The Restoration

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about the weird noises coming from the regime after the election, a post about the odd quiet that we are seeing after Trump swept the field and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.


Legend has it that at the start of the trial of English King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell saw the king approaching Westminster Hall and realized he had a problem. He quickly warned his fellow parliamentarians that the king would ask a very straightforward question at the opening of the trial. He would demand to know upon what authority was he being brought to a trial. This is, in fact, what happened. Charles refused to enter a plea on the grounds the court had no authority over him.

The drama about Cromwell seeing the king’s approach and then suddenly seeing his problem is apocryphal, as the parliamentarians had been debating this issue since the end of the Second English Civil War. According to English law, the king could not be tried for breaking the law. Logically, the king was the law. The king was the sovereign and therefore the embodiment of the nation and its laws. Putting the king on trial was putting the system itself on trial.

Cromwell and his pals got around this problem by simply wielding the power they had, which was the force of arms, to override objections from members of parliament, the House of Lords and the king himself. When Charles asked “I would know by what power I am called hither. I would know by what authority, I mean lawful authority”, the parliamentarians decided that “the King of England was not a person, but an office whose every occupant was entrusted with a limited power to govern.”

In other words, the long-held principles both sides claimed to support, over which they fought two bloody wars to that point, gave way to political expediency. Cromwell and the New Model Army had power, and they were determined to keep it, which meant killing the king and what he represented. If it meant trampling a thousand years of tradition and the law itself, they were prepared to do it. The trial proceeded as if the Charles confessed his guilt, and he was soon executed.

The French Revolution gets all the attention when it comes the crisis of liberalism, but it is the English Civil War that presents the problem plainly. By what authority can a parliament rule over a people? The answer always given is the people, but by what authority do the people have to pick their rulers? Where is it written that the people are the moral arbiter of society? Modern people think the answer is obvious, but for most of human history people thought the opposite.

The reason we have that story about Cromwell looking out of the window of Westminster Hall and suddenly realizing his dilemma is because people at the time understood the power of authority. The king was just a man, but what he represented was earthly dominion over man. No one looked at the king as just a man because he was the final authority, the one man who was an exception to the law, while being the embodiment of the law. He was the sovereign.

It is why after Cromwell’s death, the monarchy was restored. Despite it all, Cromwell was never able to answer the question posed by Charles at his trial. The authority of Parliament is in the law, but the authority of the law is in the king. Without a king, those in control of Parliament were left with force as their authority. It is easy to see why Mao famously said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The question of authority has haunted the world since that famous trial.

We are getting a glimpse of this with the election of Trump. Fifty years ago, the managerial class staged a coup against Nixon. Like the Rump Parliament that deposed Charles I, they acted extrajudicially but claimed to be doing so in defense of the law, which is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. They rid themselves of the imperial presidency, reducing the office and the rest of the political structures to committees controlled by the managerial class.

Then as now, the central question in the crisis is who says? Much of what constitutes the crisis of the American empire is people shouting from screens, demanding you must do this or must stop doing that. Everywhere you turn is a digital preacher, waging her bony finger at you and lecturing about your sins. The Roundhead ascendency that began with Watergate climaxed with men in dresses calling normal people sinners, but always the question remained. Who says?

The restoration of Donald Trump is an answer of sorts. Whatever his faults, Trump is a man who commands attention and respect. When he enters a room, the room changes because he is larger than life. He persevered over the last four years of official persecution through force of will. He returns to Washington as the leader of the victorious side in the cold civil war that has gripped the country. He also returns with an agenda and a mandate to execute it.

None of this is to say that Trump is the monarch or our moral authority. The point of the comparison is that the executive exists to replicate that role in a democratic system that lacks a moral authority. Without energy in the executive, the president cannot play the role the system requires to function. The last fifty years has seen the rise of rule by committee, and no one builds monuments to committees. Just as Parliament needed the king, Washington needs Trump.

It still leaves open that question. Monarchy solved the problem by making the king the sovereign and the answer to who says? In America, Christianity was assumed to be the answer most of the time. The exceptions required a strong executive to make the hard decisions and force the legislature to act. First the melting away of Christianity then the toppling of the strong executive left us with rule by committee and the fanciful chants about democracy to answer the question of authority.

Trump will not reign forever, so the question will return. Perhaps the managerial elite sees the problem and supports the return of the imperial presidency as a solution to the internal contradictions of managerialism. Maybe the economic elite supports the strong executive as a proxy for their supremacy over the managerial class, much in the way the king was the leader of the aristocracy. Maybe Washington falls into chaos again, as managerialism reaches its end.

In the end, political systems rise and fall on the question of authority. The moral questions in every society are either answered by the gods or by the people though their traditions and customs. Centuries of experience in self-government says we simply cannot accept “because we say so” as an answer. You either have a strong executive with the power to impress or you have a shared religion that answers all the important moral questions. Managerialism has neither.


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127 thoughts on “The Restoration

  1. The historical analogy is apt also because of what happened when Charles II came in. He had to be advised to halt his sanguinary revenges for the sake of national peace.

  2. Eventually, parliament decided that the solution was to have a king without a monarchy, with the kings serving as figureheads for unlimited parliamentary power since the Glorious Revolution. The historian Hilaire Belloc properly pointed out that the actual form of government in Britain was a radical republic, radical in that power is concentrated in Parliament with the kings as ciphers. The modern managerial state has managed to turn both presidents and legislatures into ciphers, with power concentrated in the bureaucratic apparatus. This became abundantly clear with the Biden presidency, with the wheels of bureaucracy turning despite the obvious incapacity of the executive.

  3. This business with Trump is a populist revolt that led to a popular revolt. There’s no way to sugar coat last week’s result as anything other than a very big chunk of the country, in answer to the question, “By whose authority?”, responded, “Not yours.”

    And by voting “not yours” they collectively rejected:

    • the courts that tried to jail him
    • the bureaucracy that opposes him
    • The media that assailed him
    • the politicians that betrayed him

    It’s hard to overstate the disobedience of the peasant class to those four groups. 75,000,000 collectively disobeyed the experts and the autocrats.

