In 1788, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, published The Federalist Papers, a collection of articles and essays arguing on behalf of the U.S. Constitution. Though more than 200 years old, the papers offer a look into the minds of our Founding Fathers as they put forth their most compelling arguments for the American system. In this collection, Dr. Spencer Klavan makes the Federalist Papers more accessible than ever, bringing modern context to the words of our Revolutionary leaders.

Only very advanced societies are able to live and let live. We are apparently no longer a very advanced society.
Twitter lit up this week with the news that six Dr. Seuss books had been cancelled by the man’s own estate. Dr. Seuss Enterprises was founded by Theodore Seuss Geisel’s widow in 1993. Since, it has decided that certain portions of Geisel’s own work are racist and therefore at odds with “our mission of supporting all children and families with messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship.”
One might imagine that the business entrusted with preserving Dr. Seuss’s legacy of delighting and inspiring children would look for guidance on how to do so from&#8230; Dr. Seuss. But ours is an era in which sons stand in judgment over their fathers. It’s characteristic of late-stage cancel culture that the very people trained and empowered by the work of a genius would think they can use that training and power to condemn the man himself.
Seussgate is of a piece with last week’s Amazon blitz, in which Ryan T. Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally was zapped from the online retailer’s inventory. As Sohrab Ahmari <a href="https://americanmind.org/salvo/amazons-digital-bonfire/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/salvo/amazons-digital-bonfire/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFfoI7PVSvEQNxfm_AbbNDPe00M2Q">pointed out</a> at The American Mind, “given that Amazon controls most book sales in the United States, [this] means Anderson’s book simply doesn’t exist, as far as most book buyers are concerned.” And since Anderson’s book was not a screed but a thoughtful, well-researched argument, “if Anderson’s book is subject to cancellation by Amazon, few other books are safe.”
But there is something distinctive about cancelling Dr. Seuss. Two, things, in fact: for one, it makes the books in question not just difficult but impossible to obtain. They will simply no longer be published: the people in control of their licensing have made them contraband. Irrespective of the business the books may or may not generate, and purely on the basis of ethical purity, those books are now forbidden. Gone.
For another thing, Seuss is a children’s author. This obvious fact is of a weighty significance that is likely to be overlooked. If anything it might tempt us to treat this episode as more frivolous than the Amazon fiasco, less deserving of adult attention. But that is an error that lets progressives get away with a great deal. Conservatives commit it all the time: we sniff at low culture and childish things, as if they were beneath our attention. The Left does not. They understand an important truth: control early childhood education, and you control the country.
From Cradle to Congress
“The best means of forming a manly, virtuous and happy people, will be found in the right education of youth. Without this foundation, every other means, in my opinion, must fail.” So <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0149" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0149&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHpEpsErJzYNrgswaIxI7i1ngSC8w">wrote</a> George Washington in a letter to his friend, the educational theorist George Chapman. Washington had ancient wisdom behind him: “the beginning of everything is the most important thing,” <a href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D2%3Asection%3D377a" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc%3DPerseus%253Atext%253A1999.01.0168%253Abook%253D2%253Asection%253D377a&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF9ll4s1dwMGC8iNFsw0XtxVQoUHg">wrote</a> the Greek philosopher Plato in his Republic, “especially for any creature that is young and tender. That is when it is most easily molded.”
Plato’s student Aristotle went on to write a <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0058%3Abook%3D8%3Asection%3D1337a" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc%3DPerseus%253Atext%253A1999.01.0058%253Abook%253D8%253Asection%253D1337a&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF-k4ZFsM7DaGDyIaFvgu261aJmdg">series</a> of lectures on how education shapes politics: the children who are trained in the nursery grow up to vote in the assemblies and write the laws of the state. “Legislators make their citizens good by training,” <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0054%3Abekker%20page%3D1103a" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc%3DPerseus%253Atext%253A1999.01.0054%253Abekker%2520page%253D1103a&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHoVlhTzMltG8XvrT4Pe0NjdKSWSA">wrote</a> Aristotle. “This is the wish of all legislators, and those who do not succeed in this miss their aim, and it is this that distinguishes a good from a bad constitution.” In a representative government like ours, or a democracy like Athens, education is never merely personal. It is also political in the deepest sense: it trains us for participation in government at every level.
Abraham Lincoln, in one of his <a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEeh_tE8HcQ1nQ94wwOuOY0c1Xj3g">earliest speeches</a>, insisted on this point: “let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap,” he declared. “Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.” “From out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou established strength,” says Psalm 8: from the nursery on up through the universities and into the legislature, like seeds sprouting into trees and bearing fruit, the lessons we teach our kids play out in our politics.
One lesson progressives are currently teaching our kids is this: those whose views make you uncomfortable should be barred from the public square. They are teaching that lesson very effectively, because they are paying attention to every level of society—down to the very babes and sucklings. This is a cultural lesson, deeper than this or that law: that is why we call it cancel culture.
Nothing that Amazon or Dr. Seuss Enterprises has done is currently illegal or ever was. It is not as if the laws changed, and now the censors are free at last to do their merciless work. Our expectations of one another have changed, our instinctive reactions to things and the unspoken rules of how we do business.
You can feel this at work in your own heart, even though if you’re reading this I doubt you support cancellation as an intellectual matter. Look up some of the <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/books-and-literature/dr-seuss-books-racist-imagery-7211862/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://indianexpress.com/article/books-and-literature/dr-seuss-books-racist-imagery-7211862/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFYc4nuNd5IpV8quFyIm_0lsVOFmQ">supposedly racist</a> images from the Dr. Seuss books in question. They are, in my view, perfectly harmless. And yet I cringe to see them. Why? Because the atmosphere around me, the set of cultural assumptions I encounter every day, has trained me to do so at a subconscious level. We are all, even conservatives, being culturally molded by the Left.
Cultural Solutions to Cultural Problems
To be sure, there are some legal remedies that we can and must seek for this state of affairs. In particular the power that Amazon and Big Tech hold over us — over the flow of information, over our elected representatives themselves — must be broken. I don’t care if we use Section 230 reform, or anti-trust law, or some other new law to do it: this is a foundational, constitutional issue for us. The first amendment guarantees our rights of free expression. Any company which attains the power to nullify that amendment has violated our most basic social contract with one another and stolen our God-given birthright. If the laws do not allow us to defend these constitutional principles, the laws need changing. It’s a good reason to pay attention to the 2022 election.
But laws at the congressional or even the state level won’t fix everything. These cultural matters — these matters of the heart — also require cultural change. The atmosphere itself, the way we treat one another and expect to be treated, is something over which we the people have total collective control. We can, for starters, stop treating that fact as if it were small beer. The time is past to acquiesce, to shrug off petty accusations or menacing looks as inconsequential. It is time to boldly, without apology, act as if we believe what we believe.
And what we believe is: that we are endowed by our Creator with the right to speak our minds. That the endless invention of petty racism where none exists is a tool and a tactic to cow us into silence. That neither the state nor our neighbor has any right to make us feel ashamed of our country or to assassinate our character on charges that change every day and bear no relation to reality. We have to start acting like we believe that.
I am talking here about action on a very subtle level, about shifts in attitude which take place daily and in minor interactions. The great Athenian statesman Pericles, in a speech praising the glory of his native culture, <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/pericles-funeralspeech.asp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/pericles-funeralspeech.asp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEOoE736BduuaTXKj0f5Gl6etGMcw">noted this </a>about how neighbors in Athens regarded one another:
<blockquote>
Far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.
</blockquote>
“Those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty”: in those looks, those sidelong glances and clucks of concern, are the roots of all cancel culture’s power. We are so easily swayed by one another, so ready to shrink back when someone looks at us askance. This has empowered the worst kinds of bullies: everyone is familiar now with the hideous scenes of grown men screaming at defenseless women in grocery stores, demanding that they put on masks.
The fact that those men feel comfortable acting that way is a matter of cultural climate: they have been encouraged to spy on and berate their neighbors, to demand compliance, to act as agents of the nanny state. We cannot stand for this any longer. We must not look away when things like this happen. There is no need for violence or even anger in any of this: we must simply stand our ground and defend one another against these crabbed and oppressive forms of social control.
We Can Win
I am going to stress one more time now that this is not a minor thing. It is everything. It is the context within which it becomes possible to be America. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People,” <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEb-5VDEuR7FbruUvjqt0Mef-Y9lA">wrote</a> John Adams to the Massachusetts Militia. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Adams was saying that republican government is possible within a certain kind of culture, and not within others. That cultural context — the strong social and religious fabric in which the country was founded — preceded the country itself and made it possible.
We don’t automatically become virtuous and free by living in a country with a written Constitution. Our virtue, and our insistence on freedom, are what makes the Constitution more than writing. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,” <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&amp;doc=15&amp;page=transcript" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash%3Dfalse%26doc%3D15%26page%3Dtranscript&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEU6SPLrbk-KJWHEqOs58rF7_JvXg">said</a> George Washington upon leaving the presidency, “religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”
It starts in churches. It starts in gatherings of the like-minded. And then it grows every time you, or anyone, has the courage to do what is frowned upon in the era of cancel culture. To resist tyrannical lockdowns. To speak your mind honestly in love. To disregard the nasty looks or the social stigma that may come with those things.
And courage is what it will take. Courage is what it always takes: this country was founded at the risk of life and limb. We can summon the guts to resist this new foe, this cloud of censorship and closed-mindedness. When we do, we will find there were lots of people on our side the whole time, just waiting for permission to be brave and speak up.
We can give them that permission, each of us, if we step out in faith. “Do not be afraid,” said the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings%206&amp;version=NIV" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search%3D2%2520Kings%25206%26version%3DNIV&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614879961969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH_EBisg-wwm4JQq30hjRd0x2s0Ng">prophet</a> Elisha to his servant: “they that are with us are greater than those that are against us.” And the servant saw that though there was an enemy army outside their tent, horsemen and chariots of fire were waiting to charge into battle.
The cavalry is there for us — but we have to summon them. We have to summon them with daily courage, and with refusal to be intimidated. Do not back down: we can win this fight.
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="http://youngheretics.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://youngheretics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFegURPjAdNFJd0-_mKudXAgmAp5g">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEwm82CEKe6gHOjTWwdZQOTR6iQow">Claremont Review of</a> Books and <a href="https://americanmind.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHQm8tQMK1XoUSXLWkCl3KkGZJgrQ">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/spencerklavan" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/spencerklavan&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHzq-src8474zs7-nMknyLYtgJwCA">@SpencerKlavan</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Dr. Seuss Receives A Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame

