I often wonder if AC realizes that the “new” right/MAGA are the elites of today. They’ve dominated their party for over a decade, nominated their founder and intellectual lodestar for president three consecutive times, and control the entire federal government, again. They long ago excommunicated the former elites who they obsessively charge with “catastrophic failure”. So, when exactly will the time come that they accept responsibility? Aren’t the actions of those in charge today far more relevant than those kicked out of the party years ago? Perhaps the grievance and blame are more lucrative fundraising tactics, and much easier than taking responsibility for the government they run?
Let's focus on the agenda of the “new” right elites of today, not the long gone agenda of the elites of yore. MAGA’s disastrous Middle East war, Don’s rampant corruption, random taco tariffs, RFK’s science denial, rising inflation, record setting deficit spending, the America Alone strategery, the fixation on political retribution, Don’s drive to plaster his name/photo on random inanimate objects, and the general gaslighting of the movement’s own members all seem a tad more relevant. Perhaps it's time for a new "new" right, this one has become stale after their decade plus in power.
Republicans have spent the last decade ignoring Trumps corruption and manifest unfitness for the presidency. They have directly caused America’s decline.
“We reject chaos and corruption.” - author of this very dour and verbose article.
We had a centrist, salt of the earth leader once who stated, “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it. They just don’t want to see crazy stuff.” He was raised by a single mother and his maternal grandparents who were from the absolute center of our country-Kansas. I agree with the statement.
However the author of this article seems way too absorbed by national media and headlines. In my opinion their mental state would benefit greatly from spending time in local communities reporting on how average non-ELITE folks are working productively to maintain civic responsibilities throughout this good nation.
Are there problems to be addressed? Yes. I’ll give solutions to three of our biggest.
1. National healthcare for all our citizens who have a new citizenship ID this administration has been rattling on about.
2. A six month long publicly funded(yes with tax dollars) election season. Goodbye “citizens united” & special interest money.
3. Fair tax code to close loopholes and get rid of the dynastic wealth system we have currently. Inheritocracy was not what our founders had in mind! Oligarchs- Musk, Zuckerburg, Bezos just to name a few pay no (as in $0) income taxes. In fact one year, Bezos RECEIVED $4000 for the Child Tax Credit!!! Yes it should be criminal. How? You might ask… their motto is “Salaries are for Suckers!” They borrow against their assets, do not take any income and pay no tax. They never sell and when passing the wealth on do “step up in basis” strategy to avoid paying their share!!!
Great plan - and who is the author of this essay? It's a mite long on soaring rhetoric and lacking the economic argument I usually expect from this group.....
I find myself agreeing with Karl. If I am stepping in mud today I do not curse the storm from last month. The search for blame for blames sake never brings about needed change. Rehashing the past is for political wonks. We need answers today.
AC speaks incorrectly and stereotypically of "our aging society that has lost its ambition, its appetite for risk, and its interest in the future". Far from it! Look no farther than the recent political rallies to bring congress back into it's role of checks and balances. Questioning the impartiality of Supreme Court Justices. Asking fiscal conservatives to reign in debt. Is this lack of interest in our combined future?
The majority of participants at the rallies I have attended are largely from this "aging society". I will volunteer at the elections office knowing there could be danger, subscribe to Compass in an effort to broaden my horizon and put my talents to work where I can see a difference. Ageing is not a disease or a place of mental stagnation.
"What happened to our citizenship? The American elites..."
Aristotle believed that only a individuals who have mastered personal self-government (virtue) can ever be capable of its collective form (democracy). John Adams believed that too. They were right.
Our elites did not do this do us. We did it to ourselves. We chose maximal individual autonomy over virtue (that's John Stuart Mill's Harm Principle). We chose to stop worrying about God and sin and right and wrong so we could focus on making money (that's Locke's Enlightenment tradeoff in 1 sentence.)
