After commenting on the North American Colonial Era in a discourse with “Scorpion” that remains unfinished, I finally found time to read today's Crooke essay, and believe his observations deserve a major place in this thread, “The Failed State Effort Of Indicting Trump
2024 POTUS: Commentary on Crooke's Current Perspective: "Counter-Revolution – ‘Do You Know What Time It Is?’"
"Mindless chaos or anarchy is no way to achieve justice. "
LOL Two points: 1) "Justice" is one of those terms humans like to use that have absolutely zero reference in the real world; it is used solely to bludgeon other people; and 2) anarchy IS the only way to achieve "justice" in the sense that everyone literally and physically gets what they deserve by definition.
"We the People need to establish a new guiding document and institutions to support it as the current arrangement has utterly failed."
As individualist anarchism points out, there is no "We the People" - there are only individuals who do not necessarily have common interests. There is one such: survival - and at scale in a society of rational entities is best achieved by cooperation. Hint: The human race is not such a society and can not be such a society in the present state of human nature.
Second, any "guiding document" is not going to be put together by an individual and probably not by any group of random individuals. It would have to be put together by a group of extremely rational and extremely well-educated individuals with a range of subject matter expertise involving human physiology, neurophysiology, evolutionary psychology, ethnology, sociology, history, economics, geography, and other subjects that escape me at the moment but I am sure are considerable in number. It probably would take several years to produce.
And third, until the present system is smashed, there will be no "institutions" to support a new one. In fact, it's likely that any "institutions" presented as the solution will turn out to be the exact opposite. But no such institutions can be created while the present ones exist in any form that entails an armed force protecting them. The elites that exist are not going to fade away after an "election" that supposedly turns them out of power. As demonstrated by history, they will subvert or simply overthrow any system than suppresses them.
What do you think happened to the US system? Within ten years, they were suppressing habeas corpus in order to arrest rioters in Massachusetts...
There's a book I just downloaded last Friday which is very relevant to that last. I haven't read it yet, but here's the synopsis:
From Independence to the U.S. Constitution
The "Critical Period" of American history—the years between the end of the American Revolution in 1783 and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789—was either the best of times or the worst of times. While some historians have celebrated the achievement of the Constitutional Convention, which, according to them, saved the Revolution, others have bemoaned that the Constitution’s framers destroyed the liberating tendencies of the Revolution, betrayed debtors, made a bargain with slavery, and handed the country over to the wealthy.
This era—what John Fiske introduced in 1880 as America’s "Critical Period"—has rarely been separated from the U.S. Constitution and is therefore long overdue for a reevaluation on its own terms. How did the pre-Constitution, postindependence United States work? What were the possibilities, the tremendous opportunities for "future welfare or misery for mankind," in Fiske’s words, that were up for grabs in those years? The scholars in this volume pursue these questions in earnest, highlighting how the pivotal decade of the 1780s was critical or not, and for whom, in the newly independent United States.
As the United States is experiencing another, ongoing crisis of governance, reexamining the various ways in which elites and common Americans alike imagined and constructed their new nation offers fresh insights into matters—from national identity and the place of slavery in a republic, to international commerce, to the very meaning of democracy—whose legacies reverberated through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and into the present day.
Contributors:Kevin Butterfield, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon * Hannah Farber, Columbia University * Johann N. Neem, Western Washington University * Dael A. Norwood, University of Delaware * Susan Gaunt Stearns, University of Mississippi * Nicholas P. Wood, Spring Hill College.
The existence of government has for so long been taken for granted as to produce an immediate revulsion to the idea of eliminating it. The loaded term "anarchy" should be put in mothballs, and we should speak instead of "liberty." The Declaration of Independence notes that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. Indeed, what gives any group the right to assert itself as having authority over the rest of us? If that were valid, then the rest of us would have the right to assert our own authority in return. Conclusion: self-declared authority is invalid.
My favorite term is sovereignty, although autonomy is good, too. The only "authority" I recognize is what I once heard termed "sapiential authority", which is the authority provided by having factual knowledge and/or experience in a matter. As Andrei Martyanov says, he doesn't pronounce on brain surgery because he's not a brain surgeon, he's an expert on military matters. He has extensive education, experience and knowledge about military matters, which is why I listen to him. When he goes off on other matters, I tend to ignore him. This is sapiental authority.
