Note from the Editors: The following essay is part of our dialogues series – conducted via written exchanges – which aims to bring together the best minds to analyze and debate controversial issues in-depth. This dialogue was prompted in response to a debate between Christopher Rufo & Curtis Yarvin published on IM—1776 in April 2024, and it’s part III of “The American Nation Dialogues“, conducted by Lafayette Lee. (Cover art by Lex Villena.)
Lafayette Lee & Michael Anton discuss the American Revolution & Counterrevolution
Lafayette Lee: In a recent dialogue between Chris Rufo and Curtis Yarvin, Rufo argues that the Founders solved the core problem of classical politics and established the first modern regime. Therefore, many if not most of the problems we face today are a consequence of living in a postmodern world. According to Rufo, we can still walk in the Founders’ footsteps, and in the spirit of pragmatism, solve these problems without abandoning our founding principles. These principles, Rufo insists, are still fundamentally true and only need to be revived to guide us through present difficulties to a better future.
Rufo’s position would have been uncontroversial in the recent past, but it is increasingly difficult to defend today. Americans have slowly come to realize that there is a powerful political bureaucracy in Washington that does not share Rufo’s reverence for our founding principles, and operates outside constitutional constraints and the popular will. In short, our political system has been commandeered by what Yarvin would call an institutional oligarchy.
Is Rufo right to believe that our founding principles remain relevant in the shadow of a permanent and unaccountable oligarchy?
Michael Anton: This is a hard question for me to answer (though not to write about at numbing length). I was so to speak “raised in the faith” — that is, the Claremont faith, or now the Claremont-Hillsdale faith. I mention that because Rufo’s argument, as presented — and I do not find your summary of the original debate inaccurate — sounds very “Claremontian.” Indeed, Rufo was a Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute in 2017 and remains on friendly terms with us. So I assume he’s getting some of his points at least partly from us.
Anyway, one of the supposed tenets of Claremontism — perhaps its most fundamental tenet — is that the American Founding is perfect, or as close to perfect as any human institution can be, and that it solved problems created in the ancient and medieval worlds. The godfather of our sect, Harry V. Jaffa, after all, wrote a monograph called “The American Founding as the Best Regime,” whose title pretty well sums up its content.
“Best regime” of course refers to the highest theme of classical political philosophy, above all the “city in speech” of Plato’s Republic, but also other similar variations presented in Xenophon, Aristotle, Cicero, &c.
But the thing about the classical best regime is that it’s presented as, if not quite impossible, so improbable as to depend on chance. It’s primarily a thought experiment from which one can learn, perhaps a standard by which to judge actual regimes, but not a practical proposal.
Which only points to another difficulty. This interpretation of the classical best regime was first presented (or re-presented, after being forgotten for centuries) by Leo Strauss, who is foundational to the Claremont school. (Strauss actually taught at Claremont for three terms in the late 1960s.)
One should be able to see the problem immediately: if the best regime cannot be real — is not even presented as a serious possibility — then how can the American Founding, a real-life government, be the best regime?
The “Straussian” world long ago divided on this question (not to mention other, related ones). One side claims to be truer to Strauss and calls Jaffa’s claim in effect a heresy. Jaffa’s most complete defense of his thesis is Chapter 2 of A New Birth of Freedom (2000), in which he shows (or at least sets out to show) that modernity was necessary because of fundamental changes from the early to late antiquity, and from antiquity to the medieval world. I won’t detail all those changes now; I have written about them at length and may do so again in a more systematic way. But in brief, the most important were the Roman conquest of the ancient world, the destruction of the polis as an independent polity, the concomitant extinguishing of liberty and republicanism throughout the West (which meant throughout the world, since both had only ever existed in the West), the rise of Christianity, the subsequent division of Christianity into sects, and the near-universal adoption of hereditary monarchy as the sole legitimate form of government.
Jaffa’s argument is that, with these changes having taken place, the classical best regime — even as a standard by which to judge practical politics — had to be modified to address new circumstances. Even the classics’ more practical proposals, such as those found in Plato’s Laws or Aristotle’s Politics, can’t be ported into the modern world. Strauss himself — the most pro-classical thinker of the last 400 years — declared that we “cannot reasonably expect that a fresh understanding of classical political philosophy will supply us with recipes for today’s use… Only we living today can possibly find a solution to the problems of today.”
Which is, in Jaffa’s account, precisely what the American founders did. This is also “too long and exalted” a matter even to summarize here. Suffice it to say that the American founders were practical men, solving a practical problem, or set of problems, in very real and specific circumstances.
The question at hand is whether their solutions still apply to our times. But before we get to that, I want to address an assertion made in your opening. You write that “Rufo’s position… is increasingly difficult to defend today” because of changes — or let’s just call it what it is, corruption — in the American regime.
But why should that corruption necessarily obsolesce the superior regime which it degraded and supplanted? The only reasonable answer would seem to be that return is impossible. Is it? Maybe, but that conclusion is thus far only presupposed, not elaborated, much less demonstrated.
“Postmodernism” is referenced. I confess I do not know what that is. I nonetheless assert that, whatever it is, we are not in it. As far as I can tell, we still live in the modern world, if in its later stages. Which means that, until something fundamental changes, the founders’ solutions still apply.
I completely agree that “a powerful political bureaucracy in Washington does not share Rufo’s reverence for our founding principles and operates well outside constitutional constraints and the popular will” and that “our political system has been commandeered by… an institutional oligarchy.” Actually, I have some quibbles, but ones that would only strengthen and deepen this hypothesis, so there is no point in belaboring my refinements now. Instead, I ask: how does any of this add up to the necessity, or wisdom, of rejecting the founders?
I see only two ways: first, if it could be demonstrated that the founders’ solution led us to this; second, if it could be demonstrated that there is no possible way back under any circumstances.
I do not believe that either of these demonstrations have been made. If we were convinced that the founders’ regime inevitably led to this, that would be one thing; we would have no choice but to turn to something else. Yet since I do not believe modernity has passed into “postmodernity” or anything else, I do believe that the founding principles remain the best available for us today. Is it even debatable that they would be infinitely better than what we have now? If they’ve been made obsolete, we must know: by what? If they were flawed from the beginning and inevitably brought us to this, that would have to be shown. I have spent more than half a lifetime looking into that claim and find it, to say the least, unevident. I have studied all the major arguments to the contrary. If you think you have something new, have at it; but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it all before.
What of successful restoration? Suppose we “knew” that to be impossible. What then? What new solutions will successfully address the problems of today?
One answer is “monarchy.” Indeed, that is the only real alternative I ever hear mentioned. This is not the place, or at least not the time, to explore monarchy as a viable solution to our present problems. I may do that later; we’ll see what unfolds.
I use the word “real” because another supposed alternative, popular on the “alternative right” or whatever it is called today — namely, a “return to tradition” — is in the American context in fact a return to the founders, who are inescapably our tradition. I have pointed this out dozens of times to “traditionalists” who claim to love tradition but hate “the Enlightenment” and natural rights and therefore the founding. When I show that their tradition to which they appeal does not merely include, but rests on a foundation of all they claim to hate, they just get mad. This is to say nothing of all the other theoretical and practical problems that traditionalists ignore or gloss over.
The central question is, to repeat, can we go back? I think this is actually two questions. The first is: Are the founding principles still applicable, still the best practicable principles for political organization in the world as it is today? The second is: Is it possible to restore those principles to the United States as it exists today, via its existing political machinery?
I think I have answered the first question. If you need further elaboration, ask yourself this: if the present monstrosity were suddenly to collapse, and somehow you, personally, were influential in deciding what came next, what principles of organization would you recommend? Would you try to declare yourself king? Maybe place the crown on someone else’s head? Would you, as one supremely ignorant yet self-confident blogger has insisted, begin by telling your followers “You have no rights”?
