Michael Anton, Publius Decius Mus, is back, and it's still Flight 93

After “Is 2020 another ‘Flight 93 election?’” the question I most often hear is “What happens if Trump loses?”

  

The answer to the first question, unfortunately, is yes, but more so. 

 

The rest.

Michael Anton rightly rejects birthright citizenship

Here.

The author of Bronze Age Mindset and its review by Michael Anton both seem to miss its thesis actually unfolding in our time

Are the kids (alt)right?:

To paraphrase Woody Allen (whom, I hasten to add, BAP does not quote), life wants what it wants. What does it want? At the upper reaches, among the higher animals (BAP is relentlessly hierarchical), what it wants is mastery of “owned space.” “Owned space” is the most important concept introduced in Part One and the key to understanding the rest of the “exhortation,” if not necessarily the rest of the book. BAP argues that life, fundamentally, is a “struggle for space.” All life seeks to develop its powers and master the surrounding matter and space to the maximum extent possible. For the lower species, this simply means mass reproduction and enlarging habitat. For the higher animals, it means controlling terrain, dominating other species, dominating the weaker specimens within your own species, getting first dibs on prey and choice of mates, and so on. BAP sees no fundamental distinction between living in harmony with nature and mastering nature. All animals seek to master their environments to the extent that they can, and the nature of man, or of man at his best—the highest man—is to seek to master nature itself. Not in the Aristotelian sense of understanding the whole, nor in the Baconian sense of “the relief of man’s estate” via technology and plenty; more to assert and exert his own power. Indeed, BAP posits an inner kinship between the genuine scientist and the warrior; he calls the former “monsters of will.” ...

Early modernity actually offered the higher types vast opportunities to explore and conquer new space. Thus bugdom is not caused or defined by science and technology. To the contrary: science and tech at their best can form a kind of frontier that allows for man’s higher motives to find vent when and where space is constrained. For BAP, science in modern times is, or should be, a manifestation of the will to conquer space.

Sheesh, ever heard of SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic? The highest men are already there, diligently working to master heaven itself.

Stop the preening and get with the program.

Publius Decius Mus exits the Trump Administration

Michael Anton.

Story here.

Noted in passing: Publius Decius Mus is Michael Anton, appointed by Trump to the NSC

Reported here. Anton, no surprise, cops to being a devoted Straussian.

The best part about the interview is that he thought Bill Kristol was his friend, until Kristol insinuated that Anton was a Nazi.

Kristolnicht. The guy can't be all bad, then.

Publius Decius Mus eviscerates libertarian James Pethokoukis as a mere leftist materialist, calls him a traitor

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Here are some excerpts, but read the whole thing:

'In the leftist-Hegelian hive mind of which Pethokoukis is but one drone, the benefits of mass immigration and open trade are true simply; therefore popular objections are illegitimate. ... Pethokoukis ... has absorbed the core premises of the Left. “That’s racist!” This points to one of the deepest problems with “conservative intellectualism.” It accepts, out of conviction or fear or both, every restriction the Left places on it. The left rules out-of-bounds any discussion of the cultural or political effects of immigration as “racist,” and the conservatives go along. Hence they can only talk about immigration in economic terms, as if human beings were widgets.

'In fact, this particular intellectual rot defines almost all of “conservatism.” It’s allowed the Left to bully the Right out of talking or thinking about so many subjects that all conservatives can rouse themselves to address any more is the economy. They rationalize such a narrow focus by insisting economics trumps all. But the root is fear. Or was. Fear may have caused the initial retreat, but younger “conservatives” raised in the faith actually believe every line of the Leftist creed. Except the parts about redistribution, because Hayek. Also, the donors don’t like it. ,,,

'Like all self-castrated “conservatives,” Pethokoukis goes right along. Whether out of fear or conviction doesn’t even matter anymore.

'Either way, he—and all the others like him—are obstacles to the near- and long-term project of saving what’s left of American and Western civilization. To climb out of the hole we’re in, we don’t need liberals, we don’t need cowards, and we don’t need traitors.'

Publius Decius Mus rightly mocks Mark Levin's convention of the states

Not in so many words, but he does nevertheless, here:

"[I]n the federally consolidated super-state, what good do state legislatures do anyway? Does Voegeli or doesn’t he agree with me that federal and administrative state control will become more consolidated rather than less in Clinton II? We could have every statehouse in the nation, and everything we try to do (which, once again, is: not much) would just be overridden by judges and bureaucrats."

It was amusing to hear Mark Levin play an Antonin Scalia audio this evening, in which Scalia ridiculed the parchment barrier of The Bill of Rights, which Levin's grand scheme is to increase the length of with his manifold "liberty amendments". Does Levin even listen to Scalia, or just grovel at his feet?

Scalia clearly expressed in the audio that the separation of powers was key to our liberties, not the Bill of Rights.

Yet, yet, neither Scalia, nor Levin, nor Publius Decius Mus for that matter recognize that it was Abraham Lincoln, their hero!, who destroyed the separation of powers and arrogated all the power to the executive, the very heart and soul of the once and future "federal and administrative state".

That Lincoln did so over slavery was simply the pretext.

Hello Barack Obama. Hello Black Lives Matter. Hello . . . communism.

Publius Decius Mus imagines there is a transcendence which is outside of religion

Yes, there is. They used to call it "idolatry".

