The FTN guys posted a special podcast on the American Revolution and the process that resulted in the Constitution. Instead of reciting the standard mythology about the Founders and their alleged love of liberty, they get into the economic motivations of the men who met in Philadelphia to restructure post-colonial America. They also talk about the men who were excluded, as well as the interests they represented. It is a well-done episode that gets into the forgotten parts of the founding story, as well as the economic motivations.
The basis of their analysis is the historian Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Beard argued that the structure of the Constitution and the process that produced it was the result of the personal financial interests of the Founders. For example, George Washington had provided significant financing for the revolution, so the Constitutional guarantee that the newly formed nation would pay its debts worked out pretty well for people like Washington and the other bond holders.
Beard built on earlier Progressive interpretations of American history and can probably be described as a proto-Marxist historian. His analysis of the Founding is that it was first a revolt against the monarchy and then a counter revolution against democracy by the mercantile class located in the cities. It was not just the issue of repaying war debts. The financial class also saw the Articles of Confederation as a hindrance to trade, because there was no central authority to strike trade agreements with foreign governments.
Beard is an interesting guy, who was immensely popular with the Left into the Cold War, but then fell out of favor in the 1960’s. This seems like an odd thing, given that his reading of American history is based in class conflict. The New Left historians, however, rejected that interpretation in favor of racial and sexual conflict, which meant abandoning facts and standards in favor of emotion and vengeance. Neo-conservative historians rejected all of that in favor of selling the narrative of Americanism as a vehicle for present policy.
One of Beard’s insights was that the people located in cities not only have a different set of economic interests, but they also have a different relationship with government. In the 19th century, which meant the city dwellers were much more receptive to socialism than the citizens in the country. The main reason was that the city dweller gets used to bumping up against the government on a daily basis. It feels natural to them. Citizens in the country, particularly in the 19th century, had little contact with the state, so it seemed alien to them.
This suggests something about the nature of socialism, as throughout history urban populations have supported authoritarians, while rural populations have not. In the ancient world, a savvy tyrant like Peisistratus could appeal to the masses of urban poor, to challenge the power of the aristocrats. On the other hand, authoritarian appeals work much better in high density environments. Still, daily familiarity with the power of the state makes people more trusting and comfortable with it. Socialism relies on that trust.
Of course, the defect of class-conflict historiography is that it tries to jam all facts into a model of society. Instead of the theory explaining history, history is used to explain the theory. There is no question that the men who met in Philadelphia had direct financial interest in the outcome. They were also motivated by all the usual stuff like patriotism, regional loyalty, and petty stupidity. That stuff is every bit as interesting as economics and just as important. In other words, history is both particles and waves.
More important and related to the podcast, is the fact that the people who drive history have personal interests. The men who revolted against the king, did so because they saw an advantage in it. Once they gained control of the country, they were not about to give it away or arrange things to their disadvantage. After all, the whole point of the revolution was to get a better deal. The Articles of Confederation were simply an interregnum, while the new elite figured out how they were going to lock in their position after evicting the old elite.
That was the point of the Constitution and the point of all subsequent changes to it, including the Civil War. Similarly, the mythology of the founding, as well as the “second founding” as neoconservative historians call the Civil War, is part of locking in that position via the miracle of propaganda. All of the soupy romanticism of American history is intended to convince the rest of us that the current arrangements are the result of Providence. Political arrangements are not about ideals. They are about power.
This is an important lesson for anyone in dissident politics. The first goal, that which everything bends toward, is to gain power. This is why the New Left has rolled through the culture. They first seized power and then cooked up timeless principles to justify their position. It is also why the legacy Right’s appeal to principle must be rejected. Limiting your options by self-imposed rules and inviolable principles is a recipe for failure. The truth of life is that politics is about power. First you seize power and then vae victis.
If the Constitution worked as advertised we would not be here reading this blog. Any governing document can be subverted when the governed not only allow it but join in wholeheartedly.
The written Constitution has been ignored in totality since FDR threatened court-packing. The real power is the “unwritten Constitution” consisting of court precedents the average person knows nothing about. This is what j-liberal appeals judge Richard Posner meant when he admitted he ignored the Constitution when writing legal opinions. Posner was not indicted for treason, and receives a federal pension.