Any other use of the term "authority" is to deflect from the reality of some people using force against others. Individualist anarchism doesn't oppose the use of force against others as a valid means of action, it merely calls it what it is: force. And it recognizes cooperation as an equally valid means of action.
Abstract concepts like "justice" or even "freedom" are ill-defined and unconnected to reality. My favorite is Superman's "truth, justice and the American Way." The only definable one of those is the latter - if you take it to mean greed, deception, war-mongering, etc. About five minutes after the Revolution overthrew colonialism from another country, the US became a colonial power. :-) But Superman's phrase is use to conceal the reality.
I prefer to discuss concretes like actions and consequences on a personal level and at scale over the species based on actual human behavior on a historical scale. This leads to entirely different conclusions than one gets from philosophy, religion, morality, ethics, etc.
Yeah, Superman's Motto--always a ridicule target once we got old enough to know that is. Before that was the Revolutionary War Trio--the flag bearer, the drummer, and the fife player. And in the middle was the "Bloody Flag" Union amputees paraded to oration platforms at election time to bolster the Republican candidate. And of course, there're others.
Prior to the 2020 election I asked MoA commentators to submit draft Manifestos
I love this idea. 1) anti imperialist war 2) anti oligarchs and their system, capitalism 3) anti police state measures against the working class (could probably just add some class content to the bill of rights for this one) 4) anti division of the working class via bourgeois identity politics.
The problem as I see it is the inability to alter Federalism, which is now under Wall Street's control. Once upon a time, there was the notion of Popular Sovereignty. There might be an opportunity when Russia wins to take advantage here. That might be a topic sometime in 2024.
All this is good I suppose though not put in the stark simple terms I would like.
But overall it omits the people, I think, just as much as the 'elites' etc. do all over the West.
The people have a democratic machinery to hand.
I requires them to elect representatives according to their own taste, fitting their own requirements. (i.e. not just select with a feeling of hopelessness on member of one party instead of another).
Then - never, ever, ever mentioned anywhere, from gurus such as this author all the way back down to primary school and all the way up the most 'elevated' political, social observers and 'experts' - they are required to stay in touch, keep feeding them instructions, constantly monitor their behaviour and get back from them insights from within the corridors of power which they tread on your behalf.
Disregard all the One Party bull and 'toe the party line' and everything suchlike and just attack those reps.
Make them perform as they should by yourself performing as you should.
Get on the ball. Get onto them.
They will at first ignore your requests/demands but will report them to the party bosses who also will ignore. But as it grows more intense and as they begin to lose seats here and there a sea change will begin where individual reps see they've nothing to lose because if they don't do as the electorate asks they're on the way out anyway and they'll begin challenging and disobeying the party bosses.
And so on.
That's the way. It should be mentioned. It should be stressed.
You're correct, I didn't mention the duties of the citizen, one of which is to closely supervise elected representatives at all government levels. During the short period when I taught at junior college, I did develop and taught the duties of the citizen which is something I picked up from Ralph Nader when I worked for his 2000 campaign. Essentially, we have a citizenry that's illiterate when it comes to performing the duties of citizenship as our civics and polysci classes don't teach that. The immigrant wanting to become a naturalized citizen must learn what that is because a test must be passed that asks questions about those duties.
I think in Australia the situation is worse than that: I don't believe they learn anything about their duties. I have a friend, Chinese, who I assisted a little during her application and gaining of citizenship and I remember no such at all.
Being a tad sarcastically hyperbolic I'd claim it couldn't be taught in Australia as there is no knowledge of it in any sector of the populace that could teach it.
I think it is no exaggeration to say that it alone can account for all the ills of the western world.
Authentic Americans - Great name, worth repeating, brats patriots, etc.
It is worth noting that money makes the world go round. This will never stop.
Wall Street used to be the sponsor of the CIA shenanigans from its early years. That changed maybe in the seventies. I have no idea who the current sponsors are.
Attacking the big money will go nowhere. FDR had mixed results, not all of them good.
Taking big pharma a peg down is hard and dangerous. Pfizer paid for part of Trump's Inauguration and got Tucker canned. They own the CDC, NIH and the FDA. One small step is better than a head-on collision.
