I was reading something about a battle in the American Revolution and it got me to thinking about what revolution would look like in the modern age. We tend to associate revolutions with mobs in the streets, disobeying lawful orders from whoever happens to be in charge. That’s part of it, for sure, but usually they have more formal elements as well as popular unrest. The American Revolution had a number well organized acts of rebellion like boycotts and peaceful resistance before we got armies in the field.

Revolutions have two forms, at least at the onset. There are the revolts within the ruling class and then there are popular rebellions. The former is more like a civil war played out on the small scale. For instance, a group of soldiers takes over the military and then sacks the civil leadership. The English Civil War is the best example. The latter is when the people get tired of their rulers and rally around a leader or cause (or both) and force out the old rulers. The Bolshevik Revolution is the most obvious example. The American Revolution is unique in that it has both elements.

In the modern west, a military coup is unlikely as the civilian authorities have done a good job over the last few generations of selecting against the sort of ambitious men who tend to lead military coups. In Europe, the military is simply too weak to pull it off. That and the rest of Europe would either send in troops to restore civilian rule or have the US do it. Then you have the fact that there’s not a lot of popular support for the military in much of Europe. A coup would result in massive protests.

The US is a different animal in that we have a big competent military, but it is mostly stationed overseas. That’s not an accident. If the invade the world types are purged from the ruling class, the next step is a great demobilization. There’s simply no way a civilian leadership is going to allow a massive high tech army to be garrisoned at home. Even so, the military culture in the US has long selected against the sort of men that lead military coups. It’s the one thing we have no screwed up yet.

I think if we are going to see a soft civil war or a revolution from within, it will look a lot like what we are seeing with nationalist parties across the Continent. The first wave will be less than professional politicians demonstrating the power of popular discontent, followed by a second wave of real professionals who take control of those new parties and lead a reform movement. This is not so much a revolution or revolt, as a process of internal reform tapping into popular will to overcome internal resistance. It’s not exactly how democracy is supposed to work, but it is not a terrible result if it leads to peaceful change.

There’s good reason to be pessimistic about this possibility. We saw how the Austrians rigged their election and a lot of people suspect this US election could be loaded with shenanigans. Even if Trump overcomes the Clinton crime machine, he will most likely face a ruling class unified against him. In America, we may have crossed the Rubicon in the 1990’s when it became clear that the ruling class could no longer police itself. Their inability to purge their ranks of the Clintons was a sign that the rot had reach a point where reform is no longer possible.

That leaves popular revolt. Certainly voting for Trump sends a message, but messages need a sender and a receiver. If the people on the other end refuse to acknowledge the message being sent, then it’s not really a message. The Olive Branch Petition was the last ditch effort by the Colonist to avoid a breach with the mother country, but the King’s refusal turned it from a message to him into a message from him. That message was clear to the colonials. They could either submit unconditionally or prepare for war. A Trump win followed by a unified refusal by the political class to cooperate would also be clear message.

A few bloggers on our side of the divide have noted that what comes after Trump is, if history is a guide, going to be much worse. Instead of an amateur politician, who still believes in the system, the next guy to rally the troops will be a professional who does not believe in the system. Instead he will be a guy that looks at the system in the same way Turkish strongman Erdoğan looks at democracy. That is, it is useful only as a vehicle for taking the leader to where he wants to go. “If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it,” said Julius Caesar.

That may be true, but it will still require popular support. What we are seeing with nationalist insurgencies in the West is they are running into the massive power that comes from owning the mass media. A little girl skins her knee and there is a news team there to blame Trump in a four hour TV special. Hillary Clinton is caught running a pay-for-play scheme and no one can be bothered to ask her why she went to the trouble of installing an illegal e-mail system in her bathroom. Even the most cynical and savvy insurgent campaign cannot get past this problem.

It may be that the custodial state has reached a point where rebellion is no longer possible. Or, it may simply be that the method of revolt will have to adapt to the modern age. If the rulers no longer have the consent of the governed, then the governed will have no reason to voluntarily cooperate. Perhaps the cord-cutting movement is one of those acts of rebellion that makes sense only in a mass media age. Publishing the private correspondence of rulers, obtained by hackers, is certainly a very modern for of rebellion.