Hologram of Liberty: http://www.javelinpress.com/hologram_of_liberty.html The Constitution’s Shocking Alliance with Big Government ==== ABOUT HOLOGRAM OF LIBERTY Civic Belief #1: The Congress was given few specific powers. All else was left to the States and to the people under the 10th Amendment. Ample checks and balances protect the Republic from federal tyranny. Civic Belief #2: The Federal Government has become so powerful only because despotic officials have overstepped their strict, constitutional bounds. If #1 is true, then how did #2 happen? “The Constitution has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it”. Lysander… Read more »
Yep, there was a good reason why Stalin wiped out all of the landowning farmers.
His (((advisers))) urged him to do so out of “necessity”.
Sorry, I have to disagree this time. So much wrong here. First of all, I didn’t listen to the podcast; I don’t do podcasts. So all I have to go by is your reporting of what was said, but if that’s accurate it must have been riddled with nonsense. For instance, what we call the American Revolution began in the city…specifically in Boston, where the inhabitants were “bumping up against government” all day long. That was precisely the problem: they wanted government, in the form of the British occupation, to go away and leave them alone. The leaders of the… Read more »
Here’s a summary of what signers of the Declaration of Independence got out of the deal. Not good for quite a few of them.
http://www.constitution.org/bio/fate_of_signers.htm
I must agree here, Z. During your conversation with Luke Ford et al, I thought the salient point was that the politics would follow the culture. Culture would be a practical expression of a set of common principles and values.
John Adams himself had great doubts about the Boston crowd. He not only knew them well, some were his clients. The Boston crowd were not patriots, they were low life opportunists, and they scared the devil out of Adams. The Constitutional convention only gained the license it did because this sort were tearing it up through so many states during the period of Articles of Confederation.
What Adams or anyone else may have thought of the radicals of Boston was not my point. I only wanted to point out that in America, and later in France and Russia, radicalization began in the cities. The notion that people in cities are more placid because they come into greater contact with government is laughable.
“then fell out of favor in the 1960’s”
In other words, when Jews started taking over the country.
Kindly fuck off. The more you talk about Jews the more it occurs to people that they made a bitch out of you.
You seem upset…
LOL.
That must really be making the rounds, my son texted that to me yesterday.
I’ve already posted it on a couple of forums full of so-called “conservatives” and the whining is getting really loud.
It takes them a while to figure out what the whole thing is REALLY referring to though.
The best I’ve seen in a while, but I don’t think your average person would make the connection unless you beat them over the head with it.
“Average person” = media spoon fed Democrat sheep
There’s a phrase I have heard often that covers that:
“The beatings will continue – until the attitude improves”
So let the beatings begin.
Hey, if non citizens can vote in California, then what’s wrong with letting Russians vote in the rest of the country? No borders, no ICE, right? /s
Do they REALLY want to get into the DUAL CITIZEN issue? Lol.
How about countries that have political action committees and haven’t been required to register under FARA?
AIPAC, anyone?
They never think about where their train of thought leads if taken to logical ends.
Ok, I re-read this and realized that I missed the last sentence “once you get REDLISTED on this…” and realized it was written sarcastically by an Alt-righter.
It has honestly reached the point that I cannot recognize sarcasm or reality. Is this just me who can’t tell anymore when ppl are being sincere, or they’re just insane?
I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole more and more, everyday.
“This is an important lesson for anyone in dissident politics. The first goal, that which everything bends toward, is to gain power.” I submit that was a lesson your founding fathers knew and understood better than you, Z. If those guys were solely interested in their own gain, I couldn’t see them building the country’s laws the way they did. If I were a tyrant, I would not set up my nation with inconvenient things like elections, rule of law, term limits and all the rest of the checks and balances. I agree those guys DID benefit personally though because… Read more »
I’m currently reading Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, (finally!), and I would LOVE to have this book as required reading for every person in America. One of the interesting aspects is how concerned Jefferson was that this book would be published wide-spread or that it would elicit negative reactions from those he gave the book to personally. He had intended to destroy the remaining copies if that was the result. Speaking of historians and “alternative facts,” one of the most egregious examples for me is John Meacham’s writings on Barack Obama. The space alien historians are going to be very poorly… Read more »
Applause for Mr Filthie.