Cutting 800 military bases down stepwise is a matter of foreign policy which means cutting back on the Pax Americana and stopping the vilification of China, Russia, etc.
The Libertarians have a core of thought worth playing with.
This issue will be an on-off discussion as we move towards November 2024. A great many ideas got discussed at MoA going back to 2012 when I first appeared there, and undoubtedly some will be revisited.
The "small-l" libertarians do. The "big-L" Libertarians, i.e., the Libertarian Party, are just, in the words of Bob Black, "Republicans who smoke dope."
More importantly, the lack of influence of the Libertarian Party, which has never achieved more than 3.3% of the vote, clearly demonstrates what happens when a significantly different approach to matters comes up against the PTB and more importantly the electorate itself, which simply is incapable of hearing anything other than "that's the way it's always been done."
Wikipedia:
In the 59 presidential elections since 1788, third party or independent candidates have won at least 5.0% of the vote or garnered electoral votes 12 times (21%); this does not count George Washington, who was elected as an independent in 1788–1780 and 1792, but who largely supported Federalist policies and was supported by Federalists. The last third-party candidate to win a state was George Wallace of the American Independent Party in 1968, while the last third-party candidate to win more than 5.0% of the vote was Ross Perot, who ran as an independent and as the standard-bearer of the Reform Party in 1992 and 1996, respectively; the closest since was Gary Johnson in 2016, who gained 3.3% of the vote running as the Libertarian nominee. The most recent third-party candidates to receive an electoral vote were Libertarian Ron Paul and Sioux Nation independent Faith Spotted Eagle who received a vote each from faithless electors in 2016.
You omitted the rise of the Republicans that emerged from the failed Whig base. Also, it's important to look at what happened at the state levels in both "populist" eras. The People's Party had an opportunity to wedge its way into the mix but made the fatal mistake of fusing with the Democrat Party. However, what became known as the Progressive Era wouldn't have occurred without the People's Party actions. Also, as Gabreil Kolko noted in his extremely important "Triumph of Conservatism," the Progressive Movement and Era sprang from the Conservative wellspring, not from the Democrats. We'll never know what might have been if Taft had won in 1912.
I find the discussion of political parties in a largely two party system of limited benefit. The geo-political abstractions are a matter of intellectual interest to me as a hint of long term trendlines.
'It is a gift to be simple' died out with a lack of procreation.
What is somewhat actionable are specific entities, such as activists, politicians or groups with a specific interest.
Yes, political parties and electoral politics are rather recent inventions and IMO the jury remains out as to their efficacy. More important by far are the ideas/philosophies, the resulting policies, and their effect on governance. Several years ago, we had a discussion at MoA about China's democracy and governance system and why it was clearly superior to the of Western "democracies." I found some excellent presentations and writings by Zhang Weiwei and used them liberally in our MoA discussion. I later discovered he writes for a Chinese publication that had published an interview he had on the topic, "The Success of the Chinese System is the Greatest Fear of the West", that I translated and copy/pasted at my VK, https://vk.com/@580896205-an-interview-with-zhang-weiwei-the-success-of-the-chinese-sy
I really enjoyed the MoA thread you reference and only just came to your substack towards the end of my day here in CMT. I look forward to more discussions about this. I found the Claremount Article a refreshing read. I've read some of their stuff before but don't tune in regularly. From there I downloaded the main book recommended: by Thomas G West The Political Theory of the American Founding Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom. I think this might be the first book-length material I'll read on this.
Interesting how it emphasizes morality as a basis for Freedom. So the aim was to craft 'a more perfect Union' than that provided typically by hereditary Aristocracy and the Divine Right of Kings. A tall order.
You are right to gripe about incomplete coverage of the financial system in the articles you read. That is par for the course, though I regard the preeminence of the Money Power as an expression of a post Enlightenment 'reductionist materialist' or 'physical materialism' now sometimes called 'scientism' which has dominated our worldview. The problem isn't so much that it is wrong - because it most certainly isn't in practical terms in various limited areas where it excels - but that it is misapplied and consequently smothers too many other perspectives, especially in this context those needed for creating sane, uplifting societies and individual life journeys.
This makes it hard to find common ground with which to explore complex, very human topics like this.