Whether any of it works is open to debate

The other day in the comments, there was a brief exchange about the difference between people that do things and people that say things. Nixon used to divide the political world into those in the arena and those who talked about those in the arena. He even wrote a book about it. This is the same formulation you see in sports. Athletes complain all the time about the press, pointing out that few of them ever played the game at any level, so they can only imagine what it is like to be a player.

Another way to think of it, one that I prefer, is the 18th century salon, where men in elaborate costumes boasted to elaborately costumed women about what they would do if they were ever called to action. These were the guys who were “well schooled” in the art of war, but never made it out to camp, much less a battle. Meanwhile, out on the streets, men of action did the hard work of civilization, including the defense of it. These men had no use for theory because they were judged and they judged others by deeds. Doers versus talkers.

As with all models, it is an artificial construct used to better understand the world. George Washington was both a doer and talker. In fact, he was probably better at talking than war fighting. Washington was not a very good general, but he had a knack for saying the perfect thing at the perfect time in order to get other men to act. Most modern politicians do nothing but talk so calling them doers is a bit of a stretch. Paul Ryan, for example, has spent his life in Washington politics. The only thing he has ever done is promote himself up the ladder of party politics.

Even so, The model of the doer versus the talker is a useful one for understanding the world today. A century ago, almost all men in America were doers. In fact, it was hard to be anything but a doer. Even politicians started out as lawyers or businessmen. The scions of rich men could skip the doing and get to the talking, but there was not much of it. Status for men was tied to deeds so even rich guys joined the military, got into business or argued cases before the court. 32 US Presidents had some military experience.

Today, few of our politicians have ever done anything resembling useful work. Those who did some time in the service were almost always JAG officers, meaning the greatest danger they faced was a paper cut. The commentariat is even more divorced from the world of deeds. Look up the resumes of these folks and you see nothing but stops in think tanks and media jobs. Some spent time in government. As Tucker Carlson put it, these are stupid rich kids largely clueless about the world in which the rest of us live.

The American ruling class now resembles that salon where oddly costumed people engage in elaborate ritualized competitions. Deeds mean nothing, because no one does anything in the conventional sense. Instead, status is achieved by accumulating credentials, occupying government positions and winning verbal jousts with the other members of the meritocracy. Barack Obama is in the White House entirely due to his ability to talk about doing stuff. The meritocracy admires him so much, because he is one of them.

It’s also why all sides of the chattering class are in a lather over Donald Trump. He is not a member of the talking class. For all his faults, he is a man, who does things. He has risen to the top of a rough and tumble field that only rewards doers, particularly doers who like risk. Every day of Trump’s life has been about winning deals and making things happen. While Barack Obama has a trophy case full of participation medals, Trump has a trophy room celebrating the buildings he has built and the casinos he started. He even has a trophy wife and a trophy ex-wife.

There’s another aspect to this. In a world in which deeds count for nothing, words count for everything. Every sentence is packed with multiple layers of meaning, because there are no other ways to signal status, piety, achievement and so forth. The great athlete does not have to be a wordsmith because everyone know his status. The guys talking about the great athletes have to establish status by words. The guys talking about guys talking about guys talking about the great athletes are in a world where every comma carries great import.

A guy like Trump, who lacks these verbal skills, is an easy target of mockery from the talking class. The coin of Trump’s realm has no value in the world of modern American politics. Guys like Trump are supposed to write checks and remain silent. In the view of the meritocracy, Trump is a crude vulgarian. He is poor in the things they value most, even though he is rich in deeds. To make matters worse, Trump seems to get this and take some pleasure in vexing these people. He does not respect them and they know it.

It’s easy to admire men of action, but history is full of such men, who came to bad ends. Politics has always been about words at some level. George Washington’s political acumen counted for more than his military prowess. Conversely, the British generals he faced, lacked the political savvy to take advantage of their superiority in arms and material. Similarly, Trump’s stumbles in the game of words could very well unhorse him in the fight against someone’s wife. It’s why the talkers are so invested in his defeat. For most of them, it will be the only thing they have ever done.

