conservatism even more remote from American society that it was in the 1950s. But Viereck viewed his conservatism less as a program to be handed down than as an historical inevitability that unravels, against which ideology is always attempting to triumph, and always in need of vigilance from any reasonable, moral person:
Painfully, over æons, civilization stamps its traditional values and conservatism upon men. Only within these values, or traffic lights, are freedom and objective justice possible. One by one, Hitler smashes these traffic lights of the “common basis of humanity.”
Chris R. Morgan writes from New Jersey. He has been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lapham’s Quarterly, and The Week. Follow him at his blog and on Twitter @CR_Morgan.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-02--2020 is Tumbling Toward 1917

2020 is Tumbling Toward 1917

When the Russian Revolution toppled the czar and put the Bolsheviks into power , the civilized countries of western Europe had good reason to tell themselves it could never happen to them .
Russia was a barbaric country with a lopsided social structure , masses of peasants and no middle class to speak of .
Their political system was a relic of the past , a time when street revolutions still happened .
The rest of Europe was more modern , with constitutions and parliaments and labor unions .
Any political conflict could work itself out through those proper channels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1918-19 , and civilized Europe had to recalibrate its sense of what was possible .
Street unrest led to the forced abdication of the kaiser , the proclamation of a republic , a soviet government in Munich , and a near-miss of one in Berlin , only prevented by a timely blow to Rosa Luxemburg ’ s head .
The uprising did not fulfill all its proponents ’ hopes , in terms of ushering in a new socialist dawn , but it decisively refuted the idea that modern conditions had made revolution obsolete @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sure that a revolution could never happen here .
An entire generation went into open rebellion , urban unrest exploded , tanks rolled through the streets of Los Angeles and Detroit , periodic bombings made many worry that the counterculture ’ s Lenin might be out there waiting for his moment—and yet we survived the nightmare unscathed .
Americans concluded that our prosperity , or the flexibility of our political system , or maybe just the forward march of civilization , had transformed street rebellion from a genuine threat into a safe pastime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we really so safe ?
In June , the great Russian literature professor Gary Saul Morson told The Wall Street Journal that America was starting to feel eerily familiar .
“ It ’ s astonishingly like late 19th- , early 20th-century Russia , when basically the entire educated class felt you simply had to be against the regime or some sort of revolutionary , ” he said .
Even the moderate Kadet Party could not bring itself to condemn terrorism against the czar , any more than a modern Democrat could condemn Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from one of the liberal leaders put it this way : ‘ Condemn terrorism ?
That would be the moral death of the party.
’ ” Today , the Resistance is already signaling that they won ’ t accept a Trump victory in November any more than they accepted one in 2016 .
After the last election , they attempted a soft coup by means of the Russiagate scandal and impeachment .
What kind of coup will come next ?
By looking at the Russian precedent , we can evaluate the risk that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American version of 1917—and how close we have come to it already .
Tocqueville famously said that the most dangerous moment for a regime is not when conditions are worst but just when things start to get better .
Actually , the most dangerous moment for a regime is when people are allowed out of their houses after long months of being confined indoors .
The weather made the Russian Revolution as much as any other factor .
The winter of 1916-17 was one of the coldest on record , forcing St. Petersburg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ March 7 , which happened to be International Women ’ s Day .
People swarmed the streets to enjoy temperatures near 50 degrees and , incidentally , boosted the socialist protest ’ s numbers .
The tsar ’ s abdication came exactly one week later .
That was the first revolution , when the Romanov dynasty was replaced by the short-lived Provisional Government .
The second revolution , which installed the Bolsheviks , was enabled by another problem familiar to modern readers : street crime.The new regime rushed to establish its progressive bona @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of liberal demands : amnesty for political prisoners , abolition of flogging , unlimited freedom of the press and assembly .
They were less energetic about reestablishing basic law and order .
Previously safe neighborhoods of St. Petersburg became lawless , and by July mob lynchings of petty criminals had become an almost daily occurrence .
Citizens organized to protect themselves after the Provisional Government proved it wouldn ’ t or couldn ’ t .
After that , the Cheka ’ s policy of shooting criminals on sight came almost as a relief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very far from the front lines of the war most of the time , even in 1917 , but he could not feel far from its effects .
Interruptions in the coal supply had caused more than 500 factories to shut down by 1917 and thrown more than 100,000 employees out of work in the capital city alone .
Layoffs mounted every month as the summer and autumn wore on , leaving a lot of men on the streets with nothing to do .
These were some of the incidental factors , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ launch a real revolution , however , more than kindling is needed .
The fire must have fuel .
In that sense , the deeper cause of the revolution was not the men with nothing to do but the men who had important things to do but failed to do them : the liberal elite.Russia could have been saved by means of reform short of revolution , but the people who should have tried to accomplish that balancing act lacked any investment in the existing order .
Instead they gave their moral support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moral error that brought Lenin to power—and it is the error that Professor Morson finds so familiar today .
During the Cold War , the joke used to be that the Soviet Union had just as much free speech as America , since it , too , guaranteed its citizens the right to stand in the middle of the town square and shout , “ Down with Ronald Reagan !
” The joke , of course , is that the real test of a regime ’ s level of freedom is usually whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s leader .
However , in certain pathological conditions , the test becomes : can you praise him ?
You could not praise the tsar in turn-of-the-century Russia , not if you were part of the literate elite .
The question for them was not whether they wanted the regime to fall but what degree of extreme measures they would condone to bring that fall about .
The left side of the political spectrum stretched off into infinity ; the right side stopped somewhere around the center left .
The robust tradition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russia since the time of Catherine the Great had been slowly eroded until it no longer existed .
This was much more extreme than the usual rebelliousness that characterizes an intelligentsia in any era .
Under previous czars , a man of letters like Dostoevsky could still carry on a lively correspondence with a reactionary bureaucrat like Konstantin Pobedonostsev , even asking his input on The Brothers Karamazov .
Writers and poets might bristle at interference from the censorship bureau , but they did not want to abolish it , much less abolish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ allowed Russia to liberate the serfs without a civil war , as in democratic America ?
Better to work within the system , even if your goals were progressive .
That all changed around the time of Nicholas II ’ s coronation in 1896 .
Suddenly the terrorists had the moral high ground , and it seemed as if nothing they could do would forfeit it , even cold-blooded murder of women and children .
“ It was common talk in the best families , in the homes of generals et al.
, @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gotten out of the way , ” one St. Petersburg professor wrote to an American friend .
Wealthy merchants and industrialists like Savva Morozov and Mikhail Gotz—men you might expect to be grateful to the existing order for making their prosperity possible—gave fringe groups like the Bolsheviks the money to publish their newspapers and support their leaders in exile .
Every time Nicholas lost a minister to assassination , his security bureau would show him private letters between prominent people applauding the assassins .
Even the tsar ’ s own family was not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with jury trials ( introduced in 1864 ) had revealed that Russian juries were abnormally reluctant to convict .
Even a defendant who confessed to the crime could frequently get an acquittal if his lawyer gave a convincing speech about good intentions and a difficult upbringing—something about the Orthodox approach to sin and redemption , in contrast to Western legalism .
But it was still a shock when Grand Duke Andrei , the tsar ’ s cousin , was overheard to comment at the end of Grigory Gershuni ’ s terrorism trial , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ villains and believe sincerely in their actions.
