Emmanuel Todd: The Trump "revolution" is a mixture of reason and nihilism headed toward decadence in a nation now missing the strengths of both ethnic cohesion and Protestant faith

 This is the full text of La révolution Trump by Emmanuel Todd in "From Russia With Love", translated by Arnaud Bertrand:

The Trump Revolution 

I would like to try to understand the immediate cause of the Trump Revolution. Every revolution has primarily endogenous causes; it is first and foremost the outcome of internal dynamics and contradictions within the society concerned. However, one striking thing in history is the frequency with which revolutions are triggered by military defeats. The Russian revolution of 1905 was preceded by a military defeat against Japan. The Russian revolution of 1917 was preceded by a defeat against Germany. The German revolution of 1918 was also preceded by a defeat. Even the French Revolution, which seems more endogenous, had been preceded in 1763 by France's defeat in the Seven Years' War, a major defeat since the Ancien Régime lost all its colonies. The collapse of the Soviet system was also triggered by a double defeat: in the arms race with the United States and by the retreat from Afghanistan. I believe we must start from this notion of a defeat that brings about a revolution to understand the Trump revolution. The experience currently underway in the United States, even if we don't know exactly what it will be, is a revolution. Is it a revolution in the strict sense? Is it a counter-revolution? It is in any case a phenomenon of extraordinary violence, a violence that turns on one hand against the allied-subjects, the Europeans, the Ukrainians, but which expresses itself on the other hand, internally, in American society, through a struggle against universities, against gender theory, against scientific culture, against the policy of including Blacks in the American middle classes, against free trade and against immigration. This revolutionary violence is, in my opinion, linked to defeat. Various people have reported to me conversations between members of the Trump team and what is striking is their awareness of defeat. People like J.D. Vance, the vice president, and many others, are people who have understood that America had lost this war. For the United States, it was fundamentally an economic defeat. The sanctions policy showed that the financial power of the West was not an all-power. The Americans had the revelation of the fragility of their military industry. People at the Pentagon know very well that one of the limits to their action is the limited capacity of the American military-industrial complex. This American awareness of defeat contrasts with the non-awareness of Europeans. Europeans did not organize the war. Because they did not organize the war, they cannot have full awareness of defeat. To have full awareness of defeat, they would need access to Pentagon thinking. But Europeans do not have access to it. Europeans therefore situate themselves mentally before the defeat while the current American administration situates itself mentally after the defeat.  

 

Defeat and Cultural Crisis 

My experience of the fall of communism taught me, as I have said, something important: the collapse of a system is mental as much as economic. What is collapsing in the current West, and first in the United States, is not only economic dominance, but also the belief system that animated it or was superimposed on it. The beliefs that accompanied Western triumphalism are collapsing. But as in any revolutionary process, we do not yet know which new belief is the most important, which is the belief that will emerge victorious from the process of decomposition.

 

The Reasonable in the Trump Administration 

I want to clarify that I had no principled hostility toward Trump at the start. During Trump's first election, in 2016, I was among those who admitted that America was sick, that its industrial and working heart was being destroyed, that ordinary Americans were suffering from the general policy of the Empire and that there were very good reasons for many voters to vote for Trump. In Trump's intuitions, there are very reasonable things. Trump's protectionism, the idea that America must be protected to rebuild its industry, results from a very reasonable intuition. I am myself a protectionist. I wrote books about it long ago. I also consider that the idea of immigration control is reasonable, even if the style adopted by the Trump administration in managing immigration is unbearably violent. Another reasonable element, which surprises many Westerners, is the Trump administration's insistence on saying that there are only two sexes in humanity, men and women. I do not see there a rapprochement with Vladimir Putin's Russia but a return to the ordinary conception of humanity that has existed since the appearance of Homo sapiens, a biological evidence on which, moreover, science and the Church agree. There is reasonableness in the Trump revolution.