Did our elites help us? Absolutely! They stood to make the most money off the deal. But the embrace of Locke and Mill (and the dethroning of virtue) was broad.
Scott, the best most lasting and equitable progress comes from an evolutionary process, not revolution, and from the middle to upper middle classes of people. The rich and the poor very rarely contribute any lasting so called porgress. Read your history first before you respond please.
Agreed, but it always starts from the left. The main purpose of conservatism over the decades has been to “regulate” the speed of change, always asking “Are we sure we want to go there?” It’s an important role, but has long since disappeared.
And that's why a great many people abandoned what passed as "conservative" for so many decades and started something new.
I understand why someone of the Left preferred the older system, but it failed precisely because it wasn't "conservative" at all: it failed to conserve anything.
So now, for the first time since about 1940, we have 2 parties that are seeking to create 2 different, rival visions of the world.
No, we have one party with a vision, and one with an idea we can go back to when white males ruled everything. Trouble is, most of us have been there, done that and want no part of it. That’s not conservative, it’s white supremacist and is bullshit.
You just described the old, failed conservativism perfectly -- George Will "standing athwart history yelling 'stop'!" In reality, Will wasn't really standing in front of the train yelling "stop" but beside the track muttering "slow down a little, pretty please." (Hence that "regulate the pace of change" thing you mentioned.)
I agree with you 100%: that movement failed. Today's conservatives have abandoned it for precisely that reason.
For the first time in my lifetime, there are real rival political parties in America: one espousing Jacques Derrida and the other Edmund Burke. (The fact that most of the members of each party have no idea who either of those people are doesn't change the philosophical framework each embraces.)
I think what you're reacting so strongly to is that everyone is post-liberal now. The Left is all in on a racial and sexual grievance hierarchy; the Right is fantasizing about Caesarism. There's no major political group articulating the ideals of John Locke or J.S. Mill, because those ideas are predicated on a shared moral framework that no longer exists.
Depends on the idea, I suppose. Christianity as written is based on ideas that are further left than anything that exists today. Christianity as practiced isn’t even a real religion.
Shared citizenship requires a shared commitment to something. The Left hates America. They hate Christianity. They reject any shared moral framework. I do not see how one can share citizenship with such a group of people.
I'll certainly not hold Trump up as a moral examplar. But considering the incompetence and corruption, I won't hold Biden up either. Clanking your rosary doesn't make you holy. The Pharisees were really good at public rosary clanking (or the ancient Jewish equivalent).
Jimmy Carter. The last great moral examplar we had as President. And unfortunately, not a particularly good President.
Oh no. The Left absolutely hates Christianity, or rather it hates Christians who actually read the Bible and attempt to live their life in accordance with God's moral law and their church tradition.
The Left loves Christians that say "God is love", wave their rainbow flags, and preach social justice instead of sin. Unitarianism is the Left's kind of church. But those churches are dying because a god who makes no demands isn't worth anyone's time.
For a great dicussion of this, read Aaron Renn's "3 Worlds of Evangelism" article in First Things. The Right is still in Neutral World; the Left jumped to Negative World about 2015.
Without a vibrant and active Congress passing legislation focused on the problems of the day, governance by any Administration devolves into Authoritarian rule guided by its worldview alone.
To rekindle such a Congress, differences of opinion should no longer be allowed to hide behind claiming to be the truth of the matter rather than just a perspective on the situation at hand.
If you would like to see actual results from this discussion, any committee in Congress could produce them by its members actually listening to and acknowledging the views of those they disagree with.
Congress doesn't dare right now - they all owe their seats to Trump, which is actually part of our political process. The voters love the president and it's the power of their vote that's keeping Congress in lockstep.
Trump is a symptom of our collective handbasket to hell at the moment - if we can ever bring back some good paying jobs for ordinary people, we'd be immune to his "charms," but since that is an insanely enormous "if" at this point, we'll surely have to keep putting up with the occasional demagogue.