I note that the strong, rising nations like Russia and China right now, but also many of their also arising partners in BRICs, have strong leaders and that all major countries in the West without exception have weak leaders. Strong leaders serve to bind things together both administratively and psychologically. But a strong leader can only emerge from within a polity that has shared values and worldview. Making a list of virtues as they did in the late 1700's in founding America made sense but also assumed a more or less universal respect for God (albeit in various different but similar versions).
I am curious to see what sort of Manifesto you came up with or any other of the MoA worthies, perhaps as homework for any upcoming group efforts in this regard. I simply cannot imagine right now anything that could possibly work in the US. That said, one could begin by simply pruning or uprooting things which are very very bad, like the money system. I think if the Federal Reserve, the FBI, the CIA, the Dept of Education, Homeland Security and a few others were simply scrapped that would provide breathing room for maybe having a shot at having a more or less homogeneous population again. So that would just be a start to help things go in the right direction but not an end. As to an end, I lack the wit to see one at this point generally thinking that perhaps dissolving the Union altogether might make more sense.
When reading about Colonial and early US history, remember who's doing most of the writing in pamphlets, broadsides, and the early newspapers, while recalling Franklin was unique, not the norm. It's also important to know cities back then were death traps via lack of sanitation. Demographics on cities from 1650-1850 when basic sanitation came into vogue is very revealing. Merchants often had two homes, one in the city and one in the country. One of the revealing aspects of what life was like in that era is the intensity of effort put into home handicrafts--for use and sale. There were no WalMarts or Foodmarts. How far might one travel in a day? 10 miles at most. Imagine what the "roads" were like. Why were there five months between the presidential election in November and Inauguration in March? Plus, Congressional elections were scheduled by the states and didn't occur all at one time like now. Senate appointments were similarly unsynchronized.
I write all that because that's the context related to that Era--it's Pre-industrial. And as such, is markedly different from today in a great many ways.
sunday i was gratuitously objecting to the green new deal by driving the convertible around my state.....
i pulled up behind a nice, bigger than mine gasoline powered sedan with a ukraine flag magnet where i keep a 'police support' blue american flag. i smurked! i wondered if he really enjoyed arming nazis or did he work for raytheon!
the part of the armed us government not regulated as militia are dangerous and must be shuttered: doj/fbi, armed irs auditors, hhs miscreants, etc.
the rule of law ended sometime during the early 1950's as the war machine took over 7 or 8% of us economic activity and invested in owning congress.......
ike's military industry complex speech was so true it is only known to the resistance!
2016 was stolen but they underestimated the necessary magnitude of ballot printing. while 2020 they over did it with 83 million for the old guy.
The rule of law never got started within the USA and if nascent was smashed during WW1 and after. Today, the constitution's broken daily, and I could go on just with my own personal experiences. On the owning of Congress, the 1880s-1920s were also big. There's a famous political cartoon from the period depicting US Senators as overstuffed money bags with locomotive heads spewing black smoke from their cigars.
Psychohistorian made a good point about the primary goal: making finance a public utility. The new legal regime is important but a secondary question. Obviously, the new regime must be an enormous improvement on existing bourgeois law. That won't be hard, but most of it, beyond the fundamental democratic rights, will have to go.
Ultimately, the laws should naturally reflect or flow from some of the founding principles I mentioned.
thanks karl - typo down = done ) " - "anything being down to advance humanity" a good post.. i will read crooke and the link on the essay from a few years ago and perhaps comment more afterwards..
i read crookes essay and i read the claremont institute essay... although the later is focused only on the usa, crookes essay includes some shading on the impact all this might on europe. i am not sure i can add anything to all this other then to say some big changes are going to have to happen for everything to get on a better track.. i am not sure where to begin, but the situation in canada is not much different and we too suffer from great leadership or leaders with a broader vision for the future.. we have the exact opposite at present..
Thanks james. I found the Belarus Human Rights Report very educational as to what's legally binding via the various international covenants, most of them initially Western inspired like the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights--values once vaunted now being wrecked much to most of humanity's dismay and disgust.
Response to Karl Sanchez' post:
2024 POTUS: Commentary on Crooke's Current Perspective: "Counter-Revolution – ‘Do You Know What Time It Is?’"
"Mindless chaos or anarchy is no way to achieve justice. "
LOL Two points: 1) "Justice" is one of those terms humans like to use that have absolutely zero reference in the real world; it is used solely to bludgeon other people; and 2) anarchy IS the only way to achieve "justice" in the sense that everyone literally and physically gets what they deserve by definition.
