In May, C. Bradley Thompson wrote,
Last August, the Claremont Review, long a bastion of pro-American conservative thought, published a review by Michael Anton of a little-known and self-published book titled Bronze Age Mindset (hereafter BAM) by the queerly-named Bronze Age Pervert (hereafter BAP).
The essay takes on the anti-liberal American Right. I should note that the essay was published by The American Mind, which is also a Claremont enterprise. Good for them for publishing something that is highly critical of a subset of the Claremonters, although their intention may have been to put his blood in the water for hostile sharks to locate. For an example of the sharks, see Arthur Bloom.
Then there is this follow-up blog post by Thompson.
I now recognize more clearly than before that the great task for those who still want to defend the founders’ philosophy of Americanism is to answer the challenge posed by the Fight Club Right. We must demonstrate that the classical-liberal tradition of the founders is not a philosophy for perpetual losing, nor is it a Zombie-like philosophy for the walking dead. Instead, we must demonstrate how and why the philosophy of Americanism can actually win the twenty-first century Kulturkampf.
Thanks to a reader for a pointer to Thompson’s blog. I am inclined to think that the illiberal intellectuals on the right have even less impact on our political culture than libertarians. So not quite worth the rhetorical energy that Thompson gives to them.
Also, listen to Thompson’s interview with Dave Rubin. The last 10 minutes or so, they talk about the virus lockdowns as arbitrary edicts that have the potential to provoke people into reviving the spirit of the original American revolution. Don Boudreaux sounds ready for such a revival.
“Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Monday that “compliance units” led by Maryland State Police would be sent out to businesses before and during the Thanksgiving holiday to make sure business owners are following coronavirus restrictions.”
Doesn’t Larry Hogan represent Conservativism Inc perfectly. I thought you people wanted him to run for president. He’s supposed to be the exemplar of what conservatives needs to turn into.
“I call for resistance. Serious resistance. Strong resistance. Meaningful resistance.”
The only people to resist this were Trumpist and they were roundly criticized by Conservatives Inc as being anti-science and wanting to kill people.
If you wanted to stand up against the lockdowns, you had a person who stood up against them to vote for. Voting for Biden was a vote for not just lockdowns now, but the entire lockdown mindset which we will see again in the future.
Who exactly are “you people?” Larry Hogan has been, as long as he’s been governor, known as one of the most moderate members of the GOP, so I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. And don’t you appreciate the irony of pointing to as our last redoubt against tyranny a president/candidate who wants to redo the election until he wins and who’s closest supporters are urging him to suspend the constitution and declare martial law? Or is this one of those flight 93 situations where we need to burn the constitution and suppress civil liberties in order to save them?
He’s a moderate governor who sends the police to track down anyone who won’t give into virus tyranny. Is that the new moderate?
You know in a local small city nearby I see people protesting the lockdown every Friday, without fail. I don’t see a lot of Biden or Hogan signs there.
>—“I am inclined to think that the illiberal intellectuals on the right have even less impact on our political culture than libertarians. So not quite worth the rhetorical energy that Thompson gives to them.”
It is true that “illiberal intellectuals” have even less “impact” than libertarian intellectuals but it is not true for the reasons you suggest Arnold.
Libertarianism is, and always was, an almost entirely intellectual movement that has only ever flourished (to the limited extent that it has flourished at all) in the most democratic and tolerant of societies.
Fascism is, and always has been, an explicitly ANTI-intellectual movement that glorifies violent action over effete intellectualism. It never was really based on intellectualism of any kind despite occasionally finding intellectual supporters. (Yes, I know there is plenty of illiberal anti-intellectualism 0n the revolutionary left but the subject of the blog post here is right wing illiberalism.)
Allow me to suggest that, at a time when Trump has just pardoned a General who was a convicted criminal, and is now calling explicitly for a military coup which should declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and have the military oversee a national “revote,” it might be time for anyone who takes himself seriously as a libertarian to muster more “energy” for worrying about the illiberal right.