 

Nihilism in the Trump Revolution 

I must now say why, despite the presence of these reasonable elements, I am pessimistic and why I think the Trump experience will fail. I will recall why I was optimistic for Russia from 2002 and why I am pessimistic for the United States in 2025. There is in the behavior of the Trump administration, a deficit of thought, an unpreparedness, a brutality, an impulsive, unreflective behavior, which evokes the central concept of The Defeat of the West, that of nihilism. I explain in The Defeat of the West, that religious emptiness, the zero stage of religion, leads to anguish rather than to a state of freedom and well-being. The zero state brings us back to the fundamental problem. What is it to be a man? What is the meaning of things? A classic response to these questions, in a phase of religious collapse, is nihilism. We pass from the anguish of emptiness to the deification of emptiness, a deification of emptiness that can lead to a will to destroy things, men, and ultimately reality. Transgender ideology is not in itself something serious on the moral level but it is fundamental on the intellectual level because saying that a man can become a woman or a woman a man reveals a will to destroy reality. This was, in association with cancel culture, with the preference for war, an element of the nihilism that predominated under the Biden administration. Trump rejects all that. However, what strikes me currently is the emergence of a nihilism that takes other forms: a will to destroy science and the university, black middle classes, or disordered violence in the application of American protectionist strategy. When, without thinking, Trump wants to establish customs duties between Canada and the United States, while the Great Lakes region constitutes a single industrial system, I see there a destructive impulse as much as protection. When I see Trump suddenly establishing protectionist tariffs against China while forgetting that the majority of American smartphones are manufactured in China, I tell myself that we cannot be content to consider this as stupidity. It is stupidity certainly, but it is perhaps also nihilism. Let us move to a higher moral level: the Trumpian fantasy of transforming Gaza, emptied of its population, into a tourist resort is typically a high-intensity nihilist project. The fundamental contradiction of American policy, however, I will look for it on the side of protectionism. The theory of protectionism tells us that protection can only work if a country possesses the qualified population that would allow it to profit from tariff protections. A protectionist policy will only be effective if you have engineers, scientists, qualified technicians. Which Americans do not have in sufficient numbers. Now I see the United States beginning to hunt down their Chinese students, and so many others, those very ones who allow them to compensate for their deficit in engineers and scientists. This is absurd. The theory of protectionism also tells us that protection can only launch or relaunch industry if the State intervenes to participate in the construction of new industries. Now we see the Trump administration attacking the State, this State that should nourish scientific research and technological progress. Worse: if we look for the motivation of the struggle against the federal state led by Elon Musk and others, we realize that it is not even economic. Those who are familiar with American history know the capital role of the federal State in the emancipation of Blacks. Hatred of the federal state, in the United States, most often derives from anti-Black resentment. When one fights against the American federal State, one fights against the central administrations that have emancipated and that protect Blacks. A high proportion of black middle classes has found jobs in the federal administration. The struggle against the federal State therefore does not integrate into a general conception of economic and national reconstruction. If I think of the multiple and contradictory acts of the Trump administration, the word that comes to mind is dislocation. A dislocation whose direction we do not know very well.

 