I was out on my bike, riding through the countryside, when I came upon a group of deer grazing near the edge of the road. I was riding where it is mostly woods and fields so there’s not much car traffic. As a result, the woodland critters are often in plain sight. I took the opportunity to stop, drink some water and enjoy the magnificent beauty of nature. At these times it is easy to see why men believe in a just and loving God. I was also reminded of why I hate libertarians.

To be fair, I don’t really hate all libertarians. As is the case with “conservative”, the word “libertarian” has been expanded to include things that the original libertarians never would have imagined. The word itself was coined by a French communist from the word libertaire, to mean an advocate or defender of liberty, especially in politics. The guy most consider to be the founder of libertarianism, Claude-Frédéric Bastiat, was a classical liberal in the line of John Locke and Adam Smith.

It used to be that libertarians were property and contract guys. They argued that the state existed to protect property rights and enforce contracts. These were the neo-classical liberals, who believed government had been created by individuals to protect themselves from one another. Since all property was either owned by an individual or owned collectively, the state existed to protect property and sort out disputes that arose over property. There’s really nothing wrong with this as an argument against socialism and communism.

The trouble is that somewhere along the way, this rather sensible rebuke of socialism curdled into a weird fusion of Cultural Marxism and laissez-faire globalist economics. To be a libertarian today means to abandon the field as soon as the Left assaults the culture in some new way. They always have some excuse for hiding under their bed when the Left goes on a rampage. At the same time, they fall into lectures about pencils as soon as the topic of global capitalism is raised. Listen to a modern libertarian and you get the sense they really think the point of life is cheap consumer goods.

Ironically, modern libertarians are fond of talking about the Founders and they even argue that early America was a libertarian country. That’s ridiculous, but it also misses a critical point. The American colonies were doing well economically and the taxes and levies the King wished to impose were minor. Despite this economic realty, the colonies revolted anyway. It was early proof that homo economicus has always been nonsense. Humans as not rational and narrowly self-interested agents. Humans, individually and collectively, are biological.

When the Brits went to the polls and decided to leave Europe, they did not do so with economics in mind. That was part of it, but patriotism, identity, class and other non-economic factors were at the front of their mind. The winners were not waving the Union Jack because it happen to be handy. The Brexit forces were not talking about sovereignty and self-government by accident. Libertarians are so blinkered they could not comprehend what was so blazingly obvious. They remain convinced that humans are just moist robots.

It used to be that libertarians understood this. Murray Rothbard cooked up something he called Right-Wing Populism, which was a not so subtle attempt to hook libertarianism to biology. Guys like Ron Paul and many Paleo-Conservatives embraced something that is the foundation of the emerging Alt-Right. That is, the chain of causality, which is shorthanded this way: Biology->Culture->Politics->Economics. Iceland has the culture of Iceland because it is full of Icelanders. Nigeria is the way it is because it full of Nigerians.

Modern libertarians appear to embrace the Progressive claim that humans are a blank slate so the chain of causality is reversed. They run out of the room as soon as biology is mentioned. Talk about crime, for example, and they break into a sweat and start looking for a way to escape. When it comes to culture, the modern libertarians are too quick to come up with some bit of dogma that prevents them from facing off with the Left. Usually that means another lecture on why we need to legalize weed and prostitution.

Like most sensible people, I like low taxes and limited government interference in my life. I’m a maximalist when it comes to personal liberty, but I also understand that human society is about trade-offs. I give up some liberty in exchange for the benefits of living in a society to my liking. My liking and that of my fellow citizens is not always going to be logical or fit into a tidy economic model. I also know that a certain segment of the population is going to require extra help and extra restraint. That requires trade-offs too.

Those rolling hills where I sometimes ride may one day be slated for development or a chemical plant. Maybe I’ll be all for wiping out Bambi’s playground or maybe I’ll be on the other side. My arguments will be no more rational than why I prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla. The people on the other side will be just as irrational. That’s the way it goes in politics. It is two sides fighting over what to love more and what to hate more. It is about who we will be, together, as a society. It is what we want our kids to remember about us.

Libertarians have nothing to say about any of this, but like a pebble in your shoe, they keep finding a way to be an irritant. In the current crisis, they have plenty to say, but they refuse to pick a side. They have their principles and their well crafted arguments, but most of it feels like a call to inaction. They clearly believe, but faith without works is dead. A faith that can never work because it runs counter to biological reality deserves to be dead. That’s how I feel about libertarianism.

