I’ve been asking myself if it’s 1935 in Germany, but this stuff just makes me think why not ask if it’s not 1772 in America. These idiotic neo-Stuart continental thinkers have lost every single time in Anglo-American history. Every time. We should be ashamed if they win this time on the backs of a basement dwelling unhygienic incel like Curtis Yarvin.
Very much enjoyed the op-ed. In it's clarity, it brings back the conundrum I find most bizarre in the reasoning of these thinkers. How do you have a philosophy invoking moral and intellectual greatness and eternal truth as your compass points, posit that the crux of politics is a single man as the crucial linchpin (“the most competent and most conscientious statesman"), and then emerge at the end with . . . . Donald J. Trump?
How do you convince yourself that a trajectory of ancient Greek sages, Enlightenment philosophers, Jefferson's vision, and Lincoln's wisdom is a history that is waiting for someone so amoral and stupid? Don't you defeat your own argument?
Even if you see Trump more or less as a placeholder for the conscientious statesman, doesn't it still undercut the whole edifice of your theory of effective politics that this confused, ignorant, disinhibited person is at the pinnacle?
I get why lots of people are turned off by the tepid, constrained nature of liberal politics. But these sorts of thinkers reinforce my suspicion of their worship of "greatness." I love human excellence, too. But thinkers like this make it harder to swallow that they actually believe in something large-souled when they invoke the "great." Hard not to think something else is the psychic impulse, like a hatred of the noble/ignoble ordinariness of all humans (feelings that easily merge with disgust for women, poor people, and others who are deemed to embody the ignoble). Something bizarre has happened if you venerate Lincoln and then cheer for the venality and rank corruption of Trump and his crew.
Presumably that tradition of the powerful executive envisions a leader who is not both a corrupt moral idiot and ignorant as the day is long as someone to be relied upon to make these profound decisions. It says something about the folks who are promoting this ideology lately that they find someone like Trump as their proof-of-concept.
The vision they have, as Brooks points out in his latest column, is of a pagan leader despite all their earnest Christian hand-waving. For a significant cohort of 77 million Americans this idea turned out to be that in a pluralistic democracy, to borrow from Cavafy, that these barbarians were "... a kind of solution." They don't want to Make America Great; they want America to give up.
I have to wonder whether administrative law evolved in anything like the way Woodrow Wilson imagined, since he governed in an exceedingly unconstrained way.
I read Natural Right and History a decade ago. I read Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political in the same time period. I have to say that I did not understand Strauss to be championing Schmitt’s ideas. I thought he was doing Machiavelli.
Now I have to reread these books. So thanks for that. I am 70 and I never seem to be able to move forward very far without being thrown back to revisit things I read earlier.
I love your stuff, Damon. But your homework assignments to your readers are very demanding.
Abrego Garcia is Salvadoran, of course, not Venezuelan. Moreover, I'm not persuaded by the conclusion: "There is room to increase the ability of presidents to act, but only if they show themselves worthy of being entrusted with those dangerous powers." I think a need for more clear-cut institutional constraints, and mechanisms to enforce them, is a lesson of what's happening, and would've flowed from the rest of the argument.
I read Hamilton as ceding that duty to the Electoral College; another institution that didn't seem to entirely meet expectations. In which case we ought either reform, recreate or simply dissolve the EC.
In any event it seems obvious that we still require that sanity check on the electorate that Hamilton recognized. Since the parties are unwilling and unable to discharge the duty to ensure that the Presidency "... will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union..." then we need to empower some body that will. Perhaps we need to restore the republican office of Censor - wouldn't that be fun?
Out of curiosity, I decided to visit the Claremont Institute's website. What a scary place it is--very white and very male; neither viewpoint nor racially diverse, which is hardly surprising given its mission both to support the current regime and to provide an intellectual foundation for its actions (and for those of future "conservative" governments). Doing so requires a lot of what I've come to see as "re-righting" American history to fit their ideology and to bury parts of the American story that don't align with their particular and peculiar vision. In that regard, they are not unlike the folks at Hillsdale College, another bastion of far-right conservative intellectual development, whose thinkers hold a major grudge against the Progressive Era. Indeed, many of the scholars and fellows at the Claremont Institute have connections to Hillsdale.
Browsing through the Institute's publications, one finds the usual defenses of Trump era policies--John Eastman on the unconstitutionality of birthright citizenship, Alex Petaks explaining the wisdom of Trump's attack on Harvard, Kevin Spivak on why the radical left Democrats hate America, and so on. My favorite, so to speak, was an essay by Scott Yenor, entitled "American Culture Fuels the Gynocracy." Ouch! Yenor concludes with the following dig at women who don't view marriage and motherhood as their primary purpose in life:
"The place of the university in the drama of a young lady’s dreams is poisonous for America’s culture and politics. But destroying the universities will not destroy the New Girl Order. The universities are not feminist factories—American culture itself is that feminist factory. Only an alternative vision of the heroic feminine can win the day."
These guys, and their few female colleagues, aren't just looking to justify the expansion of presidential authority, but to re-right American culture to fit with their vision of a mythical, patriarchal past, where folks didn't stray from their role in the hierarchy. No thanks.
I’ve been asking myself if it’s 1935 in Germany, but this stuff just makes me think why not ask if it’s not 1772 in America. These idiotic neo-Stuart continental thinkers have lost every single time in Anglo-American history. Every time. We should be ashamed if they win this time on the backs of a basement dwelling unhygienic incel like Curtis Yarvin.