Absolute Nuclear Family + Zero Religion = Atomization 

I am very pessimistic for the United States. I will return, to conclude this exploratory conference, to my fundamental concepts as historian and anthropologist. I said at the beginning of this conference that the fundamental reason why I had believed, quite early, from 2002, in a return of Russia to stability, is because I was aware of the existence of a communitarian anthropological foundation in Russia. Unlike many, I do not need hypotheses about the state of religion in Russia to understand Russia's return to stability. I see a family, community culture, with its values of authority and equality, which moreover allows us to understand a little what the nation is in the Russian mind. There is indeed a relationship between the form of the family and the idea one has of the nation. To the community family corresponds a strong, compact idea of the nation or people. Such is Russia. In the case of the United States, as in that of England, we are in the inverse case. The model of the English and American family is nuclear, individualist, without even including a precise rule of inheritance. Freedom of will reigns. The Anglo-American absolute nuclear family is very little structuring for the nation. The absolute nuclear family certainly has an advantage of flexibility. Generations succeed each other by separating. The speed of adaptation of the United States or England, the plasticity of their social structures (which allowed the English industrial revolution and American takeoff) largely result from this absolute nuclear family structure. But beside or above this individualist family structure there was in England as in the United States the discipline of Protestant religion, with its potential for social cohesion. Religion, as a structuring factor, was capital for the Anglo-American world. It has disappeared. The zero state of religion, combined with very little structuring family values does not seem to me an anthropological and historical combination that could lead to stability. It is toward ever greater atomization that the Anglo-American world is heading. This atomization can only lead to an accentuation, without visible limit, of American decadence. I hope I am wrong, I hope I have forgotten an important positive factor. I unfortunately now find only one additional negative factor, which appeared to me when reading a book by Amy Chua, a university professor at Yale who was J.D. Vance's mentor. Political Tribes. Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations (2018) underlines, after many other texts, the unique character of the American nation: a civic nation, founded by the adherence of all successive immigrants to political values transcending ethnicity. Certainly. This was very early the official theory. But there was also in the United States a dominant white Protestant group, itself derived from a rather long and quite ethnic history at bottom. This American nation has become, since the pulverization of the Protestant group, really post-ethnic, a purely "civic" nation, in theory united by attachment to its constitution, to its values. Amy Chua's fear is that of a reversion of America to what she calls tribalism. A regressive pulverization. Each of the European nations is fundamentally, whatever its family structure, its religious tradition, its vision of itself, an ethnic nation, in the sense of a people attached to a land, with its language, its culture, a people anchored in history. Each has a stable foundation. Russians have that, Germans have that, the French have that, even if they are a bit bizarre at the moment on these concepts. America no longer has that. A civic nation? Beyond the idea, the reality of an American civic nation but deprived of morality by the zero state of religion leaves one dreaming. It even gives one chills. My personal fear is that we are, not at all at the end, but only at the beginning of a fall of the United States that will reveal to us things that we cannot even imagine. The threat is there: even more than in an American empire, whether triumphant, or weakened, or destroyed, going toward things that we cannot imagine.

This is a link to the original text (in French: https://emmanueltodd.substack.com/p/bons-baisers-de-russie) which is actually much longer than this, as it touches on more topics than the "Trump revolution".

I disagree with the premise that the United States has been defeated and that the Trump "revolution" is the result, but I do not doubt that she is in danger of defeat. Todd's other observations are salutary.

Such defeats as we have experienced have resulted from a failure of the will, primarily of the will to pay the financial costs of maintaining American leadership in the world. This failure of the will traces to the 1960s liberal social revolution, but was made bipartisan and supercharged as conservatism by the libertarian success of the Reagan Revolution in defeating the necessary role played by high ordinary income tax rates in the United States to fund it.

The word "tax" has been a four-letter word to Republicans ever since. But it is a myth that the taxpayers know best what to do with their money. The rich have hollowed out the country's capital strength and call it the land of opportunity. We have little to show for it since 1986.

The Trump revolution, for all its will to power, which is its main attraction in a country devoid of will, also refuses to pay, which is why it is not a true revolution and will not endure. The tax cut revolution of 1986 is not repeatable. That Trump would raise taxes on the rich to pay for his big, beautiful bill tells you that he knows what must be done, but as with immigration, he is a paper tiger and is not up to it. Trump is not the man demanded by the times, however much millions hope otherwise. He remains but a transitional figure.

Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.

 

To Mark Tooley a Protestant America means, among other things, the routinized revolution of periodic elections criticized by Oswald Spengler as a mark of the blindness and cowardice of Liberalism

 Our democracy is a constant state of revolution, overthrowing incumbents in favor of successors who also will soon face revolution. 

Here. 

Revolution, in the form of periodic mass elections fought by all available means of money, brains, and even - after the Gracchan method - physical violence, is exalted into a constitutional process.

-- Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision, 1934

 

The real conservative cannot stand it that eternal truths, laws, and morals are subjected to a referendum every few years. A country which does this is perverse. And no real Lutheran would abide it, let alone a true Roman Catholic.

Petronella Wyatt, 54, is single, childless, and depressed, and blames her feminism on Protestantism lol

 

 It was among Protestant communities that feminism first emerged, and it is in Protestant countries such as America and Britain in which feminist beliefs have been at their most vocal and strident in tone, like a religion with no dilution of agnosticism. Margaret Thatcher, though she would have denied it, was a feminist de facto, and no Catholic country could have produced her like.

 

More.

 

No one dares blame the crazy old Pharisee. That would be a bridge too far.

 

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.  