” This was a cell that had assassinated the minister of the interior .
When even members of the royal family shrug off terrorism , it is a sign that something is deeply wrong .
It indicates that the instincts of self-preservation that keep a regime alive are no longer operating .
When members of an elite agree entirely with revolutionaries ’ aims and object only to their tactics , all it takes is a crisis to show just how flimsy those procedural objections are .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is when the crisis will arrive .
In 1904 , Kadet Party co-founder Pavel Miliukov visited 61-year-old Prince Peter Kropotkin in London .
Kropotkin was the father of Russian anarchism , so Miliukov was astonished to see the old man fly into a rage when he heard of the Japanese attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur .
“ How could the enemy of Russian politics and state-sponsored war in general be such a flag-waver ?
” Miliukov wondered .
He was then 45 .
By the time he was in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ astonished to learn how deep the hate ran in the younger generation .
The loyalty to the constitutional order that seemed so basic to him , they found contemptible .
This progression , from Kropotkin to Miliukov to the Bolsheviks , shows how these changes build up generation by generation until no loyalty to the existing order remains , and the regime ’ s position becomes fatal .
This summer , in the first week of June , about 6,000 law enforcement officers and National Guard troops were deployed to Washington , D.C. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and another 1,700 troops from Fort Bragg were held in waiting just outside the district .
When President Trump appeared in Lafayette Park that Monday , police had to clear the square using pepper balls and smoke canisters because protesters were throwing projectiles and the president ’ s safety could not be assured .
At several points during the week , the only thing preventing the White House from being overrun was a line of armed men from the Secret Service and the Park Police , 51 of whom were injured and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would not necessarily have been reason for alarm—there are protests in Lafayette Park literally every day—except that it came the same week that former defense secretary Jim Mattis published a long interview in The Atlantic denouncing the president and saying , ominously , “ We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.
” The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff also made a statement that week condemning the president ’ s Lafayette Park appearance and expressing his support for the protesters ’ goals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the question : what if the president gave an order to clear Lafayette Park and military officers didn ’ t follow it ?
What if they decided the order was , as Mattis said , a threat to the Constitution ?
Mayor Muriel Bowser evicted some National Guard troops from D.C. hotels on June 5 because she did not approve of their mission , and there was nothing the National Guard could do except try to find another hotel .
Less than a week after the Mattis interview , The Atlantic ran a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ color revolution model might be a good one to follow if more American officials could be persuaded to treat President Trump the way Ukrainians treated their corrupt President Yanukovych in the days before he hopped a plane to Moscow .
The house magazine of the Resistance , which had done so much to drive the Russiagate soft coup , was apparently preparing the ground for something harder .
In August , word was leaked that a group of government officials and political operatives calling itself the Transition Integrity Project had gathered a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scenarios .
In one , John Podesta , playing candidate Joe Biden , refused to concede after winning the popular vote but losing narrowly in the Electoral College , citing alleged voter suppression .
Congress split , blue states threatened to secede , and the hypothetical outcome was determined by the military .
Evidently , serious people on the Democratic side are thinking in very broad terms about what the coming months will bring .
Republicans should , too , because scenarios like the ones Podesta and Foer are imagining may be unprecedented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are certainly not unprecedented in modern history .

When the Russian Revolution toppled the czar and put the Bolsheviks into power, the civilized countries of western Europe had good reason to tell themselves it could never happen to them. Russia was a barbaric country with a lopsided social structure, masses of peasants and no middle class to speak of. Their political system was a relic of the past, a time when street revolutions still happened. The rest of Europe was more modern, with constitutions and parliaments and labor unions. Any political conflict could work itself out through those proper channels.
Then came the German revolution of 1918-19, and civilized Europe had to recalibrate its sense of what was possible. Street unrest led to the forced abdication of the kaiser, the proclamation of a republic, a soviet government in Munich, and a near-miss of one in Berlin, only prevented by a timely blow to Rosa Luxemburg’s head. The uprising did not fulfill all its proponents’ hopes, in terms of ushering in a new socialist dawn, but it decisively refuted the idea that modern conditions had made revolution obsolete.
The Sixties left Americans feeling equally sure that a revolution could never happen here. An entire generation went into open rebellion, urban unrest exploded, tanks rolled through the streets of Los Angeles and Detroit, periodic bombings made many worry that the counterculture’s Lenin might be out there waiting for his moment—and yet we survived the nightmare unscathed. Americans concluded that our prosperity, or the flexibility of our political system, or maybe just the forward march of civilization, had transformed street rebellion from a genuine threat into a safe pastime for earnest young idealists.
But are we really so safe? In June, the great Russian literature professor Gary Saul Morson told The Wall Street Journal that America was starting to feel eerily familiar. “It’s astonishingly like late 19th-, early 20th-century Russia, when basically the entire educated class felt you simply had to be against the regime or some sort of revolutionary,” he said. Even the moderate Kadet Party could not bring itself to condemn terrorism against the czar, any more than a modern Democrat could condemn Black Lives Matter: “A famous line from one of the liberal leaders put it this way: ‘Condemn terrorism? That would be the moral death of the party.’”
Today, the Resistance is already signaling that they won’t accept a Trump victory in November any more than they accepted one in 2016. After the last election, they attempted a soft coup by means of the Russiagate scandal and impeachment. What kind of coup will come next? By looking at the Russian precedent, we can evaluate the risk that this country might enact our own distinctively American version of 1917—and how close we have come to it already.
* * *
Tocqueville famously said that the most dangerous moment for a regime is not when conditions are worst but just when things start to get better. Actually, the most dangerous moment for a regime is when people are allowed out of their houses after long months of being confined indoors.
The weather made the Russian Revolution as much as any other factor. The winter of 1916-17 was one of the coldest on record, forcing St. Petersburg into semi-lockdown. Spring finally broke on March 7, which happened to be International Women’s Day. People swarmed the streets to enjoy temperatures near 50 degrees and, incidentally, boosted the socialist protest’s numbers. The tsar’s abdication came exactly one week later.
That was the first revolution, when the Romanov dynasty was replaced by the short-lived Provisional Government. The second revolution, which installed the Bolsheviks, was enabled by another problem familiar to modern readers: street crime. The new regime rushed to establish its progressive bona fides by passing the full wish list of liberal demands: amnesty for political prisoners, abolition of flogging, unlimited freedom of the press and assembly. They were less energetic about reestablishing basic law and order. Previously safe neighborhoods of St. Petersburg became lawless, and by July mob lynchings of petty criminals had become an almost daily occurrence. Citizens organized to protect themselves after the Provisional Government proved it wouldn’t or couldn’t. After that, the Cheka’s policy of shooting criminals on sight came almost as a relief.
An ordinary Petersburger might feel himself very far from the front lines of the war most of the time, even in 1917, but he could not feel far from its effects. Interruptions in the coal supply had caused more than 500 factories to shut down by 1917 and thrown more than 100,000 employees out of work in the capital city alone. Layoffs mounted every month as the summer and autumn wore on, leaving a lot of men on the streets with nothing to do.