It’s interesting to study the writing of (and conversations behind) the Constitution. Also interesting are stalwart guys who were NOT present, like Jefferson. (I’m persuaded his being overseas was by design.) Consider the tenor of the Declaration of Independence vs the Constitution; the former a crisply written advocacy of decentralized liberty, the latter filled with legal loopholes advocating centralized power. Reading what the Anti-Federalists had to say about the proposed Constitution is interesting … those guys were the prophets, because all of their dire warnings came to fruition. The Anti-Federalists came together to merely tweak the Articles of Confederation but… Read more »
Capt S, have you ever read a book titled Hologram of Liberty? I read it in my younger more wayward libertarian days. It basically fleshes out a lot of what you’re saying.
Already posted once above – but putting it here again , you’re on the right track:
https://www.garynorth.com/philadelphia.pdf
Conspiracy in Philadephia
Origins of the United States Constitution
I get a little nervous when folks speak of the Constitution as a musty old irrelevant document. Old and musty it is, but a few judges maintaining the ruse of “Constitutional” authority over the years have kept at least some of the American way from falling into the abyss. I suppose in the end that’s the best we can hope for. The desire for a new and “improved” constitution comes, I think, from the utopian impulse, whether from the Left or Right. If we can just make it relevant to the times …. sure. That’s the ticket. Not.
I liken the Constitution to a dilapidated old mansion. While certainly a glorious construction in it’s time, it’s now unfit to protect anything except the termites. Perhaps it’s time to burn down that old mansion, and the termites along with it.
Beware of matches. Fire can often get completely out of control.
If that old mansion is falling down – it’s because the subsequent generations failed to maintain it. They got lazy and thought they didn’t have to keep the paint maintained. They thought they didn’t have to fix the roof when it leaks. They failed to kill the termites when the started eating away at the sills. Then the generations that cam after the non-maintainers – believed their BS when the lazy generations said “this is a shitty house – we should just burn it down”. The reality of the problem is that those people who failed to maintain the house… Read more »
I think the Constitution is analogous to the Ten Commandments, the difference being that the Ten are guidelines for how to make one’s own life happy and productive, while the Constitution has guidelines for making a society so. Both may be old in terms of age, but their principles are forever applicable.
I don’t disagree with you but my thoughts are drawn to opposing excessive universalism. It is instructive to learn about Liberia, with its cannibalism and poverty, which based its constitution on our own. What works for European derived peoples is not necessarily universal.
Stupid and laughable comment. How can a document be “certainly glorious” – like the Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trismegisthus – in year (say) 100,000 of the human race and ‘unfit to protect anything’ in year 100,200 of the human race? Have we changed that much in 200 years? Or can it be that the internet and other (very) recent socio-technical perturbations have made us… sick? What especially about the Constitution do you find so worthless today, that was ‘certainly glorious’ in 1800? By the way, “it’s” = it is. “its” is the possessive adjective. If you’re “arrogant” then you had… Read more »
Beard fell out of favor because he wouldn’t be part of the whitewashing of the “official record” of WWII. Post WWI analysis rightly destroyed the reasons and motivations behind it, particularly the involvement of the US. The AHA, captured by the Rockefeller foundation, wasn’t going to let that happen again, and wanted to command the post war narrative – make sure the story they wanted got out to the proles. Beard, to his credit, wouldn’t go along with the drumbeat, and got shoved aside. John Taylor Gatto and Gary North have written well about this.
Good post, and everyone on our side agrees on “getting power” being a good thing, but the question splitting us (and which may shatter our movement if it isn’t resolved) is the question that caused that kid with the high-pitched voice to tap out on that Luke Ford podcast you did: Do we get power within existing institutions, or are they so gamed, rigged, and limited that a Benedict Option/Alternative society is the better option? I guess it’s too Manichean to say either teach your kids the Constitution or teach them to grow crops, and the Second Amendment is probably… Read more »
As far as the Constitution is concerned it pretty much can be what the powerful want it to be. Garet Garett’s ‘revolution within the form’, where the outward appearance is the same but the purpose has been subverted.
Just consider the food fight about to erupt over the Kavanagh nomination. That’s all over the fact that the Constitution means whatever nine weirdos in black dresses say it means.
The fact that Sleepy gets her vote only adds insult to injury.