 

-- Galatians 3:28

Protestant "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" gets a hearing in Roman Catholic/Jewish dominated National Review

From the story, which draws a straight line from the human equality and freedom in Christ taught in St. Paul's Letter to the Romans right on through St. Augustine and Martin Luther to the American Revolution:

 

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, Jonathan Mayhew preached a widely disseminated sermon justifying rebellion against tyranny. His text was Romans, Chapter 13 — Paul’s instruction to believers to submit to political authorities: 

 

Thus, upon a careful review of the apostle’s reasoning in this passage, it appears that his arguments to enforce submission, are of such a nature, as to conclude only in favor of submission to such rulers as he himself describes, i.e., such as rule for the good of society, which is the only end of their institution. Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not entitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of anything here laid down by the inspired apostle.

 

John Adams, reflecting on the origins of the Revolution years later, cited Mayhew’s sermon as a factor in persuading pious believers of the legitimacy of political resistance. Mayhew may also have persuaded the more secular-minded Ben Franklin, whose proposed motto for the American seal was “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

 

Joel Kotkin has come around, now calls it what it is: Global fascism

In 2018, Kotkin was still tip-toeing around the obvious, but not anymore:

Mussolini’s notion of fascism has become increasingly dominant in much of the world . . .

Mussolini, a one-time radical socialist, viewed himself as a “revolutionary” transforming society by turning the state into “the moving centre of economic life”. In Italy and, to a greater extent, Germany, fascism also brought with it, at least initially, an expanded highly populist welfare state much as we see today.

Mussolini’s idea of a an economy controlled from above, with generous benefits but dominated by large business interests, is gradually supplanting the old liberal capitalist model. ...

fascism — in its corporate sense — relies on concentrated economic power to achieve its essential and ideological goals. ...

China, in many aspects the model fascist state of our times, follows Il Duce’s model of cementing the corporate elite into the power structure. ...

But in the battle between the two emergent fascist systems, China possesses powerful advantages. Communist Party cadres at least offer more than a moralising agenda; they can point to the country’s massive reduction of extreme poverty and a huge growth in monthly wages, up almost five-fold since 2006. At a time when the middle class is shrinking in the West, China’s middle class increased enormously from 1980 to 2000, although its growth appears to have slowed in recent years.

Like Mussolini, who linked his regime to that of Ancient Rome, China’s rulers look to Han supremacy and the glories of China’s Imperial past. “The very purpose of the [Chinese Communist] Party in leading the people in revolution and development,” Xi Jinping told party cadres a decade ago, “is to make the people prosperous, the country strong, and [to] rejuvenate the Chinese nation.”

Kotkin recognizes at least that American right-wing libertarianism is part of the problem, not part of the solution:

the consolidation of oligarchic power is supported by massive lobbying operations and dispersals of cash, including to some Right-wing libertarians, who doggedly justify censorship and oligopoly on private property grounds.

Regrettably, however, Kotkin still does not connect this failure of the old liberal order in the West with the failure of the old moral order which gave it birth and on which it depended. This is because Kotkin still sees things in primarily materialistic terms.

Kotkin is oddly politically correct when he denounces possible recourse to nativism, which blinds him to the nativism which is at the heart of Chinese state capitalism and gives it much of its appeal and strength. He calls for "a re-awakening of the spirit of resistance to authority" in the West, not realizing that it was Protestantism which made that even possible in the first place.

The problem of the West is spiritual, and Catholicism will never be able to rise to the occasion of refounding it as long as globo-homo defines Rome. The whole idea is inimical to the notion of founding a nation "for our posterity".

Peggy Noonan has second thoughts, recalls with fondness the crabbed public square of Fairness Doctrine infamy

What a shock, right? Roman Catholic from Brooklyn thinks Methodist hick from Missouri should have been shut up long ago.

Rush Limbaugh’s Complicated Legacy :

By the 1980s it was being argued that the doctrine itself was hurting free speech: It was a governmental intrusion on the freedom of broadcasters, and, perversely, it inhibited the presentation of controversial issues. There were so many voices in the marketplace, and more were coming; fairness and balance would sort themselves out.

In 1987 the doctrine was abolished, a significant Reagan-era reform. But I don’t know. Let me be apostate again. Has anything in our political culture gotten better since it was removed? Aren’t things more polarized, more bitter, less stable?

I’m not sure it was good for America.

Imagine if religion were similarly circumscribed.

From 17 distinct religious groups in 1776 and about 3,200 congregations, today there are north of 300 groups and 300,000 congregations.