That last paragraph, seriously, dude, get a grip.
Yeah, let me know when you have an argument to make Roger.
Just wait for Special Counsel John Durham issues his report. In the meantime, please continue not taking your medicines and watching CNN. Your comments make my day.
Yes always wait. Two weeks and the 43,000 indictments of Democrats by the Mueller Commission! Still waiting.
After Trump won in 2016, both the GOPe and leftist tried to get electors to turn against their voters. There was a huge effort which is easy to find documentation for. Then after he was president we got several years of Russiagate and impeachment. Even Tyler Cowen made fun of this, and he’s pretty cuck.
I don’t think any of the Trump stuff is going to amount to anything, because he is a reality TV star with a short attention span and no principles. So practically speaking I have no faith in the coup and lend it no personal support.
Morally, I have no problems with the coup. Leftists don’t have souls and after several months of them telling me to stay in my home and wait to die I would be fine with overthrowing them. You need someone a lot better than Trump to do that though.
I seem to recall you were genuinely worried for your elderly parents – who you put up in a hotel? Something about your health or your daughters health that put you more at risk? I guess you got over all that.
Yes, he did thoroughly get over all that Moo cow. That was then and this is now.
Then: Trump was supporting lockdowns, criticizing Governor Kemp for ending his too soon, starring in a daily television show on the crisis, claiming it made him a “wartime President,” and predicting it would all be over by Easter when the churches would be full again.
Now: Messaging has changed. We now know that it’s not serious enough that we should be afraid of it or let it change our normal habits. It only kills people on death’s door anyway. It was all just overhyped by the fake news media. Isn’t that all much clearer now that almost 3,000 people are dying daily from it?
Yes, I was worried in March when the death rate was a lot higher and the information I was getting was a lot scarier. I updated my views when the information became clear.
Honestly, my view on the virus looks a lot like the stock markets view. Crashing in March and then slowly recovering as we got through the first wave and had more information, with an acknowledgement by the summer that everything was going to be OK.
I’m not entirely sure why your proud of increasing your hysteria as more and more information becomes available to show its hysteria.
Greg,
So did Trump support lockdowns or say the whole thing would be over by Easter? I seem to remember Trump asking people to liberate themselves (this is when I saw the lockdown protestors start).
I don’t follow 99.9% of what Trump says, but its pretty obvious to me that the thrust of his viewpoint is to be anti lockdown and anti fear. I think we would all agree on that.
As to the local lockdown protestors they all seem to be Trump supporters.
“Isn’t that all much clearer now that almost 3,000 people are dying daily from it?”
A little under 3M people die every year. The CDC says that through October there has been about 300k excess deaths. Even if that number ballooned at the end of the year to 400k, that’s a pretty paltry increase in mortality.
The lockdowns were based on the idea that the death rates seen in March in Northern Italy or NYC would be seen everywhere for a prolonged period. When this proved not to be the case they all should have ended.
asdf,
>—“So did Trump support lockdowns or say the whole thing would be over by Easter?”
Both! Why would you think he would feel the need to limit himself to only one position?
As with so many issues he felt no need to limit himself to a consistent position. One of the few things he has been entirely consistent on is insisting that it was all just about over at EVERY point. Just a few weeks ago he insisted that the media would drop the story immediately after the election. How did that turn out? He has been a fountain of misinformation throughout.
I want to clear up one other thing. You have mistaken me for someone who wants to force you into lockdown against your will.
I think that, as much as possible, people should be free to choose their own level of risk as long as they are willing to stay far enough away from those who choose a lower level of risk for themselves. If you want to attend the next available Trump superspreader event you have my blessing for that.