From the Industrial Revolution onward, humanity has seen too many dramatic advances to even measure or understand them, as we’re still in the midst of that change. Yearning to return to yesteryear is a fool’s errand.
Family? It's based on survival. When governments fail which, they always do the family unit keeps life going. This is where procreation comes in. Life continues.
Religion? One has to have a religion or belief system or creed to exist. This is religion. If you like believe in the Navajo Indian concept of creation and religion. We came up from the ground to be created. Whatever, but you gotta believe in something or your finished, you can't stay alive. This is where suicide becomes so prevalent and why it's so high in the west.
Nihilism, belief in nothing. It doesn't work. Old Soviet Union is a latest prime example.
The university = The "New Religion" (religion of nihilism)
Loved, LOVED Reclaiming American Citizenship. We’ve lost an entire generation of momentum! Yet we all know this will take more than an eloquent assessment of our national problems and an earnest desire for reform. We need a roadmap of actions to take that transcends current political ideologies, and a realistic plan to measure results of those actions.
The size of the rock we have to push, the steepness of hill it has to move, and the persistence of the one-world elites pushing against us at the institutional level, make for the most difficult of challenges.
I often wonder if AC realizes that the “new” right/MAGA are the elites of today. They’ve dominated their party for over a decade, nominated their founder and intellectual lodestar for president three consecutive times, and control the entire federal government, again. They long ago excommunicated the former elites who they obsessively charge with “catastrophic failure”. So, when exactly will the time come that they accept responsibility? Aren’t the actions of those in charge today far more relevant than those kicked out of the party years ago? Perhaps the grievance and blame are more lucrative fundraising tactics, and much easier than taking responsibility for the government they run?
Let's focus on the agenda of the “new” right elites of today, not the long gone agenda of the elites of yore. MAGA’s disastrous Middle East war, Don’s rampant corruption, random taco tariffs, RFK’s science denial, rising inflation, record setting deficit spending, the America Alone strategery, the fixation on political retribution, Don’s drive to plaster his name/photo on random inanimate objects, and the general gaslighting of the movement’s own members all seem a tad more relevant. Perhaps it's time for a new "new" right, this one has become stale after their decade plus in power.
Meanwhile, time to suck it up buttercup.
Republicans have spent the last decade ignoring Trumps corruption and manifest unfitness for the presidency. They have directly caused America’s decline.
Agree. Demagogues are inevitable, the capitulation of societal elites is not.
Stop
Karl? What?
“We reject chaos and corruption.” - author of this very dour and verbose article.
We had a centrist, salt of the earth leader once who stated, “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it. They just don’t want to see crazy stuff.” He was raised by a single mother and his maternal grandparents who were from the absolute center of our country-Kansas. I agree with the statement.
However the author of this article seems way too absorbed by national media and headlines. In my opinion their mental state would benefit greatly from spending time in local communities reporting on how average non-ELITE folks are working productively to maintain civic responsibilities throughout this good nation.
Are there problems to be addressed? Yes. I’ll give solutions to three of our biggest.
1. National healthcare for all our citizens who have a new citizenship ID this administration has been rattling on about.
2. A six month long publicly funded(yes with tax dollars) election season. Goodbye “citizens united” & special interest money.
3. Fair tax code to close loopholes and get rid of the dynastic wealth system we have currently. Inheritocracy was not what our founders had in mind! Oligarchs- Musk, Zuckerburg, Bezos just to name a few pay no (as in $0) income taxes. In fact one year, Bezos RECEIVED $4000 for the Child Tax Credit!!! Yes it should be criminal. How? You might ask… their motto is “Salaries are for Suckers!” They borrow against their assets, do not take any income and pay no tax. They never sell and when passing the wealth on do “step up in basis” strategy to avoid paying their share!!!
Great plan - and who is the author of this essay? It's a mite long on soaring rhetoric and lacking the economic argument I usually expect from this group.....