In short, on this point, I think all of us who hate what the modern West has become, were it somehow suddenly to fail, would grasp at straws trying to think of some better way to organize politically other than along the lines of the founding principles. We would have to decide who got to be king and who didn’t, who got to be dukes and who didn’t, who had rights and who didn’t. And so on. And we would have to figure out how to “persuade” those assigned an inferior position that it was all somehow just, that they and theirs — and their heirs, in perpetuity — “deserved” it, on which basis, I know not what, since the partisans of this approach reject nature as a standard of justice with vehemence. It’s all really a mess, when you think about it, which hardly anyone does, least of all those who talk about it the most.
The second question is a lot trickier, and I confess that on this one I am pessimistic. That should come as no surprise to anyone who reads me: my reputation as a doomer is not entirely undeserved.
But it seems to me that the way you posed his question elides the two considerations, to Rufo’s disadvantage. I have no doubt that Rufo stands with me on the answer to Question One. Nor do I have much doubt that Rufo is more optimistic than I am on Question Two. But the way the original question is posed, even a semi-optimistic answer can be spun to make Rufo look naïve, or worse. “Lol, Junior Boomer thinks we can vote our way out of this mess.” Or something like that.
Maybe we can’t. But even if we can’t, that doesn’t refute the founders’ political philosophy, much less provide us with a ready-made alternative.
Let me put this another way. Whatever regime or regime principle one might favor — monarchical, republican, aristocratic, oligarchic, democratic, despotic, “classical liberal,” fascist, communist, socialist, communitarian, theocratic, timocratic, gynocritic, kritokratic, kakistocratic, anarchic, you name it — every single one of these has also been tried and failed. Many repeatedly. Even Plato’s best regime fails (in Republic, Book VIII). If one failure, let alone many, is ipso facto proof that the underlying principles “don’t work,” never have and never will, then the sole remaining conclusion is that any and all political organization is impossible.
Yet that is also plainly not true.
What if the truth is that even the best regime is time-limited? “And this too shall pass away.” When something great passes away, it is not necessarily because, in the immortal words of Andrew Cuomo, “It was never that great.” It’s because nothing human — not even the best human things — can last forever.
Hence I question — no, deny — your contention that the present bureaucracy is “permanent.” Nothing man makes is permanent. That beast is, however, certainly unaccountable. For now.
Perhaps we’re living through a period of transition. If so, it would behoove us to think about what to do to secure a better future for ourselves and our posterity. It ill behooves us to look backward, eager to lay blame — and lay waste to wise thoughts and great achievements that could help guide us toward that better future.
Lafayette Lee: Let’s begin with some common ground. I agree that our founding fathers addressed critical problems from the classical and medieval worlds and established the first modern regime. I gladly concede that they were practical men solving practical problems and that their triumph established a constitutional order that has blessed countless generations. I also affirm the existence of a unique American tradition traced back to these men (and beyond), and I reject the accusation that the founders are uniquely responsible for today’s moral and political decay. I believe the solutions to our problems will not be found outside our tradition, and to abandon this inheritance will only invite chaos and ruin.
I also agree that corruption is the central problem with this regime, and I take your point that nothing in politics or government is truly “permanent” – a sobering yet hopeful observation that should inspire ordinary Americans.
So should we submit to corruption? No, of course not. The American tradition requires us to resist. Our country’s independence came at the end of a bitter struggle against a corrupt regime, and our constitutional order and the political machinery you speak of, however deteriorated, were clearly arranged with this danger in mind. But as you point out, the corruption runs deep. We have to contend with a regime that pays lip service to American principles even as it aggressively undermines them. Its corruption degrades our laws, culture, social fabric, and the constitutional order, shaping the way both rulers and the ruled perceive our history, principles, and traditions. I assume you mostly agree with this, which would explain your pessimism about a restoration… a pessimism that I share.
The reason Rufo’s position is increasingly difficult to defend – practically not morally – is that he must compete for legitimacy with the same government established by our framers – a government with almost boundless power, authority, and resources to undermine our traditions and redefine our principles to aid the concentration of power.
So it seems that we are mostly in agreement on the first question. The founding principles and what remains of our culture and traditions are all we really have, but as much as I can admire Claremont’s tenets, they do not play a major role in our politics as far as I can tell… at least in a technical sense. I do not see them reflected in legislation or judicial rulings. Neither political party observes them, and no president in my lifetime has defended them as you have. Instead, our founding principles are treated like campaign slogans, with countless interpretations serving countless interests. Even if we agree that they are the best practicable principles for political organization, they appear to be watered down or mangled everywhere but carefully cultivated intellectual spaces. I do not think these principles can survive without the culture, traditions, and social fabric that originally sustained them. Standing alone they still shine, but without the right conditions and a people who cherish them… well, I have my doubts. My reading of the American Revolution is that these principles were not so much invented or discovered, but inherited and perhaps refined as revolt turned into revolution and independence into establishing a republic. This history makes me optimistic that the principles underlying our political order can be recovered in some way, but as we transform as a people and drift further away from our culture and tradition, I fear that victory – meaning some kind of restoration – will escape us.
That said, even if the path is dark and treacherous, I think we should push ahead. History shows that restoration is not only fundamental to the American tradition and our national mythos but a political possibility even in the shadow of tyranny. I just hope that the corruption hasn’t made us too weak and disoriented to do what needs to be done.
Michael Anton: So we turn now (earlier than I thought we would) to the all-important question of what to do. This question tends to be more interesting to all but the most theoretically-minded readers who, still and all, I have to think are over-represented on IM—1776, but who also urgently want to know what to do now.
That is, to the extent that they don’t already think they know. This is, in my opinion, a particular problem with the anon alt-right (or whatever we want to call them): absolute certainty about things they don’t know, can’t know, and that no one knows.
Not that I can rule out the possible existence of a far-sighted statesman out there who sees the situation with perfect clarity and will emerge to lead us out of the darkness and into the promised land. But if that person exists, I have no idea who he is and have never come across his writings. None of the things I have read in the last decade or so — even the very good things — demonstrate that their authors know what to do or have thought of something original or practicable that hasn’t occurred to anyone else. This is why in a recent book review I urged circumspection on the right. People on our side need to stop braying that they know everything, that everyone else is an idiot, and that all the thinking and practice of the great men of the past is garbage that must be discarded.
That out of the way, it’s hard to talk about what to do for at least two reasons.
First, how can we know what to do until and unless we fully understand our theoretical and historical situation? That is, as to the former, until and unless we understand the universe, man’s place in it, human nature, the nature of politics, the right way of life and all that? You can’t really know what to do until and unless you know what you’re trying to do, which requires knowing what you ought to do, or at least what you ought to aim for.
History is bound up with theory in the sense that, if the theory is correct — if it is an accurate account of the true workings of nature, including human nature — then actual historical events and outcomes are (must be) products of or at least predicted by the theory. So understanding how we got to where we are is very important to knowing what to do next: what mistakes to avoid, what dead-ends to bypass, what from the past can be utilized going forward and what must be discarded.
But the problem should be immediately obvious. The above theoretical questions are the biggest in all philosophy and theology. Many — most — may not have definitive answers. So if we can’t act until we have definitive answers to questions to which the human mind can’t reach, how are we ever supposed to act?
That position is, however, obviously untenable; we must make our way in the world. Action is both necessary and inevitable. But the difficulty of acting without knowing remains, which is yet another reason (perhaps the most important reason) for circumspection.