    Trump expanded his coalition across every demographic category and in every state except ultra-white, ultra-Marxist, Washington State.

    Last week was a nonviolent rebellion by people determined to resist. Why didn’t they pull the fraud trigger? We know they could have manufactured 81,000,000 votes. They did it before.

    1. Everyone was watching. 2020 too many got caught napping. 2024, there were people videotaping illegal acts, and then the courts swooped in to put a stop to it (eg PA).
    2. No covid to conceal fake mail in votes.
    3. Trump was pulling away. They risked getting caught and triggering an actual rebellion. Judging by the breadth and depth of Trump’s coalition, they couldn’t blame it on old white Boomers.

    This is a rebellion by the people who give legitimacy and authority to the government. That government has been told – many times – to stop with the wars, the illegals, the authoritarianism. But they just do what they want, elections and laws be damned.

    If not for the gaslighting information warfare and low-level fraud (mail in voting is still fake), Trump probably gets 55-60% of the vote.

    For 30 years the government has operated in open defiance of those whose authority gives it legitimacy.

    The open question – and Trump’s early announcements of positions in the government gives hope – is whether Trump will use his 4 years to punish, reform, and destroy the managerial state. And elections.

    i think getting shot was the last straw. He knows exactly who tried to kill him. And I think he intends to be aggressive in his response. The biggest deportation in history does not appear to be a slogan. I think the Lawfare cabal may flee the country. And I think there will be some very specific arrests.

    Also watch to see what he does with Congress and election. Banning mail-in voting would be a step towards restoring authority to the people. I think he will try to do this.

    • Some percentage of Trump voters no doubt felt that way, but that’s not what made the difference between winning and losing. Putting aside for the moment the notion of rigged elections and the elites allowing Trump to win, what made the difference was the Ds ran a shitty candidate. Something they’ve been in the habit of doing lately, which was what created the opening for Trump. Their candidates are shitty because they are handpicked, and their primaries (when they have them) are rigged for the handpicked candidate. This produces flawed candidates which an honest primary weeds out. Let’s face it, if the Ds had another Bill Clinton or Obama to nominate, Trump wouldn’t have had a chance. All this hifalutin stuff about rebellion notwithstanding. And the Ds who blame H and K’s losses on sexism or misogyny aren’t exactly wrong. Trump never defeated a man. And I question if he ever would have.

      • Well, whatifism is fun, but exit polling says that illegals, wars, and especially inflation are why Trump won. That was an uphill battle for any D candidate. They all would have run into the same structural problem: they all support the regime’s policies, and they all struggle to find a convincing way to lie about it.

        They all would have struggled with the Jews vs Palis problem. And the Ukraine war / brink of WW3 stuff. And the green new deal vs the massive inflation it requires.

        Yes, Harris fared no better than the head of cabbage she is often confused for. And it was a contributing factor. But it was not the decisive factor.

        If you were right, Harris wins the NPV and we get a 49/48 split.

        This is a peasant revolt, and Trump is going to carry out the mandate he was given.

        • Because the regime is handpicking candidates, their handpicked candidates adhere to regime policy. A more organically chosen candidate would have run on a different platform than she did. He would have had to have a different platform, in order to become that organically chosen candidate. Trump, B Clinton, Obama, all products of competitive primaries in which they were not favored at the outset. H, K, and Biden, handpicked by the regime. It’s clear which process produces the better candidate. If the regime were capable of learning lessons, they’d learn this one. But that would mean surrendering some amount of control.

  4. Z-Man returns to an old problem, and I think I can move it a step ahead.

    The question of “who says?” is a question of how to organize the national sovereign, whether by the gods – which I will recast as the divine guide – or by power as the revolutionaries would have it, or by some form of national identity encapsulated in the culture and the people.

    To skip the rest of the preamble, you need a divine guide to maintain consistency over effective lifetimes and to prevent your ruling class from collapsing into narcissism. You need a powerful executive to prevent the Articles of Confederation, on one side, and managerialism on the other, where reform is impossible, institutions maintain the problems they were suppose to solve, institutions remain in the past as of their founding, factionalism and ideological capture, etc. Finally, you need a sovereign authority who is an extension of the nation as it exists, someone who understands and can manage the national identity, or you end up with a Draco or Solon situation where reforms fail or die the moment the sovereign steps down. It should be noted that the proper use of power sits between the failures of Draco and Solon.

    The new model sovereign is a fusion of all three aspects of the sovereign question. Excluding nations I know too little about, Putin appears the modern exemplar of the new model and has served his nation well. Xi might be on the list, although what passes for the divine guide of the CCP is unclear to me. Mao ostensibly, but the internet suggests that influence is waning to a degree.

    The image of and wishcasting over Trump also speaks to the new model, but America is having a crisis of identity and divine guide. She has also divested power from the sovereign of the somewhat weak Constitutional Order to managerialism. Trump is a product of all three problems. It will be interesting to see how far he leans into the new model sovereign on his second term, and how much he is able to overcome the crisis of the American ruling class.

    The larger question is whether a leading nation can successfully codify and institutionalize the new model sovereign for the long run.

  5. Managerialism is not anything really new. Various empires grew enormous bureaucracies that became inherited, to a large degree. China suffers enormously from this problem, as the bureaucracies always become sclerotic and unable to adapt to changes. Leading to periodic dynastic overthrows. Xi Xinping has just completed his dynastic overthrow. The Ottomans could find no solution, hence Attaturk and nationalism. Imperial Russia, and Japan also stand out in that regard.

    There are important elites who want stuff and found that only a Trump Unitary, activist executive could deliver this:

    A. Tech people wanting to get rich off AI. AI requires cheap, and reliable electricity.
    B. The Military Industrial Complex wanting AI to power materials research and directed energy weapons for drone and missile defense.
    C. Reindustrialization at mass/scale to match Russia and China industrial capacity (now not even close).
    D. Pentagon people wanting a draft without anti-draft riots and provoking massive unrest and regime change. Which requires ordinary men getting drafted having sufficient stake in the game to make it acceptable. [Crushing feminism, enabling mass ownership not “you will own nothing, have no privacy, live in the pod, use the pronouns, eat the bugs”]
    E. Saving the auto industry from Chinese EV obliteration.
    F. Saving the MIC from all spending being social spending for immigrants and their relatives.
    G. Maintaining and expanding space dominance, hard to do with the nation of Venezuela.