The lack of unanimity surely bothers devout believers in one or the other, some of whom are certain everyone else is going to hell, and something should be done to stop it.

I suspect the one true church of Peggy Noonan feels the same way, except its liberalism has invented the half-way house of Purgatory to roast malefactors until ready for Valhalla.

Deal with it, Peggy. It's still a Protestant country.

Rush Limbaugh dead at 70, FOX obituary includes famous "preamble to the Constitution" blunder from CPAC 2009

Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio pioneer, dead at 70 :

"We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness."

The mistake is fairly typical, both of Rush, and of Rush's audience the Baby Boom for whom basic knowledge of civics had long been in decline. For Rush, and for them, conservatism was always more aspirational than actual, often conflating present perspectives with historical realities.

An example is the Straussians who in our time explicitly argued for the unity of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, giving Thomas Jefferson's more revolutionary, Enlightenment-tinged views in the former too much sway over the interpretation of the latter.

The irony of that fusionism was always that Jefferson sought for the United States "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them", not the "exceptional" American position touted by Limbaugh as an heir of America's post-war position of global domination.

The Constitution's preamble expressed a matter-of-factly self-interested goal, "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", a country of Americans, by Americans, and for Americans, not a nation of immigrants, by immigrants, and for immigrants, not a nation of heroes marching forth in search of monsters to destroy. America's founding was above all modest, which is perhaps the surest indicator of its inherent conservatism.

If Rush Limbaugh slaughtered the important details on a regular basis, what made the show so enjoyable was the entertainment, which largely came from the sheer pleasure Rush derived from doing it and communicating it, "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have". If nothing else, Rush Limbaugh was a conservative of enjoyment, and who doesn't want to be around people having a good time? It is one reason for Rush's tremendous success in a career spanning more than three decades.

Students of conservatism might think this a whimsy, not to be taken seriously, but no less a figure than Russell Kirk devoted a chapter to such conservatism in his "The Conservative Mind". Rush himself, from time to time, in his own non-academic way had observed how liberals are not funny and don't have fun, and in this he was on to something. Generally speaking conservatives possess contentment to a far greater degree than do liberals, derived from a judiciously formed view of the self as sinners saved by grace. It is a freeing thing which allows people to accept things as they are, even as God accepts sinners as they are.

Of course in the post-war there has been a tremendous amount for Americans to enjoy, to the point that we have become completely distracted by this. One may rightly say we have overdone it, and that enjoyment has frankly become conservatives' Achilles' heel. It has produced a myriad of problems, not the least of which has been a failure to reproduce, inattention to religion, and a proclivity for the easy politics of the executive where we look for one man to save us. As America was not built by Protestants enjoying religious entertainments and all-you-can-eat brunches on Sundays, it will not be recovered, if that is still possible, but by serious, religious people who work hard, deny themselves, and save.

Rush Limbaugh was an optimist about America because he still believed there were enough individual Americans remaining who exemplified the old virtues. America's future will depend on Rush having been right.

Hillsdale College professor is hopeful because Roman Catholicism dominates the intellectual wings of modern conservatism and nationalism

I'm hopeful because 72 million Americans sided against Joe Biden.

From "A Review of Protestants and American Conservatism: A Short History by Gillis J. Harp (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019)", here :

Still, perhaps there is more reason to hope than Harp lets on. Neither Modern Conservatism nor the new nationalism shows signs of a distinctly Protestant political perspective. To the extent either one has a political theology, it is dominated by Roman Catholics, who occupy the lion’s share of both movements’ intellectual wings.

Yeah, sure, buddy, it wasn't Catholic priests who used their pulpits to call the men to arms in the revolution against the English king. It wasn't Catholic priests who then doffed their robes and grabbed their rifles and joined them in the field. It was Presbyterians.

Joe Biden, a Catholic, preaches a return to normalcy, which amounts to acquiescence to the status quo of liberal dominance of most American institutions. That is the default position of Catholicism, acquiescence to authority, submission to hierarchy, rule by elites. By definition they'll revolt against nothing and adapt themselves to every nutty innovation which comes along in the spirit of taxation without representation.

The Loyalists have made a comeback, largely on the backs of Catholic immigrants to the United States since 1850.