The second difficulty in exploring what to do is that any proposed or even speculative course of action invites not merely criticism (that’s to be expected and even welcomed) but negative attention from the regime. The fact that this is hard to talk about is underscored by the fact that it’s hard even to make this point safely. Basically, the regime is eager for any reason to label any and all of us traitors, seditionists, insurrectionists and the like, to justify state-driven persecution. So even raising theoretical questions — even stating historical facts — is now fraught with danger.
For example, I caused a furor nearly two years ago when I gave a talk restating the American Founders’ case for the right of revolution — which is explicitly affirmed twice in the Declaration of Independence, to say nothing of countless other documents. The left naturally went nuts, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) it was the “conservatives” who were the most apoplectic. How dare I say that! What was I, a traitor? Apparently it is now somehow un- or even anti-American merely to restate the reasoning for the American Revolution and analyze its logic.
As every reader of this publication knows, the only regime-acceptable answer to the question “What to do now?” is “Vote harder.” But those of us who’ve studied history know that regimes do, in fact, fail and that there are situations in which voting avails one nothing — either because the votes are rigged, the people actually in power ignore the voters, and/or because of regime decay.
Those of us trained in political philosophy also know that democracy (much less “our democracy”™) is fraught with a number of grave practical and theoretical problems first diagnosed 2,500 years ago and thus is hardly the end-all, be-all of human existence. Few things irritate me more than hearing scholars who claim to be steeped in Plato and Aristotle pontificate on the glories of “democracy” in terms identical to the bloviations of Joe Biden, the New York Times, or the Yale Political Science Department. The latter don’t know any better, but scholars of classical political philosophy are supposed to. If they don’t, what purpose do they serve? What fake junk are they teaching their students?
That’s before we even get to the question of whether the founders’ regime was, or was intended to be, a “democracy” in either the original or 2024 sense of that term. Short answer: No.
Getting back to the text of what you wrote, you refer to “Rufo’s position.” Have you accurately characterized that position? I know Rufo a little and he does not strike me as naïve. Perhaps a little too confident? Maybe. But he’s not wrong when he says that he’s racking up important wins against a corrupt regime. Aren’t we better off with those wins than without them? Seems obvious to me that we are.
So the larger question is whether Rufo’s wins (and others like them) can be translated into a broader restoration of the old regime. On this I have my doubts, as you correctly intuit. That doesn’t mean, to repeat, that those wins are unimportant. Whatever comes next, and whenever it comes, the facts on the ground will matter enormously; the more favorable to our cause we can make those facts via present action, the better. For instance, it will matter whether there are 20 or 50 or however many million illegal immigrants in America, and to the extent that sound federal policy can keep those numbers down, we should pursue every lawful means to achieve that, even if some of us are not sanguine about the prospects of renewing our grandparents’ America even with a totally secure border.
All this just points back to the question: what to do right now? You ask “should we submit to corruption?” and then answer your own question: “No, of course not,” continuing that “The American tradition requires us to resist.” To which I reply: sort of.
First of all, remember these words from the Declaration:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
The above words stand as both analysis and advice. The analysis is that human beings are creatures of habit. They don’t like change, much less revolutionary change. The advice is, therefore, that any contemplated action must take into account this truth about human nature and act and plan accordingly.
It seems to me that, right now, the vast majority of Americans on the right side of the political spectrum are still firmly entrenched in the “evils are sufferable” phase and so remain “disposed to suffer.” That’s to the extent that they even feel like they’re suffering. Many (most?) do not. Political strife and discontent run very high in our country right now, but day-to-day life remains, if not quite Eisenhower or Reagan era-idyllic, at least a hell of a lot better than merely “sufferable.”
Second only to terminally online anti-liberal pontificators, the least politically contented people in America today are MAGA-hatted attendees of Trump rallies. It after all takes some fortitude to identify oneself publicly with the most vilified American political movement of the last century-and-a-half, and it takes real commitment to drag oneself to a rally site, stand in line for half a day or longer, and then sit through an event that may last another two hours.
And yet even at this level of commitment, what is the typical MAGA-ite’s solution to his present discontent? It is… to vote harder.
All this is a way of saying: know your audience; know your movement. The online right often strikes me as a cabal of would-be generals without privates, orators without an audience, office-seekers without voters, demagogues without a mob.
You may personally feel that it is high time to “do something,” even something radical or revolutionary. You may even be right that the situation is already so dire that action is justified or even required.
But even if so, you (and others who see things the same way) are a vanguard, perhaps even Cassandras — and remember how it ended for her. You haven’t even come close to winning over the masses you claim to lead and whom you will need to succeed. Hence if you push for revolutionary change now, you are going to lose, probably destroy yourselves in the process, and set back (y)our cause by years or even decades.
This sounds like a grim message, I know. But it doesn’t mean that all is lost. It means that more groundwork and patience are required.
What would/should that look like? You will be unsurprised to hear me, a theory guy, say that it starts with getting theory right. Or, if not perfectly right (as explained above, that’s impossible), at least as close to correct as possible, and without any dumb, avoidable mistakes.
Starting with the latter first, that means cooling it with the stupid, incomplete, often ignorant, yet always smug and certain pronouncements on the bankruptcy of modernity, the Enlightenment, classical liberalism, the American founding, natural rights, constitutionalism, the separation of powers, and all the rest. I could go on at great length about this, and have, and may yet again. For now, suffice it to say that a great many of those who clearly see the problems with the present also insist on burning down the entirety of the past without a second thought as to what form it might be useful in the present or future, to say nothing of what great goods our past has already delivered.
This point I do however want to repeat, since I think it is so telling, not to mention hard to refute. I am continually astonished to see those who claim to speak for “the West” and “America” and even “the white race” dump one load of excrement after another on the thinkers and doers who produced the past 500 years of Western, and American, successes and glories. If it’s all trash, if it’s all been just a big mistake, then what are these people defending? For whom are they standing up?
The ancients? That can’t be, because they piss on the tenets of ancient philosophy (to the extent that they understand them, which is not much) no less than on the moderns. Ancient Roman practice over Greek philosophy? Maybe, but if so, that’s just LARPy idiocy, as if there were any way in present times, or the foreseeable future, to revive the unique circumstances of ancient Rome.
Which points to another deficiency of this line of rhetoric. I said above that one problem facing today’s right-wing intellectual vanguard is that they are a general staff without soldiers, a leadership without followers. The great masses of people whom they wish to lead enthusiastically support Donald Trump, who promises (contra regime media lies about him) renewal and reform through voting and the exercise of Constitutional political powers.
Not that any of those people are listening to Twitter anons or reading pseudonymous bloggers. But if they were, the message they would hear is: “You have no rights. In fact, rights do not exist. The Constitution is and always was a joke, based on a mistake, because all the philosophy behind it (all written by white male geniuses, but whatever) was also completely wrong. The Declaration of Independence is mere fluff, and the American Revolution itself a mistake, because divine right monarchy is the only just regime. Or something. What a tragedy that we don’t still live in the High Middle Ages, the peak of human existence.”
Call all these strawmen if you like, but I have read and heard every single one of them repeatedly. More to the point, the totality of right-wing online anon discourse points in this direction. “He who says A must say B,” Lenin said. Asserting that a = b and b = c and leaving unsaid that a = c is a classic technique of esoteric writing, but saying the first two and then denying the third is a hallmark of either a liar or a fool.
Now, the philosophical-historical conclusions I’ve thus far (tentatively) drawn may be wrong. But I’m definitely not wrong that “You have no rights” and all the rest is not a winning message with the vast majority of right and right-leaning Americans whom you will need if your “resistance” is to bear fruit, and for whose sake that resistance will presumably be mounted. To those online “philosophers” who think they’ve figured this all out where Locke, Madison, &c. got it all wrong, I urge you to take your “You have no rights and America was always a joke” message to a Trump rally and try it out on the attendees. Please report back the result.