"We the People need to establish a new guiding document and institutions to support it as the current arrangement has utterly failed."
As individualist anarchism points out, there is no "We the People" - there are only individuals who do not necessarily have common interests. There is one such: survival - and at scale in a society of rational entities is best achieved by cooperation. Hint: The human race is not such a society and can not be such a society in the present state of human nature.
Second, any "guiding document" is not going to be put together by an individual and probably not by any group of random individuals. It would have to be put together by a group of extremely rational and extremely well-educated individuals with a range of subject matter expertise involving human physiology, neurophysiology, evolutionary psychology, ethnology, sociology, history, economics, geography, and other subjects that escape me at the moment but I am sure are considerable in number. It probably would take several years to produce.
And third, until the present system is smashed, there will be no "institutions" to support a new one. In fact, it's likely that any "institutions" presented as the solution will turn out to be the exact opposite. But no such institutions can be created while the present ones exist in any form that entails an armed force protecting them. The elites that exist are not going to fade away after an "election" that supposedly turns them out of power. As demonstrated by history, they will subvert or simply overthrow any system than suppresses them.
What do you think happened to the US system? Within ten years, they were suppressing habeas corpus in order to arrest rioters in Massachusetts...
There's a book I just downloaded last Friday which is very relevant to that last. I haven't read it yet, but here's the synopsis:
From Independence to the U.S. Constitution
The "Critical Period" of American history—the years between the end of the American Revolution in 1783 and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789—was either the best of times or the worst of times. While some historians have celebrated the achievement of the Constitutional Convention, which, according to them, saved the Revolution, others have bemoaned that the Constitution’s framers destroyed the liberating tendencies of the Revolution, betrayed debtors, made a bargain with slavery, and handed the country over to the wealthy.
This era—what John Fiske introduced in 1880 as America’s "Critical Period"—has rarely been separated from the U.S. Constitution and is therefore long overdue for a reevaluation on its own terms. How did the pre-Constitution, postindependence United States work? What were the possibilities, the tremendous opportunities for "future welfare or misery for mankind," in Fiske’s words, that were up for grabs in those years? The scholars in this volume pursue these questions in earnest, highlighting how the pivotal decade of the 1780s was critical or not, and for whom, in the newly independent United States.
As the United States is experiencing another, ongoing crisis of governance, reexamining the various ways in which elites and common Americans alike imagined and constructed their new nation offers fresh insights into matters—from national identity and the place of slavery in a republic, to international commerce, to the very meaning of democracy—whose legacies reverberated through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and into the present day.
Contributors:Kevin Butterfield, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon * Hannah Farber, Columbia University * Johann N. Neem, Western Washington University * Dael A. Norwood, University of Delaware * Susan Gaunt Stearns, University of Mississippi * Nicholas P. Wood, Spring Hill College.
Book is available for free download here:
https://annas-archive.org/md5/bdc579115f57d9e42dc8ff1217b49ce8
The existence of government has for so long been taken for granted as to produce an immediate revulsion to the idea of eliminating it. The loaded term "anarchy" should be put in mothballs, and we should speak instead of "liberty." The Declaration of Independence notes that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. Indeed, what gives any group the right to assert itself as having authority over the rest of us? If that were valid, then the rest of us would have the right to assert our own authority in return. Conclusion: self-declared authority is invalid.
My favorite term is sovereignty, although autonomy is good, too. The only "authority" I recognize is what I once heard termed "sapiential authority", which is the authority provided by having factual knowledge and/or experience in a matter. As Andrei Martyanov says, he doesn't pronounce on brain surgery because he's not a brain surgeon, he's an expert on military matters. He has extensive education, experience and knowledge about military matters, which is why I listen to him. When he goes off on other matters, I tend to ignore him. This is sapiental authority.
Any other use of the term "authority" is to deflect from the reality of some people using force against others. Individualist anarchism doesn't oppose the use of force against others as a valid means of action, it merely calls it what it is: force. And it recognizes cooperation as an equally valid means of action.