Is anyone surprised they are for open borders, mass immigration, and globalism, especially if it augments their dominance in America?

Donald Trump, in his feeble way, was a resounding No to all this.

We're still out here.

Atheist Adam Savage, Speaker Nancy Pelosi constituent, Humanist of the Year and myth-maker, not very happy with the Republican US Senate's 11 Presbyterians, 9 Catholics, 9 Baptists, 7 Methodists, 6 Evangelicals, 3 Lutherans, 3 generic Protestants, 1 Church of Christ and 2 Mormons who voted against having to do the job the House wouldn't do

Tyler Professor of Law at Harvard calls for swamping America with third world Catholics to obliterate Anglo-Protestant liberalism

Somebody call Orkin quick and send them to 1585 Massachusetts Avenue. Also 1651 and 125 Mount Auburn Street, just to be sure.

Ross Douthat, so-called "conservative" columnist, probably believes "The Dark Ages" was Protestant propaganda

Democrats and Republicans invite the world to come here, First Things crowd thinks it can make a purse of that sow's ear

White. Anglo. Saxon. Protestant.

Jonah Goldberg, Charles Cooke and NATIONAL REVIEW have it all wrong: The Founders' modest goal was to keep CHRISTIANS from killing each other

The Conservative Divide:

The post-liberals think that Enlightenment-based liberalism is the disease afflicting society because it has no answer for how people should live. They have a point: It is not a religion or moral philosophy. But it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, as National Review’s Charles Cooke rightly put it, classical liberalism was a system designed to keep people of different religions from killing each other.

This is hubris, but not American hubris. America wasn't about people of different religions, broadly conceived. To say otherwise remains the Big Lie of contemporary liberalism.

The Founders sought to create a unique home for mostly English Christian diversity, which meant Protestantism in relation to Catholicism, where its citizens would "assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them". 

Classical liberalism in America was as much a creature of Protestant Christianity as it was of the Enlightenment. It wouldn't have existed without the unique history and interaction of the two phenomena. By importing non-Christian religion into the Founders' equation as liberals do today, however, private hostility among Christians has been all but replaced by public hostility toward Christians. Some parties actually want to kill Christians just as much as some Protestants and Catholics once upon a time wanted to kill each other. Some think that's actually their plan.

It's been a recipe for disaster, and we're living it more and more.

It was a difficult enough game of chess before non-Christianity got introduced. The history of Protestant-Catholic relations in America proves that. But now it's 3-D chess, and very few can play that game, or want to.

But the last person who is going to reset this game board, touted by Goldberg, is the atheist George Will, an open borders libertarian who wants any and every immigrant who can get here to come here. Nor, frankly, will the Catholic enthusiasts at First Things Magazine be of much help. They are not inspired by American sensibilities, by definition, and represent Protestantism's fiercest theological opponents and are at the same time Catholic illegal immigrants' most practical defenders. Their loyalty is plain. All the ills of America and the West they blame on both the Enlightenment and Protestantism.

Both of these parties, ostensibly opposed to each other, seem to agree on one thing: reducing the Protestants to minority status.  

The hatred for what we were and what we are, coming from our supposed allies on the right, should astonish more Republican voters.

Jews now have Israel, thanks to the West. They should move there. Muslims have Arabia, and much more. We don't need them here. Catholics have Rome.

America is the once and future home of Protestantism. Everyone deserves a home.

Erick Erickson is still too wet behind the ears to appreciate how National Review made purging conservatives from the movement its persona, Twitter just puts that on steroids

Catholics excommunicate. Protestants self-excommunicate. Get with it, Erick.

 

 

 

 

 

National Review’s Own Struggle With “Ideological Diversity”:

For Murray Rothbard, the history of National Review was largely a story of exclusion. “And so the purges began,” Rothbard recounted in a 1992 article. “One after another, Buckley and the National Review purged and excommunicated all the radicals, all the nonrespectables. Consider the roll call: isolationists (such as John T. Flynn), anti-Zionists, libertarians, Ayn Randians, the John Birch Society, and all those who continued, like the early National Review, to dare to oppose Martin Luther King and the civil-rights revolution after Buckley had changed and decided to embrace it.” 