Pounding away at the alleged nonexistence of natural and/or constitutionally enumerated rights is not merely an idiotic way to alienate your core audience; it’s also suicidal folly at a time when the regime is doing everything in its considerable power to crush our rights to free speech, self-defense, and much else. The supposedly moronic liberal American founders actually provided us with bulwarks against tyranny which, yes, are currently crumbling, but are nonetheless not quite gone and still hold back some of the regime’s most malevolent impulses.
Does anyone think Kyle Rittenhouse would have been acquitted without a Second Amendment? That big tech and big government would be less hellbent on, or effective at, censorship and suppression without the First?
Those who rail against rights, in this context, are either fools or feds. They are either so stupid as not to see what’s plainly evident to any ordinary citizen with common sense, or else deliberately out to hurt you and the cause they claim to support.
Sticking with the question of theory or principle, you write that you don’t “think these principles can survive without the culture, traditions, and social fabric that sustained them originally.” I think you are almost exactly right about that, with one change. The principles can and will survive regardless; the question is whether they will remain observed in practice. We agree, I assume, that the answer to that is no. But even that “no” is not necessarily forever, for circumstances could emerge again when it’s possible to revive and re-operationalize these principles.
But for that to happen on this soil, with these people, would require “re-moralizing” and re-republicanizing a corrupt or at least degraded population. Not to slag my fellow Americans, but we aren’t exactly who we used to be, are we? Otherwise, what is that “again” doing in Trump’s slogan?
Unfortunately for us, history seems to show that corruption and degradation only go one way. The rebirth of virtue and of the republican spirit can (and, I believe, will) recur, but — again, if history is any guide — not in any actual population as currently constituted, but in some future cohort who will be created by a combination of circumstances and statesmanship that is hard to foresee and all but impossible to generate or direct.
I definitely disagree with this:
My reading of the American Revolution is that these principles were not so much invented or discovered, but inherited and perhaps refined as revolt turned into revolution and independence into the establishment of a republic.
Any time I say something like what I am about to argue, all the trolls come out from under their bridges to accuse me of hating tradition and wanting to rationalize all human life like some robot running Maoist software. So be it.
Much American political thought and practice was first discovered and then invented: discovered by philosophers who preceded and informed the founders, and then invented by the founders as they created institutions never seen before in human history, via means never before attempted, much less successfully executed. This doesn’t mean that everything they did was ex nihilo or that they owed nothing to the past. It does mean that neither their present nor their future — our past — was determined by their past. They were path-breaking men who did fundamentally new things in the service of ancient ends. They should be forever honored for that.
But let’s end (for now) on what to do. Fighting corruption is good, but how it’s done matters. The most obvious, if not the easiest, thing to do is to fight corruption in oneself, in one’s immediate circle, and in one’s community. Fighting at the national or macro level may be, at this stage, mostly fruitless or worse, depending on how one does it.
I say this a lot, but it bears repeating. Now is not the time to charge machine gun nests. Doing so might be brave, and might satisfy some noble inner drive, but you’ll just get shot, and accomplish nothing in the process.
I earlier mentioned the right of revolution. The American founders believed that this is a natural, God-given right, inherent to man as man, that no man can ever take away. But when and how to invoke and act on it remain matters of prudence — of practical wisdom — and practical wisdom is often (I would say mostly) harder to discern than theoretical wisdom. It’s easier to know where you want to go than how to get there. Especially when the destination is a restoration of republican virtue, and the obstacles in your way include an all-powerful state and allied (nominally) private sector institutions hell-bent on unopposed absolute rule. No actual regime — one that wields power and exercises sovereignty — ever acknowledges its own injustice or recognizes the justice of a revolutionary movement against itself. Hence if you strike at the king, etc.
One of my former teachers, the late Angelo Codevilla, defined strategy as a “concrete, realistic plan to use what you’ve got to get what you want.” There’s a lot of wisdom in those thirteen words. First, there must be a goal: you must know what you want. Second, there must be a plan: you must have some idea of how to achieve it. That plan must be concrete (detailed, not sketchy) and realistic (not mere hopium but achievable). It must be based on an accurate assessment of your own assets and deficiencies, plus those of your adversary. All this must come together to show a realistic chance of success. Strategy is not about glorious last stands; it’s about winning.
Not that there’s necessarily anything ignoble about a last stand, but a last stand should be a last resort. When you talk about “resistance,” I assume that your implied or presupposed desired outcome is victory. Hence prudence requires mounting your revolution only when all of the above elements are in place and when sober minds can see a realistic path to achieving your shared goals.
So to end where we began, it’s not always easy to know what to do, and right now, it’s especially hard. So let’s stop sniping at one another, admit that none of us knows, and discuss the way forward without rancor or insults — and carefully, in full awareness that we are all despised targets of a regime in search of monsters to destroy. In sum, let us conduct ourselves as if all our lives and those of everyone we love, as if all the things we care about, were on the line. Because they are.
Lafayette Lee: You have reminded me of a favorite speech that I revisit from time to time. In Patrick Henry’s address to the Second Virginia Convention in 1775, which ends with the immortal words: “give me liberty or give me death,” Henry wrestles with the question of what to do.
As you well know, by 1775, tensions between the mother country and her colonies had festered for more than a decade, with every attempt to reconcile having been exhausted. With British warships headed for Boston and the House of Burgesses and other colonial assemblies barred from convening, war seemed imminent. Despite the danger and a “long train of abuses and usurpations,” however, many colonists were hesitant to rebel, and reluctant moderates in the colonial assemblies remained a powerful faction.
Convinced that war was unavoidable, Henry proposed raising a militia and putting Virginia in a defensive posture to protect the colony from invasion and prevent Britain from maintaining a standing army within its borders. It was his most provocative resolution, but it won over the moderates.
Henry was a skilled orator, steeped in classical virtues and country idioms. And though he was known as a bit of a firebrand, he was widely respected, even by his leeriest peers.
Not unlike the Declaration of Independence, Henry’s address is remembered for its boldest lines, “give me liberty or give me death,” first and foremost. But like the Declaration, the speech also recounts years of tyranny and abuse, appealing to history, tradition, philosophy, and good old-fashioned common sense. Armed with history and tradition, Henry cuts through the uncertainty of the moment by invoking the “lamp of experience,” whose light ought to be their guide:
“Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House.”
Rank and reputation notwithstanding, Henry was not well educated, and unlike the young Thomas Jefferson, did not have a firm grasp of the deeper philosophical questions at stake. But Henry played a crucial part in the opening chapter of the American Revolution, and without his passion, strength and, above all, his role as the embodiment of the mores majorum, the Revolution would have failed.
Henry’s “lamp of experience” burned ever bright after years of bitter struggle, all within the confines of law and tradition, and when all else failed, the old patriot was there to urge even the most educated and philosophically sound to take that fateful step.
Henry was at the center of a slow-burning revolt in the Tidewater, which had already experienced a serious cultural crisis, as planters and backcountry farmers found themselves tangled in a web of complex credit arrangements and punitive government regulations. For these colonists, a combination of tobacco, debt, and distance became the spark that ignited a firestorm of resistance, with the educated and uneducated alike plumbing the depths of classical literature and English history for guidance. Long before Henry urged his countrymen to prepare for war, he was rallying his neighbors to safeguard their autonomy from scheming merchants and imperious officials, encouraging them to practice classical virtues and defend their ancient rights as Englishmen.
Henry’s admonitions were not scholarly in the least, but in many ways, he was the essential link between the radical politics of the countryside and the more educated and philosophical portion of Virginia’s elite. Henry provided both sides of the alliance with a great moral force and sense of urgency, which proved indispensable in the struggle for independence.