It gets tricky though because everyone’s choices affect everyone else in various ways. The real pressure for lockdowns is coming from doctors, nurses, and hospitals which are in danger of being overwhelmed. You expect them to be there if you have a non-Covid medical emergency don’t you? What would you say to them? They feel like they are on the front lines in a war zone. They are overworked, taking a lot of personal risk, and in danger of seeing all types of medical care compromised if cases continue to rise.
I guess, for you, whether or not 400K extra deaths is a big deal or not will depend entirely on whether or not any of them happen to people you personally care about or to people you happily describe as “worthless” and “dysgenic.”
“Both! Why would you think he would feel the need to limit himself to only one position?”
Which do you seem to associate most with Trump and his supporters? Lockdown or anti lockdown?
“Just a few weeks ago he insisted that the media would drop the story immediately after the election. How did that turn out? ”
Seems to be true. Obviously, people aren’t going to do a complete about face in position in 24 hours because it’s so obviously cynical. You need a little buffer time, and with Trump still being president it makes sense to slow roll. Remember, we can only declare victory once Biden has been inaugurated for a little while so we can claim it’s because he did something.
Let’s just think of a few things that have changed rapidly in the last few weeks.
1) They announced the results of the vaccine trials, which could have been announced before the election.
2) Even though leftists reversed course in the summer and opposed school re-openings simply to spite Trump, magically after the election there has been a total reverse course and now its really important that our elementary schools be open five days a week instruction.
3) We’ve been told everyone needs to quarantine for 14 days…and now all of a sudden no its actually 7.
“I want to clear up one other thing. You have mistaken me for someone who wants to force you into lockdown against your will.”
You vote for the people that do, therefore you are personally responsible.
“What would you say to them?”
I told my actual emergency room doctor friend that I appreciated all he was doing and empathized with his situation. However, I felt that if he wanted to impose sweeping coercive policies on society that it would have to pass some kind of rationale cost benefit test that involved the interest of not just himself. I told him which aspects of the lockdown I think do and don’t pass such a test based on what I’ve observed and why.
I said that being sympathetic to his position wasn’t a blank check to demand whatever one wants, and that I felt that the situation felt a lot like 9/11, where emotionally pointing to the dead was used to justify a lot of things that were clearly not a net good for the world, but that it was as impossible to discuss that at the time as it is to discuss COVID now.
There are all sorts of reasons why individuals and institutions might get overwhelmed, there is always more work that can be done and more lives that can be saved, and the ability to accept what can and can’t be done is part of being a doctor whether there was COVID or not.
“will depend entirely on whether or not any of them happen to people you personally care about”
My father, who is very high risk, lives with us. He could certainly get it and die. We’ve discussed the risk of various activities and their merits, some we do, some we don’t.
We decided for instance that sending our oldest to preschool was important enough to take the risk. I asked my Dad point blank about the possibility he could die, and he said that we all die sometime and that if its important for his granddaughters development then its just a risk we should take.
So we sent her, and it was going well. But then you COVID people started to interfere. A family member of a kid in the school (but not the kid or anyone in the school) tested positive for COVID, and we had to go rushing to the school to pick up our kid on short notice because the state shut it down against the owners will. We then had to cover for childcare while it was closed (and were were still charged). When the kid tested negative they were allowed to re-open (which takes days), but we were told this shutdown could happen again (with 25 kids plus their family members that’s going to happen a lot). And indeed it did, and I’ve gotten emails from our old daycare from awhile back and they’ve had closings too.
This place has been operating since March and has had zero cases inside the actual school, but somebody from the state can still yank it away at any second.
We also found out that if you decide to do the responsible thing and go get tested for COVID that if the medical network that my parents use knows you are getting a COVID test they cancel all of your doctors appointments until you show a negative test result. They didn’t have symptoms and didn’t particularly think they had it (it would have to go to the family member, to the kid, to my daughter, back to us, not exactly a 100% probability even it the test wasn’t a false positive), but yeah lets cancel appointments for their other conditions that they work months to set up.