These were some of the incidental factors, the kindling that captured the sparks. To launch a real revolution, however, more than kindling is needed. The fire must have fuel. In that sense, the deeper cause of the revolution was not the men with nothing to do but the men who had important things to do but failed to do them: the liberal elite. Russia could have been saved by means of reform short of revolution, but the people who should have tried to accomplish that balancing act lacked any investment in the existing order. Instead they gave their moral support to violent terrorists. It was this moral error that brought Lenin to power—and it is the error that Professor Morson finds so familiar today.
* * *
During the Cold War, the joke used to be that the Soviet Union had just as much free speech as America, since it, too, guaranteed its citizens the right to stand in the middle of the town square and shout, “Down with Ronald Reagan!” The joke, of course, is that the real test of a regime’s level of freedom is usually whether you are allowed to criticize your country’s leader. However, in certain pathological conditions, the test becomes: can you praise him?
You could not praise the tsar in turn-of-the-century Russia, not if you were part of the literate elite. The question for them was not whether they wanted the regime to fall but what degree of extreme measures they would condone to bring that fall about. The left side of the political spectrum stretched off into infinity; the right side stopped somewhere around the center left. The robust tradition of intellectual conservatism that had existed in Russia since the time of Catherine the Great had been slowly eroded until it no longer existed.
This was much more extreme than the usual rebelliousness that characterizes an intelligentsia in any era. Under previous czars, a man of letters like Dostoevsky could still carry on a lively correspondence with a reactionary bureaucrat like Konstantin Pobedonostsev, even asking his input on The Brothers Karamazov. Writers and poets might bristle at interference from the censorship bureau, but they did not want to abolish it, much less abolish the monarchy. Had not the autocracy allowed Russia to liberate the serfs without a civil war, as in democratic America? Better to work within the system, even if your goals were progressive.
That all changed around the time of Nicholas II’s coronation in 1896. Suddenly the terrorists had the moral high ground, and it seemed as if nothing they could do would forfeit it, even cold-blooded murder of women and children. “It was common talk in the best families, in the homes of generals et al., that the Empress should be killed and gotten out of the way,” one St. Petersburg professor wrote to an American friend. Wealthy merchants and industrialists like Savva Morozov and Mikhail Gotz—men you might expect to be grateful to the existing order for making their prosperity possible—gave fringe groups like the Bolsheviks the money to publish their newspapers and support their leaders in exile. Every time Nicholas lost a minister to assassination, his security bureau would show him private letters between prominent people applauding the assassins.
Even the tsar’s own family was not immune. Russia’s brief experiment with jury trials (introduced in 1864) had revealed that Russian juries were abnormally reluctant to convict. Even a defendant who confessed to the crime could frequently get an acquittal if his lawyer gave a convincing speech about good intentions and a difficult upbringing—something about the Orthodox approach to sin and redemption, in contrast to Western legalism. But it was still a shock when Grand Duke Andrei, the tsar’s cousin, was overheard to comment at the end of Grigory Gershuni’s terrorism trial, “I realize that they are not villains and believe sincerely in their actions.” This was a cell that had assassinated the minister of the interior.
When even members of the royal family shrug off terrorism, it is a sign that something is deeply wrong. It indicates that the instincts of self-preservation that keep a regime alive are no longer operating. When members of an elite agree entirely with revolutionaries’ aims and object only to their tactics, all it takes is a crisis to show just how flimsy those procedural objections are. At that point, the only question is when the crisis will arrive.
In 1904, Kadet Party co-founder Pavel Miliukov visited 61-year-old Prince Peter Kropotkin in London. Kropotkin was the father of Russian anarchism, so Miliukov was astonished to see the old man fly into a rage when he heard of the Japanese attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur. “How could the enemy of Russian politics and state-sponsored war in general be such a flag-waver?” Miliukov wondered. He was then 45. By the time he was in his 60s himself, he would be equally astonished to learn how deep the hate ran in the younger generation. The loyalty to the constitutional order that seemed so basic to him, they found contemptible. This progression, from Kropotkin to Miliukov to the Bolsheviks, shows how these changes build up generation by generation until no loyalty to the existing order remains, and the regime’s position becomes fatal.
* * *
This summer, in the first week of June, about 6,000 law enforcement officers and National Guard troops were deployed to Washington, D.C., to keep order during protests there, and another 1,700 troops from Fort Bragg were held in waiting just outside the district. When President Trump appeared in Lafayette Park that Monday, police had to clear the square using pepper balls and smoke canisters because protesters were throwing projectiles and the president’s safety could not be assured. At several points during the week, the only thing preventing the White House from being overrun was a line of armed men from the Secret Service and the Park Police, 51 of whom were injured and 11 hospitalized by the rioters.
This would not necessarily have been reason for alarm—there are protests in Lafayette Park literally every day—except that it came the same week that former defense secretary Jim Mattis published a long interview in The Atlantic denouncing the president and saying, ominously, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.” The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff also made a statement that week condemning the president’s Lafayette Park appearance and expressing his support for the protesters’ goals.
These murmurings from prominent generals raised the question: what if the president gave an order to clear Lafayette Park and military officers didn’t follow it? What if they decided the order was, as Mattis said, a threat to the Constitution? Mayor Muriel Bowser evicted some National Guard troops from D.C. hotels on June 5 because she did not approve of their mission, and there was nothing the National Guard could do except try to find another hotel. Less than a week after the Mattis interview, The Atlantic ran a piece by Franklin Foer suggesting that the color revolution model might be a good one to follow if more American officials could be persuaded to treat President Trump the way Ukrainians treated their corrupt President Yanukovych in the days before he hopped a plane to Moscow. The house magazine of the Resistance, which had done so much to drive the Russiagate soft coup, was apparently preparing the ground for something harder.
In August, word was leaked that a group of government officials and political operatives calling itself the Transition Integrity Project had gathered a few weeks earlier to game out possible election scenarios. In one, John Podesta, playing candidate Joe Biden, refused to concede after winning the popular vote but losing narrowly in the Electoral College, citing alleged voter suppression. Congress split, blue states threatened to secede, and the hypothetical outcome was determined by the military. Evidently, serious people on the Democratic side are thinking in very broad terms about what the coming months will bring. Republicans should, too, because scenarios like the ones Podesta and Foer are imagining may be unprecedented in the United States, but they are certainly not unprecedented in modern history.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-03--Why I Don’t Trust McKay Coppins’ Account of Trump Trashing Evangelicals

The Atlantic says the president is contemptuous of his own evangelical supporters .
Yet he 's made dubious claims in the past .
Joel Perez prays during the 'Evangelicals for Trump ' campaign event held at the King Jesus International Ministry as they await the arrival of President Donald Trump on January 03 , 2020 in Miami , Florida .
( Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images ) On Tuesday , The Atlantic published a widely shared story titled “ Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters , ” in which anonymous sources claimed the president has been regularly dismissive or derisive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When I saw the byline , I was immediately suspicious .
The author , McKay Coppins , is an accomplished staff writer for The Atlantic whose 2015 book The Wilderness chronicled intra-party battles within the GOP in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election .
Much of it analyzed trends within the Republican Party before the rise of Donald Trump .
That meant significant coverage of my former boss , Senator Rand Paul , who was considered by some an early presidential frontrunner in that election .
The book also covered the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paul given my controversial radio background , which was brought to light by the neoconservative Washington Free Beacon in July 2013 .
I addressed the controversy at length in Politico Magazine in November 2013 .