The 2016 US Presidential election is shaping up to be one of those inflection points in the nation’s history. At this stage it is hard to know what comes after November, even if you are confident of the outcome. In 1964, the Liberals clobbered the arch-conservative Goldwater, but that turned out to be their last hurrah as 1960’s radicalism was about to blow itself apart. Similarly, many thought 2000 was a shift toward a post-Progressive America, but it was the start of a new Great Progressive Awakening.

I’m fond of calling the prevailing philosophy among our rulers the New Religion because it has all the attributes of a religion, just adapted to the mass media era. For those unfamiliar with this, the New Religion is based on egalitarianism, multiculturalism and anti-racism. The last part is an outgrowth of the first two, but it is such a key part of the believer’s worldview, it really must be treated as a foundation item. Spend time on social media and you will inevitably run into people calling themselves anti-racists.

As Eric Hoffer observed, mass movements can get along without a god, but they must always have a devil. For the modern Progressive, the arch-demon is racism and everything is organized around fighting it. Abstract concepts make for useful devils, because they can be redefined on the fly to meet new challenges. A racist used to be some who hated blacks. Now it is someone hated by blacks or by the people who do the hating on their behalf.

As much as anti-racism is the star of the show, the other two legs of the stool are important too and we’re seeing that in the election. Trump is running on an explicitly nationalist platform. Nationalism comes with certain assumptions, like “our culture is better than others” and “our people are worth more to us than the people of other countries.” These are value judgments based on a shared history and a shared identity. America is not a blood and soil nation, but it is still a nation. My fellow citizens mean more to me than the people of France or Lichtenstein.

The internal logic of the New Religion excludes parochialism of any sort. All humans are equal, to the point where sex is even counted as a social construct. Therefore, no one can be morally better than another. Since culture is personality writ large and all personalities are equal, all cultures are equal. Anything short of embracing all cultures equally is racism. That means all the people who oppose the one-world globalism of our elites can only be driven by racism. They are evil so they must be fought at any cost.

That’s what we are seeing with Trump. He is a man who is the epitome of color blindness. He opened his first big club in Miami to all races, despite the fact the local residents opposed that idea. Those local residents were very liberal, you should note. His business associates look like the color wheel and his daughter converted to Judaism after marrying her very Jewish husband. Yet, Trump is running as a nationalist so the New Religion casts him as a racist. They even obliquely hint that he is an anti-Semite by calling him “Herr Drumpf” all the time.

The so-called conservatives in the media are just as smitten with the New Religion as their paymasters.  After all, a key part of being on contract at CNN or ABC is to be in the good graces of the fanatics that run those stations. Since the people in charge have defined racism as the worst of sins, no conservative will be caught dead associated with a racist. Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of these nancy-boys more than the thought of being cast into the pit alongside guys like John Derbyshire and Steve Sailer.

Years ago, back in the early Bush years, I met Jonah Goldberg at a NRO fundraiser event. We were chatting and I mentioned Peter Brimelow and he turned pale. The look on his face was what you would expect if he just learned Godzilla was approaching. He pulled himself together enough to say, “You should never even read anything they write. It’s very bad.” and then he sprinted away like I was chasing him. It was old fashioned, gut level fear like you see in horror movies. Goldberg is now a unhinged opponent of Trump.

On the scale of certainty, the modern Progressive is quite sure he is an anti-racist. He even has that on the profile of his social media accounts. The old Buckley Right has always existed on the edge of grace, with respect to the Left so they are desperate to prove they are just as anti-racist as their brothers on the Left. It’s why they are so over-the-top in their hatred for Trump. It’s not a case of self-doubt leading to overcompensation. They fear their brothers on the Left do not believe they have cleansed themselves of racism, so their animus toward Trump is their purification ritual.

This is why guys like Erick Erickson are constantly trolling for the attention of Trump supporters on twitter and Faceberg. It’s why NRO has given itself over to anti-Trumpism to the point of self-parody. It’s also why the most over-the-top outrage about the Khan flap was from the so-called Right. These performances are not intended to convince Trump voters. They are intended to convince the Left that the official Right is fully housebroken and ready to live in the master’s house. Anti-Trumpism is a public act of piety by those who wish to be initiated in the New Religion.