Dr. Seuss and the Culture of Fear

Cancel Culture

Dr. Seuss

You have a right to educate your children. Say it with me, though it shouldn’t have to be said: you have a right to educate your children.
Last year, Harvard’s “nationally renowned child welfare expert,” Elizabeth Bartholet, <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/law-school-professor-says-there-may-be-a-dark-side-of-homeschooling/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/law-school-professor-says-there-may-be-a-dark-side-of-homeschooling/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462173000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEmSofb2h1m3oBKjFGybPwR3J5jcw">published</a> a glorified hit job on homeschoolers and their parents. Fretting that those who choose to homeschool are often *gasp* Evangelical Christians, she explained that “children are simply not learning basic academic skills or learning about the most basic democratic values of our society or getting the kind of exposure to alternative views that enables them to exercise meaningful choice about their future lives.”
Heaven forfend, in other words, that kids should grow up deprived of such pedagogical essentials as the <a href="https://assets2.hrc.org/welcoming-schools/documents/WS_Lesson_Gender_Snowperson.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://assets2.hrc.org/welcoming-schools/documents/WS_Lesson_Gender_Snowperson.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462173000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEg5IHqDi-jHOTimj7IIPCQNep1mg">gender snowperson</a>—without a Human Rights Campaign infographic to open up before them the infinite vista of gender fluidity, how will they ever exercise meaningful choice about their future lives?
If any form of schooling in this country is designed to screen out “the most basic&#8230;values of our society” and prevent “exposure to alternative views,” it is surely the public school system. “every CPS high school will receive 200-400 copies of The New York Times&#8216; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462173000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF5SMm8sU8m8aLeHkqlxTJ0vN7mdQ">The 1619 Project</a>,” said Dr. Janice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, in September 2019. The Times’s “Project” (read: neo-Bolshevist screed) needs to be in schools, according to Jackson, so it can “help reframe the institution of slavery, and how we&#8217;re still influenced by it today.”
Long before President Biden took office, a partisan effort to install “<a href="https://americanmind.org/memo/action-civics-replaces-citizenship-with-partisanship/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/memo/action-civics-replaces-citizenship-with-partisanship/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNErr2QzyYtiWRov2ZBQ4msqos9vFQ">Action Civics</a>” in schools across the country was already replacing patriotic education with leftist activism. As a candidate, Biden partnered with <a href="https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/UNITY-TASK-FORCE-RECOMMENDATIONS.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/UNITY-TASK-FORCE-RECOMMENDATIONS.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGyBfpw07pujeoDxCXTz-mSAMMZBw">Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders</a> to declare his support for more unionization (of the kind that is now keeping schools <a href="https://americanmind.org/memo/get-your-kids-out-of-public-school/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/memo/get-your-kids-out-of-public-school/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHAcTf8ekeyXsXGNfti9ldehwzHwQ">locked down</a> in the name of self-interested bickering and at the expense of children’s welfare) as well as his <a href="https://americanmind.org/features/what-comes-next/bidens-bipartisan-plan-destroy-american-education/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/features/what-comes-next/bidens-bipartisan-plan-destroy-american-education/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHyJCrkpQK6Msti_EyJXhPRj4B-dQ">hostility</a> toward charter schools.
On his first day in office, Biden nuked former President Trump’s <a href="https://americanmind.org/memo/the-1776-report-an-excerpt/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/memo/the-1776-report-an-excerpt/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFyEdFlAVTyfwd-qDUN9_ydtt5x2A">1776 Commission Report</a>, which outlined a traditional and patriotic path for American history and civics. The report would have been uncontroversial 20 years ago; now it is not fit for the eyes of children. The Democrat platform essentially amounts to: your children will learn the values we decide upon, at the time of our choosing, and your opinion on the matter is irrelevant (plus probably racist).
Something very calculated is going on here, and it’s worth being precise about what it is. The Left understands education as a form of state indoctrination. The problem with this view is that it’s roughly half correct. This may surprise conservatives initially, wary as we rightly are of state control. But there is more to this than just “government bad.” When Trump <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/10/trump-accuses-colleges-radical-left-indoctrination-threatens-tax-exemption/5415908002/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/10/trump-accuses-colleges-radical-left-indoctrination-threatens-tax-exemption/5415908002/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEd-G6EVyIm_LJJWYzcUm7kCwuD2A">declared</a> that “our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated,” he was moving in the right direction — but something more needs saying if we’re going to get this thing right. Which we must: the soul of the country is at stake.
What is Education?
Education is a subject on which we have wandered far from our ancestral sources of wisdom. What is the point of teaching children at all? How do we pick what to teach? Do we teach values, or just facts?
There is an ancient answer that cuts through all these questions to the heart of what education is. Plato describes it in his Republic, though it was probably already conventional wisdom in his day. A rightly educated man, in Plato’s words, will
<blockquote>
praise beautiful things and delight in them. He will and take them into his soul to foster its growth and become himself beautiful and good. The ugly he would rightly reject and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason — but when reason came to him, the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her welcome, for by this affinity he would know her.
</blockquote>
To love what is good and hate what is evil: this is the mark of an educated man. Conservatives could be forgiven for recoiling at this definition: one of our strongest traditions in this country, after all, is freedom of thought and speech. How can we call our society free if we brainwash our kids to love what we love? Maybe we just ought to teach facts, and let people decide about values for themselves.
But there’s no getting away from the paradox this creates. For liberty itself — the context within which all these arguments make sense — is a value. It is not something “objective” in the sense of being merely factual. You can’t calculate our right to liberty with a mathematical equation or derive it from scientific observation. You have to believe in it, and that means knowing it as good.
Maybe the good of liberty is self-evident — Thomas Jefferson certainly thought so — but the majority of people throughout history haven’t seen it that way. Remember how the Israelites whom Moses freed <a href="https://biblehub.com/exodus/16-3.htm" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://biblehub.com/exodus/16-3.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHkY-Du_UsdwbnyLkqKcS5egJR8og">longed</a> at first for a return to slavery. Humanity had to be exposed over long years to the truth of things, to learn through hard experience the evils of tyranny and the blessings of liberty. In other words, we had to be taught — in this case, by history.