Coppins ’ account of my controversy recounted a number of things I had never heard of , while also leaving out significant developments at the time only known to myself , Senator Paul , and a select few others .
Furthermore , Coppins ’ overall portrayal of Paul and his relationship with his father , former congressman Ron @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experience working for both men in various capacities since 2010 .
That said , I was willing to consider that there were possibly happenings I wasn ’ t aware of , particularly given the delicacy of my controversy .
But one passage , describing an exchange related to the Pauls ’ father-and-son relationship in Coppins ’ book , was flat out false .
I know because I was in the room when it happened .
I worked for Ron Paul ’ s 2012 presidential campaign and was backstage with the candidate before a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ South Carolina , in January 2012 , four months after he placed second in the Iowa straw poll .
Coppins wrote in The Wilderness , “ A couple of weeks after losing Iowa , Ron was in the greenroom at a Republican primary debate in South Carolina when Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham came up to him and began effusively piling praise on his son.
” “ They gushed about how Rand was a joy to work with in the Senate , a real contributor , someone with whom they felt they could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Coppins wrote .
This exchange happened .
I was a few feet away when it did .
To my knowledge , South Carolina senators DeMint and Graham welcomed all of the Republican primary candidates that night before the debate .
What Coppins wrote next was fantasy .
“ Finally Ron snapped , ‘ Well , if he ’ s so great , he should run for president himself , ’ ” Coppins reported .
“ DeMint was taken aback by the outburst and quickly shut up , ” Coppins claimed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to catch on , because he just kept spurting commendations for Rand in his courtly Southern drawl , as Ron ’ s face twisted into a cranky scowl.
” This did not happen .
In The Wilderness , Coppins portrays Ron Paul as being jealous of his son ’ s success .
Anyone who has ever been in the family ’ s orbit knows this is completely ridiculous .
When I shared this passage with some people who had worked for Paul ’ s presidential campaign , they all laughed .
When I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still works for Ron Paul and speaks with him most days , he thought it was hilarious .
When I shared it five years ago with the only other two staffers I recall being in the room beside myself when this exchange happened , they both found it absurd .
No one thought to push back or correct the record at the time because it was just one part of one book that had not become part of the news cycle .
But this week , after Coppins ’ story in The Atlantic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I reached out again to the two staffers whom I served with in 2012 .
They agreed that this did not sound like Ron Paul or that this interaction did not take place in the way that Coppins described .
Not only did I witness the entire exchange myself up close , but I spoke to Senator DeMint immediately afterward , as we had recently worked together on a book project .
He was chipper .
In fact , the three men involved in that pre-debate discussion that night—Paul , Graham , DeMint—were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It was friendly and diplomatic .
There were certainly no angry “ snapping , ” “ outbursts , ” or “ cranky scowls ” from Ron Paul , nor was DeMint “ taken aback ” by alleged emotional reactions that did not happen .
One of the anonymous staffers in the room reiterated to me in an email on Tuesday , “ Coppins made up those things about Ron.
” This person added , “ I was around Ron and Rand a lot and none of that is familiar to me.
” Right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s greenroom that night in 2015 , I immediately texted a close libertarian-leaning friend about the exchange .
My excitement was over how the interaction went , given that the habitually hawkish Graham had long been a harsh critic of antiwar Republicans Ron Paul and his son Rand .
That friend was Jim Antle , former editor of The American Conservative and current political editor at The Washington Examiner .
When I reminded him of Coppins ’ 2012 account of this interaction , he wrote in an email on Tuesday , “ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it happened , way before Coppins wrote about it , and it being nothing like this.
” So how did Coppins come up with this snapshot of an angry Ron Paul seething with jealous rage over his senator son ’ s political success ?
Coppins described in The Wilderness how he used anonymous sources , “ Where dialogue is quoted , it is based on the recollection of the speaker or someone else who was present for the conversation .
If sources could not remember or agree on the specific wording , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Coppins used quotation marks when he quoted Ron Paul allegedly saying , “ Well , if he ’ s so great , he should run for president himself.
” If Ron Paul said this , it is highly likely he was being tongue in cheek .
Not out of anger or jealousy .
Coppins continued , “ Similarly , the considerable sections of the book that portray the various subjects ’ internal thoughts and feelings are based on descriptions from the subjects themselves , or from people in whom they confided ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they represent a sincere effort to accurately and empathetically capture the subjects ’ thinking.
” The only other people in the room to my recollection that night were Senators Graham and DeMint .
I would love to hear how they remembered this exchange , which would likely differ significantly from Coppins ’ account .
Coppins was not in the room that night .
I do not know what other source from whom he would have possibly gathered such ( mis ) information .
If it was Senator Graham , why would he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anti-libertarian ?
It also raises questions of whether the author is allowing Never Trumpers or disgruntled ex-aides to characterize the president .
Such methodology could be problematic , to say the least .
For the record , as of now , I do not plan on voting for Donald Trump for president on November 3 .
I plan to vote for Libertarian Jo Jorgensen .
I am not interested in running cover for or defending any current presidential candidate .
I am only interested in truth .
I have no idea how valid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s supposed secret attitude toward his Christian supporters as described in his recent story .
Nor do I question the integrity of The Atlantic ’ s journalistic policies and standards .
But this is my experience with McKay Coppins ’ reporting thirdhand information about a situation where I was in the room and he was not .
Is it unreasonable to ask if there are similar discrepancies in his recent negative story about President Trump ?

On Tuesday, The Atlantic published a widely shared story titled “Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters,” in which anonymous sources claimed the president has been regularly dismissive or derisive toward this integral part of his base.
When I saw the byline, I was immediately suspicious.
The author, McKay Coppins, is an accomplished staff writer for The Atlantic whose 2015 book The Wilderness chronicled intra-party battles within the GOP in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. Much of it analyzed trends within the Republican Party before the rise of Donald Trump.
That meant significant coverage of my former boss, Senator Rand Paul, who was considered by some an early presidential frontrunner in that election. The book also covered the 2013 controversy regarding my relationship with Senator Paul given my controversial radio background, which was brought to light by the neoconservative Washington Free Beacon in July 2013. I addressed the controversy at length in Politico Magazine in November 2013.
Coppins’ account of my controversy recounted a number of things I had never heard of, while also leaving out significant developments at the time only known to myself, Senator Paul, and a select few others. Furthermore, Coppins’ overall portrayal of Paul and his relationship with his father, former congressman Ron Paul, didn’t reflect my experience working for both men in various capacities since 2010.
That said, I was willing to consider that there were possibly happenings I wasn’t aware of, particularly given the delicacy of my controversy.
But one passage, describing an exchange related to the Pauls’ father-and-son relationship in Coppins’ book, was flat out false.
I know because I was in the room when it happened.
I worked for Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign and was backstage with the candidate before a GOP primary debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in January 2012, four months after he placed second in the Iowa straw poll.
Coppins wrote in The Wilderness, “A couple of weeks after losing Iowa, Ron was in the greenroom at a Republican primary debate in South Carolina when Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham came up to him and began effusively piling praise on his son.”
“They gushed about how Rand was a joy to work with in the Senate, a real contributor, someone with whom they felt they could work with productively despite their ideological differences,” Coppins wrote.
This exchange happened. I was a few feet away when it did. To my knowledge, South Carolina senators DeMint and Graham welcomed all of the Republican primary candidates that night before the debate.