    Ultimately, legitimacy comes from power, patronage, and delivering enough to enough critical stakeholders that other alternatives are unthinkable. In the US that means the MIC, defense firms, the general mass of workers, and the general mass of draftees. Given the semi wartime environment of Cold War II we find ourselves in. Not too much feminism, Alphabet + stuff during Wartime.

    • I have a couple points to add/expand/mildly disagree upon.

      People used to love Star Trek and Star Wars with all the neato direct energy weapons on the spaceships.

      Well, the MIC has been doing real-world research on directed energy weapons for shooting down missiles and drones. For various reasons, that turns out to be a far more difficult and complex problem than what Hollywood has shown us over the years.

      Saving the auto industry from itself would be a good start. I don’t know how Trump could get rid of the globalist plant destroying Stellantis. He should do something to kill the regulations forcing all ICE engines into turbocharging. Same goes for the proposed kill switch and Bammy’s idiotic stop-start button.

      I don’t know how he’d yank EV subsidies without alienating Elon. That would be bad because Elon is a powerful Ally who controls the critical X platform.

      Speaking of Elon, he has amassed quite the pool of competence at SpaceX. Problem is, that’s one if the few pools of competence around. How is the country going to reindustrialize without a deep reservoir of skilled trades people and engineers? Not enough young people are going into the trades or engineering. Why would you when you can be a mediocre attorney that bills put at 4x-6x the hourly of mid-career staff engineers or go to Wall St and make real money?

      I realize people here know better, but the, “USA #1 WOOO KILL KILL KILL!!!” crowd that comments on MSN is in for a seriously rude awakening if they think we have any chance of winning WW3 versus Russia, China, and Iran.

  6. You raise a good point. “Without energy in the executive the president cannot play a role the system requires to function.” Napoleon said, “I found the crown of France in the gutter and I picked it up.” This invites comparisons of Joe Biden to Louis XVI. (I know it’s a ridiculous comparison.) I won’t say much more or it becomes an essay but power ultimately requires legitimacy. Napoleon had the power because he had the energy but ultimately he didn’t have legitimacy. Donald Trump has power because he has the energy and he has legitimacy under the rule of the unitary executive office of our system of limited government. He has it for now but he’s old. I pray that God gives Donald Trump the good health and energy to continue this counterrevolution against the forces of Satan, the entrenched primacist neocon worshippers of Tikkun Olam. I pray that he has the wisdom to surround himself with good advisors. He’s made a good start but the forces of Satan are working overtime to topple him. And let’s face it, they’re ensconced right in his own immediate family.

    • Yes, his own family is divided against him, while they make cooing noises. His daughter mainly. Last time out he let them sway him away from purpose. It showed.

      As for Tikkun Olam, looks to me that the Sabbateans/Frankists run the West now, through the agency of the bankster elite.

  7. Managerialism doesn’t need authority. All it needs is the ability to give government workers paychecks and pensions. As long as the cops and generals get paid, they don’t give a fig about “who says”. They will work for Satan if he is signing the checks.

    Managerialism is just Mao with check book.

  8. “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun.” Whatever faults Mao had, this statement cuts through so much BS we tell ourselves about politics. Laws are merely suggestions if the threat of violence isn’t there to back them up. The source of what we call authority, be it a king or a parliament, only has teeth if it can be backed up by force. The moment King Charles lost the civil war, he lost all real authority because he lost the monopoly on violence.

    The original feudal nobility largely originated as a protection racket where wealthy landowners who could afford to arm themselves and their supporters began carving out their own petty fiefdoms after the fall of Rome. Any notion of divine sanction for their authority is just BS. Likewise for the Constitution or Congress or the courts or the President. The only thing actually backing their power is force. Just look at the treatment of the J6 prisoners. The government violates their rights with impunity and to date there have been no consequences. They only follow the law when it suits them, and when it doesn’t then they are just words on paper to be ignored.

    • You write:

      The only thing actually backing their power is force. Just look at the treatment of the J6 prisoners. The government violates their rights with impunity and to date there have been no consequences.

      It seems that you have missed Z man’s point entirely. In durable societies, authority requires something more than a monopoly on violence. It also requires what we in the West call “legitimacy” or what the Chinese long called “the mandate of heaven.”

      Tsar Nicholas had a monopoly on violence until all of a sudden, he didn’t; the guns were turned on him. Not by Lenin, either, but by a preference cascade. The Ceausescus had a monopoly on violence, then suddenly they didn’t, and it didn’t go any better for them than it did for Nicholas – or Charles I, for that matter. None of these events turned simply on who grabbed the guns. That’s a childish and reductive way of looking at human history.

      Now there has been an election, and the miscreants who have “violated rights with impunity” may indeed be facing consequences. Trump represents legitimacy, under our system. Whether he – or we – enjoy a “mandate of heaven” is doubtful, but we’ll see.

      • I get tired of seeing Mao’s brutish dictum quoted everywhere, as if no one understood political power until that sadistic prick took over China in 1949, following twenty years of chaos.

        We all hate Lincoln here – a club rule, I believe – but he didn’t order his political enemies buried alive, eviscerated, etc., as Mao did. Or maybe Lincoln just didn’t understand the true nature of political power.

      • We will see if the J6 prisoners are freed and their tormentors get justice. I still stand by my statements. Laws are only effective if backstopped by coercion. Successful revolutions always secure power first, then worry about the fig leaf of “legitimacy.” When the examples you cite were overcome by revolution, what recourse did they have? They may have claimed they were the legitimate authority, but the revolutionaries killed them anyways. Monopoly on violence is antecedent to legitimacy, or mandate of heaven, or whatever you want to call it.

  9. Don’t look now, but the RINOs and neocons are moving to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by pushing Comryn and Thune as the best choices for the new Senate Majority Leader.