And even seemingly basic things, like math and science, involve basic values — values like reason, empirical observation, and experimentation. We’ve got these things so deep in our bones that we don’t realize that people aren’t born into the world knowing how to use them. But it’s true: we train kids to love these things. We teach them funny songs, or games, or show them puzzles, to get them used to the pleasure of finding facts out.
“Mankind by nature reaches out to know,” wrote Plato’s student Aristotle — and that’s true. But when we first reach out, as kids, we need someone else reaching out on the other end to guide our natural impulses: toward good and not evil, toward truth and not falsehood, as best as can be done in this broken world.
This is something which the Left deeply understands, albeit in a twisted and dangerous way. They want to seize control of early childhood education precisely because they do know that education is about values, and not just facts. The gender snowperson, the 1619 Project, the activism and the hostility toward home schooling: all of these are motivated by a desire to get kids schooled in their values. It’s why they’re so effective, even with their terrible ideas. Leftists know that if they can get at kids when they’re impressionable, they can teach whole generations to hate what they hate and love what they love.
Education is Politics
Education is thus political in the most profound sense. There’s no escaping it. Here’s Aristotle again:
<blockquote>
Nobody would dispute that the education of the young requires the special attention of the legislator. Neglect this in a state, and the constitution is destroyed—for education ought to be adapted to the particular form of government&#8230;for instance the democratic spirit promotes democracy and the oligarchic spirit oligarchy; and the best spirit always causes a better constitution.
</blockquote>
George Washington expressed much the same sentiment when he wrote in a <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0149" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0149&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHgqDU_UzQaufIU2hDi273d0_1xSg">letter</a> to the teacher and educational philosopher George Chapman, “The best means of forming a manly, virtuous and happy people, will be found in the right education of youth. Without this foundation, every other means, in my opinion, must fail.” Then again Abraham Lincoln, near the very beginning of his political career, proclaimed, “that every man may receive at least, a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance.”
The question is not whether we want to instill political principles into children by educating them. The question is which political principles we want to instill. The Left has its answer: they want children primed to hate America from as young an age as possible, trained to assume as a matter of course that their country is racist and their fellow countrymen are potential oppressors. To think of their bodies as prisons and to long for liberation from the reality of gender. That is a totalizing educational project, and it guides how the Left wants everything — from history and civics to math and science — to be taught.
What is our answer? That, too, can be found in Aristotle, at the very beginning of his <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0149" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0149&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHgqDU_UzQaufIU2hDi273d0_1xSg">Politics</a>. The form of education should mirror the form of government, and our form of government is a free one. Its most basic building block, the natural community out of which all its other structures grow, is the family. If the family is free — if it stands firm as a self-contained unit — then communities, cities, and states can build from there.
“Nothing of a public and institutional nature can supply the place of parents,” wrote Rousas John Rushdoony in The Messianic Character of American Education. “They were ordained of God; and no incubator of modern science or education should ever supplant them.” True learning doesn’t begin the first time a child walks through the classroom door: it begins the first time a mother smiles and her baby smiles back.
The lifelong process of becoming ever more deeply human — of learning to love the good and hate what is evil — begins in the home and grows organically outward from there into the highest reaches of government. School, if it happens outside the home, is still an extension of the home, and the parents’ final authority to choose the manner of their children’s education should be absolute. That is not a politically neutral or objective view. It doesn’t spring out of nowhere or endure without care and upkeep. It is an American view, following directly from the American belief in man’s inalienable rights.
The Opposite of Leftism
The Left has set itself resolutely against this American view of education. That goes way back: already in the late 1800s, Progressive reformers were arguing, again in Rushdoony’s words, that “the family is a social product and must serve therefore as a social agency.” The attacks on homeschooling and charter schools that now issue regularly from the modern Democratic Party follow directly from this Progressive project: we decide what is good, not you; therefore we and not you will decide what your children learn.
We will need, in the years to come, a strong defense of our own right to educate our kids. That doesn’t mean everyone should homeschool — it’s not right for everyone, of course, and there are other ways to watch over your child’s education. But it does mean defending homeschooling as the basic form of education, from which all other forms of education derive their character and their legitimacy. Homescholing has produced and continues to produce extremely high-functioning, well-educated <a href="https://twitter.com/Liz_Wheeler/status/1194440635664613376?s=20" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/Liz_Wheeler/status/1194440635664613376?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1613600462174000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF8ouzwTMG3Gh3_lgGkdwzBdaWEIQ">people</a> who defy the bigoted stereotypes of its detractors. It is not a marginal oddity or a deviation from the norm. It is the baseline, the heart and soul of how education should look.
The conservative position should therefore be the exact reverse of the leftist one — not because we want to take politics out of education, but because the politics of our education should be based on the politics of the American Constitution. If the Democrat view is wokeness from the top down, ours should be Americanism from the bottom up — no matter what, against every form of opposition. Take control of what your kids learn. You have the right. Say it again, once more to close: you have the right.
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="http://youngheretics.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://youngheretics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFegURPjAdNFJd0-_mKudXAgmAp5g">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEwm82CEKe6gHOjTWwdZQOTR6iQow">Claremont Review of</a> Books and <a href="https://americanmind.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHQm8tQMK1XoUSXLWkCl3KkGZJgrQ">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/spencerklavan" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/spencerklavan&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHzq-src8474zs7-nMknyLYtgJwCA">@SpencerKlavan</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