What Coppins wrote next was fantasy.
“Finally Ron snapped, ‘Well, if he’s so great, he should run for president himself,’” Coppins reported.
“DeMint was taken aback by the outburst and quickly shut up,” Coppins claimed. “But Graham didn’t seem to catch on, because he just kept spurting commendations for Rand in his courtly Southern drawl, as Ron’s face twisted into a cranky scowl.”
This did not happen.
In The Wilderness, Coppins portrays Ron Paul as being jealous of his son’s success. Anyone who has ever been in the family’s orbit knows this is completely ridiculous. When I shared this passage with some people who had worked for Paul’s presidential campaign, they all laughed. When I shared it this week with someone who still works for Ron Paul and speaks with him most days, he thought it was hilarious.
When I shared it five years ago with the only other two staffers I recall being in the room beside myself when this exchange happened, they both found it absurd. No one thought to push back or correct the record at the time because it was just one part of one book that had not become part of the news cycle.
But this week, after Coppins’ story in The Atlantic critical of President Trump made waves, I reached out again to the two staffers whom I served with in 2012. They agreed that this did not sound like Ron Paul or that this interaction did not take place in the way that Coppins described.
Both requested to remain anonymous.
Not only did I witness the entire exchange myself up close, but I spoke to Senator DeMint immediately afterward, as we had recently worked together on a book project. He was chipper. In fact, the three men involved in that pre-debate discussion that night—Paul, Graham, DeMint—were cheerful and there was no tension. It was friendly and diplomatic.
There were certainly no angry “snapping,” “outbursts,” or “cranky scowls” from Ron Paul, nor was DeMint “taken aback” by alleged emotional reactions that did not happen.
One of the anonymous staffers in the room reiterated to me in an email on Tuesday, “Coppins made up those things about Ron.”
This person added, “I was around Ron and Rand a lot and none of that is familiar to me.”
Right after Graham and DeMint left Paul’s greenroom that night in 2015, I immediately texted a close libertarian-leaning friend about the exchange. My excitement was over how the interaction went, given that the habitually hawkish Graham had long been a harsh critic of antiwar Republicans Ron Paul and his son Rand.
That friend was Jim Antle, former editor of The American Conservative and current political editor at The Washington Examiner. When I reminded him of Coppins’ 2012 account of this interaction, he wrote in an email on Tuesday, “I remember you describing this exchange immediately after it happened, way before Coppins wrote about it, and it being nothing like this.”
So how did Coppins come up with this snapshot of an angry Ron Paul seething with jealous rage over his senator son’s political success?
Coppins described in The Wilderness how he used anonymous sources, “Where dialogue is quoted, it is based on the recollection of the speaker or someone else who was present for the conversation. If sources could not remember or agree on the specific wording, I reconstructed the dialogue without using quotation marks.”
Coppins used quotation marks when he quoted Ron Paul allegedly saying, “Well, if he’s so great, he should run for president himself.”
If Ron Paul said this, it is highly likely he was being tongue in cheek. Not out of anger or jealousy.
Coppins continued, “Similarly, the considerable sections of the book that portray the various subjects’ internal thoughts and feelings are based on descriptions from the subjects themselves, or from people in whom they confided; though my characterizations that comprise direct quotes, they represent a sincere effort to accurately and empathetically capture the subjects’ thinking.”
The only other people in the room to my recollection that night were Senators Graham and DeMint. I would love to hear how they remembered this exchange, which would likely differ significantly from Coppins’ account.
Coppins was not in the room that night. I do not know what other source from whom he would have possibly gathered such (mis)information.
If it was Senator Graham, why would he trust someone who has been so vocally anti-libertarian? It also raises questions of whether the author is allowing Never Trumpers or disgruntled ex-aides to characterize the president.
Such methodology could be problematic, to say the least.
♦♦♦
For the record, as of now, I do not plan on voting for Donald Trump for president on November 3. I plan to vote for Libertarian Jo Jorgensen. I am not interested in running cover for or defending any current presidential candidate.
I am only interested in truth.
I have no idea how valid Coppins’ claims are regarding Trump’s supposed secret attitude toward his Christian supporters as described in his recent story. Nor do I question the integrity of The Atlantic’s journalistic policies and standards.
But this is my experience with McKay Coppins’ reporting thirdhand information about a situation where I was in the room and he was not. Is it unreasonable to ask if there are similar discrepancies in his recent negative story about President Trump?
Jack Hunter is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Senator Rand Paul.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-05--After Trump, the GOP Can Still Be Saved From Itself

After Trump , the GOP Can Still Be Saved From Itself First , though , they need to stop drinking deeply from the polluted waters of Trumpism .
U.S. President Donald Trump exits the Oval Office and walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on October 1 , 2020 in Washington , DC .
( Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images ) How shall we describe the prevailing American temperament as the presidential election of 2020 approaches ?
“ In a funk ” might work .
Or “ totally perplexed.
” Or perhaps “ highly pissed.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stephen Sondheim once wrote a bluesy number that wondered “ God-why-don ’ t-you-love-me-oh-you-do-I ’ ll-see-ya-later.
” This past week ’ s dismal and discouraging presidential debate—or whatever you want to call it—has certainly left me with a case of the blues .
I ’ m guessing that I am not the only one .
The God that most Americans assume must surely have a soft spot for the United States has a strange way of showing that love .
Could it be that He has left the building ?
Among pundits it has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s election as the most important in recent memory , if not all of U.S. history .
Count me among the unpersuaded .
That Americans need an important election is doubtless the case .
That is , we need an election that will bring clarity to the multiplying challenges crowding the nation ’ s agenda .
Even an abbreviated list of those challenges would surely include war , debt , race , immigration , health , inequality , privacy , free speech , the environment , and a rapidly changing global order that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and progressives will differ when it comes to prioritizing responses to these various challenges .
But without priorities of some sort , problems simply fester .
In this particular election , however , the spotlight rarely strays from Donald Trump ’ s remarkable persona .
Both acolytes and critics tacitly agree that we are presently living in an eponymous “ Age of Trump ” over which our current president presides like some vulgar and volatile Wizard of Oz .
So to an unfortunately great extent , the upcoming contest centers on one overarching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about everything else : will the Age of Trump end on January 20 , 2021 or will it continue for four ( or more ! )
years ?
Allow me to register my personal dissent .
Ours is not an Age of Trump .
It ’ s an Age of Chickens Coming Home to Roost .
Honest observers can disagree on exactly when America took a wrong turn .
Many conservatives of my ( advanced ) age still hold a grudge against the Sixties .
In his splendid book The Age of Entitlement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the decade associated with sex , drugs , rock , and Vietnam left a poisonous legacy that still haunts the nation .
I myself tend to think we blew it by grotesquely misinterpreting our “ victory ” in the Cold War , an argument that I make in my book The Age of Illusions .
But there is a strong case to be made that the heedless and hysterical response to 9/11 , leading in short order to a mindless Global War on Terrorism , deserves pride of place .
Good news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GWOT has been notably scarce .
Of course , many on the Left greeted the election of Barack Obama as very good news indeed .
With the passage of time , however , even Obama ’ s biggest fans are hard-pressed to deny the fact that his presidency largely proved a disappointment .
Obama looks good only in comparison to his predecessor and his successor .