Ted Cruz setting himself on fire at the GOP convention is a good example of how things are not always what they seem. The Wuss Right cheered because they hoped it would hurt Trump. They never cared for Cruz, which is why they refused to back him until the last days of the primary. Even those who were willing to back Cruz early on were muted in their enthusiasm. Once there was nothing to lose and he was throwing one last rock at Trump, they could let loose with full-throated cheers for Lion Ted.

The Wuss Right’s reticence with regards to Cruz is not all wrong. Cruz is a weasel, who cannot be trusted. He proved that the other night. He is also revealed himself to be a fanatic, fully capable of stepping on a rake that he laid in front of his own path. Cruz seems to believe the things Glenn Beck says about him. He imagines himself as the throne half of the team, while Beck imagines himself representing the altar side of their thing. Their thing is a strange movement that blends evangelical Christianity, Mormonism and evangelical Constitutionalism.

Conservatives tend to define themselves as people who are faithful to the spirit of the law, as well as the letter. When it comes to the Constitution, the Right typically takes a narrow view. If it is not explicitly in the document, then it is assumed to not be in the document. This is in line with the traditional negative liberty that is the bedrock of the American system of governance. The state only has powers specifically granted to it. Put another way, the state must get permission from the citizens to act.

Listen to a Ted Cruz speech and he talks about the Constitution in the same way preachers talk about Scripture. You either read the document as the literal word of God or you are a sinner. An America that is not organized around the literal reading of the original document is failing in its duty to God. Similarly, liberty is a stand-in for salvation. One is either in a state of liberty or outside the light of the Founders. When a guy like Ted Cruz talks of religious liberty, it clearly means more than just being left to worship as you please. It is liberty as a religion.

The irony of this evangelical constitutionalism is that it was Evangelicals who ushered in the whole “living constitution” stuff. The Christian reformers of the 19th century badgered the courts to accept a more expansive role in law making. This always meant chipping away at property rights in order to eradicate immorality from national life. The Abolitionist Movement was, after all, an attack on property rights. Slaves were property and freeing slaves is, legally speaking, no different than “freeing” someone’s car or their cash.

Treating the founding documents as holy texts and the Founders as messengers of God seems like a natural evolution of Evangelical politics. In the 70’s and 80’s, Christian conservatives got involved in politics and ended up as a reliable Republican constituency. This traditional approach to politics got them nothing but disappointment as the liberals steamrolled conservatives in Washington on social issues. Strategy shifted to backing coreligionists, thinking that would result in more dependable politicians. Eight years of George Bush disabused most Christians of that belief.

Holding up a holy text as something more than words on a page is to be expected. Religions only work when the rules are set forth by an authority higher than man. Otherwise, it is just coercion. Deifying the Constitution, the way we see with guys like Cruz and Beck, inevitably deifies the men who wrote it. It also assumes a transcendence that the writers never imagined. The men who wrote the Constitution fully understood that it was a grab-bag of compromises that were necessary in order to organize thirteen nations into a single country.

Just as important, the men who founded the country relied upon the work of others to form their opinions and debate how to best organize the newly independent country. Jefferson, for example, borrowed heavily from The Declaration of Rights with which Parliament asserted its rights against the King in the Glorious Revolution. Imbuing the Constitution with sacred authority inevitably turns the writers into something they were not and strips them of their humanity. The Founders were just men, but they were still men.

That is what makes the Cruz speech and his refusal to back Trump interesting. The Wuss Right, filled with hatred for the rise of Trump and his nationalist backers, cheered Cruz as the heir to Reagan. The Cruz people, however, are not looking for Reagan. They tried that and got nowhere. They saw the Cruz speech and saw their savior, a man in the line of the Founders, sent by God to bring his people back into the light of the Constitution. It’s why his followers are sure God will punish America for rejecting their man.

Ted Cruz says he will run in 2020 no matter what happens in 2016. It remains to be seen whether this movement he is leading has legs. These things often fizzle out. With high profile people like Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson signing on and preaching from their Internet pulpits every day, it is probably going to be with us for a while. Ted Cruz is the leader of the political version of the Westboro Baptist Church now. The founding documents are holy scripture and the leaders are men of God, sent by God.