US-LIFESTYLE-GAY-RIGHTS-GENDER-SOCIETY-BOOKS

The Backward Leftist View of Education

Education

Homeschooling

School Choice

Living is easy with eyes closed, 
Misunderstanding all you see. 
It’s getting hard to be someone, 
But it all works out. 
It doesn’t matter much to me.
     &#8211;The Beatles, “Strawberry Fields Forever”
When the Beatles first sang that “nothing is real,” it was February of 1967. The song had originally been destined for the LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which came out in May of that same year and helped kick off the Summer of Love. The rebellion in the streets of San Francisco that summer was against artifice and consumerism, against the Vietnam War and sexual morality alike.
The disastrous consequences of the hippie movement are well known among conservatives: radically decoupling sex from commitment has left women depressed in <a href="https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-false-science-of-feminism/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-false-science-of-feminism/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1612377143133000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHXE-AYZM2p2DAyT6mj1siufkBq7w">record numbers</a> and men at the mercy of their worst impulses. The extravagant failures of that generation are carefully recorded by Helen Andrews in her new book, Boomers—it’s not my intention to rehash them at length here. What I keep thinking about these days, instead, is the perceived state of affairs that the hippies were reacting against. I think we have more in common with them than we might like to admit in that regard. Maybe we can learn from their mistakes.
Things Come Undone
The Vietnam War lasted 20 years. When it started, a Republican — Dwight D. Eisenhower — was president. During those years of the late ’60s, two Democrats — John F. Kennedy and, after his assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson — failed to bring hostilities in Southeast Asia to a close. It must have seemed suddenly that the difference between Republicans and Democrats was a mirage: if the enormity of the war was unchanged by either party, if it dragged on through presidency after presidency, what did the supposed distinctions between these supposedly great men really amount to?
And  then there was the assassination. By all accounts, it was almost impossible to believe that Kennedy had just been shot like that. “We were working in one of the worst moments of the nation’s life back then and we didn’t know what to make of it,” said the journalist Bob Huffaker, who covered the story: “much like what happened on 9/11.” The fact that an American president could be killed so shattered America’s postwar perception of itself — as untouchable, as permanently triumphant, as exempt from history — that many people simply refused to accept that one man and a few bullets could bring an entire epoch crashing down.
“There were a lot of people who wanted Kennedy dead,” said one suspicious layman, Michael Fontaine, “a lot of powerful people. There are secrets still being held and I never bought for a minute that [the killer Lee Harvey] Oswald operated alone.” Likewise Hugh Aynesworth: “We can’t accept very comfortably that two nobodies, two nothings—Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby—were able to change the course of world history.” This was modern America’s inaugural conspiracy theory: suddenly, it seemed plausible to a lot of people that the official narrative about absolutely everything was not just mistaken but thoroughly deceitful on a grand scale.
In an atmosphere like that, you could sing “nothing is real” and get thousands of heads nodding along. You could build an entire album — Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band — around a series of LSD trips and psychedelic trances, with the implication that hallucinogenic drugs revealed more truth than any newspaper would ever dare to. And you could propose the deconstruction of traditional mores on the basis that they, too, represented more false teachings from the grown-ups who had lied to you so often for so long. It must have seemed as if everything — from marriage to military service — was a construct and a means of control.
Overdosing on Rebellion
The problem, of course, was that youthful excess turned rebellion into not just a reaction but a life philosophy. It’s one thing to realize that America isn’t invincible like you were taught; it’s another thing to conclude that all patriotism is blindness. It’s one thing to chafe against insincerity; it’s another to assert that 2,000 years’ worth of carefully constructed sexual ethics is an outright lie. In a classic case of throwing babies out with their bathwater, the hippies tore everything down and realized they had absolutely nothing to replace any of it with.
All they had was themselves, viewed through a flattering haze of drugs and sex. Here is how Paul McCartney <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/beatles-sgt-pepper-at-50-john-lennons-accidental-getting-better-acid-trip-122596/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/beatles-sgt-pepper-at-50-john-lennons-accidental-getting-better-acid-trip-122596/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1612377143133000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFc_kNcEd42iEng8bbX-gUAk0TB1Q">described</a> a fateful acid trip that would lead to one of Sgt. Pepper’s hit tracks:
<blockquote>
It was amazing. You’re looking into each other’s eyes and you would want to look away but you wouldn’t, and you could see yourself in the other person. It was a very freaky experience and I was totally blown away. John [Lennon] had been sitting around very enigmatically and I had a big vision of him as king, the absolutely Emperor of Eternity.
</blockquote>
When every authority has been debunked, man at last makes himself God, vainly imagining himself “Emperor of Eternity.” The results have been predictable.
Conservatives have a fair amount of justified disdain for free love. But these days, it seems many of us are no less convinced than the hippies that “nothing is real.” Indeed, the suspicion that absolutely everything is a farce might be the driving sentiment of our age.
As far as conspiracy theories go, “Epstein didn’t kill himself” has way more traction than anything anyone ever cooked up about the Kennedy assassination. PizzaGate and QAnon, though far more unhinged than the Epstein theories, are no less influential and compelling to a significant portion of the electorate.
There are more mainstream forms of disillusionment too: public <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-samuels-new-americans-gamestop-wallstreetbets" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-samuels-new-americans-gamestop-wallstreetbets&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1612377143134000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG49VQ3wwF6AuwdY6P9BsKYkyujKQ">enthusiasm</a> for the r/WallStreetBets phenomenon, in which Reddit users gamed the stock market and thwarted hedge fund managers, arises from a general concern that “stonks” do not accurately represent the real prosperity of Americans and boil down instead to a gamified construct — exactly as real as a video game, and just as susceptible to cheat codes.
And if you want proof that growing numbers of people think the whole system of government is “rigged,” that most Republicans and Democrats in office amount to the same establishment, that the whole system needs to be “burned down” by an outsider who, whatever his other flaws, will at least tell the truth and call a spade a spade — well then, look no farther than the 2016 election. The spirit of iconoclasm that the ’60s generated is alive and well, because we are still reckoning with the seismic revelations of that era.
Our growing distaste for forever wars in far-off lands, our mistrust of experts who have failed us, our sense that America is not unbreakable but fractured, vulnerable, and culturally insecure: these things are not limited to the Right or the Left. They are the consequences of an entire nation realizing that our fantasies about limitless prosperity were misguided and our trust in the “experts” was misplaced.
Cautionary Tales
The internet makes it easier and easier every day to see that our leadership classes have failed and their credentials are meaningless. The louder they scream at us to pay no attention to the men behind the curtain, the more people start to wonder if everything about our society is an ornately confected illusion. Not a few people are whispering that maybe the whole thing was a mistake — that maybe we should scrap the country, or secede from it, and start over.
But that would be a mistake — the same mistake the hippies made. What we are not seeing is a failure of the basic truths on which America was built. Just the opposite: what we are seeing is a failure of our belief that we were so powerful we could do away with those truths. In the wake of our heady triumphs during the World Wars, when America grew strong as the “old world” of Europe tore itself apart, we came to believe we had transcended the realities of human nature and political change that have been at work since men first organized into governments.
The ease with which we lost our religion, the blithe optimism with which we shed old customs and habits: these are signs of what the ancient Greeks called hubris, the pride which comes from unprecedented success. Looking back on the rise and fall of the great Persian empire, the Greek tragedian Aeschylus reflected on how Darius, the disciplined and mighty king, left behind a son who thought he couldn’t lose, until he did — badly. Xerxes was guilty of “that pride, which from the gods calls down destruction on his head,” proclaimed the ghost of Darius onstage.
The Greek idea of anacyclosis — that civilizations rise and fall in a predictable pattern — was based on the observation that pride follows triumph, and then makes triumph impossible. “Hard times create strong men,” wrote G. Michael Hopf.  “Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.” It’s easy to see where on that cycle we find ourselves.
It is hubris that has left America complacent and increasingly weak. The solution is not a rejection of the old truths but a return to them, as a refuge from the emptiness of our modern dreams. We were so focused on our greatness that we forgot the source of it, which is that “Creator” by whom we are “endowed with certain inalienable rights.” Unless we acknowledge this, we will go down into the dust as every great power has since long before Persia and Greece.
The Revolutionary Road Home
There is value in the kind of revolution that destroys empty and deceitful things. Insofar as the populist Right is showing both its willingness to crash heedlessly through the barriers of political correctness, and its antic disregard for the pieties of secular globalism, I salute it. But at a certain point you have to stop tearing down and start building up. If conservatives are about to stage their own cultural rebellion, let it be distinct from that of the hippies in exactly this way: let it be a rebellion not against law but against lawlessness, not against convention but against the cheap pseudo-sophistication which disparages convention. We are sick not from too much meaning, but too little, and the wrong kinds. What is really radical, now, is to re-establish the simple customs and essential truths that made us great in the first place: marriage, community building, self-defense, family life, devotion, faith.
There are appealing signs that this very online movement is headed in exactly that direction: the “retvrn to tradition” catchphrase, if you search for it on Twitter, will reveal many very modern, quite hip young people who nevertheless hunger for ways of life so long rejected that they have become novel again. The Right’s new fondness for bodybuilding, for traditional courtship, even for gun ownership, represents more than just lifestyle choices: these are efforts to plant a personal flag for deeper virtue and more integrity in one’s own life, and build outward from there. As they say online: you love to see it.
Eventually, of course, we will need to think about how those individual choices can be built out into a winning political platform. This will take more than just internet nihilism or plucky Reddit missions. It will take community organizing, local leadership, and funding from sympathetic donors. But the lifeblood of it will be this new spirit of rebellion, this defiant search for meaning, this insistence upon substance in a world gone mad. Until we get another shot at an election — and we will — this is our task. It is a good one. If we do it well, then by the grace of that Creator who endows us with our rights — who is himself the realest thing there is — we will find our way back to reality.
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="http://youngheretics.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://youngheretics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFegURPjAdNFJd0-_mKudXAgmAp5g">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEwm82CEKe6gHOjTWwdZQOTR6iQow">Claremont Review of</a> Books and <a href="https://americanmind.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHQm8tQMK1XoUSXLWkCl3KkGZJgrQ">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/spencerklavan" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/spencerklavan&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHzq-src8474zs7-nMknyLYtgJwCA">@SpencerKlavan</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Griffith Park Love-In