So regardless of where you want to start the story , the United States of America today is not in a good place .
And blaming Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ qualifies as little more than a dodge .
Let me come clean : on Election Day , I will hold my nose and vote for Biden .
I hope he wins .
I hope even more fervently that he is able to take office on January 20 without our country coming apart at the seams .
Yet the likelihood that Biden will succeed in actually repairing our badly damaged social fabric is close to zero .
Doubtless , our Joe—a fellow Catholic !
—is a decent enough fellow personally .
But even among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a Democratic version of Warren Harding , the agreeable hack who in 1920 won his party ’ s nomination not because he was highly regarded but because he seemed unlikely to rock the boat .
Other more interesting candidates were available , but they were deemed too risky .
Harding was a safe pick .
So too is Biden .
Safe in this context means that candidate Biden will take his cues from liberal centrists who are veterans of past Democratic administrations .
A Biden administration will deliver a warmed over version @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the years when Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama were in the White House , with George W. Bush ’ s disastrous presidency sandwiched in between .
These were the administrations whose various bumbles and fumbles created the conditions that enabled Donald Trump to make his successful run for the presidency in 2016 .
Unless Biden can defeat the pandemic and restore some semblance of shared prosperity within the first year of his presidency , he ’ s probably toast .
All Americans , regardless of political persuasion , should root for his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then enjoy a shot at pushing a Left agenda .
Meanwhile , Republicans can make good use that period to detoxify , purging themselves of the poisons ingested when they drank deeply of the polluted waters of Trumpism .
Whether this will suffice remains to be seen .
Having thoroughly prostituted itself , the Party of Lincoln may prove to be irredeemable .
Few genuine conservatives will mourn its passing .
But if the GOP seeks to regain even a modicum of respectability , its leaders should identify a set of modest propositions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ damage inflicted on the American people by recent Republican and Democratic administrations alike .
What might those modest propositions include ?
Here are four commonplace suggestions : First , clip the wings of the commander-in-chief .
Promote legislation that prohibits U.S. military action abroad without prior congressional assent .
No more presidential wars of choice .
No more regime change .
Second , curb runaway military spending .
Refuse to indulge the bizarre proposition that equates national security with the amount of money shoveled annually to the Pentagon .
Third , bring the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lock on the revolving door between arms manufacturers and the national security establishment .
Support radical campaign finance reform to prohibit defense contractors from buying members of Congress as they have been regularly doing ever since Ike called attention to the practice .
Fourth , demand fiscal discipline .
This was once a bedrock Republican principle .
Restore it .
Saddling future generations with massive debt is an outrage and a sin .
Say so loudly and repeatedly .
Mean it this time .
None of these alone will restore the lost honor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they just might make a start at persuading Americans to forgive the party for having sold its soul for a mess of pottage .
Do that and the election of 2024 might turn out to be the genuinely important one .
Andrew Bacevich , president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft , is TAC ’ s writer-at-large .

How shall we describe the prevailing American temperament as the presidential election of 2020 approaches?
“In a funk” might work. Or “totally perplexed.” Or perhaps “highly pissed.” “Verging on despair”? Stephen Sondheim once wrote a bluesy number that wondered “God-why-don’t-you-love-me-oh-you-do-I’ll-see-ya-later.” This past week’s dismal and discouraging presidential debate—or whatever you want to call it—has certainly left me with a case of the blues.
I’m guessing that I am not the only one. The God that most Americans assume must surely have a soft spot for the United States has a strange way of showing that love. Could it be that He has left the building?
Among pundits it has become commonplace to describe this year’s election as the most important in recent memory, if not all of U.S. history. Count me among the unpersuaded.
That Americans need an important election is doubtless the case. That is, we need an election that will bring clarity to the multiplying challenges crowding the nation’s agenda. Even an abbreviated list of those challenges would surely include war, debt, race, immigration, health, inequality, privacy, free speech, the environment, and a rapidly changing global order that is not tilting our way.
Conservatives and progressives will differ when it comes to prioritizing responses to these various challenges. But without priorities of some sort, problems simply fester.
In this particular election, however, the spotlight rarely strays from Donald Trump’s remarkable persona. Both acolytes and critics tacitly agree that we are presently living in an eponymous “Age of Trump” over which our current president presides like some vulgar and volatile Wizard of Oz. So to an unfortunately great extent, the upcoming contest centers on one overarching question to the virtual exclusion of just about everything else: will the Age of Trump end on January 20, 2021 or will it continue for four (or more!) years?
Allow me to register my personal dissent. Ours is not an Age of Trump. It’s an Age of Chickens Coming Home to Roost. Honest observers can disagree on exactly when America took a wrong turn. Many conservatives of my (advanced) age still hold a grudge against the Sixties. In his splendid book The Age of Entitlement, Christopher Caldwell makes a strong case that the decade associated with sex, drugs, rock, and Vietnam left a poisonous legacy that still haunts the nation.
I myself tend to think we blew it by grotesquely misinterpreting our “victory” in the Cold War, an argument that I make in my book The Age of Illusions. But there is a strong case to be made that the heedless and hysterical response to 9/11, leading in short order to a mindless Global War on Terrorism, deserves pride of place. Good news since the United States embarked upon the GWOT has been notably scarce.
Of course, many on the Left greeted the election of Barack Obama as very good news indeed. With the passage of time, however, even Obama’s biggest fans are hard-pressed to deny the fact that his presidency largely proved a disappointment. Obama looks good only in comparison to his predecessor and his successor.
So regardless of where you want to start the story, the United States of America today is not in a good place. And blaming Trump for the fix we’re in qualifies as little more than a dodge.
Let me come clean: on Election Day, I will hold my nose and vote for Biden. I hope he wins. I hope even more fervently that he is able to take office on January 20 without our country coming apart at the seams. Yet the likelihood that Biden will succeed in actually repairing our badly damaged social fabric is close to zero.
Doubtless, our Joe—a fellow Catholic!—is a decent enough fellow personally. But even among progressives he inspires little enthusiasm. He is a Democratic version of Warren Harding, the agreeable hack who in 1920 won his party’s nomination not because he was highly regarded but because he seemed unlikely to rock the boat. Other more interesting candidates were available, but they were deemed too risky. Harding was a safe pick. So too is Biden.
Safe in this context means that candidate Biden will take his cues from liberal centrists who are veterans of past Democratic administrations. A Biden administration will deliver a warmed over version of what we’ve experienced during the years when Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama were in the White House, with George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency sandwiched in between. These were the administrations whose various bumbles and fumbles created the conditions that enabled Donald Trump to make his successful run for the presidency in 2016.
Unless Biden can defeat the pandemic and restore some semblance of shared prosperity within the first year of his presidency, he’s probably toast. All Americans, regardless of political persuasion, should root for his success in that regard. Liberals will then enjoy a shot at pushing a Left agenda.
Meanwhile, Republicans can make good use of that period to detoxify, purging themselves of the poisons ingested when they drank deeply of the polluted waters of Trumpism.
Whether this will suffice remains to be seen. Having thoroughly prostituted itself, the Party of Lincoln may prove to be irredeemable. Few genuine conservatives will mourn its passing.