It’s a sign of the Republic’s decline that Supreme Court nominations are this contentious, or that people have to feel they are such high stakes affairs. I can’t speak in detail because I’m not a legal mind, but is anyone familiar with the concept of jurisdiction stripping? The deceased lawyer and blogger John J. Reilly had an essay on his now defunct website basically arguing that the Constitution gives the Congress the power to name and assign federal courts responsibilities. According to Reilly, the Supreme Court’s powers of judicial review and inventing new rights out of thin air could be… Read more »
Actually Z if i recall my civics education, the supremes are only allowed to pass judgment on legislation passed by the congress. Only two outcomes are allowed. The law is constitutional or it is not. If not, its passed back to the legislature for changes based on the supremes input. What we have today is the supremes passing it back with their changes as actual law.
You mean like gay marriage?
Yup. Gay marriage was “federalized” by the court when it is a states matter. Marriage does not appear in the constitution. The constitution is a series of negative rights for the feds if i recall correctly. The supremes have streched the commerce clause and the “common good” sections to the breaking point.
The usurpation of power by the courts has largely been encouraged by the other two branches. For example, gay marriage had no chance to ever pass both houses and get signed. Even when the Democrats held all three branches from 2008 – 2010, they never considered it. But, judges are not subject to the voters, so the legislature turns a blind eye to legislating from the bench, as long as it works to their favor, which it usually does.
The primary attraction of democracy is that it fools the public into thinking they have some say in things.
Yup. They let the courts do the dirty work for them. Keeps their hands clean. Need a jackson president: you made the law, now you enforce it
Except we don’t live in a pure democracy – at least we’re not supposed to . The progressive experiment has substantially changed the original structure of the Republic – and therefore made it easier to do things like just shove thru things like gay marriage – using whatever means are available to them. If they can’t get it thru Congress – then the Supremes will just take care of it. Prior to progressive manipulation – we didn’t have things like women voters, restrictions on the amount of members in the House , and direct election of Senators. One of the… Read more »
No elected official is interested in responsibility. Anyway the Court has been corrupt since Marbury vs Madison and that was in 1791 . Had Congress wanted responsibility they would have executed everyone who voted for it for usurpation of powers under an emergency order. One days work if that. As for fixing the court, we can tune it wit new people to make it a bit more tolerable but a true repair requires to imposition of a single standard via a dictator with enough force and will to make it happen everywhere. Despite what some people hope a septuagenarian hotelier… Read more »
You guys are way too negative on the federal judiciary. Out of the three branches of government, the judicial branch is undeniably the best functioning over the long run. The biggest crisis in the judicial branch’s history—the court packing scandal—was the Executive branch’s doings. There’s nothing wrong with judges making policy—that is essentially the system of English common law we inherited. I can tell you from experience as a lawyer, the ability to elect a policymaker provides little if any restraint on their actions (and that assumes the elections aren’t rigged). Ask a bunch of lawyers, 9 out of 10… Read more »
I don’t think the people who wrote the Constitution ever imagined the insidious nature of progressive leftism undermining the very roots of society for it’s own ends.
The seemed to be focused on “elites” enriching themselves at the expense of individuals – not murderous commies on a religious high pulling down the walls of society around them.
Oh no, they imagined it very clearly. Their term for the prog back in the day (and it was the greatest possible dismissal in their time) was “visionary and Utopian philosophers. If they failed to imagine something that would be full male suffrage, much less female and slave suffrage.
Don’t think so. The Court addresses many other issues besides constitutionality. It’s just that all we hear about these days in the garbage press are constitutional questions, particularly when old standards are under challenge. Anything for a headline.
Where in the Constitution can I find rights for women & negro voting? Anchor babies? Obama care taxation? Separation of church & state? Gay marriage? Abortion? Tranny toilets? Civil rights? De-Segregation? Removal of Freedom of Association? Affirmative Action? Unlimited beaner immigration? Federal judges having more power than the Executive branch? Sanctuary cities? The Judicial branch having more power than the Legislative & Executive branch? I mean, if you can just look at the Constitution and devine what you want to see as being there, and make federal law based on what you “feel” that was the Founder’s intent, why is… Read more »
The founders, passionately Protestant as they were, apparently learned nothing from the Protestant revolution. The biggest problem the Protestants had with the Catholic Church (and what led to the idea of “sola scriptura”) was the idea that a tiny group of men in white robes (the College of Cardinals) reserved for themselves the unlimited power to “interpret” the Bible, which functionally amounted to the idea that the Bible said whatever they wanted it to say at any given moment. So then the founders wrote a “Bible” for their country to follow (the Constitution), and let the exact same power to… Read more »
Again – I don’t think the founders really anticipated progressivism or modern leftism and it’s ability to manipulate political structures thru the religious mania of it’s followers
Read Mencius Moldbug. The leftist progressive type is on record at least as far back as the Cathars, soon after the West had recovered enough from its “dark ages” to begin crusading. Excess productivity had allowed both expansion as much as decadence even in the 12th century.