Don’t Be Like the Hippies

Conservatism

Hippies

Populism

Readers Pass

Last week the Daily Wire premiered its first feature film, Kyle Rankin’s Run Hide Fight. The results were: impressive viewership numbers, glowing audience reviews, and a predictable outpouring of dyspeptic condemnation from critics who found fault with the movie once they realized it had been picked up for distribution by a conservative outlet.
All of this, it’s fair to say, represents a resounding success for the Wire’s new incursion into the fictional creative world. If the gatekeepers of that world took the time to savage the movie in print, they must be getting antsy about the potential for cultural success it represents. To paraphrase my colleague <a href="https://americanmind.org/author/poulos/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/author/poulos/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1611258056196000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF3k-mtVr6lLt11sWcPoIhcaRP9Ig">James Poulos</a>, when the eye of Sauron turns upon you, you know you’re getting close to infiltrating and destroying Mordor.
There were also, from some of the Daily Wire’s most devoted fans, concerns about Run Hide Fight’s nudity and strong language. Those concerns are representative of more widespread conservative misgivings about narrative art — and art more generally — which showcases the grittier, more violent aspects of life. So much of the explicit content featured in legacy and prestige venues — Netflix, Hollywood, the top 40 music charts — is either debauched (like Cardi B’s infamous “WAP”) or outright evil (like Netflix’s misbegotten child-exploitation flick, Cuties).
Whatever the artistic “merits” of such doggerel (on which, more below), anyone with a shred of moral dignity could be forgiven for wanting it nowhere near his children or indeed himself. We have a deeply felt intuition that art which shoves our faces in immorality doesn’t just disgust us but degrade us, in some way over which we don’t have total control. The chattering classes are intent on pouring filth into our eyes and ears, and despite our dedicated resistance, we worry that we can’t shield ourselves entirely from corruption.
I don’t want to dismiss or belittle those worries in any way — to the contrary, I share them all and want to take them very seriously. But I do want to suggest that in the case of Run Hide Fight, they’re misplaced. In the process I hope I’ll help us as conservatives to think about this question — the question of art’s morality — in a way that goes deeper than the churn of the daily news cycle. Because as it happens this is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, issues in Western artistic criticism: how do we affirm all the richness of art and its potential to edify, without leaving ourselves at the mercy of its dangerous power to seduce?
The Danger of Art
In the first-ever complete work of literary criticism, the Poetics, Aristotle made an observation that strikes at the heart of the problem. He was arguing that imitation (in Greek, mimēsis) is a fundamental human act and comes from deep in our souls: “imitation is engrained in man’s nature from childhood — in this, he is different from all the other animals. He is the most imitative of them all.”
Aristotle was developing an observation his teacher Plato had made in a number of places — particularly his last great unfinished work, the Laws. Both philosophers noticed that babies and young children learn all sorts of things long before they are able to understand rational arguments or even language. And the way they learn is through imitation, in the form of nursery rhymes, songs, and lessons that they can hear from their parents and parrot back. Preschool teachers still work this way: they teach with games, dances, and songs that can be seen and mimicked.
Art is a highly refined and sophisticated form of this basic human impulse to imitate. That’s where we get our idea that great art is supposed to represent reality — not the facts of something that actually happened, but the truth of inner experiences which can’t be conveyed except in narrative form. When we make movies or sing songs, we use sounds and images to recreate and imitate what a certain experience is like for the people having it. And because humans have a natural impulse to imitate, the audience who sees a good representation spontaneously feels some of the feelings represented.
There’s an inherent pleasure and delight that comes with doing something natural to us. That’s why Aristotle noted that imitation itself is pleasurable, even if what’s being imitated is something awful. “There is proof of this in real-life experience, for we enjoy looking at accurate images of things which are painful to see in themselves: monstrous beasts, for example, and corpses.” And here’s our whole problem. No matter what is shown in art, if it’s depicted skillfully and well, we can often enjoy seeing the depiction. That enjoyment is primal, deep, and pre-rational. It’s been with us since infancy, and that makes it powerful — more powerful, even, than reasoned arguments.
This is one of the reasons why Plato famously exiled poets from his perfect city in the Republic: it’s not that he didn’t like them, it’s just that they had too much power. Grab hold of people’s imaginations through skillful depictions and stories, and you can work your way into their hearts in a way that’s very hard to talk them out of — even if what you’re showing them is immoral and debased.
The Artist’s Responsibility
Hence the power of the modern American Left: they own the culture, so they can manipulate huge crowds despite the total failure of their ideas. But in reality you can’t, and shouldn’t, banish artists from a society the way Plato fantasized about doing. Art is too basic a human instinct for that, and it’s the only way to convey certain spiritual and emotional realities which go beyond mere material facts. So instead of giving up on art altogether, conservatives like the Daily Wire guys have started to respond to the Left in kind: you don’t fight false stories with factual arguments. You fight false stories with true stories.
This is the crucial thing that has to make us different: the fact that art represents something means it has to represent it truly. Otherwise it’s a lie — and a bitterly corrosive lie at that. The rhetoricians Cicero and Quintilian taught that good compositions need to “move, delight, and instruct.” Those are the three essential things that art can do in ways nothing else does: it stirs our emotions, it gives us rapturous pleasure, and it shows us the world.
But because that world is so broken, skillful artists can divorce the truth-telling function of art from its emotional properties — they can move us powerfully while instructing us falsely. This is the real reason why “WAP” is a vile song. It’s not because it’s sexually explicit: sex acts are a part of life. Much of Western visual art involves nudity and sexuality — look up Tintoretto’s “Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan” for one among innumerable examples.
Even things like the promiscuity and self-abasement Cardi B displays in “WAP,” though they’re grievously wrong to indulge in, are real things: they exist in this fallen world of ours, and art should have some mature way of acknowledging that. The fact that Cardi B does so isn’t her problem.
No, her real failure as an artist is that she doesn’t just depict promiscuity: she tells a lie about it. The song and the video make what she’s doing look easy, fun, empowering, and consequence-free. In real life — and especially for people who, unlike Cardi B, don’t have millions of dollars on hand to sweep up the mess — prostrating yourself for easy sex is a miserable, painful, damaging thing. Countless women, even as they nod their heads along to “WAP,” are finding themselves abandoned, lonely, depressed, and spiritually bereft because they’ve been sold a bill of goods about sex that just isn’t true. That’s the terrible power of art that lies.
But art that tells the truth doesn’t have to censor itself from showing ugly realities: it just has to be honest about them. This was a philosophy that was popular when Shakespeare — whose plays are saturated with gore and sex — displayed the full array of human life on stage. “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action,” says Shakespeare’s Hamlet: the purpose of art is not to sanitize the world but “to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”
This means that when Shakespeare wrote about Macbeth’s regicide and murderous ascent to power, he also showed his and his wife’s descent into fatal nihilism and madness. He didn’t shy away from showing bloodshed, but he showed it taking place in a moral universe, where bloodshed has consequences and guilt brings misery upon the heads of the guilty. That’s the real world we live in, too.
As much as we might like to get away from this, we can’t. Shakespeare’s rough contemporary, Philip Sidney, pointed out in his Defense of Poesy that even Jesus Christ used stories to convey the profundity of what he had to say, rather than cut-and-dry moral lessons. The Lord knew that narrative and allegory “would more constantly, as it were, inhabit both the memory and judgment.” There is something foundational about stories at the core of who we are and what we’re meant to do. That’s what makes it so urgent that we not tell stories which distort the truth and pervert reality. But at the same time, it means we can’t escape showing the whole world as it is, evil and all.
What it Means for Us
So take, for example, a series like HBO’s Game of Thrones — another one about which Christians and conservatives often worry. There’s a reason why the sex is more corrupting in that show than the violence: it’s often completely disconnected from what the story is portraying. That’s what makes it feel unnecessary: it’s not that beautiful women don’t sometimes have sex in reality. It’s that to make art about that fact, you have to take it seriously and show the essence of what that particular sex is like. So when women are undulating in the background of an exposition scene that has nothing to do with them, it’s not art, it’s titillation: pleasure without instruction.
On the other hand, the violence in Game of Thrones is very often tightly bound to the characters and their relationships. Without spoiling anything, consider the character arc of Tyrion Lannister: almost everything he does, violent or not, is expressive of his inner self. That’s truth. That’s art.
Here’s the thing, then: school shootings happen. In them, violence occurs. People who are feeling panicked and vulnerable, as well as bad guys who are victimizing the innocent, say bad words. They also say them differently, for different reasons, and with different consequences, depending on their characters and circumstances. Nudity and sex are also real parts of life. All of these things are true, and all of them — in my estimation — are depicted with honesty in Run Hide Fight.
It’s a good reason not to show the movie to kids — children are a different ball game entirely, and everyone knows we want adults to be able to think about and do some things that aren’t suitable for impressionable young minds. But it’s not a good reason to condemn the movie. One reason why it’s broken out of the typical “conservative film” mold is because it’s not squeamish about acknowledging and portraying the full array of human affairs. That’s a good thing. It’s an essential thing. If we want to get serious about making our mark on the culture — and we have to — then one indispensable part of that will be giving artists latitude to be frank about what goes on in this world of sin.
You can, in other words, condemn “WAP” and Cuties without trying to scrub all the sex and violence out of the world. We can hold both lines in this fight at once: we can oppose the banality and decadence of modern pop culture, while striking out to make good, robust art of our own. In order to win both fights, we only have to do one thing: we have to tell the truth.
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="http://youngheretics.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://youngheretics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFegURPjAdNFJd0-_mKudXAgmAp5g">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEwm82CEKe6gHOjTWwdZQOTR6iQow">Claremont Review of</a> Booksand <a href="https://americanmind.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHQm8tQMK1XoUSXLWkCl3KkGZJgrQ">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/spencerklavan" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/spencerklavan&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHzq-src8474zs7-nMknyLYtgJwCA">@SpencerKlavan</a>.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Run Hide Fight

Should Conservatives Watch Violent Movies?