Then we get a call from the preschool that the state has decided that now the toddlers have to wear masks all day long (against the owners wishes). It’s not exactly easy or comfortable getting toddlers to wear masks. It also defeats the purpose of why we are sending her, which is to socialize with other kids and develop those skills. You can’t socialize with people whose face you can’t see and whose speech you can’t understand. And I’m fairly confident it will increase and not decrease germ spread, as these kinds are constantly handling, throwing away, etc these masks.
So I’ve got an owner that wants to stay open unless there is a genuine risk (but isn’t allowed) and an owner that wants to let my toddler be a normal toddler (not wear a face burkha all day), and the state won’t allow it. My at risk father was willing to bear that risk for his granddaughters sake, but he won’t be allowed.
I don’t know what the right level of lockdown is but I’m pretty sure it is different for different people and in different states and at different times. Despite the various things you want to blame me for, my main sentiment about it is that I feel really lucky to be comfortably retired and no longer in positions where I would be making decisions I was unsure of about that which would affect lots of other people.
I have seen good arguments for keeping schools open. It seems kids are unlikely to behave more safely when they are out of school. Don’t think you will find substitute teachers when the teachers get sick though.
As far as shortening the quarantine, data has shown that the small and declining risk in the final days was more than offset by people refusing to quarantine at all if the period was longer. Such recommendations should be adjusted as better data comes in. It is a good thing when that happens.
>—“You vote for the people that do,(impose lockdowns) therefore you are personally responsible.”
It is and ought to be governors that decide their state’s policies on that. Not only have I not voted for your state’s governor since the pandemic began. I haven’t even had a chance to vote for my own state’s governor yet. You never fail to find someone else to blame though. Did you ever stop to consider that back in March when you were blaming other people for not being supportive enough of lockdowns and putting you at risk that you were doing the exact same thing you now are outraged that some others are doing? Not everyone supported lockdowns then just because you did.
>—“Which do you seem to associate most with Trump and his supporters? Lockdown or anti lockdown?”
Depends entirely what time period you are asking about. Back when you supported lockdowns he did also. Since about the time he started opposing them, you have opposed also them.
>—” I felt that if he wanted to impose sweeping coercive policies on society that it would have to pass some kind of rationale cost benefit test”
No one disagrees with that. The devil is in the details. I still can’t even tell whether or not you think that the healthcare system being overrun to the point that care declines significantly counts in your cost benefit test.
>—” I asked my Dad point blank about the possibility he could die, and he said that we all die sometime and that if its important for his granddaughters development then its just a risk we should take.”
Good. He should get to decide that and have his choice respected. Not so for your mother-in-law though. We should view her as a dupe of the mainstream media if she is afraid to share your own risk choices.
>—“So we sent her, and it was going well. But then you COVID people started to interfere.”
Actually I had nothing at all to do with that. But you never fail to find other people to blame. Ever consider blaming the virus for a lot of this?
“Did you ever stop to consider that back in March when you were blaming other people for not being supportive enough of lockdowns and putting you at risk that you were doing the exact same thing you now are outraged that some others are doing?”
In March is was justified to do a temporary lockdown and figure out what was going on based on the data and the fast moving nature of events.
If the virus was as bad as a lot of epidemiological models were stating in March, then we wouldn’t have needed a national lockdown. Nobody would have left their house anyway.
The idea behind the lockdown was that if ordinary people could see what the state of things would be like 2-3 weeks hence, they would voluntarily lock down, but by then it would be too late. So the government would just do for people what they would have done for themselves if they understood how quickly something with a high R value grows.
Now that we have more information, it is not justified. It turns out the models in March were wrong, and as soon as it became obvious they were wrong the justification fell apart.
If the entire history of the lockdown was a month long holiday to figure this thing out when excess deaths were dramatically higher than today and the possibility of it growing exponentially more, then it wouldn’t have elicited the anger it has. It’s the decision to continue it once the facts were in that is reprehensible.