Abstract concepts like "justice" or even "freedom" are ill-defined and unconnected to reality. My favorite is Superman's "truth, justice and the American Way." The only definable one of those is the latter - if you take it to mean greed, deception, war-mongering, etc. About five minutes after the Revolution overthrew colonialism from another country, the US became a colonial power. :-) But Superman's phrase is use to conceal the reality.
I prefer to discuss concretes like actions and consequences on a personal level and at scale over the species based on actual human behavior on a historical scale. This leads to entirely different conclusions than one gets from philosophy, religion, morality, ethics, etc.
Yeah, Superman's Motto--always a ridicule target once we got old enough to know that is. Before that was the Revolutionary War Trio--the flag bearer, the drummer, and the fife player. And in the middle was the "Bloody Flag" Union amputees paraded to oration platforms at election time to bolster the Republican candidate. And of course, there're others.
Prior to the 2020 election I asked MoA commentators to submit draft Manifestos
I love this idea. 1) anti imperialist war 2) anti oligarchs and their system, capitalism 3) anti police state measures against the working class (could probably just add some class content to the bill of rights for this one) 4) anti division of the working class via bourgeois identity politics.
The problem as I see it is the inability to alter Federalism, which is now under Wall Street's control. Once upon a time, there was the notion of Popular Sovereignty. There might be an opportunity when Russia wins to take advantage here. That might be a topic sometime in 2024.
All this is good I suppose though not put in the stark simple terms I would like.
But overall it omits the people, I think, just as much as the 'elites' etc. do all over the West.
The people have a democratic machinery to hand.
I requires them to elect representatives according to their own taste, fitting their own requirements. (i.e. not just select with a feeling of hopelessness on member of one party instead of another).
Then - never, ever, ever mentioned anywhere, from gurus such as this author all the way back down to primary school and all the way up the most 'elevated' political, social observers and 'experts' - they are required to stay in touch, keep feeding them instructions, constantly monitor their behaviour and get back from them insights from within the corridors of power which they tread on your behalf.
Disregard all the One Party bull and 'toe the party line' and everything suchlike and just attack those reps.
Make them perform as they should by yourself performing as you should.
Get on the ball. Get onto them.
They will at first ignore your requests/demands but will report them to the party bosses who also will ignore. But as it grows more intense and as they begin to lose seats here and there a sea change will begin where individual reps see they've nothing to lose because if they don't do as the electorate asks they're on the way out anyway and they'll begin challenging and disobeying the party bosses.
And so on.
That's the way. It should be mentioned. It should be stressed.
You're correct, I didn't mention the duties of the citizen, one of which is to closely supervise elected representatives at all government levels. During the short period when I taught at junior college, I did develop and taught the duties of the citizen which is something I picked up from Ralph Nader when I worked for his 2000 campaign. Essentially, we have a citizenry that's illiterate when it comes to performing the duties of citizenship as our civics and polysci classes don't teach that. The immigrant wanting to become a naturalized citizen must learn what that is because a test must be passed that asks questions about those duties.
Thanks much for your comment.
Thank you for that.
I think in Australia the situation is worse than that: I don't believe they learn anything about their duties. I have a friend, Chinese, who I assisted a little during her application and gaining of citizenship and I remember no such at all.
Being a tad sarcastically hyperbolic I'd claim it couldn't be taught in Australia as there is no knowledge of it in any sector of the populace that could teach it.
I think it is no exaggeration to say that it alone can account for all the ills of the western world.
Authentic Americans - Great name, worth repeating, brats patriots, etc.
It is worth noting that money makes the world go round. This will never stop.
Wall Street used to be the sponsor of the CIA shenanigans from its early years. That changed maybe in the seventies. I have no idea who the current sponsors are.
Attacking the big money will go nowhere. FDR had mixed results, not all of them good.
Taking big pharma a peg down is hard and dangerous. Pfizer paid for part of Trump's Inauguration and got Tucker canned. They own the CDC, NIH and the FDA. One small step is better than a head-on collision.
Cutting 800 military bases down stepwise is a matter of foreign policy which means cutting back on the Pax Americana and stopping the vilification of China, Russia, etc.
The Libertarians have a core of thought worth playing with.