  10. There was a time, before the rise of the managerial class, before Woodrow Wilson, when it didn’t matter that much who the president was or what he did (most of the time, to most of the people, with one or two notable exceptions like Lincoln). There was neither an imperial presidency nor rule by committee. I would say that between Lincoln and Wilson there wasn’t a consequential president at all, regardless of any lionization of TR. And the managerial state did not yet exist. This was when our shared religion, shared values, more homogenous people, held things together. You could say this persisted into the mid 20th century even as managerialism rose.

    Managerialism has been working on a new shared religion (IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE), it has just had some trouble obtaining buy-in from a majority. It’s not so much that their efforts were poor, they tried very hard, but rather that the religion they are selling is so repugnant. They had no choice but to pick a new religion that was repugnant to the old one, because so many of them are spiteful mutants, and that’s what spiteful mutants do. And I would say they were doing very well, on the road to ultimate success, before they put the trannies front and center, turned the high school girls non binary, and advocated sex changes on kids. That was the bridge too far. As we always say, progressivism has no end point.

    • I think you are underestimating the impact of TR. It was his navy that sailed around the world and into semi-hostile ports just to make the point that the new kid on the block carried a big stick. He also started the massive takeover of state lands by the feds, first for Yellowstone National Park, but followed rapidly by a plethora of other National Parks, National Forests and even National Grasslands.

      Prior to TR, the push was to get territories into states and federal lands homesteaded.

  11. ‘Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his:

    And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings . . .’ (Daniel 2: 20-21)

    He damn sure will give folks idiots, liars, punkettes and thieves if that’s what a country deserves. Not that He ever wanted kings and queens and congresses to begin. He didn’t. People wanted all those things.

    If Donald hadn’t been born into great wealth and privilege, he’d be just another portly man with a comb-over, clinging to his gig at Corporation X. All that ‘he dominates a room’ stuff gets tacked on as result of materialist impressions and public relations. First time he showed me some real character was getting a little snarly after he was nicked. Up to that point, meh.

  12. Lost in the hoopla of the US election, I note that the German govt has quietly collapsed. Long story short – they’re broke. Retarded green environmentalism, the war in the Kraine, and endless gibs to hordes of ungrateful black baboon immigrants has left the country in a mess.

    i don’t think the question of authority will even come up. For the left, the question is “how do we voat our way out of this…”.

    • A mysterious hyperpower blew up their pipeline, engineered the Ukrainian war and took out Gaddafi (We came, we saw, he died!).
      It’s a tough gig being allies with America and Israel.

  13. The counterweight to the authority of the monarch was traditionally the Church. Church leaders could chastise or even excommunicate a monarch that transgressed too far–even the most absolute monarch felt himself subordinate to God and had to accept some discipline at the hands of the Church. Thus, English King Henry II had to publicly confess his guilt in the murder of Thomas Becket and be beaten by bishops and monks. Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV stood barefoot in the snow for three days and kneeled before Pope Gregory VII to obtain a lifting of his excommunication. When I visited the church/mosque of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, there was a place where the Byzantine emperor prostrated himself before entering the church. The answer to “Who says?” was “God says,” and monarchs governed according to the will of God, overseen and periodically corrected by the Church. Traditionally, the Church favored monarchy, at least partially because it was hard to adapt the power of legislatures to the teachings of the Church.

    But I don’t see this coming back any time soon.

    • This comment makes me think about Henry VIII. When he broke with the Catholic Church and put the English monarchy as head of the English church he may have removed a troublesome check on his power, but undermined any claim to divine right. Because who says a king has divine right? The king? At least the pope was a somewhat disinterested third party.

  14. Life has existed on Earth for about a billion years. That fact supersedes anything introduced by modern man. How has nature solved the problem of proper authority? What works, persists. As demonstrated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, managerialism leads to extinction. Ditto for parasitism run amok. What prevents these outcomes? Antibodies eliminating pathogens. It’s hard to argue with a billion years of natural success.

      • The evolutionary trait persisted because it enhanced the ability of the organism to prevail over hardship and attack, or adapt to a change in environment. The failures are lost to history, only the successes are extant. This is typically a very slow process, but the actions of antibodies is, of necessity, quite rapid.

        • Those that cannot adapt will be swept away. The losers in this fight will gnash their teeth and beat their breasts, but they will be dragged kicking and screaming into the new order. I always remember the Oregon bottle bill, where all the companies that were going to be involved wailed and sobbed, saying it will be too expensive, take too much time etc, and now all those same companies boast about how they were in the forefront of green environmentalism. There’s a reason why children don’t get to sit at the big table-

  15. I think those Parliamentarians were modern Vikings, culturally Viking. Raiders and traders, inclined towards egalitarianism, lead by strongmen and warlords. The Germanic, and especially the Anglo, is the tension between the Pagan and the Christian. We don’t take to civilization as well as others. It’s a reality we’ve been grappling with for millennia. It’s why I say we finally cut the Athens and Jerusalem business and do it our way, our civilization. Much work has already been done in this direction.

    PS I’m not saying ditch Christianity. It needs another Reformation is all. We need another Enlightenment. Both with lessons learned from the last 500 years.

    I mean, the Latins, maybe the Greeks too for all I know, syncretized the faith to fit them. Why is it satanic if we do the same?

    Imo we lose our identity trying to tie ourselves to others’ traditions.

  16. Managerialism isn’t going anywhere. The Election was essentially the struggle of the neo-Elites, led by Trump and Musk, against the failed Biden/Obama/Clinton elites. The victorious neo-Elite aren’t offering the Articles of Confederation; they are offering a better, more efficient version of Managerialism.
    Now, obviously this is better than what we had before. But it’s not a paradigm shift. Meanwhile, the government Blob has grown so big that Trump will need 4 years just to figure out how to get it back to the size it was when he was cheated 4 years ago. I’m hoping this leads the way for Vance to make more fundamental changes.

    • “Managerialism without managers” may be a good description of the emerging Technocracy. Robots will do the work, and AI will make the decisions, except, perhaps, at the highest level. This may or may not result in a circulation of elites, but what is certain is that there will be fewer of them. That will, and arguably already is causing a crisis in the regime, as the mandarins see themselves losing out to the oligarchs.

      The struggle will be over which oligarchs rule.