I admit that with hindsight I should have had lower faith in humanity and opposed the lockdown, not because the lockdown was wrong, but because once leftist established the power to do so they would never relinquish it even after the danger had passed.
“I still can’t even tell whether or not you think that the healthcare system being overrun to the point that care declines significantly counts in your cost benefit test.”
I think the healthcare system is less overwhelmed than it was in March based on data I’ve seen, especially if “in march” means the leading edge areas that got hit first (like NYC). In addition there was the possibility to get a lot worse in March (it was unknown what the next months would bring, and it looked exponential), whereas at this point its pretty clear spread and deaths start to level off a lot earlier than the 60% of the local population being touted in March.
It’s also clear that certain items that were perceived bottlenecks in March, like ventilators, don’t actually help much. COVID treatment for the most part doesn’t seem like something the hospital does much for. A lot of it could be done at home or other settings.
“Not so for your mother-in-law though. We should view her as a dupe of the mainstream media if she is afraid to share your own risk choices.”
I respect that my father didn’t choose to hurt his granddaughter to slightly extend his life. He isn’t literally sacrificing toddlers to Moloch, a low bar.
I don’t respect my mother in laws choice. I have not attempted to force her to do otherwise, nor would I want anyone too. Just because I don’t think she should be stopped from making a mistake does mean I respect it.
As to choices, the state infringed on my fathers good choices and has if anything abetted my mother in laws bad ones (I once got close to convincing her to visit, but her governor imposed out of state quarantine rules and she did not want to put up with that).
“Ever consider blaming the virus for a lot of this?”
“Not only have I not voted for your state’s governor since the pandemic began. I haven’t even had a chance to vote for my own state’s governor yet.”
The virus is just the flu bro. It can’t make anyone do anything. You support leftists, and leftists are the driving force behind lockdowns.
Yeah, that was uncharitable. Sorry.
1) I assume you’re referring to Michael Flynn. Flynn was questioned as part of the Mueller probe and when he wouldn’t give Mueller any gotcha information on Trump, charges were brought against him. It is almost always possible to show that someone wasn’t totally honest under FBI questioning and Flynn was in for a long expensive time defending himself. As the saying goes, “The process is the punishment.” In a plea deal, he pled guilty to lying to the FBI. So technically he was convicted. There are numerous civil liberties problems here. Flynn seems to be a jerk but if civil liberties don’t apply with jerks, we have a big problem.
2) Flynn’s tweet about suspending the Constitution is ridiculous. But the only people who take it seriously are the people who have been telling us for four years that Trump is a fascist who will try to become a dictator. Yet it never happened.
Flynn wouldn’t have needed to lie if he hadn’t been trying to hide a crime in the first place. A conviction in a plea deal isn’t a “technical” conviction. It is just as much a real legal conviction as a trial result and the only reason he agreed to it is that he believed he would have gotten an even worse result had he gone to trial.
>—“Flynn’s tweet about suspending the Constitution is ridiculous. But the only people who take it seriously are the people who have been telling us for four years that Trump is a fascist who will try to become a dictator.”
Actually the whole QAnon phenomenon which has millions of followers and has already put two people in Congress is based on a belief that Trump should and will suspend the Constitution, organize a military coup and arrest top Democrats. They take it plenty seriously. These people are highly visible at every Trump rally and he often retweets with approval some of their various slogans.
Trump is a wanna be dictator who has at various times expressed admiration for almost every dictator in the world most famously saying that he “fell in love” with Kim Jong Un and trusting Putin more than his own intelligence agencies. He has expressed admiration for the “strong” leadership that led to the massacre in Tiananmen Square and contempt for the “weak” leadership that Gorbachev showed in the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Fortunately his dictatorial ambitions have been pretty effectively thwarted by his own incompetence and laziness. His main activities as President have been watching his own TV coverage, golfing, and tweeting. Just because he is unlikely to succeed doesn’t mean he isn’t trying to overturn a legal election result by all means available to him.