Just me… no AI (im a gen x so i group up learning to compose my own thoughts)
Fyi- im a public middle school teacher for English and History.
Oops i didn’t write the essay just the reply:)
Yes, I was riffing on your reference to the author of this article. It just says "guest column" and doesn't sound like the usual AC biz...
I find myself agreeing with Karl. If I am stepping in mud today I do not curse the storm from last month. The search for blame for blames sake never brings about needed change. Rehashing the past is for political wonks. We need answers today.
AC speaks incorrectly and stereotypically of "our aging society that has lost its ambition, its appetite for risk, and its interest in the future". Far from it! Look no farther than the recent political rallies to bring congress back into it's role of checks and balances. Questioning the impartiality of Supreme Court Justices. Asking fiscal conservatives to reign in debt. Is this lack of interest in our combined future?
The majority of participants at the rallies I have attended are largely from this "aging society". I will volunteer at the elections office knowing there could be danger, subscribe to Compass in an effort to broaden my horizon and put my talents to work where I can see a difference. Ageing is not a disease or a place of mental stagnation.
.
"What happened to our citizenship? The American elites..."
Aristotle believed that only a individuals who have mastered personal self-government (virtue) can ever be capable of its collective form (democracy). John Adams believed that too. They were right.
Our elites did not do this do us. We did it to ourselves. We chose maximal individual autonomy over virtue (that's John Stuart Mill's Harm Principle). We chose to stop worrying about God and sin and right and wrong so we could focus on making money (that's Locke's Enlightenment tradeoff in 1 sentence.)
Did our elites help us? Absolutely! They stood to make the most money off the deal. But the embrace of Locke and Mill (and the dethroning of virtue) was broad.
I reject a common citizenship with leftists.
That’s too bad. All progress comes from the left.
Scott, the best most lasting and equitable progress comes from an evolutionary process, not revolution, and from the middle to upper middle classes of people. The rich and the poor very rarely contribute any lasting so called porgress. Read your history first before you respond please.
Agreed, but it always starts from the left. The main purpose of conservatism over the decades has been to “regulate” the speed of change, always asking “Are we sure we want to go there?” It’s an important role, but has long since disappeared.
And that's why a great many people abandoned what passed as "conservative" for so many decades and started something new.
I understand why someone of the Left preferred the older system, but it failed precisely because it wasn't "conservative" at all: it failed to conserve anything.
So now, for the first time since about 1940, we have 2 parties that are seeking to create 2 different, rival visions of the world.
No, we have one party with a vision, and one with an idea we can go back to when white males ruled everything. Trouble is, most of us have been there, done that and want no part of it. That’s not conservative, it’s white supremacist and is bullshit.
You just described the old, failed conservativism perfectly -- George Will "standing athwart history yelling 'stop'!" In reality, Will wasn't really standing in front of the train yelling "stop" but beside the track muttering "slow down a little, pretty please." (Hence that "regulate the pace of change" thing you mentioned.)
I agree with you 100%: that movement failed. Today's conservatives have abandoned it for precisely that reason.
For the first time in my lifetime, there are real rival political parties in America: one espousing Jacques Derrida and the other Edmund Burke. (The fact that most of the members of each party have no idea who either of those people are doesn't change the philosophical framework each embraces.)
I think what you're reacting so strongly to is that everyone is post-liberal now. The Left is all in on a racial and sexual grievance hierarchy; the Right is fantasizing about Caesarism. There's no major political group articulating the ideals of John Locke or J.S. Mill, because those ideas are predicated on a shared moral framework that no longer exists.
Ok then but how far left???
Depends on the idea, I suppose. Christianity as written is based on ideas that are further left than anything that exists today. Christianity as practiced isn’t even a real religion.
Shared citizenship requires a shared commitment to something. The Left hates America. They hate Christianity. They reject any shared moral framework. I do not see how one can share citizenship with such a group of people.