Film

Film Reviews

Hollywood

We are flirting in this country with the darkest and most serious kind of civic disaster: the disaster of political violence. Not only the shameful and deadly fiasco in the Capitol building on January 6, but the merciless parade of arson, defacement, and slaughter that tore through our cities in the summer of 2020: these are like the first thunderclouds that pass over the air before a storm. If the storm comes, it will be the ruin of us all.
Our career politicians and their lackeys in the press grinned and cheered while Marxian revolutionaries ravaged our streets. They are now putting on a farcical display of mock principle, portraying the Capitol rioters as organized insurrectionists and issuing earnest calls to root them and their kind out of American society forever. The arrogant cynicism of aristocrats like this is a major root cause of the American people’s desperation and fury.
If people like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris are pretending now to be shocked and appalled at the possibility of armed rebellion, remember that just last year Harris publicly <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bail-fund-backed-by-kamala-harris-and-biden-staffers-bailed-out-alleged-child-abuser" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bail-fund-backed-by-kamala-harris-and-biden-staffers-bailed-out-alleged-child-abuser&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHjfxYDGvDtobqHdbgjngZgnfP-JA">invited</a> donations to a bail fund for rioters in Minnesota. Just as much now as then, whether they fret theatrically about insurrection or egg it brazenly on, what people like Harris are out for is power. They are part of the problem and should be regarded as nothing more.
But the hard truth is, whichever faction of rioters seems most sympathetic to partisan eyes, mobs in the street and in the Capitol represent profound failure all around: failure of leaders to lead, failure of the people to respond maturely and wisely, failure of government to serve the men and women who employ it—failure, in a word, of the American regime.
I’m far from believing that the failure is permanent or fatal for the country. But it’s worth understanding this moment for what it is so we can take it with the seriousness it deserves: this is not about grandstanding or hot takes. This is an urgent crisis that requires mature reflection. It is a make-or-break moment for our society that will determine how we and our children’s children live going forward.
What Did the Founders Think about Revolution?
Beyond the screaming and the pontificating, beyond the dimwitted children at CNN stoking the flames, the question at hand is: when and why do people take up arms against their fellow citizens and against their government? Strangely, framing it that way gives some small hope for a path forward, because we have confronted these questions before. Our Constitution was written by men who believed deeply in the rule of law, and yet they had just fought a war to overthrow their rulers. Less than a hundred years after the revolution, America would turn in on itself and fight another gruesome war between the federal government and a rival army of American citizens. That war, awful though it was, would end slavery and let the nation come into its own.
So it’s not as simple as saying “political violence is never justified” and leaving it at that—if only it were. But political violence founded our nation, and there are times—times of extreme catastrophe and oppression—when it is tragically the only solution. I want to be as clear as possible at the outset that I do not believe this is one of those times. But I also want to seek some clarity, for all our sakes, about what those times are and how we should think about them. For that we can refer to the founders themselves, who were well aware of these complexities and reflected on them deeply.
If you read only one document about revolution and insurrection from the founding era, it should probably be <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed28.asp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed28.asp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFZGUmgu12O78MUcJtHsE_MKJFHZw">Federalist #28</a>. It was written by Alexander Hamilton in 1787, as the states were voting on whether to ratify the new Constitution which would eventually become the law of our land. Hamilton was reflecting on the dangers and the necessity of a national army, and arguing that a stronger central authority wouldn’t stop the people from exercising their rights.
Perhaps the first weirdly encouraging thing Hamilton says about clashes between the government and the people is: they happen. “Seditions and insurrections are, unhappily, maladies as inseparable from the body politic as tumors and eruptions from the natural body,” he writes in the first paragraph; “the idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government), has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction.”
Hamilton was thinking first about the need for the government to put down conspiracies and insurrections with military force. As Senator Tom Cotton wrote in a now infamous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHx5-UnqdQOvaMML8RuFwaMcVVmEA">Op-Ed</a> for the New York Times when Antifa and BLM were terrorizing urban centers, “the federal government has a constitutional duty to the states to ‘protect each of them from domestic violence.’” That is the practical consequence of what Hamilton was arguing.
Shortly before the Constitution was drafted, Massachusetts had faced an armed uprising now known as “Shays rebellion,” in which a veteran of the revolution and his supporters fought against increased taxation. The founders were appalled at the prospect that the revolutionary spirit might not have been satisfied by 1776: “The flames of internal insurrection were ready to burst out in every quarter&#8230;and from one end to the other of the continent, we walked on ashes, concealing fire beneath our feet,” said James Wilson looking back on the tense days of Shays’ Rebellion. It sounds familiar.
So Hamilton was keen to vest the government with power to stamp out anti-Constitutional insurrections. He wanted to ensure the stability of the government and protect the people from the horrors of sedition. It helped that Washington, whose revolutionary credentials were impeccable, had reacted with passionate “indignation” when a group of his own soldiers conspired to attack Congress and demand pay in the “Newburgh conspiracy.” The founders had learned the hard way, and taught explicitly, that violent revolution is something to be avoided if it’s even remotely possible.
When is it Justified?
And yet, there was—and still is—the fact that our own Declaration of Independence takes the possibility of justified revolution as a given. “When in the course of human events”—not if, but when—“it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” But how to know “when”? If revolution is such a painful, bloody, miserable thing—and it is—how can we know when to make the terrible decision of taking that cost upon ourselves?
Hamilton addresses this, too, in Federalist #28. What has been called the “right of revolution” may fittingly be invoked “if the representatives of the people betray their constituents.” In such a case “there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.” It would, Hamilton argued, actually be more feasible to rebel against the federal government than against state governments, because rebelling against the federal government would require a vast, coordinated, and carefully planned assault. “In a single state,” he explains, “if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource.”
That is a pretty apt description of the Capitol hill assault, which was a federal-level riot with a state or local level of disorganization. The motley crew of protestors and rabble rousers that flooded into the building were unruly, disorganized, and without a plan. They had concerns about election integrity—some of which I share—but the court cases attempting to prove that November 2020 was a fraud had failed. One would be hard-pressed to say what they wanted, or—if what they wanted was Trump back in office—how they realistically thought they were going to achieve it.
What Hamilton argues about real, justified rebellions is, in part, that they have to be thought through and given the gravity they deserve. The fact that the United States is a big, diverse, and centrally governed country actually helps ensure that any successful revolution, in the event of true federal usurpation, would have to be carefully considered. Its costs would have to be weighed, and its rationale would have to be defended persuasively before a large number of citizens. Anything less than that is unserious and juvenile—not to mention counterproductive. The riot on January 6 was all those things.
Taking Riots Seriously
In a funny sort of way, Hamilton’s arguments here mirror those of James Madison in <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHYOUFLe40Cp9g1Ni8zubyU_s3Weg">Federalist #10</a>. This is one of the most famous Federalist papers—it argues that liberty and representative government can thrive in a large republic because it means the different interests and factions have to find ways of working together if they want to accomplish anything major at the national level. This forced compromise and collaboration is a national safeguard against “the cabals of a few.”
For Hamilton, true revolution means collaboration, organization, and coordination among a variety of Americans, all of whom agree that their country has been stolen from them. He goes so far as to say that a successful revolution will have to ally with some parts of the government—either state governments against federal, or vice versa:
<blockquote>
Power being almost always the rival of power, the general government will at all times stand ready to check the usurpations of the state governments, and these will have the same disposition towards the general government. The people, by throwing themselves into either scale, will infallibly make it preponderate. If their rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress.
</blockquote>
It is not my opinion that either the protestors at the Capitol or the rioutous mobs from summer 2020 have thought through and coordinated their efforts seriously enough to justify revolution. If there is any group of people who really have tried to coordinate insurrection in recent memory, it’s oligarchs like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/politics/george-soros-racial-justice-organizations.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/politics/george-soros-racial-justice-organizations.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFF1fsbn8pE5CoXunyuRsaMjIntlA">George Soros</a> and <a href="https://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/jack-dorsey-bu-center-for-antiracist-research-gift/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/jack-dorsey-bu-center-for-antiracist-research-gift/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGrls2bolS0D8mVyNikyjGIlMODww">Jack Dorsey</a>, who have calculatingly funded and encouraged racialist agitators while silencing opposition. That kind of puppetry and deceit really does amount to something like a coup—though not one, God willing, that has yet taken full control of this country.
I imagine some will object that the tech magnates and their Democrat stooges effectively have staged a silent revolution of their own, one for which violent rebellion is the only available mode of redress. To this I respond: grow up. We have not even begun yet to pursue all our legal and nonviolent options for fighting back against Big Tech and Davos. Conservatives talk a big game about local politics, but do you know the name of your local representative? Do you know whether he or she really stands for what you believe in? How about your neighbors—do you have any idea what their politics are? Any chance you can work together with them to get someone good on the ballot? Any chance you’ve tried?
The Left has played a long and in many cases quite sinister ground game for decades—infiltrating the schools, funding election efforts, building infrastructure and connections that have enabled them to insinuate themselves and their psychotic ideas into the culture. We laugh at the Democrats’ <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gretchen-whitmer-stacey-abrams-prayer-candle" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gretchen-whitmer-stacey-abrams-prayer-candle&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEwXr2iQYudXNd9McydS4LOHewumw">worship</a> of the failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, but they know that her relentless local campaigning was a big part of what clinched the Senate when it all came down to Georgia.
We can—must—play the same ground game in reverse, substituting our good ideas for their bad ones. We have to get serious about building new schools for our kids, about seeking new servers for our digital communications, about making the local connections that will be the foundation of our new coalition. The alternative is more frantic, unpremeditated political violence, which won’t do what we want and will eventually make everything much, much worse. Count me out.
If, on the other hand, you’re ready to get serious about winning the ground game on the New Right—if you’re ready to start working yesterday for a more robust populist coalition, one that can win locally and, in time revitalize conservatism nationally—then I’m right there with you. Let’s get to work.
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="http://youngheretics.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://youngheretics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFegURPjAdNFJd0-_mKudXAgmAp5g">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEwm82CEKe6gHOjTWwdZQOTR6iQow">Claremont Review of</a> Booksand <a href="https://americanmind.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHQm8tQMK1XoUSXLWkCl3KkGZJgrQ">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/spencerklavan" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/spencerklavan&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHzq-src8474zs7-nMknyLYtgJwCA">@SpencerKlavan</a>.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Protests As Joint Session Of Congress Confirms Presidential Election Result