Rotten and corrupt democrats have been telling the same story for the past 4 years. They rely on useless idiots to repeat it every day.
You are absolutely right that a plea bargain is a real conviction. It can result in the plea-er getting fined or going to prison.
Whether he would have “gotten an even worse result had he gone to trial” is speculative. What is not speculative is that it would have cost him a lot of money and time to go to trial. You pay your money and you roll the dice. You can get everything from an acquittal to a sentence several times longer.
I don’t know enough about QAnon and people like that to comment. My gut reaction is that they are too ridiculous and extreme to ever have much influence. But I would have said the same thing two years ago about Critical Race Theory.
>—-“I don’t know enough about QAnon and people like that to comment.”
Maybe so, but from this point forward, ignorance about it will be a deliberate choice for you Roger.
A simple Google search for QAnon will bring up many good summaries that could educate you in just a few minutes. I recommend the Wikipedia piece which points out how frequently Trump has signaled his approval for QAnon.
If Wikipedia is too left wing for you the Wall Street Journal has one.
No, fascism actually had a fairly robust intellectual movement in its original iteration. Many prominent intellectuals whose names we all know today – e.g. Gini, Pareto, Heidegger, Schmitt, or, in the arts, Puccini, Orff – were supporters of fascist parties at least one point. In the US and Britain there were a decent number of fascist sympathizers in academia (in policymaking circles). It was really only after WW2 that fascism ceased to be a presence in academia. But before that, especially in the 20s and early 30s, it was (not unlike communism in the 50s) something of a fad in academia.
Liberals claim to want to listen to speakers of all points of view but then are shocked and offended to discover there are other views, or something like that, said William F. Buckley, the man who married conservatism and liberalism. A divorce has been in order for a long time. The two-party system excludes both from any practical political relevance, although the liberal (libertarian) vote did hand the presidency to the progressive establishment. So we will get to see how that works out. The progressive left and the liberals share a lot of policy goals so maybe the second marriage will work out. Patrick Deneen recently observed on twitter something to the effect that necrophilia is ripe for legalization, so maybe that honeymoon is in order.
Magna Carta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689), the French Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) all preceded the current USA constitution and its bill of rights. Americanism is not the be all and end all of individual rights. Are individual rights a matter of gifts from god(s), natural law endowments (?), treaties, or something else? Does it matter? Personally, I think that the slavery abolitionists have more meaningful things to say than anyone writing today. What an abortion if our individual rights are merely a matter of US Supreme Court whimsy. Give me Nietzsche over that. But first let me hoard some food. As the USA slides down a Venezuelan trajectory, we will all discover new priorities.
Maybe they could all settle their debate by accepting the UN Declaration of Human Rights and letting it go at that:
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
I am inclined to think that the illiberal intellectuals on the right have even less impact on our political culture than libertarians.
The Moldbugaloo will blindside a lot of people who think they understand “the political culture.”
Sorry, Arnold, but I reject to play the intellectuals’ hypocrisy game. The intellectuals’ old tradition of serving government has degenerated into a general attitude of pretending to serve as useful idiots to politicians. There are “weak” and “strong” useful idiots: the former are interested in not being canceled by “their” politicians when they grab power and the latter in being appointed to a high position by “their” politicians when they grab power. The new D-Party (the one after embracing radical leftists) has got huge support from “weak” idiots because of its aggressive strategy of getting rid of the deplorable (after the election, these cowards have been telling the Party that they are ready to be submissive to the new police). In the meantime, “strong” idiots are fighting for their lives in a Biden administration.
On the R-side, “liberal” and “libertarian” intellectuals are trying to find who they will serve in the next 4 years. They are confused because Republican politicians don’t like intellectuals and they know their role will continue to be as limited as has always been. No much room for “weak” idiots, but good incentives to become “strong” ones to get high positions in 2025.