      • Yes, well put. The technology/AI gives Oligarchs more span of control. So we’re back to the good old “who/whom” stuff. The Mandarin influence works when they are competent – the old Chinese exam haha. Our knuckleheads are DEI cases who screw everything up. The Oligarch push-back was inevitable.

    • Precisely. Managerialism is a cancer. Unless destroyed, it will return—and often in a more virulent form.

  17. Excellent essay. We seem to be living through a historical inflection point. It is often ludicrous at times, as I suspect most others were, but something is changing dramatically. The action mostly is in the background away from our immediate lives save the barbarians flooding into our towns and the price of bread shooting through the roof. Were others who lived through a historical inflection point generally aware of it at the time? I’m certain enemy armies marching through the streets focused the mind, and we sort of have that, but the greater implications may not have been apparent in the moment beyond inklings, which we have.

    The Managerial Class was our New Model Army and has been in charge a very long time. If a Stuart Restoration is possible (I doubt it), whose bodies will be displayed? Fascinating time to be alive, it is, and that somewhat dampens the sadness and pain.

  18. Trump can’t truly be considered a restoration because:

    1) he was ALLOWED TO WIN. Some people simply decided to NOT fully fire up the fraud machine. It *could* have been done.

    2) enemies who committed outrageous treason against the republic are utterly unpunished; quite the contrary.

    • Yep, the accusation of fraud will continue until the process is corrected. This of course will never be done. Further, I make a prediction—the process will continue to be corrupted such that fraud will become impossible to detect.

      • Probably true. It almost requires digital voting because if there are physical ballots with the “wrong” candidate selected, they will have to be destroyed and replaced with ones showing the “correct” candidate. The Diebold story was probably true — it wouldn’t have taken much of a coder to pull that off, then overwrite it’s own code after the polls close, so even if there is a post-mortem software audit, it passes.

        If one must have secret ballot, at least make it physical paper/card, and have the voter dip his penis in the dye so he can’t vote twice.

        • If one must have secret ballot, at least make it physical paper/card, and have the voter dip his penis in the dye so he can’t vote twice.”

          Not far off. In the early years of machine balloting, our dept took great interest so we had a representative come to speak from the most (at that time) advanced in the study of these systems—MIT. Long story short. After an extensive presentation of the problems with such software—especially proprietary software as Diebolt insisted upon—the MIT visitor exclaimed the solution was “paper, we know how to handle paper”. 🙂

          Indeed, even a third world country like Brazil used machine balloting, but printed out paper next to the machine so the voter could compare the selections for accuracy. The paper ballot could be used to audit and check the electronic ballot if needed/desired.

        • But what about the POV (People of Vagina)? Are you suggesting they shouldn’t vote? Now that’s old school.

          • Dunno about him, but I’m suggesting it. Assuming you want to keep your country.

            They scream constantly about a patriarchy (that hasn’t existed for a century) trying to ‘take away their rights’. This is meant to shame and guilt weak men into, duh, giving them even more ‘rights’.

            What’s the solution? Taking all their ‘rights’ away. Shut up and go make dinner.

          • If you look at the reactions being curated at Libs of TitTok to Trump’s victory, the hysteria is 9 to 1 female. That’s a pattern.

          • It is THE American problem, and the problem of many other Western nations. Entitled and empowered women, dragging the country to the pit.

            Face it and correct it or perish.

          • I’d absolutely love to see the 19th Amendment abolished forevermore.

            And I’m a [natural-born] girl.

    • Well, not really. Monck restored Charles, and he was one of Cromwell’s allies. Two, Declaration of Breda was pretty liberal for its clemency. Yeah, a few of the ones that executed Charles were killed (in modern equivalent, a few of the most egregious will be fired), but most were given free passes. To wit: Charles was restored, and most were not punished.

    • The real proof that your point #1 is true will be if point #2 remains true in the early weeks or months of The Donald II: The Reckoning.

      As Z observed the other day, no one alive in the first century AD knew they were alive in the first century AD. We cannot call this present moment a “restoration” until a few years from now, maybe longer; events will over-write all our hopes and proclamations, Substack essays, and general glibness.

      Just buckle up and prepare for the ride!

    • Oh yes…I’m sure the Dems are waiting for some rando enforcer to slip up. The Trump team is in a similar position as the Palestinians are with the Israelis…one aggressive jerk is all it takes for the full force and might of the enemy to come down on deportations.

    • That would mean deportations are happening at all, which I’d count as a win. This time 8 years ago, everybody was excited about a wall.

      • The aspect of deportations seems more simple than “midnight” raids. “Spoil the milk” and expand the court system to hear all asylum claims promptly. Seems we can entertain bills to add thousands of BP agents at a time, but not expand the number of judges to hear asylum claims? Last numbers I read have BP at 23,000 agents. Asylum judges, 682. Each judge has more than 4,000 cases awaiting—and that was as of 2023! WTF?

        How to generate more judges, simple. We graduate 30,000 new lawyers from grad school each year. Most will have no gainful employment in their field of law at graduation. Create a program to teach the law wrt asylum claims. Should take no longer than 6 weeks. Make those graduates “pro tem” judges. Simultaneously recruit retired judges and lawyers as well. A backlog of only 1000 cases per judge would entail adding another 2k or so judges.

        If you think this is not feasible, such has been mentioned by none other than the Border Patrol itself. They know bullshit claims when they hear them and wanted their officers empowered to hear these bullshit claims and reject them in the field. All I’m doing is painting a better facade on the process which definitely falls within current law.

        Post advanced court dates in all media and call for those asylum “seekers” currently on parole to make a date with their local court. Benefits to “going legal” would be green card and employment and welfare eligibility. Penalty for failure to comply is immediate deportation when caught and no welfare nor ability to work legally. We can also present some sort of excise payment to deported asylum seekers—which will lighten the burden of sending these folks back on receiving countries.

        Now before you all jump on me—yes, I know they won’t do this because they want these people to replace us. This is just a mental exercise to show others you may encounter just how duplicitous any phony our current system is. If Trump decides to start “show raids” and highly publicized “deportations”, rather than fix the system at the level I discuss above, you will know he’s putting on a show for the rubes.