Very much enjoyed the op-ed. In it's clarity, it brings back the conundrum I find most bizarre in the reasoning of these thinkers. How do you have a philosophy invoking moral and intellectual greatness and eternal truth as your compass points, posit that the crux of politics is a single man as the crucial linchpin (“the most competent and most conscientious statesman"), and then emerge at the end with . . . . Donald J. Trump?
How do you convince yourself that a trajectory of ancient Greek sages, Enlightenment philosophers, Jefferson's vision, and Lincoln's wisdom is a history that is waiting for someone so amoral and stupid? Don't you defeat your own argument?
Even if you see Trump more or less as a placeholder for the conscientious statesman, doesn't it still undercut the whole edifice of your theory of effective politics that this confused, ignorant, disinhibited person is at the pinnacle?
I get why lots of people are turned off by the tepid, constrained nature of liberal politics. But these sorts of thinkers reinforce my suspicion of their worship of "greatness." I love human excellence, too. But thinkers like this make it harder to swallow that they actually believe in something large-souled when they invoke the "great." Hard not to think something else is the psychic impulse, like a hatred of the noble/ignoble ordinariness of all humans (feelings that easily merge with disgust for women, poor people, and others who are deemed to embody the ignoble). Something bizarre has happened if you venerate Lincoln and then cheer for the venality and rank corruption of Trump and his crew.
Exactly.
So Trump,
the narcissistic criminal sociopath, is the great one they've been waiting for? This would be hilarious if it wasn't so cruel and dangerous to all.
Interesting article.
Presumably that tradition of the powerful executive envisions a leader who is not both a corrupt moral idiot and ignorant as the day is long as someone to be relied upon to make these profound decisions. It says something about the folks who are promoting this ideology lately that they find someone like Trump as their proof-of-concept.
The vision they have, as Brooks points out in his latest column, is of a pagan leader despite all their earnest Christian hand-waving. For a significant cohort of 77 million Americans this idea turned out to be that in a pluralistic democracy, to borrow from Cavafy, that these barbarians were "... a kind of solution." They don't want to Make America Great; they want America to give up.
I have to wonder whether administrative law evolved in anything like the way Woodrow Wilson imagined, since he governed in an exceedingly unconstrained way.
I read Natural Right and History a decade ago. I read Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political in the same time period. I have to say that I did not understand Strauss to be championing Schmitt’s ideas. I thought he was doing Machiavelli.
Now I have to reread these books. So thanks for that. I am 70 and I never seem to be able to move forward very far without being thrown back to revisit things I read earlier.
I love your stuff, Damon. But your homework assignments to your readers are very demanding.
Join the club... I'll be making the same trip. (-;
Abrego Garcia is Salvadoran, of course, not Venezuelan. Moreover, I'm not persuaded by the conclusion: "There is room to increase the ability of presidents to act, but only if they show themselves worthy of being entrusted with those dangerous powers." I think a need for more clear-cut institutional constraints, and mechanisms to enforce them, is a lesson of what's happening, and would've flowed from the rest of the argument.
I read Hamilton as ceding that duty to the Electoral College; another institution that didn't seem to entirely meet expectations. In which case we ought either reform, recreate or simply dissolve the EC.
In any event it seems obvious that we still require that sanity check on the electorate that Hamilton recognized. Since the parties are unwilling and unable to discharge the duty to ensure that the Presidency "... will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union..." then we need to empower some body that will. Perhaps we need to restore the republican office of Censor - wouldn't that be fun?
National suicide should never be on the ballot.
Out of curiosity, I decided to visit the Claremont Institute's website. What a scary place it is--very white and very male; neither viewpoint nor racially diverse, which is hardly surprising given its mission both to support the current regime and to provide an intellectual foundation for its actions (and for those of future "conservative" governments). Doing so requires a lot of what I've come to see as "re-righting" American history to fit their ideology and to bury parts of the American story that don't align with their particular and peculiar vision. In that regard, they are not unlike the folks at Hillsdale College, another bastion of far-right conservative intellectual development, whose thinkers hold a major grudge against the Progressive Era. Indeed, many of the scholars and fellows at the Claremont Institute have connections to Hillsdale.
Browsing through the Institute's publications, one finds the usual defenses of Trump era policies--John Eastman on the unconstitutionality of birthright citizenship, Alex Petaks explaining the wisdom of Trump's attack on Harvard, Kevin Spivak on why the radical left Democrats hate America, and so on. My favorite, so to speak, was an essay by Scott Yenor, entitled "American Culture Fuels the Gynocracy." Ouch! Yenor concludes with the following dig at women who don't view marriage and motherhood as their primary purpose in life:
"The place of the university in the drama of a young lady’s dreams is poisonous for America’s culture and politics. But destroying the universities will not destroy the New Girl Order. The universities are not feminist factories—American culture itself is that feminist factory. Only an alternative vision of the heroic feminine can win the day."
These guys, and their few female colleagues, aren't just looking to justify the expansion of presidential authority, but to re-right American culture to fit with their vision of a mythical, patriarchal past, where folks didn't stray from their role in the hierarchy. No thanks.
"It's not even close."
Yes, it is: https://harpers.org/archive/1985/11/liberty-under-siege/?logged_in=true?logged_in=true. (Walter Karp, "Liberty Under Siege," Harper's, November 1985).
Interesting. Memory serves and so I still think that "not even close" is pretty spot on as regards the Trump regime. It is sui generis.