This issue will be an on-off discussion as we move towards November 2024. A great many ideas got discussed at MoA going back to 2012 when I first appeared there, and undoubtedly some will be revisited.
The "small-l" libertarians do. The "big-L" Libertarians, i.e., the Libertarian Party, are just, in the words of Bob Black, "Republicans who smoke dope."
More importantly, the lack of influence of the Libertarian Party, which has never achieved more than 3.3% of the vote, clearly demonstrates what happens when a significantly different approach to matters comes up against the PTB and more importantly the electorate itself, which simply is incapable of hearing anything other than "that's the way it's always been done."
Wikipedia:
In the 59 presidential elections since 1788, third party or independent candidates have won at least 5.0% of the vote or garnered electoral votes 12 times (21%); this does not count George Washington, who was elected as an independent in 1788–1780 and 1792, but who largely supported Federalist policies and was supported by Federalists. The last third-party candidate to win a state was George Wallace of the American Independent Party in 1968, while the last third-party candidate to win more than 5.0% of the vote was Ross Perot, who ran as an independent and as the standard-bearer of the Reform Party in 1992 and 1996, respectively; the closest since was Gary Johnson in 2016, who gained 3.3% of the vote running as the Libertarian nominee. The most recent third-party candidates to receive an electoral vote were Libertarian Ron Paul and Sioux Nation independent Faith Spotted Eagle who received a vote each from faithless electors in 2016.
In other words, pathetic performance.
You omitted the rise of the Republicans that emerged from the failed Whig base. Also, it's important to look at what happened at the state levels in both "populist" eras. The People's Party had an opportunity to wedge its way into the mix but made the fatal mistake of fusing with the Democrat Party. However, what became known as the Progressive Era wouldn't have occurred without the People's Party actions. Also, as Gabreil Kolko noted in his extremely important "Triumph of Conservatism," the Progressive Movement and Era sprang from the Conservative wellspring, not from the Democrats. We'll never know what might have been if Taft had won in 1912.
I find the discussion of political parties in a largely two party system of limited benefit. The geo-political abstractions are a matter of intellectual interest to me as a hint of long term trendlines.
'It is a gift to be simple' died out with a lack of procreation.
What is somewhat actionable are specific entities, such as activists, politicians or groups with a specific interest.
Yes, political parties and electoral politics are rather recent inventions and IMO the jury remains out as to their efficacy. More important by far are the ideas/philosophies, the resulting policies, and their effect on governance. Several years ago, we had a discussion at MoA about China's democracy and governance system and why it was clearly superior to the of Western "democracies." I found some excellent presentations and writings by Zhang Weiwei and used them liberally in our MoA discussion. I later discovered he writes for a Chinese publication that had published an interview he had on the topic, "The Success of the Chinese System is the Greatest Fear of the West", that I translated and copy/pasted at my VK, https://vk.com/@580896205-an-interview-with-zhang-weiwei-the-success-of-the-chinese-sy
You’ve the solution without knowing it about the Uniparty disaster .
People talking civilly to each other in a non partisan political way .
Why this looks like democracy in action!
Democracy has surfaced again along with its Constitution .
Something amazing is truly happening.
Thanks, but the process must be as universal as possible.
I really enjoyed the MoA thread you reference and only just came to your substack towards the end of my day here in CMT. I look forward to more discussions about this. I found the Claremount Article a refreshing read. I've read some of their stuff before but don't tune in regularly. From there I downloaded the main book recommended: by Thomas G West The Political Theory of the American Founding Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom. I think this might be the first book-length material I'll read on this.
Interesting how it emphasizes morality as a basis for Freedom. So the aim was to craft 'a more perfect Union' than that provided typically by hereditary Aristocracy and the Divine Right of Kings. A tall order.
You are right to gripe about incomplete coverage of the financial system in the articles you read. That is par for the course, though I regard the preeminence of the Money Power as an expression of a post Enlightenment 'reductionist materialist' or 'physical materialism' now sometimes called 'scientism' which has dominated our worldview. The problem isn't so much that it is wrong - because it most certainly isn't in practical terms in various limited areas where it excels - but that it is misapplied and consequently smothers too many other perspectives, especially in this context those needed for creating sane, uplifting societies and individual life journeys.
This makes it hard to find common ground with which to explore complex, very human topics like this.