But as the conflict progressed from revolt to revolution, and finally to independence, the principles espoused by Henry and his compatriots had to endure growing pains.
When I claim that the principles of the American Revolution were not necessarily “invented” or “discovered,” I mean to say that they were not created out of whole cloth. You seem to agree. Using your definition of “invented,” I see these principles having to be reinvented to confront new challenges during the period, specifically on the road from revolution to republic, but always remaining safely embedded in a culture, tradition, and historical context. Patrick Henry himself seems to embody this.
Of course, the culmination of more than twenty years of struggle is the ratification of the Constitution and the birth of the Republic, which in spite of all the philosophical groundwork, hinged on every delegate ultimately submitting to an inherited process of lawgiving. My purpose is not to undermine men like Madison, Hamilton, or even Henry, but to highlight the vital relationship between invention and inheritance. And given what you have said already, it seems that you more or less agree.
All that to say, I see Patrick Henry and his fight as especially relevant. I consider Chris Rufo to be a kind of modern-day Patrick Henry. I do not think he is naive or misguided. We may disagree on the finer points of history and philosophy, but his fundamentals are sound and his strategy and tactics are impeccable. Rufo is racking up important wins against a corrupt regime, and like Henry, he has taken the reins of a broader revolt, giving it moral force and a sense of urgency. He has transformed popular grievance into a political movement and wields American principles like a hammer. Contrary to what critics might claim, Rufo is not simply urging Americans to “vote harder,” but to fight regime corruption on ground ceded by our side long ago.
Do I see Rufo single-handedly restoring the republic? No, but I believe his efforts are pivotal to whatever good thing comes next; if we are to have a restoration, I am sure Rufo will help pave the way. Like Henry and the Tidewater planters, Rufo and other serious-minded reformers are reviving American principles and honing them on the steel of experience, or, as you might say, “operationalizing” them.
Patrick Henry and the Tidewater revolt should also inform how we treat this peculiar anon uprising on social media. I understand your complaints and empathize with you to an extent, but I take issue with the broad brush you use to paint the whole corner. Online anonymity is necessary in an environment like ours, where surveillance, harassment, and threats of violence are a daily reality, and victims of cancellation have little recourse. The Wild West atmosphere on platforms like Facebook and Twitter may foster lazy thinking and bad behavior, but it also introduces ordinary people to new and old ideas and to key dissidents who would have languished in obscurity in years past. Coincidentally, I discovered the Claremont Institute through social media after stumbling on a video of Claremont chairman Thomas D. Klingenstein making an impassioned case for Donald Trump. I had just left the Army and was bewildered by the political landscape, but that video and comments from anonymous users led me to subscribe, and eventually to find your writings. I have been an avid reader of yours ever since, and it would not have happened without this unwieldy space online and the anonymous users who occupy it.
For every cantankerous anonymous account, there are a handful of ordinary people searching for truths inconvenient to this corrupt regime. Whatever good comes of our actions now – if a restoration is in the cards – this strange and often frustrating arena will be part of it, with online anonymity serving as a vital link between people like you and people like me. I wonder if all the derangement, hubris, and bad behavior that is so obnoxious to serious thinkers today is not unlike the derangement, hubris, and bad behavior often found in the American backcountry so long ago. Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton complained bitterly against the rabble, and for good reason, but the Revolution would have failed without a rigid alliance between the rank-and-file and a colonial counter-elite. And so while there is a vocal, toxic minority to contend with, I think the vast majority of users on these platforms are just ordinary people who could prove useful. That has been my experience, at least, and it seems to be working for Chris Rufo, as well.
But to return to your call for prudence and the original question of what to do. I would like to clarify that “resistance” does not necessarily mean violence and full-scale rebellion. Like the Tidewater example, we are living through a slow-burning revolt; prudence is absolutely essential. And so I appreciate your advice, as I believe the proper course of action requires ordinary people like myself to first lay hold of the political machinery at our fingertips and make good use of it. Local government is still a cornerstone of our republic and can serve as a bulwark against regime corruption as well as a finishing school for aspiring elites.
Goals will differ between philosophers and statesmen, but for ordinary American patriots with pluck and vision, our goal should be to take and hold this ground. It is not lost on me that the birth of our republic began this way, in town halls and taverns, with planters, shopkeepers, and merchants operating within an inherited tradition of self-government. And, to underscore a point you made earlier, this may be the only place where a “re-moralizing” and “re-republicanizing” of ordinary Americans can take place. We should not downplay the importance of the local; it is a fighting position, and a damn good one at that. I am doubtful that we will see a national re-birth of virtue and the republican spirit in our lifetimes, but if it does happen, it will need fertile soil to grow. And I cannot think of a better place than in healthy homes and strong communities; cultivating such an environment is something every patriotic American can do.
In some ways I think you and I are at opposite ends of this unseemly coalition. Excluding the trolls online, we have a large mass of ordinary people aligned with a small counter-elite and online platforms as our connective tissue. Bad actors may abuse this relationship – from both ends of the coalition, I may add – but there is a lot of potential for the two groups to support and strengthen one another. The Right has many problems to address, but an appreciation for hierarchy is not one of them. For the philosopher kings of this movement, being connected to a uniquely productive class of citizens, whose strength lies in experience, has considerable advantages. And for the common citizens who make up the majority of MAGA and the online Right, having access to a friendly and patriotic intellectual class with vision, spine, and the ability to get the theory right, is hugely beneficial.
Here Henry’s “lamp of experience” is instructive, not only to unmask the regime but to show us how to resist its corruption and strive for something better. I do not have much use for tech monarchs, steppe warriors, or nihilists, and neither do the ordinary people who keep the lights on in this country. We want America to be America again. We want to partake of the same blessings our forefathers fought and died for, and we want a better life for our children. But we cannot get there without an alliance between this patriotic core and a viable counter-elite and a digital space connecting them.
I echo your call for prudence and camaraderie, and I hope to see both groups make a greater effort to bring this coalition together.
Michael Anton: I agreed with every word right up to this point: “I see these principles having to be reinvented to confront new challenges during the period, specifically on the road from revolution to republic, but always remaining safely embedded in a culture, tradition, and historical context.”
Even then, my disagreement will seem like hairsplitting. But I believe it gets to the heart of what we are talking about, at least on the theoretical side. Now, it’s easy to dismiss my theoretical concerns as the obsessions of an academic dork, which in one sense they are.
But I respond to that with two contentions. First, the truth is always worth knowing for its own sake — at least, there will always be a minority who will be unsatisfied by any contradictory or incomplete accounting of anything and will seek the full truth as best they can.
Second, the truth often has important practical implications. One can see this in the American case from what you wrote. Somehow the country wisdom and traditions of the tidewater were not quite enough to carry the Revolution through but required the more sophisticated thinking of the Virginia squirearchy and Boston brahmins.
This points to another problem, which I will elaborate further below. Once any possibility of common adherence to ancestral faith is obviated, some way has to be found to unite elite and common opinion around a shared standard of justice and source of legitimacy for the regime.
There was no possibility for common faith to serve as the basis for a new American regime. First, because Christianity is at its core apolitical; it does not lay down the law — certainly not any political or constitutional law. Second, because of the multiplicity of Christian sects (to say nothing of other sects) already present in the America of the Revolution: they all had to find some non-religious source of legitimacy that they could all agree on.
People like Jefferson and Adams did not reject Patrick Henry’s folk wisdom out of hand; far from it. But they did think the question “Why is liberty inherently good, and King George’s tyranny inherently bad?” requires an answer not supplied by that folk wisdom, or by common sense. So they turned to recent and ancient philosophy to flesh out the reasoning behind those (correct) conclusions.