        • I think it’s probably even easier than that. You just give asylum attorneys a three-strikes rule. The third loss, they are disbarred. Possibly with prejudice.

          Simultaneously, establish that federal funds go to citizens only, and enforce existing law on employer verification of work status. No, not my solution of choice, but one of the simplest and easiest ways out of the mess we are in. We can worry about that once this crisis is resolved.

        • You seen what’s coming out of the law schools nowadays? We don’t want them adjudicating deportations. The way to effectively deport is to be just as lawless about it as the Biden administration was about importing them.

          • All you do by circumventing “the law” is to create enemies out of those not particularly radicalized enough to agree with you. It’s a sure way to entangle oneself in the court system and get bogged down while losing popular support.

            It is not enough to simply assume power, you need to used it in a clever way. Seems few people understand that and as such we lose every time. Now, if indeed we had some sort of coup ala Chile, then yeah go pedal to metal, but we did not. We assumed power under the pretext of rule by law, not rule by men.

        • We don’t need lawyers to be deportation judges. The only prerequisite is the physical ability to iteratively swing a gavel and loudly cry out “DENIED! next …”

        • Another idea that could be implemented is using retired cops/soldiers to round the invaders up. An added incentive; For every invader rounded up, you get an extra $100.00 in your check.
          Watch how fast they self-deport.

          • Self deportation is the key, not “rounding folks up”. No one seems to pay attention to “souring the milk” as I have posted before. It is possible to *legally* create a situation such that no illegal alien can exist in the USA lawfully. And the unlawful who remain can be immediately deported upon arrest. This of course runs against the monied interests of corporations and small business, so it really has not been followed—but the basis is already on the books. For example, e-Verify. My State requires such for all State employees. Like a reverse non-fly list. It is a no-work list. We use this type of verification all the time—ever buy a firearm? And so forth.

          • I like the idea of e-verify in principle.

            But it is a double-edged sword: too much information (such as the airport “pre-check” thing) in the hands of any gubmit: state, federal, even county-level.

            e-verify can make or break even us huwhyte plebes.

            I don’t think it’s a good thing. But I get what you’re saying.

          • I’m afraid such legal niceties would be met by a massive wave of nullification from entrenched interests.

        • The answer is simple, self deportation. Enforce the law with the employers. Prison time, maximum fine per alien. Totally disqualify any government money as well.

  19. The Democrats opened the door to rule by Executive Order, which Trump can use to trample all over them…I hope he appreciates that fact…At some point, SCOTUS will have to shut that door, but not in the next four years…

    • Trump’s people need to be drawing up a list of SCOTUS nominees because there is more than a chance he may have the opportunity to appoint up to three Justices in his second term.

      • Ironically—wrt today’s Z-man missive—the SCOTUS can be considered our most powerful “managerial committee”, can’t it?

      • he may have the opportunity to appoint up to three Justices in his second term.”

        Or maybe a couple more if there were as many right-wing psychos as there are left-wing…

      • That was a very tightly-worded decision. The door is wide open for a slightly different approach to deporting dreamers that would be consistent with stare decisis.

      • In all fairness, DACA is a rabbit hole. It is a distracting bright shiny object. It makes the administration look all the worst, while ignoring the fire that’s going on in all other areas.

        There are 580k DACA recipients. Most really did come in as children and are entirely integrated into the American culture (as vs their parents). If they were not at the time of Obama’s illegal order, they sure as hell are now. Meanwhile, we’ve allowed two to three times as many IA’s to come into the country each and every year since 2012. That number today is estimated as 15-30M! Yet, we still quibble over DACA—which was never ordered with the benefit of those folk in mind, but as a bargaining chip to create a Faustian immigration reform act by Congress.

        Seems to me, those favoring “open borders” pretty much got their way in reality, if not actual law.

  20. Winston Churchill was right about some things. In 1944 he was very concerned about the situation in Greece, with Communists violently trying to take advantage of chaotic conditions following the German occupation. Churchill was so concerned that he traveled to Greece, and in very dangerous conditions, he helped arrange talks between the Greek political powers. Looking for a moral authority, he included a respected Orthodox archbishop in the talks. He also ensured that British troops who were in the area clamped down on the violence that the Communists were committing.

    Contra Mao, Churchill said, referring to the Communist violence, “Democracy is no harlot, to be picked up in the street by a man with a tommy-gun.” Even so, Churchill insisted that the Communists be allowed to have their say in the negotiations. The Greeks weren’t able to come to a peaceful resolution, but at least Churchill prevented a Communist takeover for the time being. It ultimately took a civil war with the non-communist forces backed by the West prevailing, but I think that Greece offers another interesting case study regarding political authority, violence, and legitimacy.

    The Left still virulently hates that Churchill got in the way of their plans, and they shriek about the British “perfidy,” but they have been “the man with the tommy-gun” all along, looking for a “harlot” to pick up, rather than a virtuous maiden. They claim they had legitimacy in Greece because of Communist guerrillas who fought the Nazis. They ignore that the Communist ELAS guerrillas committed a lot of atrocities, along with other intimidation, and that there was non-Communist Greek resistance, along with a Greek government that had been overthrown. Sometimes legitimate authority doesn’t have a “tommy gun,” and it needs assistance from those who do. Where does the ultimate moral authority lie? As ZMan touched upon, we used to understand that it was with Christianity, and with ideas of equality under the law.

      • Marx And Satan, by Richard Wurmbrand, makes a strong case that Marx literally worshipped Satan. It is difficult to prove a thing like that, but Wurmbrand presents a whole lot of circumstantial evidence.

      • I call Communism (and it’s versions) idolatry, as they cannot exist without an idol: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Obama.
        This time American version of communism with DEI, corruption of ruling class etc. could not succeed because they could not produce an idol. Obama faded, AOC was pushed on people unsuccessfully and Kamala had all the charm of a used rag.

        • Don’t forget Fauci, who was the major idol of the coof scare.

          Their inability to come up with a similarly marketable idol is a major factor in their failure to launch coof v2.0.

      • One big problem with the so-called Dissident Right is that they need to read books that aren’t just on the approved reading list.

        Darryl Cooper is sometimes worth listening to, but he doesn’t tell the whole story.