The Threat of Revolution

Revolution

The Federalist

Black Lives Matter Protest In Bristol

America Is Not a Democracy

American History

Democracy

Donald Trump

Republic

If you want insight into our culture, pay attention to memes. No kidding: talk of memes has become a thing in the digital era, but “mimetic” behavior isn’t a digital phenomenon: it’s a human one. When people say “and I oop” or repeat the same dance over and over on TikTok, they’re doing more than just messing around. They’re living out one of the most basic human impulses. If the Right is going to win on this front, we have to understand memes.
How Memes Work
The word “meme” itself comes from an ancient Greek concept: mimēsis. It means “imitation,” and a mimēma, or “something that is imitated,” is a meme. This is what the philosophers Plato and Aristotle thought lay behind all artistic production and culture-making. “The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood,” writes Aristotle in his Poetics, and he goes on to explain how basic kinds of imitation like games and lessons develop into elaborate forms of imitation like theatre.
This fundamental truth has been at the heart of how we understand art and society in the West. From the poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69375/the-defence-of-poesy" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69375/the-defence-of-poesy&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607630007258000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFUYNKeBqNPQqepU4aGGifuJJhH7Q">Philip Sidney</a> in the age of Shakespeare, to the philosopher <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/girard/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://iep.utm.edu/girard/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607630007258000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHlUJgG6ZydxPVmS77ISoK26vhEww">René Girard</a> in the modern day, mimetic theory has informed some of our civilizations’ most incisive cultural commentary. “Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind,” wrote Girard in “Generative Scapegoating. “We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.”
If you’ve ever heard me or anyone else nattering on about how important it is for conservatives to understand and care about art and culture, this is why. When we make art, we’re not just painting pretty pictures or saying nice words. We’re trying to represent something spiritual by imitating it and so conveying it: those pictures and words are trying to get at an internal feeling or experience which others will grasp and experience themselves. Shakespeare himself described it as holding “the mirror up to nature,” which gets it about right. When good art hits you with a really accurate portrayal—an effective imitation of some reality—it compels you to feel something, to reproduce within yourself what the artist is expressing.
It’s a powerful tool, and it can be used for more than just self-expression: it can be used for influence and control. When something is repeated and reproduced enough, it prompts that deep human impulse of imitation and catches on—it goes viral. This is what happens when a song plays on the radio so much that it gets in your head even if you hate it: by the sheer power of mimēsis, it worms its way into your brain and forces you to imitate some small part of the culture, to reproduce it within your own self.
This brings us to memes, in the current digital sense. A meme is mimēsis distilled, like the “crack” form of cocaine: an endless repetition that finds its way into your own patterns of thought whether you like it or not. Ever find yourself saying “lol” out loud, or thinking “<a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sad-panda" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sad-panda&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607630007258000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGgnZsYjd0QIbPaH86vNvToVLYocQ">sad panda</a>!” in response to something genuinely tragic? If so, then your online experience has memed its way into your head, even if you don’t know exactly the origin of the meme or endorse all its assumptions.
Therapy and Manhood
When a meme gets popular, or has a resurgence, it says something about what’s on people’s minds. You can almost feel them rippling like waves across the surface of social media, or watch them pass from hand to hand overhead like a beach ball at a rock concert. That’s what happened this week with the “men need therapy” meme, which had a bit of a moment this past <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/do-all-men-need-therapy/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/do-all-men-need-therapy/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607630007258000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG4Y6FR-WLXUBXZoN4RDnJ4Q2XENQ">July</a> and has now appeared in the world’s bloodstream again.
This time the particular mutation is: “why do men do x instead of go to therapy?” “why do men start podcasts instead of going to therapy,” <a href="https://twitter.com/flossybabyjay/status/1335606543056769025?s=20" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/flossybabyjay/status/1335606543056769025?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607630007258000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGek8FXxEJ6GDq068nObirAMM3eBQ">asked</a> @flossybabyjay, virally. Or “why do men start going to the gym instead of therapy,”<a href="https://twitter.com/custardloaf/status/1336313181090709504?s=20" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/custardloaf/status/1336313181090709504?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607630007258000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHD-P1brjrvB8pGbhsjfjDsmJbU-g">wondered</a> @custardloaf. It seems silly to analyze something so apparently frivolous, but it’s not: these weird little verbal tics emerge out of deep, gut-level attitudes about the world. They’re worth examining in detail.
In this case, we can start with the answers to these questions: why do so many men prefer to go to the gym than to therapy? What’s with all those podcasts, anyway? Well for one thing, men are (gasp) different from women. Most good therapists will tell you that perpetual counseling with no defined endpoint is bad for anyone, but men in particular tend to be <a href="https://www.nyrealestatelawblog.com/manhattan-litigation-blog/2015/july/men-are-more-goal-oriented/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nyrealestatelawblog.com/manhattan-litigation-blog/2015/july/men-are-more-goal-oriented/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607630007258000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFvJW1-5Pvw69u5KbSyMCYna9zu9A">goal-oriented</a>. We like going out and doing stuff, and we like to have a target that tells us when the stuff is done.
So the state of simply “being in therapy”—as opposed to “doing therapy” to resolve a particular issue—is unlikely to fly with men as a sales pitch. But on a deeper level, for many men, taking on new projects is itself a form of therapy. In response to the question about working out, one lifter wrote: “I started lifting with a friend a few years ago and I had no idea he was depressed. A few months ago he told [me] that lifting every day with me saved his life.” Any man who has ever processed his feelings by going out and building something, or writing a novel, or basically making anything, will understand that experience: it’s kind of a guy thing to resolve your more intense feelings by getting active rather than talking at length.
None of which is particularly a knock on therapy itself, which can be totally helpful for men under some circumstances—soldiers suffering from PTSD, for example, or guys who had abusive parents. That in itself is part of what makes it so wrongheaded to cast therapy as some cure-all which can “fix” men, as opposed to all the other things like weightlifting and podcasting which are just “tactics” to “avoid dealing with things.” If you talk about therapy that way, you make it into something most guys are going to shun at all costs.
Why wouldn’t they? If you’re going to belittle all the good and manly stuff we do like it’s some kind of childish evasion ritual rather than, you know, the stuff civilizations are built on—and if you’re going to contrast therapy to building, using tools, working out, making art, and all the other stuff we love to contribute to the world—then I’m sorry, but we’re going to tell you to pound sand. I can think of nothing more likely to scare a dude away from therapy (perhaps at exactly the moment when it might be life-saving) than to present it as the thing that will deflate all his manly energies and just let him have a good cry.
This, I believe, is the heart of the matter and the core of the meme: it’s not actually about getting men to go to therapy when they need it or inviting them to become more emotionally aware. It’s not about helping or healing men at all. It’s about identifying manhood itself as something that needs fixing, and therapy as a cure you absolutely 100% need if you have the terrible disease of being a man. Dig down into the logic of the meme and you’ll find an ugly little hostility squirming like some kind of angry bug: “why don’t men go to therapy” quite simply means “men are bad.”
How and Why to Win at Memes
I present this little rant as an object lesson in how to read and understand what goes on in the culture, and an argument for paying attention where doing so might seem a little foolish at first. It’s not foolish, actually, to scroll Twitter once in a while and parse the video game references or movie quotes that are really generating traffic today. It’s a way of discerning how people feel and are making each other feel—and what we are inviting one another to want or aspire toward.
This, for what it’s worth, is exactly why places like the Daily Wire are so important. You don’t save the world just by writing laws: you save it by making memes. Good memes, and good art, and internet videos or podcasts of your own that can really catch on and speak to people, the way all art and indeed all culture does. We who write and speak at DW are not just trying to convince people here, though of course I think we present some pretty good arguments for our points of view. We are trying to get under people’s skin and implant there something more wholesome than the toxicity of the Left.
A final word in response to what I imagine will be a major objection: isn’t what I’m talking about just brainwashing or indoctrination? No, I answer: it’s half or more than half of our humanity. The fact that leftists use art and culture to so hideously sicken Americans—children especially—has left us with Orwellian concerns about what it means to persuade someone using more than just facts and logic.
But the truth of the matter is, though people do learn and grow intellectually, they also get won over emotionally, in their hearts. It has been very rightly said that “facts don’t care about your feelings.” That’s exactly true, and a crucial observation. But it’s also the case that people’s feelings are facts, and in order to operate effectively in the world you have to take facts about how people feel and how they operate emotionally into account. To really persuade them, you have to ingrain in them the intuitions that prepare them to receive logic in a good and noble frame of mind.
Plato made exactly that argument in his Laws: before children can use reason, they hear nursery rhymes. Before we ever walk into a lecture hall, we see movies and sing songs. And today, as Plato couldn’t have known but might have predicted, we make memes. We ought to take care how we do so, because—to paraphrase another Greek, Archimedes—give me a meme and a place to stand, and I will move the world.
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="http://youngheretics.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://youngheretics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1606431224802000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF83sqnbRSoskQQ6sEAo_cYVTeiMg">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1606431224802000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGTcuBM7QTUoG0IILQKEiWbSzKnoQ">Claremont Review of</a> Books and <a href="https://americanmind.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1606431224802000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGMUl1NuGq0C5ObYzxcMCv-7q9PNA">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/spencerklavan" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/spencerklavan&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1606431224802000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGHBgoLcqZAhuVqJiN9d0bQFEIbog">@SpencerKlavan</a>.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Assorted Location And Technique Shoots