But if the GOP seeks to regain even a modicum of respectability, its leaders should identify a set of modest propositions that may at least begin undo the damage inflicted on the American people by recent Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
What might those modest propositions include? Here are four commonplace suggestions:
First, clip the wings of the commander-in-chief. Promote legislation that prohibits U.S. military action abroad without prior congressional assent. No more presidential wars of choice. No more regime change.
Second, curb runaway military spending. Refuse to indulge the bizarre proposition that equates national security with the amount of money shoveled annually to the Pentagon.
Third, bring the military-industrial complex to heel. Put a lock on the revolving door between arms manufacturers and the national security establishment. Support radical campaign finance reform to prohibit defense contractors from buying members of Congress as they have been regularly doing ever since Ike called attention to the practice.
Fourth, demand fiscal discipline. This was once a bedrock Republican principle. Restore it. Saddling future generations with massive debt is an outrage and a sin. Say so loudly and repeatedly. Mean it this time.
None of these alone will restore the lost honor of the Republican Party. Yet together they just might make a start at persuading Americans to forgive the party for having sold its soul for a mess of pottage.
Do that and the election of 2024 might turn out to be the genuinely important one.
Andrew Bacevich, president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, is TAC’s writer-at-large.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-06--The Case for Minority Obstructionism

The Case for Minority Obstructionism

“ Minority rule ” is the latest buzzword emanating out of the Democratic party .
Concerned about the likelihood of a 6-3 Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court and the possibility of Donald Trump once again winning the presidency sans the popular vote , progressives are indicting America ’ s republican system of government for impeding their numerical might .
The number-crunchers at FiveThirtyEight concluded that rural areas have two to three times as much representation in the U.S. Senate as do large urban cities , despite the two areas containing about an equal number of voters .
“ And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of other downstream consequences .
Since rural areas tend to be whiter , it means the Senate represents a whiter population , too , ” writes Nate Silver .
It ’ s as if the upper chamber dials back the demographic clock twenty years .
“ Republicans essentially get bonus points : They can be the less popular party and still get to govern , ” complains Seth Masket in The Washington Post .
“ This is how a government loses its legitimacy…And it ’ s not a counterargument to say that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constitutional.
’ In fact , that ’ s the heart of the problem.
” In The New Yorker , John Cassidy accuses the Republican Party of intensifying “ a years-long effort to consolidate minority rule.
” He calls it “ egregious ” that “ when you consider the combined influence of the Electoral College and the Senate , both of which amplify the power of Republican voters living in less densely populated parts of the country , the empowerment of the minority—an overwhelmingly white and conservative minority ” exercises “ a baleful influence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Don Lemon has the solution .
“ We ’ re going to have to blow up the entire system , ” he told colleague Chris Cuomo .
“ You ’ re going to have to get rid of the Electoral College , because the people , the minority in this country decides who the judges are , and they decide who the president is .
Is that fair ?
” The amendment process makes these constitutional alterations problematic in the short term , but the ultimate goal is clear : the dismantling of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The result will be nothing short of the dictation of national policy from New York and California , while the voices and interests of smaller states and communities are smothered .
Republicans ought to straighten their backs against this fetishization of democracy .
And they ’ ll find guidance in one of the first-rate minds of the nineteenth century .
John C. Calhoun , in a forty-year political career , served as South Carolina ’ s congressman and senator , as both Secretary of War and Secretary of State , and as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began his journey as a fervent nationalist ( for whom was coined the term “ war hawk ” ) and ended it a dyed-in-the-cotton sectionalist .
One of the “ Great Triumvirate ” —along with Henry Clay and Daniel Webster—Calhoun ’ s intellect burned like a furnace behind his piercingly blue eyes in an otherwise cast-iron expression .
“ Calhoun ’ s political thought is more original and more closely reasoned than that of any other American statesman , ” wrote Russell Kirk , the dean of modern conservative thought .
Even John @ @ @ @ @ @ @ profoundly penetrating and original understanding of the social bases of government [ which ] has significantly influenced American political theory and practice.
” The most consequential of Calhoun ’ s works , A Disquisition on Government , was written in the final months of his life as he coughed to death of tuberculosis .
Published posthumously in 1851 , it describes Calhoun ’ s vision of a constitutional republic governed by a concurrent majority .
Far removed from the starting point of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson , Calhoun rejected the natural rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ foolish to subscribe to any theoretical “ state of nature.
” Instead Calhoun posited that government as an institution was divinely ordained , and that the human race always and forever existed under some form of authority .
But while God might demand governance , it is the responsibility of man to contrive its form .
For Calhoun , that meant a constitutional republic able to balance the spheres of security ( a necessity ) and liberty ( a privilege ) .
To achieve this harmony , participation from the voting public is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ call the right of suffrage the indispensable and primary principle ; for it would be a great and dangerous mistake to suppose , as many do , that it is , of itself , sufficient to form constitutional governments , ” wrote Calhoun .
In an effective popular democracy , a voting majority turns “ into an agency , and the rulers into agents , to divest government of all claims to sovereignty and to retain it unimpaired to the community.
” But transferring the seat of authority to the masses does nothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government to oppression and abuse of its powers.
” Calhoun recognized that every community—especially one as large as a nation—would have a diverse array of interests , pursuits , and situations .
When the authority of the state is placed on the mass of people , it will “ lead to conflict among its different interests—each striving to obtain possession of its powers , as the means of protecting itself against the others—or of advancing its respective interests , regardless of the interests of others.
” He accurately describes how political coalitions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican and Democratic parties , as vehicles for power : The purpose of a written constitution , then , is “ to prevent any one interest , or combination of interests , from using the powers of government to aggrandize itself at the expense of the others…that is , by the adoption of some restriction or limitation , which shall so effectively prevent any one interest , or combination of interests , from obtaining the exclusive control of the government , as to render hopeless all attempts directed to that end , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the crux of Calhoun ’ s essay : forming a concurrent majority whose decisions regard not only a mathematical headcount but competing interests as well .
Too often a numerical majority is wrongly identified with representing “ the people ” as a whole .
A majority , even for example 60 % , still only represents a portion of the total .
A concurrent majority , on the other hand , uses preventative action to achieve compromises that respect all interests .
If not , and a majority is able to dictate policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ absolute government—whether superficially “ democratic ” or not .
That is why a political minority must possess “ a concurrent voice in making and executing the laws , or a veto on their execution , ” wrote Calhoun .
“ It is this negative power—the power of preventing or arresting the action of the government—be it called by what term it may—veto , interposition , nullification , check , or balance of power—which , in fact , forms the constitution.
” When Calhoun conceived of the concurrent majority in the 1830s and 1840s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , whose “ negative power ” had to rely on nullification , and eventually , secession .
Today , Republicans don ’ t require anything so exceptional ; only a defense of the U.S. Senate , electoral college , and other centuries-old institutions that will ensure conservatives continue to have a seat at the governing table .
Calhoun hoped that a concurrent majority , “ by giving to each interest , or portion , the power of self-protection , all strife and struggle between them for ascendency ” would be prevented , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ common devotion to country.
” Judging from the above statements by the corporate press , who act as a vanguard for the burgeoning majority , Calhoun ’ s prayer for brighter days seems as fanciful as it once did in 1850 .
Understanding the relevance of Calhoun ’ s political theory does not require adopting his worldview wholesale ; conservatives should not reject natural rights theory or begin treating liberty as “ a reward to be earned.