        All great men are a bundle of contradictions, as all of us are too. The DR won’t get anywhere until they are willing to look beyond certain shibboleths that many now have, such as Churchill being to blame for continuing WWII, Puritans to blame for Woke, etc. History is much more complicated.

        • 1660please,

          Yes. Churchill was indeed very complicated, as are many people.

          He was, I believe, on active service during Kitchener’s campaign against the Mahdi of the late 1890s. Think he was a journalist, but can’t recall.

          He had a large number of gifts, and looms large over the English national conscience. But he had many pitfalls, and made many a mistake.

          Here in The Isles, the default take is that he had alot of blood upon his hands for Gallipoli. But, he was often spot-on about the dangers of letting the Germans rearm, and saw this problem very early on.

          So it goes.

        • My opinion of Churchill was not formed by Cooper and I’m not a fan of Cooper in general. This particular podcast episode just happens to be a decent one highlighting some of the crimes of Communism.

          Churchill was a sellout, literally. He was being financed by (((warhawks))). He made WW2 happen. Hitler’s (BTW…not a fan) demands for Poland were eminently reasonable. They hid his demands from the public because of how reasonable they were. They were very likely to be the last of his demands.

          • And I got a bridge to sell you if you believe for a NY minute a fascist made his “Last demands”.

          • LOL. I like one of L. Neil Smith’s quips about that. Something like “WWII was a struggle between two competing versions of fascism. Fascism won.”

          • Ethnic Germans were being severely abused in Czechoslovakia and Poland especially. There was mass slaughter of ethnic Germans going on in Poland (even same-race diversity is never a strength). The Wehrmacht was appalled at what they were finding once the invasion started.

            Austria and even Czechoslovakia both fell into Hitler’s lap. He simply took advantage of opportunity which arose. Hitler and the Nazis were wildly popular in Austria. The Rhineland was Germany proper and had been for a very long time. The hated occupiers had been robbing Germany blind.

            I fail to see what else he wanted. I get that the version of history where Churchill was dead from Cirrhosis of the liver by 1935 and the war doesn’t happen the way it did never happened. We cannot know for sure what would have happened. But neither Hitler or especially the Wehrmacht were itching to go to war. Hitler postponed Poland several times in hopes of a negotiated settlement.

            You can say Hitler blundered his way into war. Time was most likely on his side. But to say he was never going to stop demands until the world reluctantly went to war with Germany because they are noble good guys who tried their hardest to “appease” the Nazi blood lust is poppycock.

          • Probably not his last demands. He had committed Germany to autarky, and Greater Germany had neither the land nor the people to pull it off. Poland, yes, but he would almost certainly need parts of Ukraine. And untermenschen to run the farms for the Aryans. He could plausibly have stopped there.

          • Not a fan of Hitler either, but as near as I can tell, his demands were to reunite a disunited German ethnic people scattered/divided by the powers after WWII. In this there is something to be appreciated.

          • He took over the whole of Czechoslovakia even the areas which were not in any way German which led Chamberlain ,who opposed war, to offer the guarantee to Poland.

            The British went out of their way to avoid war with the Appeasement policy but gave up on it with Hitler breaking his word after Munich.

            This is an inconvenient fact that you and Cooper ignore,

      • Eh, I’m about an hour into that podcast and Cooper has spent 90% of the time talking about Nazis, Poles, the start of WW2, and the end of WW2 while barely touching on the communists.

        I understand the need to set the stage…but dude!

          • Hitler was desperate for war. Poeple like you alway ignore the fact that Chamberlain declared war on Hitler and not Churchill.

            Hitler violated every international agreement he signed.

      • Darryl Cooper lies a lot.
        Interesting how he ran away when offered the opportunity to debate Andrew Roberts. He’s a flake which is why Carlson relates to him so well.

    • 1660please,

      You say:

      Even so, Churchill insisted that the Communists be allowed to have their say in the negotiations.

      This interests me as my father just offered me some old volumes written by Churchill, whose main theme is basically that the good nature of the English-speaking peoples helped to enable the 1939-45 war.

      In this context, it is intriguing that Churchill wanted to demonstrate his own good nature towards Commies, who are, to the bone and without exception bitter and resentful. Their entire theme is resentment of what others (mainly more productive and fortunate people) have over them.

      Churchill was an immensely complicated and interesting man. And as others here will note, flawed in a large number of ways. But permitting Commies a seat at any table is asking for trouble. Then again, I speak with the benefit of hindsight of the state of Western nations… a state that Sir Winston probably never envisaged.

      On a side note, I took the Churchill volume, as well as the war memoir of Lloyd George and a couple of maritime Atlases that my son will find interesting.

      • That “good nature” which you mention is such an interesting factor. I think that, overall, Churchill saw Communists for the evil force that they were, and he usually made strong efforts against them. This can be seen from the aftermath of WWI onwards at least, and certainly into the Cold War days. But in the consideration for fair play he wanted to allow the Communists a voice in this Athens context. At the same time, he was willing to use the might of available British forces to put down Communist violence and intimidation there, and he did that while he could. He also rejected a request to have a private discussion with the Communist delegates. To me, it looks like an understandable mixture of principle and power in this case.

        If I recall correctly, leftists in Britain snarled loudly about Churchill’s actions in Greece, but he was supported by a vote in Parliament (hopefully I’m not mixing that up with another event).

    • ‘As ZMan touched upon, we used to understand that it was with Christianity, and with ideas of equality under the law.’

      Right. Now, both equality under the law and Christianity are farces.

      • Yes, both have been perverted. In Britain with “2-tier Kier”, they’re a far distance from equality under the law. And it’s the same in the USA now obviously, with Derek Chauvin and the three Georgia white guys who were convicted.

        God protect Daniel Penny!

  21. Good essay. I was thinking at some point over the last few months, trump could say he has a mandate to foundational change not just personal, but this faceless system itself. He could get people to back him, he could make a cogent argument in a sober speech, and he could do it.

    I wouldn’t know what the nuts and bolts would look like, but constant “social progress “ would have to end. The discovery of new “rights” would have to end.

    there would also have to be explicit descriptions of whether the us is a European country not and what a citizen or subject looks like.