The more educated you are, just like the founding fathers, the more you realize how dubious they were.
That’s not what happened. There was no concept of judicial Supreme Court supremacy in the constitution. The supremes gave themselves that latter in a judicial decision. Edited to add: Marbury v. Madison 1803.
If we had nine Scalia’s, we would actually have a little control of our overlords. His stated view: “The Constitution is not a living organism. It’s a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.”
Scalia’s weakness was that he also believed that whatever torture previous court decisions brought to the Constitution he was bound to regard that too equally with the original document. His reasoning cannot be faulted, but the result is inevitable.
If enough people were happy with this the USG could have been eliminated by force long ago. We have the guns, the training and the ability, just not the will The thing is people want the kind of stuff Roosevelt did, its the normal expectation of complex, technological and urban societies You can’t escape more State if you live in a city or suburb or if anyone else does and there is technology Industry brought more state followed by the automobile and sooner than later so will automation. This is why former Obama is talking a guaranteed basic income .… Read more »
This was the essence of the Augustan reform at the end of the Roman Republic. Make it look like you just saved the republic while installing a military monarchy.
It’s entirely likely that George Washington, the indispensable man, would not have joined the revolutionary cause had the Crown not enacted the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbade settlement west of the Appalachian mountains. Washington held Charter to huge tracts of land (H/T Monty Python) in the Ohio river valley, which represented a significant portion of his wealth. The Royal Proclamation rendered these lands essentially devoid of value. Washington also had a chip on his shoulder because he had been passed over for a Commission in the British Army after his service to the Crown in the French & Indian… Read more »
I appreciate the essay, but even more so if it’s part one of two. Without principles, and particularly limiting principles, we only become the new powerful assholes. Which would represent a great improvement, but still.
In order to be successful, the victors have to come up with their timeless principles after they win and figure out the new power relationships. That’s how it unfolded with the Founders. The Articles of Confederation were a stopgap. Eventually, the power elite figured out hwo bets to lock in their position and asserted those timeless principles in Philadelphia.
I think that is overstated to some extent. The victors need general timeless principles with some flexibility for exact definition later on. “No taxation without representation” is a principle. How it gets implemented though is where the rubber meets the road. “Crucible of War” about America in the French-Indian War has some insights into American attitudes. Colonial governors who had been popular during the war suddenly found themselves out of touch with the colonists when the paradigm shifted. One fact that I didn’t know was that Benjamin Franklin got one of the Stamp Act jobs. He quickly realized that was… Read more »
“No taxation without representation” was a slogan cooked up by monied interests to rally public support. Today it is used as part of the ongoing propaganda in favor of the current arrangements. If the King had been able to crush the revolt, no one today would claim “No taxation without representation” is a principle. It would not even be remembered, because the winners write the history books.
I’m hardly a monarchist nor a Tory who regrets the outcome of the war but to be fair to the British the American colonists were about the least taxed people in the world.
“By today’s standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today’s U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence….”
…Joseph Sobran
Because if we hadn’t, we’d be disarmed, muslim rape gangs would be operating with impunity, dissent would be punished with prison, a Muslim would be mayor of NYC, and Trudeau would be royal governor of America.
UK has a lower rape rate than the US,lower violent crime rate and better life expectancy. The US has a much worse gang problem than the UK:”safe space to riot”. UK % of pop which is white is higher too. Maybe look at suicide rates or drug addiction stats for both countries.Mayors in the UK are not the same as mayors in the US.US had a president who described himself as a Muslim.On pretty much every social metric the US is more screwed than the UK.US has a bigger prison pop % and if you are charged for a crime… Read more »
Au contraire. Life was brutal and short. *Any* tax was a hardship.