” But Republican leadership must ascertain that the voice of their voters matters , and even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ permanent minority status , that doesn ’ t require sacrificing their core interests at the altar of majoritarian democracy .
Hunter DeRensis is Assistant Editor at the Libertarian Institute and a regular contributor to The American Conservative .
You can follow him on Twitter @ HunterDeRensis .

“Minority rule” is the latest buzzword emanating out of the Democratic party. Concerned about the likelihood of a 6-3 Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court and the possibility of Donald Trump once again winning the presidency sans the popular vote, progressives are indicting America’s republican system of government for impeding their numerical might.
The number-crunchers at FiveThirtyEight concluded that rural areas have two to three times as much representation in the U.S. Senate as do large urban cities, despite the two areas containing about an equal number of voters. “And of course, this has all sorts of other downstream consequences. Since rural areas tend to be whiter, it means the Senate represents a whiter population, too,” writes Nate Silver. It’s as if the upper chamber dials back the demographic clock twenty years.
“Republicans essentially get bonus points: They can be the less popular party and still get to govern,” complains Seth Masket in The Washington Post. “This is how a government loses its legitimacy…And it’s not a counterargument to say that the advantages the Republicans have today are ‘constitutional.’ In fact, that’s the heart of the problem.”
In The New Yorker, John Cassidy accuses the Republican Party of intensifying “a years-long effort to consolidate minority rule.” He calls it “egregious” that “when you consider the combined influence of the Electoral College and the Senate, both of which amplify the power of Republican voters living in less densely populated parts of the country, the empowerment of the minority—an overwhelmingly white and conservative minority” exercises “a baleful influence” on American society.
CNN anchor Don Lemon has the solution. “We’re going to have to blow up the entire system,” he told colleague Chris Cuomo. “You’re going to have to get rid of the Electoral College, because the people, the minority in this country decides who the judges are, and they decide who the president is. Is that fair?”
The amendment process makes these constitutional alterations problematic in the short term, but the ultimate goal is clear: the dismantling of institutional barriers to raw, uninhibited majority-rule. The result will be nothing short of the dictation of national policy from New York and California, while the voices and interests of smaller states and communities are smothered.
Republicans ought to straighten their backs against this fetishization of democracy. And they’ll find guidance in one of the first-rate minds of the nineteenth century.
John C. Calhoun, in a forty-year political career, served as South Carolina’s congressman and senator, as both Secretary of War and Secretary of State, and as Vice President under two administrations. He began his journey as a fervent nationalist (for whom was coined the term “war hawk”) and ended it a dyed-in-the-cotton sectionalist. One of the “Great Triumvirate”—along with Henry Clay and Daniel Webster—Calhoun’s intellect burned like a furnace behind his piercingly blue eyes in an otherwise cast-iron expression.
“Calhoun’s political thought is more original and more closely reasoned than that of any other American statesman,” wrote Russell Kirk, the dean of modern conservative thought. Even John F. Kennedy praised Calhoun’s “profoundly penetrating and original understanding of the social bases of government [which] has significantly influenced American political theory and practice.”
The most consequential of Calhoun’s works, A Disquisition on Government, was written in the final months of his life as he coughed to death of tuberculosis. Published posthumously in 1851, it describes Calhoun’s vision of a constitutional republic governed by a concurrent majority.
Far removed from the starting point of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, Calhoun rejected the natural rights tradition, and believed it was a foolish to subscribe to any theoretical “state of nature.” Instead Calhoun posited that government as an institution was divinely ordained, and that the human race always and forever existed under some form of authority.
But while God might demand governance, it is the responsibility of man to contrive its form. For Calhoun, that meant a constitutional republic able to balance the spheres of security (a necessity) and liberty (a privilege).
To achieve this harmony, participation from the voting public is essential but not sufficient. “I call the right of suffrage the indispensable and primary principle; for it would be a great and dangerous mistake to suppose, as many do, that it is, of itself, sufficient to form constitutional governments,” wrote Calhoun.
In an effective popular democracy, a voting majority turns “into an agency, and the rulers into agents, to divest government of all claims to sovereignty and to retain it unimpaired to the community.” But transferring the seat of authority to the masses does nothing to counteract “the tendency of the government to oppression and abuse of its powers.”
Calhoun recognized that every community—especially one as large as a nation—would have a diverse array of interests, pursuits, and situations. When the authority of the state is placed on the mass of people, it will “lead to conflict among its different interests—each striving to obtain possession of its powers, as the means of protecting itself against the others—or of advancing its respective interests, regardless of the interests of others.”
He accurately describes how political coalitions of expediency are formed, such as our Republican and Democratic parties, as vehicles for power:
For this purpose, a struggle will take place between the various interests to obtain a majority, in order to control the government. If no one interest be strong enough, of itself, to obtain it, a combination will be formed between those whose interests are most alike—each conceding something to the others, until a sufficient number is obtained to make a majority…When once formed, the community will be divided into two great parties—a major and minor—between which there will be incessant struggles on the one side to retain, and on the other to obtain the majority—and, thereby, the control of the government and the advantages it confers.
The purpose of a written constitution, then, is “to prevent any one interest, or combination of interests, from using the powers of government to aggrandize itself at the expense of the others…that is, by the adoption of some restriction or limitation, which shall so effectively prevent any one interest, or combination of interests, from obtaining the exclusive control of the government, as to render hopeless all attempts directed to that end,” wrote Calhoun.
We now arrive at the crux of Calhoun’s essay: forming a concurrent majority whose decisions regard not only a mathematical headcount but competing interests as well. Too often a numerical majority is wrongly identified with representing “the people” as a whole. A majority, even for example 60%, still only represents a portion of the total. A concurrent majority, on the other hand, uses preventative action to achieve compromises that respect all interests. If not, and a majority is able to dictate policy to a minority, you have an absolute government—whether superficially “democratic” or not.
That is why a political minority must possess “a concurrent voice in making and executing the laws, or a veto on their execution,” wrote Calhoun. “It is this negative power—the power of preventing or arresting the action of the government—be it called by what term it may—veto, interposition, nullification, check, or balance of power—which, in fact, forms the constitution.”
When Calhoun conceived of the concurrent majority in the 1830s and 1840s, he had in mind regional interests, whose “negative power” had to rely on nullification, and eventually, secession. Today, Republicans don’t require anything so exceptional; only a defense of the U.S. Senate, electoral college, and other centuries-old institutions that will ensure conservatives continue to have a seat at the governing table.
Calhoun hoped that a concurrent majority, “by giving to each interest, or portion, the power of self-protection, all strife and struggle between them for ascendency” would be prevented, and social feelings could “unite in one common devotion to country.” Judging from the above statements by the corporate press, who act as a vanguard for the burgeoning majority, Calhoun’s prayer for brighter days seems as fanciful as it once did in 1850.
Understanding the relevance of Calhoun’s political theory does not require adopting his worldview wholesale; conservatives should not reject natural rights theory or begin treating liberty as “a reward to be earned.” But Republican leadership must ascertain that the voice of their voters matters, and even if demographic trends condemn them to a permanent minority status, that doesn’t require sacrificing their core interests at the altar of majoritarian democracy.
Hunter DeRensis is Assistant Editor at the Libertarian Institute and a regular contributor to The American Conservative. You can follow him on Twitter @HunterDeRensis.