Now, here is where I agree and disagree with you at the same time. I agree, sort of, that the principles had to be “reinvented,” but not quite in the way I think you mean.
As I have written elsewhere, the discovery of the so-called “natural right” in the 4th century BC was an atomic bomb in the history of human thought and political practice. Rather like the discovery of fission in the 20th century, it cannot be forgotten, undone, or gotten around — at least not until and unless some cataclysm wipes out most if not all human knowledge.
The question “What is just and unjust by nature?” always and everywhere points to the good, in this case, the human good, which is unchanging so long as human nature remains the same. But the answer to the question “What is most conducive to the human good right now?” does change, and depends on circumstances.
To reduce this to its essence, the answer to that question took one form in the pre-Christian ancient world, was modified to fit the Christian medieval world, and needed to be revolutionized to fit the modern world. It was in this modern world that the American founders lived and in which (I contend) we still live.
The “reinvention” that you speak of was an attempt to answer the 2,500-year-old question “What is simply and truly right?” in new circumstances in which the old answer (basically: a theocracy moderated by reason) was no longer viable. (Note to the quibblers: “theocracy” is here used loosely to mean not “rule by priests” but rule based on divine law, as interpreted and implemented by wise statesmen.)
That reinvention however required principles that, even as they aim at the same ends — human virtue, happiness, justice, and good government — are revolutionary in thought and practice. There was, for instance, no conception of “rights” — not even as understood by Patrick Henry—in the pre-modern world. (The scholarship asserting otherwise is tendentious and often based on deliberately inaccurate translation.) “Natural rights” — a core assertion of modern philosophy from its birth up to Rousseau, and of the American founding and most modern regimes — is the form that natural right takes in the modern world. It is in this sense an invention, or perhaps a discovery, but it is new, at least in the application of ancient principle.
So in one sense we can trace a rather jagged line backward from Patrick Henry to Socrates. But in another, Henry is speaking a language that would have been entirely alien to Socrates and to anyone right up until the 16th or even 17th centuries.
My problem with the online right is not anonymity; it is inaccuracy coupled with bombastic obnoxiousness. Anonymity is only a problem insofar as it contributes to one or both of these.
Obviously, NASALT (“not all shitposters are like that”). I don’t even know, nor would I know how to measure, how many are. But enough of them make enough of a splash that I think they are a real problem. When the regime is coming for all of us, they seem to seek only to divide, accuse, weaken, purity spiral, and just generally make everything worse. On top of all that, they do so on the basis of an account of things that is wrong. I’ve said my piece on the idiocy of their messaging, but to summarize once again, “The founding sucks and you have no rights” is a losing message so laughably bad, if it had been devised by our enemies, it could hardly be worse.
I think our problems are bigger than Patrick Henry’s, and bigger than either of us has thus far let on. Whether we are holding back out of prudence or lack of understanding I shall leave in the ether.
But it is not a heavy lift to make the case that the American Revolutionaries’ grievances against King George fall short of the injustices we face today. And it’s easy to show that the regime on our necks is a lot more powerful, technologically sophisticated, and well-armed than the British Empire of 1776. Today’s propaganda and censorship apparatus alone is probably more difficult to contend with than the entire 1776 British Army, Royal Navy, and Bank of England combined. Patrick Henry and his cohorts could see a reasonable path to liberty. Can we? Perhaps more importantly, they could talk and write about it without being instantly crushed. Can we?
In any event, my role (to the extent that I have one) or my value (to the extent that I offer any) is solely in the realm of theory. I freely admit that people can live a perfectly fine life without any theory, and most people mostly do. But I do think that in modernity, especially in America, getting the underlying theory right is essential if the regime we seek, or seek to restore, is to enjoy the necessary respect of its people and its elites so that it may operate properly.
You say you “want America to be America again.” So do I. There is no way to do that without restoring the founders’ regime and the people’s reverence for it. That means understanding what made America great in the first place. My contention is that it was a combination of the people, their traditions, their faith, their character, and their principles. Take any one of those away, and you don’t have America anymore. You might have something that “works,” though I doubt it. But it won’t be the America that you and I want back.
Lafayette Lee: So we agree that the American tradition is superior to all others and tailor-made for this time, place, and people. We also recognize the centrality of the founders and the republic they established in that tradition, and we acknowledge that our current regime is hostile, corrupt, and possibly illegitimate. We share a desire to see a rebirth of virtue and the republican spirit and a restoration of the old regime, even if the way forward is treacherous and uncertain.
Where I sense tension is how we approach the question of inheritance versus invention. I would expect our differences here to immediately derail any detailed discussion of history, for I do not see the birth of the republic as a victory of philosophy or the end of a theoretical exercise as much as I view it as a triumph of tradition. We see this in the debates over the Articles of Confederation and the ratification of the United States Constitution, where all philosophical arguments were forced to surrender to a political process — an established method of an existing order — with everything hanging on the consent of the states and their peoples. Naturally, I am wary of efforts to peer beyond the limitations of law, history, and human nature to recover deeper truths. When this is done badly, a nation becomes an aspirational project and the common citizen is sacrificed first, regardless of his old rights and privileges. I confess that I see our current regime in this light, and I sometimes wonder if the triumph of theory over tradition is to blame for the mobs, ideologues, and fanatics that plague our political system today. Perhaps this only underscores your point about getting the theory right, but a crisis of authority had to precede this crisis of legitimacy, and so who can we trust to get it right?
But more and more I find such conversations pointless, and I continually return to the subject that has dominated our discussion today: what to do?
As much as I would like to cling to tradition and my inheritance as an old-stock American, such things are rapidly disintegrating. If I insist that revolution, independence, and the birth of the republic took place within a historic continuum, preserving a particular order with inherited rights and political arrangements reserved for posterity… well, how can I honestly say that my inheritance remains remotely intact today? What means do I have to recover it? Vote harder? Of course, I see promise in the American people and the political machinery left over from the old regime. In our respective states and communities we can establish redoubts, cultivate virtue, and preserve our character and the traditions of our forefathers. But I fear this will not be enough. We seem to lack an animating spirit, which came so easily to prior generations.
Perhaps this is why theory and philosophy are gaining prominence on the Right and ordinary people like me are probing the same questions that once preoccupied that first generation of Americans. Maybe it helps explain why the tumultuous years leading up to the Revolution are attracting far more attention than they used to.
Our problems today are much bigger than Patrick Henry’s, and as that fragile combination of people, tradition, faith, character, and principles splinters – the more that my precious country wisdom and traditions fade – the more open I am to the sophisticated thinking of those grappling with deeper philosophical questions. For as you mentioned earlier, amid the Declaration’s long list of grievances – all of which are tied to a specific time, place, and historical context – the Founders also made a case for their right of revolution. And that contribution, the document’s primary object, could only have been made by a “theory guy.”
But to return to this idea of an animating spirit, we are increasingly deracinated and unable to conceive of ourselves as citizens, much less Americans, in any meaningful way. This comes at the end of a long process of dispossession, with the final prize being our very identity. With our traditions under vicious assault, our principles turned into slogans, and activists, scholars, and politicians playing fast and loose with the concept of rights, what does a proper reading of natural rights, the founders, and the birth of the republic look like in 2024? How should Americans see themselves and their place in history against this backdrop? I suspect that confusion over such questions is responsible for much of the incoherence and desperation we see from the online Right. But it is beginning to uproot everyday conservatives from their own tradition as well, and so if a restoration is in our future, I think providing a convincing answer to our patriotic core will be a critical first step.