This isn’t really the case as the fertility rate and survival rates in that period were high even among the poor. This suggest that food was plentiful and that people had adequate amounts of everything else. Civilization comes at a cost and while you can within the limits of your society keep costs under control.you can’t opt out A very few Anglos and a dinky number of others like minarchy (enough maybe to fill a smallish US state) but the vast majority of humanity wants to be led , the want representation for the taxation they pay and most people… Read more »
Ha! I was reaching for my copy of “Crucible of War” as well. Anderson’s introduction covers the historiographic debate on the meaning of the revolution very well. Anderson, like Z, believes that the economic motivations were present, but cannot account for such disparate elites such as Virginia slaveowners, Massachusetts shipping magnates or lawyers, and yeoman farmers all making common cause. The economics reinforce the ideas, but the ideas are the things that send men to battle. We’re not on the verge of civil war today over tax policy or nationalized healthcare, but rather the overarching coercive power to impose our… Read more »
The next conflict will more closely resemble the chaos of the French and Russian revolutions. Both sides will attempt a “final solution”. Wearing red or blue, R or D, will do you no good.
Conspiracy In Philadephia Origins of the United States Constitution https://www.garynorth.com/philadelphia.pdf ======== This book is the history of a deception. I regard this deception as the greatest deception in American history. So successful was this deception that, as far as I know, this book is the first stand-alone volume to discuss it. The first version of this book appeared as Part 3 of Political Polytheism (1989), 201 years after the deception was ratified by representatives of the states, who created a new covenant and a new nation by their collective act of ratification-incorporation. This new covenant meant a new god. The… Read more »
The Catholic Church at the doctrinal level, and catholics who take the faith seriously, have seen this for a long time. It is known as “religious indifferentism” or “the heresy of Americanism”.
You don’t hear too much these days except from the more traditional elements, but the Church struggled mightily against Freemasonry and the dogma of “conduct over creed,” which is just a trojan horse for atheism in the public square.
Edit:
https://thejosias.com/2018/04/17/politics-and-the-church/
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if you don’t have a set of principles to draw people into a cause, you’re not going to gain any popular support. No popular support, no power. The Founders, much as we in our modern cynicism would like to make them out as no better than the John McCain’s and Hillary Clinton’s of their day, had some important principles they used to rally popular support. They had Common Sense, and they had a Declaration of Independence. Now, we can mock and scoff and guffaw that all we want sitting here in… Read more »
For half a century, conservatives have been polishing their principles to a mirror finish. Meanwhile, the Left rolls from victory to victory. The professionals call that “a clue.”
Get that. Accept that. My worry is that without some minimum set of non-negotiable principles, if the turning takes place and power is attained, the “miners and sappers” will take over the movement. Probably the usual suspects. When in the last century has it been otherwise?
This is what happened to the Tea Party. They had no real sense of what it was that they wanted, no core set of principles articulated, no consistent leaders. So they became easy to mimic, pick off, and destroy. One of the first things the Dems and the GOP did after 2010 was create a bunch of fake “Tea Party” outfits and then run their establishment guys as having endorsements from the “Middlesex County Tea Party Patriots”.
For half a century, conservative leaders have been forgetting their principles, primarily loyalty, in order to go whoring after idols. The inevitable result is that they were, in their turn, betrayed.
Conservative followers, on the other hand, are guilty of being complacent and lazy, allowing their leaders to betray them over and over again and hardly ever resorting even to primarying them, let alone stringing them up from lampposts.
I don’t know about that. There’s a no true Scotsman vibe to that. There’s no disputing that the conservatives have been vastly more principled than the left, yet they get clobbered in every fight.
Look. Losing is a signal. The side with the principles lost the culture war and it was a rout. A blowout. A 100-to-zero humiliation. That did not happen because the losers were not scrupulous enough in the attention to principle.
I think the idea that one needs principles to gain political power is false. I think one needs to capture the publics imagination and this is best done with rhetoric rather than dialectic. Logic is hard. Attractive celebrities endorsing feel good give away programs are easy. Facts are hard. Pop songs are easy. Conservatives on the other hand refuse to utilize what works, what has been crushing them for over 50 years (i.e. identity politics) thereby leaving the gringo utterly defenseless in a Hate whitey culture. Conservatives are losing BECAUSE of their principles.