I note that the strong, rising nations like Russia and China right now, but also many of their also arising partners in BRICs, have strong leaders and that all major countries in the West without exception have weak leaders. Strong leaders serve to bind things together both administratively and psychologically. But a strong leader can only emerge from within a polity that has shared values and worldview. Making a list of virtues as they did in the late 1700's in founding America made sense but also assumed a more or less universal respect for God (albeit in various different but similar versions).
I am curious to see what sort of Manifesto you came up with or any other of the MoA worthies, perhaps as homework for any upcoming group efforts in this regard. I simply cannot imagine right now anything that could possibly work in the US. That said, one could begin by simply pruning or uprooting things which are very very bad, like the money system. I think if the Federal Reserve, the FBI, the CIA, the Dept of Education, Homeland Security and a few others were simply scrapped that would provide breathing room for maybe having a shot at having a more or less homogeneous population again. So that would just be a start to help things go in the right direction but not an end. As to an end, I lack the wit to see one at this point generally thinking that perhaps dissolving the Union altogether might make more sense.
Good substack!!!
When reading about Colonial and early US history, remember who's doing most of the writing in pamphlets, broadsides, and the early newspapers, while recalling Franklin was unique, not the norm. It's also important to know cities back then were death traps via lack of sanitation. Demographics on cities from 1650-1850 when basic sanitation came into vogue is very revealing. Merchants often had two homes, one in the city and one in the country. One of the revealing aspects of what life was like in that era is the intensity of effort put into home handicrafts--for use and sale. There were no WalMarts or Foodmarts. How far might one travel in a day? 10 miles at most. Imagine what the "roads" were like. Why were there five months between the presidential election in November and Inauguration in March? Plus, Congressional elections were scheduled by the states and didn't occur all at one time like now. Senate appointments were similarly unsynchronized.
I write all that because that's the context related to that Era--it's Pre-industrial. And as such, is markedly different from today in a great many ways.
sunday i was gratuitously objecting to the green new deal by driving the convertible around my state.....
i pulled up behind a nice, bigger than mine gasoline powered sedan with a ukraine flag magnet where i keep a 'police support' blue american flag. i smurked! i wondered if he really enjoyed arming nazis or did he work for raytheon!
the part of the armed us government not regulated as militia are dangerous and must be shuttered: doj/fbi, armed irs auditors, hhs miscreants, etc.
the rule of law ended sometime during the early 1950's as the war machine took over 7 or 8% of us economic activity and invested in owning congress.......
ike's military industry complex speech was so true it is only known to the resistance!
2016 was stolen but they underestimated the necessary magnitude of ballot printing. while 2020 they over did it with 83 million for the old guy.
The rule of law never got started within the USA and if nascent was smashed during WW1 and after. Today, the constitution's broken daily, and I could go on just with my own personal experiences. On the owning of Congress, the 1880s-1920s were also big. There's a famous political cartoon from the period depicting US Senators as overstuffed money bags with locomotive heads spewing black smoke from their cigars.
Psychohistorian made a good point about the primary goal: making finance a public utility. The new legal regime is important but a secondary question. Obviously, the new regime must be an enormous improvement on existing bourgeois law. That won't be hard, but most of it, beyond the fundamental democratic rights, will have to go.
Ultimately, the laws should naturally reflect or flow from some of the founding principles I mentioned.
It’s happening is spite of any conscious attempt at control as far as I can see and beautifully real!
Something about that Universe is so appealing .
thanks karl - typo down = done ) " - "anything being down to advance humanity" a good post.. i will read crooke and the link on the essay from a few years ago and perhaps comment more afterwards..
Oops. Spellcheck doesn't catch those. I did proofread, but clearly not close enough.
i read crookes essay and i read the claremont institute essay... although the later is focused only on the usa, crookes essay includes some shading on the impact all this might on europe. i am not sure i can add anything to all this other then to say some big changes are going to have to happen for everything to get on a better track.. i am not sure where to begin, but the situation in canada is not much different and we too suffer from great leadership or leaders with a broader vision for the future.. we have the exact opposite at present..
Thanks james. I found the Belarus Human Rights Report very educational as to what's legally binding via the various international covenants, most of them initially Western inspired like the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights--values once vaunted now being wrecked much to most of humanity's dismay and disgust.