Michael Anton: I hate to end on what must seem a sour note, but I still find nits to pick. For instance, I do not agree that “the American tradition is superior to all others,” though I do agree that it is “tailor-made for this time, place, and people.” It is precisely because I believe the latter that I cannot subscribe to the former. The American tradition, like any tradition, is and must be contextual. While I don’t deny there is a hierarchy of traditions — some are better than others, and ours is pretty darn good — I don’t think there can be a “best tradition” in the same way that there can be a “best regime” as Plato and Aristotle understood it. The American tradition is, for instance, wholly unsuited to the ancient or medieval worlds, which is one reason why it cannot simply be “best.”
I agree with you that “the birth of the [American] republic” was not “a victory of philosophy or the end of a theoretical exercise.” It was a practical exercise launched by practical men trying to do real good for real people in the real world. But it was informed by philosophy and theory — explicitly so.
I disagree that the Revolution was a “triumph of tradition” insofar as so much of the underlying philosophy was relatively new. Recall the arresting language of the first Federalist (whose spirit is repeated many times in that book and throughout the writings of the founders), where “Publius” boldly announces the novelty of the entire American experiment in self-government, culminating in the proffered Constitution. Think also of all the ways in which the American revolutionaries explicitly broke with tradition, rejecting a hereditary monarch, hereditary aristocracy, a nationally established church, explicitly outlawing titles of nobility, etc.
To the extent that the Revolution was based on tradition, that tradition was not, as traditions go, that old (about a century-and-a-half). Unless you want to try to trace it all the way back to the Magna Carta, which I think is inaccurate. I won’t stop to explain why, since I’ve already said so much and still have more to say.
But surely it’s notable that, for this claim to be true, we would have to ascribe to both sides in the Revolution, loyalist and patriot, American and British, appeal to or reliance on that document, and both of them couldn’t simultaneously be right, the Magna Carta cannot, at the same time, justify and forbid the American Revolution… so for the Americans to have been right, that would have to mean that the British with their kings and peers and unwritten constitution and ermine and holy oil and all the rest must have completely misunderstood their own tradition, Because the Americans pointedly did not, in their supposed appeal to tradition, copy all that from the sceptered isle, now did they? So if American practice in 1776 was the real Anglo tradition, that would have to mean that the Brits had been getting their own tradition wrong since, oh, Alfred the Great …
Anyway, the American tradition to which you appeal was explicitly derivative of a philosophy that, when it first appeared, was sharply anti-traditional. This is not to deny that thought which begins as anti-traditional can, itself, become a tradition. I believe that is what happened in our case.
In my view, it is precisely the rejection of that tradition, and its underlying philosophy, that got us into the present mess. You say you are “wary of efforts to peer beyond the limitations of law, history, and human nature to recover deeper truths.” But in the political realm, there are no deeper truths than the limitations of human nature. That’s exactly what political philosophy examines and tries to learn. It is the denial of this truth — really, the blowtorch taken to it — that has led to the present crisis, not people expending too much effort on philosophy.
We return at the end to the same question of what to do. I once again freely admit that I don’t know what to do. I have some ideas, but none that are prudent to share openly. And anyway, they all might be wrong. I think none of us knows what to do. I share your frustration and sense of urgency. But I also think that just about the worst thing we could do is charge ahead heedlessly without a plan, against an overwhelmingly powerful adversary, and get destroyed while accomplishing nothing in the process.
So, while we still don’t know what to do, it seems to me we may as well continue to think. Thinking is useful even if one completely rejects theory and philosophy. Not saying that’s you, but continuing with this strawman for the moment, imagine someone totally averse to theory and philosophy, but who despises the tyranny in which he lives. He has a goal: the restoration of his tradition. To achieve that goal, he will need a plan. Or, as I said earlier, a strategy: a concrete, realistic plan to use what he’s got to get what he wants. That requires thought. Not theoretical thought necessarily, or philosophy, but thought.
For my part, my thinking is still mired in theory and philosophy. I think that stuff is important. Admittedly, that may be just an example of the old adage of the hammer seeing every problem as a nail; I’m too close to the issue to tell the difference. So what follows is an account of the historical situation I think we find ourselves in, how we got into it, and how the American founders dealt with it. Understanding that may help us ruminate productively on “what to do.”
***
“Natural politics” we may say is pre-philosophic politics or, ironically, politics before the discovery of “nature” as distinct from perception, opinion, or authority. In this natural (or “default”) state, every political society is a closed community. It may be small (a tribe) or large (an empire) or something in between (a polis, or “city-state,” or perhaps a league of cities) but it is self-contained and not merely closed to but hostile to outsiders. It self-understands as having received its laws from its god or gods; neither those gods nor those laws are or even can be questioned. There is, in each separate people’s minds, no independent standard or reality outside or above those gods and their laws. The political community in the natural state is all-comprehensive. It regulates belief as well as behavior; there is no “freedom of conscience” or “private sphere.”
At some point (Thales is generally considered the first philosopher), man discovers “nature”: an independent reality whose features do not all necessarily comport with either man’s initial observations or the divine account of phenomena. E.g., is lightning really thrown by Zeus or is it an unrelated effect of electrical build-up in clouds? The first philosophers focus on what we today would call “scientific” questions. This questioning is however corrosive to the political community — to actual, individual political communities and to all political communities as such — because it calls into question or even undermines authoritative accounts of various visible phenomena, and in undermining any part of the authoritative account, it undermines the whole. I.e., casting doubt on the cause of lightning inevitably leads to doubt about the authoritative account of the source of lightning (the gods), and a fortiori of the validity of the laws (which the same authority says originate with the gods).
At a later point, philosophy turns its attention to “the human things,” that is, accounts of good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust, etc. This is known as the “Socratic turn,” and for reasons that should be obvious, it is even more corrosive to authoritative accounts of law and justice than is “natural philosophy” (as “science” was still called as late as the early 19th century).
The original state of affairs is most memorably analogized as “the cave” in Plato’s Republic, Book VII. Men believe in things that are not real, but this belief is natural, even necessary, to man and cannot be overcome. Plato of course asserts that there is a truth beyond this mere belief — the natural world above the cave — but only a few men, the philosophers, can ever ascend to it. And even in the “best regime,” those few must be compelled to return to the cave and see to the affairs of the people down there who can never ascend.
Plato wrote his dialogues (and Aristotle his treatises) in part because both intuited that philosophy (or pseudo-philosophy) had made the cave no longer habitable for not-quite-philosophic but intelligent Greek elites. Getting Alcibiades and his ilk to believe in Zeus had become impossible. What was needed, these genuine philosophers concluded, was an alternative authoritative account of the highest things that could appeal to educated elites and steer them in decent, just, and productive directions.
But this leads to the problem of bifurcation. The education presented in the Republic (and in other philosophic works) is not intended for the masses or common people, who are expected to still believe in the traditional gods. Somehow the two parts of any given polis have to find ways to stay and work together. Given the turbulent events of the 3rd and 4th centuries BC, the actual Greek elites to whom these books were primarily addressed didn’t have much time or opportunity to figure out if this solution could work. All we know is what actually happened: Athens lost the Peloponnesian War to the decidedly non-philosophic, even anti-philosophic, Spartans; the Greeks as a whole were conquered by the mostly non-philosophic Macedonians; and finally, the entire Hellenistic world was conquered by the (then) anti-philosophic Romans.
As all this ferment was going on in Greece, to its west, Rome was rising and all its citizens — patrician and pleb alike — lived firmly in the cave. There was no philosophy. The limited contact the Romans had with philosophy and philosophers convinced them to despise both. (There are some funny stories illustrating this but I will omit them in the interest of space.)