I have just read this article in today’s Tablet
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/fact-checkers-media-criticism
that reminded me that the intellectuals’ hypocrisy game runs in parallel with another similar game: the journalists’ hypocrisy game. It’s funny because when I wrote my comment I doubted whether to refer to the two political sides or just to only one because the intellectuals’ game is too one-sided. The evidence on the journalists’ game confirms that is one-sided.
I posted my own review of Bronze Age Mindset here:
https://trotskyschildren.blogspot.com/2020/08/book-review-bronze-age-mindset.html
Anton recently came out with “The Stakes”, which, surprisingly, was really only half about, well, the stakes of the 2020 Presidential election. In that half, he makes a lot of the typical observations and complaints of the more edgy, non-establishment, conservative commentators, and lays out the various problems caused by progressive ideology and policy. He doesn’t exactly make the case for re-electing Trump the man himself (except perhaps in a faute de mieux sense) and perhaps more precisely, makes the case for supporting the right in power as part of a project of continued transition of the anti-progressive party away from ‘zombie’ GOP establishment towards, well, something closer to The emerging Claremont Consensus position on things, which is much more nationalist along several dimensions of policy.
The other half of the book seemed to better belong to a different work entirely (perhaps the book Anton actually wanted to write, and which he had to piggyback on the continuing popularity of his Flight 93-esque style and themes). It is presented as part of the intra-right argument about ideology and political philosophy and whether to continue to subscribe to the old civic nationalism perspective with a reverence and commitment to the (mostly ‘liberal’) ideas expressed in the founding documents of the Declaration and the Constitution, with a very strong flavor of Jaffa’s presentation of Lincoln and his formulation in “A New Birth of Freedom”. (Indeed, see Flanney’s contribution to the same series.) A long part of it could be have been titled “Contra Moldbug”. He spends a lot of time going after Calhoun as a kind of arch villain, but he really isn’t fair at all to the idea of concurrent majority expressed in “Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States” and “A Disquisition on Government”. I think Calhoun was prescient on the structural requirements for social peace and consensus in a highly polarized age (think “bipartisan commission”), and most modern scholars of “power sharing” arrangements (Lebanon, North Ireland) often seem to reinvent the same idea, which in a way is the only good answer to a domestic Thucydides Trap. Anton goes after Calhoun where he is strongest, instead of where he is weakest, which is when making a weak legalistic argument that concurrent majority (and some rights of nullification) are implied by the Constitution’s structure and design, instead of saying that the lack of these features was an unfortunate mistake in a flawed design that was destined to break down in crisis and war when matters inevitably came to a head.
I think that Claremont perspective basically triumphed over most of the American right between Goldwater and Reagan in the first neoconservative generation, especially once all the old paleoconservatives has been successfully purged out of the ranks of the movement and the corridors of power and prestige (at least among academics in political fields). You barely heard anyone on the right argue against it, and if there was something wrong, it was because we had strayed from the straight and narrow path of the Constitution’s true vision and requirements. There was no problem that more True Constitutionalism couldn’t fix. Notions along the lines of the Constitutional scheme having fundamental flaws which were incompatible with the requirements of late modernity to an irredeemable extent, or, at the very least, that too much water had gone under the bridge and things had become corrupted beyond any hope of restoration and repair, were mostly extinct on the right, and for a long time.
But that all started to change about 20 years ago, and it clear a new and younger generation of men and women of the right now looked at all those tenets and articles of faith as contestable, highly suspect, or even outright ‘discredited’, and in particular, politically counterproductive in the current context.
Anton argues that there’s really no good alternative to sticking with the American Civil Nationalist Tradition. You should read his argument for yourself, but overall I found this to be his weakest work and as if his heart wasn’t really in it. Or else a kind of Straussian (heh, get it?) political-philosophy version of “We Are Doomed”. If there is no better alternative to pursuing what is already a hopeless set of ideas, then for any realistic options, it remains the case that it’s all downhill from here.