I still think you’re wrong here, Z. It happened because the leaders of the conservative movement sacrificed principles for scruples. Loyalty to truth, even if it means being harsh in its defense, is a principle; always being polite is a scruple. Rather than go to the mattresses in defense of what they claimed (at least) to believe in, the conservative establishment chose to “take the high road” and always be polite to people who deserved a punch in the throat. In doing so, they betrayed their principles and us. You’re right, losing is a signal, and there are right lessons… Read more »
MtnExile; I’m late to the party but IMHO you have grasped the essential truth of why ‘conservatives’ have conserved nothing. As you say having actual principles entails having standards essential to those principles and being willing to defend those principles despite criticism and opposition. Western Civilization arose from Christianity and so defending Christian Principles using Christian Standards turned out to have been essential to defending Western Civilization. Who knew_? There has been a 200 + year relentless attack on Christianity, starting with portions of the Enlightenment, largely by using ‘science’ as defined by elite fashionability as a means of attack.… Read more »
As you know, my point about Conservative Inc. generally and the GOP specifically is that they actually do not possess any principles. Not any that regular people would find palatable. That’s why they lost in devastating fashion to Trump. The jig was up because everybody figured out that their principles were just talking points, and that they had zero intention of following those principles once elected. That has been the great value of Trump. He has an undivided Congress and a generally center-right SCOTUS. And yet they STILL find ways to lose, to not carry out their promises, to try… Read more »
Most intelligent comment I’ve read all week, especially the ‘stupid’ part. More, please!
“principles that we would do well to live by even today”
You’re adorable!
I’m a little confused by this. What is wrong with economic motivation? And also, by way of fact, all wars are economic and blather about the altruism, faith, rightness of ‘our side’ is all, and always, just propaganda. This isn’t ground breaking at all. Everybody in the business of warfare knows this already and has for centuries. That ‘civilians’ only sometimes understand this is what’s weird to me. We aren’t losing wars in the middle east we’re purposefully grinding these places to a standstill for the extraction of opium and oil wealth. I very much hope this isn’t new news… Read more »
It is indeed a sad state of affairs when Beard’s seminal work is not referenced in ANY High School History text. I was fortunate to be forced to read and analyze it at the behest my one of my professors back in 1967. The other tome which I have referenced over and over again to my American History/Government students is: HOLOGRAM OF LIBERTY by Kenneth Royce. While Beard and Royce get it, the vast, vast majority of the Sheeple do not have the intellectual capability of understanding how long and deep and continuously they have been getting raped by TPTB.… Read more »
Beard has been pretty well debunked — even professional historians don’t mention him much anymore, and those guys are all Marxists. But then again, the Left has a wonderfully schizo attitude towards the Revolution. It’s fun to mess with them about it: Whenever some Lefty gets self-righteous about “all men are created equal,” I love to come back with “so says Thomas Jefferson… a white, cishetpat gun nut who raped his slaves. What else ya got?” Always good for a chuckle.
I’m not sure ‘debunked” is the word to use. Given that he was mostly correct, but not comprehensive. The people who have “dismissed” him, in contrast, are completely wrong.
Academic historians are almost all leftists, there is nothing professional about them. They don’t represent the general population. Beard fell out of favor because he didn’t like the post-WW2 internationalism, not because new evidence was discovered. Remember the Belleisles hoax, evidence will simply be manufactured. In certain respects Beard was a “Marxist” because his narrative was based on class conflict. His unpopularity is because Marxism was replaced with cultural marxism.
Lots of new information was discovered (Beard’s Economic Interpretation was published in 1913, for pete’s sake). Forrest McDonald, Gordon Wood… the Anti-Federalists were of the same basic economic class. Beard achieved what we can all aspire to, in that what he got right is now just part of “what everyone knows” about the Revolution (that economic factors played a big role). This stuff *matters*, because if they were still teaching Beard in US History 101, new grads would have a much better toolkit to think about these things. Instead, it’s all race/class/gender now — sure, George Washington may have led… Read more »
What Beard was guilty of, if anything, was projecting Gilded Age trusts backwards into the 18th century. It makes sense, as Beard was a partisan for the Progressives. As a narrative history, rather than muh Austrian economics, it still functions. The academics will get more respect when they resemble the partisan spectrum of legacy America. The commuter school I attended in Midwest America had three Jews, two Chinese professors, two foreign-born blacks, and not a single Republican in its History Department.
Add-on. About half were Ivy PhD graduates. Symptomatic of wild overproduction of PhDs in graduate schools. Even worse, aforesaid commuter school had a PhD program of its own. Several graduates a year, none of who will ever get a tenure track position, but still think they are too good for a high school job.