You got your church going, rosary clanking Joe Biden contrasted to the current irreligious and irreverent man in the White House.
I'll certainly not hold Trump up as a moral examplar. But considering the incompetence and corruption, I won't hold Biden up either. Clanking your rosary doesn't make you holy. The Pharisees were really good at public rosary clanking (or the ancient Jewish equivalent).
Jimmy Carter. The last great moral examplar we had as President. And unfortunately, not a particularly good President.
So seem to be admitting that the Left does not hate Christianity but banging Stormy is not so bad.
Oh no. The Left absolutely hates Christianity, or rather it hates Christians who actually read the Bible and attempt to live their life in accordance with God's moral law and their church tradition.
The Left loves Christians that say "God is love", wave their rainbow flags, and preach social justice instead of sin. Unitarianism is the Left's kind of church. But those churches are dying because a god who makes no demands isn't worth anyone's time.
For a great dicussion of this, read Aaron Renn's "3 Worlds of Evangelism" article in First Things. The Right is still in Neutral World; the Left jumped to Negative World about 2015.
YOUR Christianity has no room for Christ, having been pushed out by Trump and hate.
Without a vibrant and active Congress passing legislation focused on the problems of the day, governance by any Administration devolves into Authoritarian rule guided by its worldview alone.
To rekindle such a Congress, differences of opinion should no longer be allowed to hide behind claiming to be the truth of the matter rather than just a perspective on the situation at hand.
If you would like to see actual results from this discussion, any committee in Congress could produce them by its members actually listening to and acknowledging the views of those they disagree with.
Congress doesn't dare right now - they all owe their seats to Trump, which is actually part of our political process. The voters love the president and it's the power of their vote that's keeping Congress in lockstep.
Trump is a symptom of our collective handbasket to hell at the moment - if we can ever bring back some good paying jobs for ordinary people, we'd be immune to his "charms," but since that is an insanely enormous "if" at this point, we'll surely have to keep putting up with the occasional demagogue.
Nice long essay. Project? Outputs? Outcomes?
Best of luck from well wishers across the pond in the UK.
Too bad you have naysayers and despondency pedellers, see below, as we do.
From the Industrial Revolution onward, humanity has seen too many dramatic advances to even measure or understand them, as we’re still in the midst of that change. Yearning to return to yesteryear is a fool’s errand.
women have equal rights now
“family” is a concept based in patriarchy and religion, not citizenship, or our constitution
Family? It's based on survival. When governments fail which, they always do the family unit keeps life going. This is where procreation comes in. Life continues.
Religion? One has to have a religion or belief system or creed to exist. This is religion. If you like believe in the Navajo Indian concept of creation and religion. We came up from the ground to be created. Whatever, but you gotta believe in something or your finished, you can't stay alive. This is where suicide becomes so prevalent and why it's so high in the west.
Nihilism, belief in nothing. It doesn't work. Old Soviet Union is a latest prime example.
The university = The "New Religion" (religion of nihilism)
since the photo shows in notes but not the post
https://dontneedtwitter.com/images/pinned/citizen-vs-family-us-constitution.jpg
it’s literally true that the us constitution does not mention “family”, “child”, “wife”, “husband”, “marriage” or “baby”
it uses “citizen” dozens of times
Oh give me a break. This is just stupid.
"There are no “citizens of the world.” Citizenship is restricted and particular, not open and universal."
Sounds like a recipe for war to me.
Loved, LOVED Reclaiming American Citizenship. We’ve lost an entire generation of momentum! Yet we all know this will take more than an eloquent assessment of our national problems and an earnest desire for reform. We need a roadmap of actions to take that transcends current political ideologies, and a realistic plan to measure results of those actions.
The size of the rock we have to push, the steepness of hill it has to move, and the persistence of the one-world elites pushing against us at the institutional level, make for the most difficult of challenges.
Nice Jeremiad.