Secure in their own cave, the Romans set about destroying the caves of all the other peoples in the ancient world. Not that this was their intent, but it was unquestionably the effect of their vast conquests. The natural basis of political legitimacy, or at least the only basis mankind had yet known, was destroyed in a few short centuries. This created an even bigger problem than the problem of bifurcation — which was still a problem, because as Rome came into contact with Greece, matured, and became wealthy, its elites underwent essentially the same transformation Greek elites experienced three or so centuries prior: they stopped believing in their ancestral gods in favor of quasi- or pseudo-philosophic doctrines. They also, or as a consequence, became decadent and corrupt.
So we have a bifurcated Roman population ruling a Mediterranean basin — back then, in effect, the whole world — whose peoples have been conquered, stripped of their liberty and ancestral gods, and whose whole worldview and understanding of their place in it have been shattered.
Christianity comes along — whether by Providence, clever manipulation, or chance organic growth depends on one’s faith, or lack thereof. One thing that cannot be denied however is that for the first time in human history, there is a (potentially or aspirationally, at least) universal religion. The closed society of the cave is suddenly “problematic.” Shall there be a universal polity to go along with the universal religion? Many dreamed of one; a few tried to make it happen; none succeeded.
Unless it makes sense to say that the Church did. But really, considered purely in purely human terms, the Church is a temporal prince only of its own limited territory (which at its peak controlled not even all of Central Italy, plus a few territories in Southern Italy and Southern France). The Church’s true temporal innovation was to become the world’s first “transnational” institution, one that sits above states, passes judgement on them and, when it can get away with it, tells them what to do. The Church is in a way the model for the European Union.
Which points to the other earth-shaking innovation of Christianity: separating civil and religious authority. This, again, was a first for humanity. The connection between the divine and the law — the foundation of politics in the cave, and of all known human history up to that point — was severed. Christianity did not claim to rule on most political matters — “render unto Caesar” — but did claim authority over men’s souls.
So on what was the authority of the laws, of the rulers’ legitimacy, now said to rest, or arise from? A claim to divine right was later elaborated but would remain “problematic.” I can explain why later if anyone wants me to; meanwhile, interested parties should check out Locke’s destruction of Filmer in the First Treatise. As for the laws, there could no longer be any question but that they were written by men.
The republicanism of the ancient world gives way to the Roman Empire — the first “universal and homogenous state” — which, when it fractures, devolves into various hereditary monarchies. The question of the end or purpose of politics, central to ancient political philosophy and (to a lesser extent) ancient political practice, recedes into the background. Politics devolves into petty quarrels over succession: who gets to rule, and hence who gets the spoils.
Then, to make matters even more complicated, Christianity itself divides into sects. These divisions have many consequences but the most important for our purpose is that many princes find themselves with two hostile, sometimes warring, populations within their own realms. Nearly all of those princes are on one side or the other of this religious division and many feel compelled — whether from zeal or some other motive — to take that side, furthering internal conflict in their own states and intervening in the internal affairs of other states.
Hence the history of the west from the fall of the Western Roman empire to the Reformation is largely one of dynastic wars, and from the Reformation to the American Revolution, of dynastic and religious wars.
In addition to all this, you have the emergence of modernity and the “scientific revolution,” which — far more extensively and effectively than even the most influential works of ancient philosophy — utterly destroyed (for the foreseeable future at least) the possibility of basing political legitimacy or law on any but a rational (or at least “rationalistic”) basis. Leaving aside the difficulty of getting men to believe in myths in a rationalistic age (and it was hard even in antiquity; see Prince 6), Christ doesn’t even glancingly guide us on how to write a constitution.
Hence the American founders had to: 1) find a way in theory and in practice, for the first time in history, to base political legitimacy on a rational understanding of nature; 2) come up with a new political theory and constitution compatible not just with Christianity but under which Christianity’s multiplicity of sects could live together peacefully and cooperatively; 3) articulate this new basis for political legitimacy in ways palatable and believable to both elites and the common people; 4) write explicitly man-made laws that were similarly acceptable to all; and 5) bind together a citizenry of various ethnicities and religions into a single people, without the benefit of millennia of shared history. (Before someone balks at that last claim, I note that while America was then much more homogeneous than it is now, it was by no means as homogenous as, say, contemporaneous England or France, nor did the nascent American people have those nations’ hundreds or even thousands of years of shared struggle and wars to hammer them into a coherent ethnicity).
All of that the founders had to do, on top of organizing and equipping an army and navy from scratch, defeating the world’s greatest military power, paying off the debts incurred without ruining the new nation’s finances, protecting the new country’s vast frontiers against incursions by Indian tribes and still-great European empires, setting the economy on a sustainable path to growth, maintaining domestic order throughout all this, and dealing with myriad other day-to-day practical issues.
Let’s also not forget how precarious the whole experiment was. It really wasn’t until the first contested election in 1800 that anyone (including, especially, Jefferson) could be sure the whole thing would fly. This peaceful transfer of power, without persecution by the winners, may have been the most unprecedented feature, of all the unprecedented features, of the American founding. The fact that the Left has now abandoned this precedent should prove, again, how challenging it is to found and operate a decent government, and how impressive the founders’ accomplishments were.
So, yes, the American founders — with an assist from the early modern philosophers who helped form their minds — did solve these problems. Not merely better than anyone on the anon-online right who constantly bitches about the founders’ supposed inadequacies while being 1/1,000th the human beings they were. But, I also believe, in the only way those problems could have been solved.
Now, if we want to really split hairs, I suppose we would substitute “addressed” for “solved,” because in politics — in anything human — there are no permanent solutions. Still and all, I do believe the founders solved the problems they faced. That doesn’t mean they solved every human problem; no one could. Not all human problems can be solved. They solved the particular problems before them at that time.
More to the point, since “one inconvenience can never be suppressed without another’s cropping up” (Discourses I 6), any solution(s) they found would be bound to bring forth new problems at some point down the line. Nor can every potential problem be anticipated and adequately addressed in a constitution or in legislation, which is why wise statesmen will always be required if the human race is to continue to flourish. Even more to the point, and to repeat: nothing human lasts forever, so even the greatest regime ever conceived and implemented by man must end someday.
For the founders to have been quite the Enlightenment stooges the anon-online right insists they were, the latter would have to demonstrate the former’s errors; show either that the problems they solved were not real problems or could have been solved in some other, better way; and also show that two-plus centuries of glorious subsequent history were but a pittance of what could have been accomplished if only men with the moral and intellectual virtues of the anon-online right had been in charge 1774-1789 instead of Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Marshall, Wilson, and all those other losers. These demonstrations have not been made.
I have said nothing here about a whole host of other issues, in particular the theoretical and practical problems with hereditary monarchy and aristocracy which the founders had to address. Nor have I made the case for the intrinsic superiority of republics over monarchies (“the common good is not observed if not in republics”; Discourses II 2), or why the founders’ choice for the former over the latter was not merely bold and risky, but paid immense dividends to hundreds of millions then yet unborn.
None of this is to say that monarchy is always bad or is not sometimes necessary. It is rather to say that republicanism is always the more difficult path, the greater political achievement, one that can be profitably or prudently pursued only in favorable, and rare, circumstances. And even then is often avoided. The founders thus deserve credit not merely for taking the harder road but for succeeding at it.
Nor is any of this to say that rote application of the rhetoric of 1776 is going to save us now. I already made clear that I don’t believe that. What will save us, I am not sure I know. As noted, I have some ideas, but I don’t want to bring the Eye of Sauron down on me or on any of the institutions that so generously and graciously support me. So, for now, I will stick with theory, written esoterically, so that, for those geeky enough to try to find them, inklings of my speculations can be teased out of the surface.
Lafayette Lee is an American writer and a contributing editor of IM—1776. He can be followed @Partisan_O.
Michael Anton is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a former national security official in the Trump Administration, and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.
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