Other than Hamilton, Jefferson was the most dangerous stand alone Founding member, but Tom did not fuck Sally–his brother did–as well as everything else that nodded go on his visits to Monticello. This is not to raise Jefferson in your eyes, only to note that in that time there were no few men who held certain practices to be abominations and took that sort of thing in a way that moderns cannot seem to compute. TJ was a prick of the highest order.
Right on, Z-man. Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.
I was thinking Trump is the particle and MAGA was the wave
Article Three, Section Two:
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution…
This is the fatal flaw in the Constitution. The founders must have known it. They were not stupid. Among the choices they had—and acutely aware of the nature of man—they must have seen it as the longest and slowest braking mechanism on the road to ultimate, and inevitable, collapse.
“I cannot lay down my pen without recurring to one of the subjects of my former letter, for in truth there is no danger I apprehend so much as the consolidation of our government by the noiseless, and therefore unalarming instrumentality of the Supreme court.”
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Johnson
http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-print-04-02-02-3373
I read somewhere, perhaps apocryphal, that the real reason behind the Whiskey Rebellion was that Washington and Hamilton had interests in Caribbean rum makers, and they were simply trying to choke off the competition. It’s always been the same. Greedy elites treasonously sticking it to the lower castes. There never was a golden age is my view of history.
It is apocryphal. Rum was made in the British Caribbean, which had been closed to American shippers since 1783. The interests Hamilton was set on protecting were Robert Morris and his bond holders carrying the war debt. Big domestic whiskey distillers, connected to big landowners who were growing the rye, wanted to squeeze out the small time operations and farmers. Hamilton wanted to impose a tax to demonstrate the new power of the Federal government by making an example of Western Pennsylvania, and paying off the creditors so the US could crawl out from the financial chaos of the 1770s.… Read more »
Vae victis!
Woe to the vanquished!
The revolution happened because John Otis’s Dad got passed over for a judge job.
I have precisely one principle: I want good to win and evil to lose. I don’t really care how it happens.
I believe any other approach to be insanity.
The other side things the same thing so at least you are bringing your religion to a religious fight.
You make a fatal mistake when you make your highest principle one of ethics or religion. What if a different group, which opposes you, better embodies the “good?” You must make your highest principle the biological preservation of your people. All non-white races do this, whether they are conscious of it, or honest about it, or not.
Why is it “insanity” to commit yourself to the biological preservation of your people?
Z, I am having some difficulty connecting the dots between this, “This is an important lesson for anyone in dissident politics. The first goal, that which everything bends toward, is to gain power”, and your advice to the podcast crybaby to change the culture first and the politics would follow. Could you explain?
Vladimir Putin had no clear ideology when he became President. He was a career bureaucrat, then given progressively higher appointments because he was seen as a reliable yes-man. Upon becoming President he turned on the oligarchs, forcing them to swear loyalty to him or else be exiled/killed. Only later did he attempt to expound an ideology beyond the nebulous idea of “national greatness”. Those with principles wanted to see communism come back, but we don’t hear anything from them anymore…
I don’t think that answers my question. Putin didn’t need to change the culture to gain power. the dissident right, if I understand Z’s argument, does.
Culture is downstream from power. The trick is finding out where the power is.
How about a post next week on this very topic.
So you are saying that Nietzsche was right about the Will to Power.
Funny to see the number of replies.
The replies are much lower for this post than others.
I think the Latin is scaring people off!
Wednesday tends to have few comments than Monday and Tuesday. It depends upon the time of year, but Wednesday and Thursday are the slowest traffic and commenting days. That said, some subjects generate a ton of comments for reasons that are not all that obvious to me. The post on the social capital of mothers generated a crap load of traffic. I wrote that one in ten minutes. This one took an hour and I really like it.
There is no accounting for taste.
Well, everybody has a mother….
Lmao even here the commenters are arguing that what we really need are more conservative principles. We are f u c k e d
What’d we have: A few responsible white guys perched on the edge of a vast wilderness, ready to conquer and paper it over with crypto-deist-enlightenment-greek rhetoric. The constitution is a magician’s flourish for pulling off the trick of continental settlement by a race of angry, expansive men. Jefferson’s biggest contribution (besides deleting the supernatural from his bible) was in contravention of all his principles – the Louisiana Purchase. When we looked West we did well; we banked and shipped and dammed and drilled and herded savages as wanted. T’was a rapid conquest of the continent, in a historical blink of… Read more »