In any event, this excerpt shows that Decius simply fails to take the Protestantism of the American Founding seriously. One could blame the Founders for being too particular in this regard, but that's a different topic altogether.

Here:

The Old Right was, in my view, too particular in that it tried to base everything on tradition, on kith and kin, blood and soil and so on. It rejected any transcendence (beyond the religious) as “universalist” and liberal. This is my ultimate problem with Kirk, Bradford and the like.  They want to say that certain things are good while rejecting any fundamental, permanent ground for the good.  The New Right swung way to the other direction and insists on universals and sees all particulars—at least when asserted by Americans and Europeans—as insular and racist. The truth is that both are true in their sphere and both are necessary. Restoring a proper relationship between the universal and the particular is in my view the paramount theoretical challenge for whatever it is that follows conservatism.

Publius Decius Mus responds effectively to some of his critics, but his own words still condemn him

Namely, these (here):

[Trump] is not playing his assigned role of gentlemanly loser the way McCain and Romney did, and may well have tapped into some previously untapped sentiment that he can ride to victory. This is a problem for both the Right and the Left. The professional Right (correctly) fears that a Trump victory will finally make their irrelevance undeniable. The Left knows that so long as Republicans kept playing by the same rules and appealing to the same dwindling base of voters, there was no danger. Even if one of the old breed had won, nothing much would have changed, since their positions on the most decisive issues were effectively the same as the Democrats and because they posed no serious challenge to the administrative state.

Well, so long as you accept the income tax, Decius, as you clearly do in your Flight 93 Election essay, YOU pose no serious challenge to the administrative state, either.

And secondly, you don't even recognize the fact that, or the reasons why, our "representative institutions" stopped being representative a long time ago. Conservatism today, including yours, does not recognize that the income tax is essential to funding the administrative state, and it does not recognize that our representatives are remote from the people by design from the 1920s. 

Trump is adequate for the moment, and necessary if there is to yet be a chance to fix these problems, but there is no one, no one, who is really working politically to restore the Republic either by cutting it down to size or by expanding the input of the sovereign people to a level imagined by the constitution. The people may yet have their day on immigration and trade because of Trump, but after Trump, what?

What an Obama has done by fiat can be undone by a Trump. But that buys you four, maybe eight, years. And then? The next president can undo it, and probably will.

That means we already live under a tyranny.

Conservatism Inc. doesn't have a clue, and neither do you.

Publius Decius Mus has appeared before, at The Unz Review, and had his own blog

Before his Claremont piece, Publius Decius Mus made an appearance in March at The Unz Review, here, and had his own blog, here, since shut down after only four months of operation.

Publius Decius Mus is getting bashed here and there for writing anonymously . . .

. . . but it's a fine old American, patriotic and anti-federalist tradition, as explained here.

Lefty Damon Linker thinks "The Flight 93 Election" is radical when it's hardly radical enough

The "conservative" world conceived of by the author of "The Flight 93 Election" isn't radical, it's unimaginative.

Being the good leftist that he his, however, Damon Linker senses the inherent weakness and flogs the man as a "reactionary" just for thinking about getting his feet wet, almost daring the author to defend what he knows he probably would not.

Struggling swimmer in the water. Shark arrives. 

The weakness of the anonymous author, Publius Decius Mus, is illustrated by the closing which imagines what actually lassoing the moon would look like in his mind: a return to constitutionalism, limited government and a top marginal income tax rate of 28%. Really?

You won't get either of the first two while keeping the third. And the income tax wasn't "constitutional". 

It doesn't occur to our anonymous author that through the income tax is how big government in this country made a big splash in the first place, and that it was necessary for progressives to eradicate the constitution's self-limitation expressed in its direct taxation handcuffs in order to achieve that big government.

In effect repudiating "constitutionalism" was necessary. And that's what the progressive era achieved, sweeping away the defenses of the constitution through the amendment process, bringing us woman's suffrage, the direct election of senators and the income tax. It made the country sick enough, but only enough to cut off the fourth leg of the progressive stool by repealing Prohibition.

So it works both ways. We can change our minds. The task of conservatism in our time ought to be to wake up the country to the possibilities of more repeal, to the conviction that we can correct our mistakes, whether it's the income tax, direct election of senators, or the vote of 18-year olds. And to the possibilities of ratification, say of Article the First.

Being "reactionary" isn't a bug, it's a feature, and thoroughly American.

Unless you're a communist. Or Damon Linker. But I repeat myself.

Dear Rush Limbaugh: Publius Decius Mus doesn't get it at all, and neither do you

From the conclusion of the anonymous conservative intellectual, here:

"The possibilities would seem to be: Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse, or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see … which, since nothing human lasts forever, at some point will give way to one of the other three. Oh, and, I suppose, for those who like to pour a tall one and dream big, a second American Revolution that restores Constitutionalism, limited government, and a 28% top marginal rate."

A 28% top marginal rate?

He must be kidding.

The income tax is the cornerstone of the contemporary part of the anti-American revolution which made big government and rabid anti-constitutionalism not just possible but plausible. The 16th Amendment shredded the intent of the Founders, so why not shred the rest? They have, and they will.

Dreaming big means shedding the shredding, and along with that the imperial presidency and the Leviathan State implied by that, which was bequeathed to us by Abraham Lincoln.

But the followers of Harry Jaffa will never be able to imagine that, which makes them nothing more than the hollow men of Conservatism Inc.