  22. Although imperfect, the best system for Christendom was the Pope as final moral and political authority, including over kings. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t want the current Pope to wield that power. But an echo of the old system was John Paul II helping ease out communism without blowing up the world.

    • BTW — the man called Jorge Bergoglio that most people –Catholics and non-Catholics alike — assume is the Pope, is NO SUCH THING.

      He is not, nor has he ever been, nor will he ever be, the Pope.

      Benedict XVI “resigned” in grave error. It’s like being baptized: once it’s done, you can’t be “un-baptized.” Benny could not “un-be” the Pope.
      It doesn’t work that way. And all of his German-mid-century-linguistic-gymnastics could not negate that fact.

      He created a mess for the lot of us.

      Jorge is not only a “player for the other team” but also a NWO toadie. He is a scumbag.

      Just so we are clear: Jorge is not the Pope.

  23. Even if managerialism is on the way out, the progressives are still here and they are going to be a problem for everyone.

    • I was going to say this same thing. How do we remove these problems. Co-existing with them is impossible. Maybe enough of them will off themselves.

      • They are (and should be) cowed right now. With luck and some backbone, Trump’s policies could convince enough people that the troglodytes running the show for the past 10+ years are “in the dustbin of history” as the saying goes.

        If the Trump admin starts making mistakes the Old Guard will make bigger noises. There may even be a psy-op or an unforeseen cataclysm that causes Trump’s agenda to get distracted or derailed.

        As I see it, we’re going to need a quiet few years and tangible successes coming from Trump’s team, in order to make our little revolution successful.

        • Exactly… which is why I won’t be at all surprised if a new Current Thing is unleashed soon…

        • Exactly, with the addition that it won’t be done in Trump’s term. If he can pull a Reagan and keep the economy from deteriorating further, then there is a possibility that he might pull Vance into office as his successor. What took decades to occur cannot be changed in a few years.

          This is the essence of Z-man’s missive today. Managerialism is the direct product of short term executives—here today, gone tomorrow. This, coupled with extreme size and complexity of the system, makes managerialism inevitable.

          So the name of the game is—stay in power long enough to effect government simplification by shrinking the size and reach of government in part or whole by returning authority and such power to the States. The trick of course is to do this without collapse or violent revolution.

          Not being well versed in my history, I have no examples to draw from. Perhaps better commenter than I can add some?

          • Z mentioned that the executive must be “impressive” and “energetic.” Presumably then, the prez’s personality and character are at least as important as the length of his tenure.

          • Yes indeed. A recurring criticism of many who have held the highest office was a refusal to put in the effort in change at the domestic level. They then begin to dabble in foreign engagement in which they have more freedom and authority (less deal making needed with Congress). Bush II was a great example of this process.

          • Making a Reagan/Bush analogy to Trump/Vance doesn’t really give me the warm fuzzies. Since I can see it all too well.

          • Reagan/Bush are different people than Trump/Vance. Neocons vs more isolationist, America First types. However, the analogy holds for what I use it for. Reagan’s “Morning in America” was the tag line that got him the biggest re-election victory ever recorded in modern times. He could coast and that set a fairly mediocre Bush I into office. People wanted a third term of Reagan. Bush I was then free to follow his neocon habits and that gave us Clinton.

            My fear concerns a fickle American public with short memories and undergoing drastic demographic change. As the consensus here seems to show, Trump is predicted to simply be a 4 year respite. As has been said, “Après moi, le déluge,”

        • A backbone won’t stop bullets. Trump’s supporters are the only ones who have been punished for political activism, and the only ones likely to be punished. Meanwhile, the FBI, CIA, and Secret Secret have taken it upon themselves to contract hit jobs on him, with only the flimsiest of “Iranian” psyops as a diversion. Perhaps firing the button men and forcing them to do the jobs now done by illegal aliens would change things up a bit.

      • When the cows rebel, you cow them. They ain’t gonna do the world any favors and disappear.

        They will rage and ruin right up ’til the point that it costs them dear. They’ll settle on down once the strong hand is over them, and not before.

    • The parasites are already hard at work.

      For example, the WaPo story about Pompeo getting Secretary of State appears to be a total fabrication.

      When called on it, WaPo will just issue a correction on page 57 and hide behind the First Amendment.

    • Which is why the US will inevitably break up into groups of like minded States…Very few States outside New England or New York want to be governed by them….,That’s been true since Andrew Jackson’s day…

        • And that’s why manifold city-states and independent rural states may be the best types of polities once AINO collapses.

        • Yep, as a youngster I remember the perennial movement to make NYC the 51st State. Norman Mailer was the big proponent here. I suspect however, that the sides positions/motivations were turned around somewhat. Rural NY Counties wanted to keep the city, while the city wanted to get rid of the hicks and keep their tax money.

  24. Good essay.
    Cromwell also tried to force Ireland into submission and was aggressive at home with his rule.
    Similar to our case.
    I think it was Robert E Lee who said the consolidation of states was destined to be aggresive abroad and despotic at home.

    • Yes, Lee saw that all the foreign wars and a domestic police state were inevitable after the LIncoln tyranny, with its mass murder and incarcerations, had succeeded… Too bad Lee wasn’t a better general….

      • I’m not one to fall for typical revisionism by scholars looking to publish something edgy to get notice and publication. We see that all too often. Lee fought a force (the Union) that was ridiculously disproportionate to his forces, in terms of manpower and resources, successfully for longer than most generals of historical importance. Lee would have needed to be a Caesar to have succeeded in the Civil War.

        What Lee should be remembered for is his integrity and devotion to his State, rather than the Union. Most here will agree I’m sure that the Civil War was an inflection point after which all we decry today came to pass. Lee was the *original* DR! If (doubtful) we ever pull out of this mess, I would stand Lee right behind George Washington as the historical founders of the new Republic.

      • He was an excellent General.

        But it’s like Ukraine vs. Russia.

        Numbers and war material manufacturing trump pretty much everything else.

    • If the Constitution is in fact, not a “suicide pact”, it’s hard to square the Civil War.

      Power from the barrel of a gun began on April 12, 1861, and has only become more obvious over time.

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