Charles Krauthammer, America’s Greatest Tory, a Postscript.

Tags

Bill Kristol, Chjarles Krauthammer, Conservatism, Constitution, Donald Trump, Elitism, Elitism and Class, George Will, Richard Brookhiser

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

I wrote the essay that follows in Jan 2015, almost 6 months before Donald Trump announced his candidacy. So read in that context, for the conversation was more about the hard solutions being offered by radicals such as Ted Cruz than the soon to be “clown”, Donald Trump.

Who doesn’t hang on every word of Charles Krauthammer? He is conservatism’s finest wordsmith, the last word on just about every outrage of government for the past 15 years. For many, Charles has been America’s Ben Franklin on every public issue, bringing a historic scope to the sociology and psychology of government and politics unmatched by any other commentator.

There’s only one hitch. Ben Franklin went where Charles isn’t willing to go.

Last Friday, while commenting about Mitt Romney getting into the presidential race again, Charles mentioned that if Mitt jumps in, it would split moderate voters (and establishment big money), regretfully hinting that this might, in turn, hand the 2016 nomination to, well you know, one of “them”; any one of a number of wrecking-crew Sam Adams types such as Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, just to name a few. In Charles’ eyes, these are all are unsuitable for that high office, or for that matter, a good game of cribbage over a good port after dinner.

It seems the one thing that separates Dr Krauthammer from Dr Franklin was Ben’s willingness to break with the King and start up a new nation here, risking life, fortune and sacred honor in the process. For Charles, being asked to cast his lot in with common revolutionaries seems to be a bridge too far.

Consequently, we should be more careful about Charles’ strategic advice, for while the finest of analysts, it’s a dead giveaway about where he is unwilling to go, or see America taken. He is not alone, so learn to look for this status preference in other conservatives, from seniors such as George Will, to a host of newbies such as Erick Erickson. Their rice bowls and public reputations are bound up in the survival of the current King, the Washington Establishment, and can be relied on to pull their punches when the Establishment, and their place in it, are placed in jeopardy[…]

Continue Reading

Does Anyone Actually Teach Conservatism Anymore?

Tags

Apologetics, Conservatism, Larry Schweikart, National Review, relevance, Richard Brookhiser, Teaching, The Framers, William F Buckley

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

The miracle of the Founding Fathers was not the Constitution so much that they created a document of self governance for people not of their class, and gave it away freely, no strings attached.

It was a gift!—but only, as Mr Franklin warned, “If we can keep it.”

This had never happened before in human history. I’m not even sure it had ever been contemplated before, but I’ll leave that for scholars to set the record straight.

This opening line opens up various forks in the road, several lines of inquiry, among them class as the Founders viewed it in the Colonies versus the rest of the educated world, and by comparison, in today’s world. Both are worthy of inquiry in light of what conservatism means today.

Then there is the nature of American specialness itself; our view of ourselves as exceptional, against the world’s majority view, held by its governments, based on at least 500o years of human history in which no idea even remotely resembling a government “by the people, for the people and of the people” could ever germinate and take root.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the “specialness of America” has always been viewed through two entirely different lens, one as a freak of nature, to be hated, and the other, as Man’s hope for liberty and rescue from a history of servitude to a master class.

This in turn begs yet another fork, the question: is America a miracle, and if so, from whose hands, the Founders or an Invisible Hand? Or maybe a collaboration? Billy Graham, who just passed away (RIP) believed in the role of an Invisible Hand, he even went so far to call it by Name. And I agree, only, it has been some years since some types of Christians have been invited to discuss this question with the intellectual right. As you know, on the key elements of liberty, I’ve even argued that Science and God are of one accord, than Man-the-animal needs and seeks it because it is survival-enhancing. But over the years I’ve noticed that the so-called intellectual right has never gone through that open door of inquiry.

Still, in all the years Man has trod this earth there has not been known to recorded history any other rising of a nation of peoples who became their own masters. As the lawyers would say, America was a “case of first instance.” And that was 231 years ago, and with our success, you’d have thought that at least some of the rest of the world would have stood in wonderment at what these people in America had wrought, and decided to try it out themselves. True, they paid lip service to many of our institutions, even adopting many of our terms, such as “Democratik”, a popular label from the mid-20th Century, to appease their masses. (“Hypocrisy is the price vice pays to virtue.”) But at no time did those states ever cut the ties between their ruling class and the ruled. In fact, some of the most virulent forms of governance known to history were brought forth in the two centuries since the founding of America, in part because of America’s mere existence and the threat it posed to autocracy’s 5000 year winning streak. (For proof, follow the genesis of modern masters candidates’ theses in the American academy, largely blaming all of society’s ills on the manner of our Founding.)

[…]

Continue Reading

American Exceptionalism or American Freak show?

Tags

Abraham Linclon, American Exceptionalism, Conservatism, Education, race and culture, Richard Brookhiser

Source: Obama White House/Flickr

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

I recently watched an interview of Barack Obama in which he discussed the parallel views of reality in American politics. (It was undated, so I don’t know if it was made during his term in office or part of his post-presidency schtik, about the upheaval we’re seeing unfold in America now that Donald Trump has forced those separate realities into bolder relief.

In doing a little research on this single subject “Obama and separate realities in America” I found that this had been a common thread in many of his canned remarks, especially when acting professorial in a one-on-one sit-down.

It dawned on me that Barack Obama is exactly right.

America is divided almost down the middle by two entirely separate realities as to what comprise fundamental fact and truth. Even the most common human equation is determined by who is asserting it, them, or us. And this is no longer restricted to the low-end Twitter troll, it has entered the language of scholarship, especially in soft sciences, but also hard ones, such as climate science, where, no matter which way you lean about the bottom line, the evidentiary road to those conclusions are a minefield, not of misinformation mind you, but of separate realities, where only one can be true in a sane world, but two are clung to, the deciding factor—politics, not science.

This trend only appears recent in hard science, but it is not. What makes it appear new is the cacophony, the rising decibel level, and the curious notion that somehow high school juniors and college freshmen are entitled to equal time in venting their spleens about what “teacher” said. Now in my 70’s I have the advantage of being able to watch what was garage banter over whiskey out of a bottle in the 60s elevated to serious papers presented in symposia in the post-Clinton era, so can suggest we may be in the middle of a “quickening” where everything is about to come to a head, simply because it has to come to a head.

Frederick Hayek, in his 1963 Capitalism and the Historians, which he edited, gave some gravity to the notion that this “two-reality” phenomena has been around a longer time. The essays presented were from the late 1800s, and about the rise of the factory system in Britain. From distinguished economic historians of the era, they showed the highly distorted accounts of the social consequences of that system from Marxist historians, and the inability of the academy or political establishment to ever force a head-to-head confrontation, putting factual cards on the table side-by-side with non-facts.

That is now the norm, and carries with it a giant risk to civilization in that truth has been made captive to the political process, something the Modern Left declared to be their ultimate goal at the time of the Carter election in 1976. “Modern liberalism stands for the proposition that all human behavior shall be subject to the political process.”- Mary McGrory, via an  “Arizona Republic” op-ed. (I remember that day well, for that day was the day I ceased calling myself “liberal”.)

[…]

Continue Reading