That policy of excommunication continued to the present. Over the years, the magazine has fired or stopped publishing figures like Joseph Sobran (an editor who should have been fired for his anti-Semitism and racism but was not let go until criticizing Buckley in 1993), Peter Brimelow (an editor who was excessively anti-immigrant) and Ann Coulter (who was fired in 2001 after writing a column arguing saying that the United States should “invade [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”).

Western civilization wasn't built on the "Judeo-Christian" heritage until the "Judeo" was added in the mid-20th century

The addition of "Judeo" is largely due to the post-war victors' response to and feelings of guilt for the Holocaust, but is also bound up with the post-war enthusiasm for ecumenism which remembered how Protestants and Catholics of many stripes fought side by side with Jews in the allied forces of the west to defeat Hitler.

The France which started to build the Notre Dame Cathedral in about 1160 thought so little of Jews it took away their property and expelled them from time to time.

Richard Spencer associates himself with Catholic anti-Protestantism, so he might as well be Conservatism Inc.

Here.

Did Billy Cunningham mention the Trumpster's lousy February jobs number last night?

If he did I must have missed it.

20,000 jobs in February, worst performance in 9 years, but Billy Cunningham blathered on about how socialism fails and how Americans enjoy a high standard of living because of great companies like Kroger, Amazon and Walmart. No mention of this huge anomaly in the Trumpster's so-called economic boom.

I can remember when Walmart was widely perceived as the enemy by wide swaths of America because it destroyed mom and pop stores wherever it decided to leave its giant footprint. Walmart defended itself against this opposition with its "Buy American" policy, but those days are long gone now. Walmart and Amazon are now storefronts for Communist China and the globalism which took away America's best jobs for ordinary folks. And the tax breaks generally provided by state and local governments these days to get big businesses to locate where they are is hardly capitalism, but favoritism, state capitalism and fascism. Too much of American life is now the people vs. government and business allied together against them.

But more to the point is that Billy Cunningham's idea of a great America is an America that consumes, whereas the Protestant ethic which truly made America great was the one where people saved, invested and consumed beneath their means. I guess that ethic is not part of the Sunday homily at Billy's church.

It has been because of losing touch with this real meaning and practice of capitalism which has produced the moribund economic conditions where socialism now appears more attractive to growing numbers of Americans for whom capitalism-light has failed to deliver.

Too bad Billy doesn't really get it.  

The New Republic attacks The Jew Howard Schultz for getting The Protestant debt religion

Which teaches that real capitalism is about risking savings, not about leveraging debt.

It's The New Republic which has learned nothing, not Howard Schultz. As usual the liberals engage in projection of their own failings onto their enemies. 

Howard Schultz Learned All the Wrong Lessons From His Childhood:

Without savings—and with his mother seven months’ pregnant—the family was forced to rely on Jewish Family Services. Later, when debt collectors called their home, Schultz’s parents would put him on the phone to turn them away; when the family ran out of money, they sent him out to family and friends to ask for loans.  

Like all liberals, Beto O'Rourke is mistaken about human nature

Beto O'Rourke's immigration plan: No wall but no specifics:

"I trust the wisdom of people. And I'm confident - especially after having traveled Texas for two years - people are good, fundamentally, and if given the choice to do the right thing, they will. To do the good thing, they will," he said, referring to his unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign while giving a walking tour of El Paso and its Mexican sister city, Juarez.

People are not fundamentally good. Nor are they basically evil. Human nature is irreducibly mixed. If people were fundamentally good we wouldn't need laws or government at all, or lawyers, judges, courts and prisons. If they were basically evil the possibility that is America never would have presented itself to history, and monarchy would still be called for. America is the gift of English dissenting Protestantism.

All our political problems remain spiritual ones. There is no freedom without self-control.

Jerusalem Post boasts 6% of the new Congress is Jewish, complains Christians are over-represented

Wait until it's full of Muslim motherf*ckers and then see how you like it.

There are 34 Jews in the House and Senate, which is 6.4% of the total 535. All but two are Democrats.

JEWISH REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS NOW THREE TIMES THAT OF NATION AS WHOLE:

Congress as a whole is overwhelmingly Christian — even more so than the country. Seventy-one percent of Americans identify as Christian, compared to 88 percent of Congress. Both Protestants and Catholics are over-represented on Capitol Hill.