Men, Memes and Therapy

Masculinity

Memes

Mental Health

Therapy

“Policymaker, father, stand-in king”: that is how a much-discussed “Checks and Balances” podcast from the Economist described the office of the American presidency in anticipation of Joe Biden coming to occupy it. The statement was greeted on <a href="https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1333408612400705536?s=20">Twitter</a> with a staggering ratio of (currently) 645 replies to 149 likes—as sure a sign as any that the Economist had, in the current vernacular, posted cringe.
There are few words that inspire more visceral disgust among American conservatives than “king.” It is a title that has become synonymous for many with “tyrant”: an evil office occupied by an arrogant fool, possessing vast quantities of unmerited power and wielding it over oppressed subjects in a manner doomed to corruption.
This, in the scope of history, is a radical and relatively new outlook. “Kingship” has not always been an inherently bad word—neither, ironically, has “tyrant,” which comes to us from the Greek tyrannis, best translated simply as “king.”
But the ease with which tyrannis slid from meaning “king” to meaning “violent oppressor” shows that even in antiquity, rule by one man was inherently prone to abuse. That is something the great historians and political theorists of Ancient Greece and Rome knew well. Aristotle, Herodotus, Polybius, Cicero: each of them, in his own way, saw that the evil in human hearts made it impossible for one man and his heirs to hold lifelong rule without eventually becoming hypocritical, destructive, and cruel.
But it’s not as simple as just throwing off the shackles of kingship and being done. Someone has to be in charge, and attempts at direct democracy—giving power solely to a majority of the voting public—have ended poorly in the ancient world. Without great statesman like Pericles at the helm, direct democracies like Athens found it difficult to act decisively in times of war or even proceed coherently in times of peace. Just as monarchies decay into tyrannies, and aristocracies decay into cronyism, direct democracies decay very easily into mob rule. The brokenness of human nature always wins out in the end.
Therefore even the Roman historian Livy, who famously endorsed the virtue of republican liberty even as he wrote under the Emperor Augustus, still recognized that simply letting the people loose is a recipe for disaster. Though the Romans put an end to their own decadent monarchy around 509 BC, Livy <a href="http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy02.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy02.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF4SxaZxW7ghw0FMYx6xJhnu8Waiw">wrote</a>, they were lucky they didn’t do so earlier. Because:
<blockquote>What would have been the result&#8230;if they had been freed from the restraining power of kings and, agitated by populist storms, had begun to foment quarrels with the patricians&#8230;before sufficient time had elapsed for either family ties or a growing love for the very soil to effect a union of hearts? The infant State would have been torn to pieces by internal dissension.</blockquote>
In other words, even Romans needed time to mature before they tasted what Livy elsewhere calls “the sweetness of liberty”: if they were going to dispense with the strong leadership afforded by kings, they would need something better to put in its place. But what?
The Lawful Freedom of a True Republic
The answer is given by Polybius, a Greek historian who describes the masterful design of the Roman constitution in his own <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/6*.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/6*.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG_wQxLPNe9v2IaS1dqDbCJi-gIIw">history</a>. All simple forms of government, writes Polybius, undergo what has come to be called anacyclosis—a Greek word meaning the “cycle of regimes.” If a virtuous king takes over, nevertheless his son or his son’s son becomes corrupt and monarchy becomes tyranny. Then a few good men oust the king and install an aristocracy—but that devolves into oligarchy, or cronyism, in the end. Then the people seize control, their democracy becomes mob rule, and a king has to rise up to bring order back. The cycle begins again.
But the Roman republic was a system for balancing each kind of government against the other: the voting people, the aristocratic senators, and the “consuls,” a yearly two-man executive that performed some of the duties kings used to perform. So even in the republic, the office of consul looked enough like kingship that, in Polybius’ words, “if one looks at this part of the administration alone, one may reasonably pronounce the constitution to be a pure monarchy or kingship.”
And yet, Livy tells us, the Romans at this point were so disgusted by monarchy that they even chased from the city a perfectly decent man who had the same name as a former king, simply because “the very name was a danger to liberty.” The Romans took every precaution that the consuls should never be tempted to those excesses they had suffered under the rule of tyrants.
Every republic needs an executive power, and that power must fill certain functions which kings fill in monarchies: issuing final decisions in times of war, for example. But it would have appalled the Romans to imagine that a consul, or anyone in government, was coming even close to being a “stand-in king.” The whole point of replacing the kings with a republic was to eradicate the need of kingship entirely.
The Puzzle of the Presidency
All of this and more was on the minds of the American Founders when they drafted our Constitution in 1787. Americans, having thought of themselves as English subjects until very recently, were still stinging with resentment at the abuses of King George III. Those abuses are listed at great length in the Declaration of Independence, and the impulse to avoid them at all cost did much to shape our first national compact—the <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&amp;doc=3&amp;page=transcript" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash%3Dfalse%26doc%3D3%26page%3Dtranscript&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGpGet2MoZi26JxA9hoyG2_lfNWvg">Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union</a>.
Under the Articles, America discovered what Polybius and Livy both knew: a government whose central power is too loosely held will be vulnerable to chaos. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was, effectively, a response to the problems that arise from a weak federal government: no executive or judiciary branch means no power to do such important things as repay debts or regulate commerce between states.
And so the founders had an extremely difficult needle to thread. On the one hand, they had to vest power in a stronger federal government if America was to survive at all. On the other hand, both they and their people were—exactly like the Romans—still supremely wary from firsthand experience of anything that looked remotely like monarchy. To create an executive office in that climate which would pass muster with the people was a tall order indeed.
That is why Alexander Hamilton, in <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed69.asp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed69.asp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG2xAJitQWkA46Dimr7_GJF6fK5Xw">Federalist #69</a>, took every pain to reassure his readers that this new office—the presidency of the United States—would not in any way be a stand-in king. True, “the executive authority, with few exceptions, is to be vested in a single magistrate.” But, “ if, in this particular, there be a resemblance to the king of Great Britain, there is not less a resemblance to the Grand Seignior, to the khan of Tartary, to the Man of the Seven Mountains, or to the governor of New York.”
Hamilton goes on to give reason after reason why the president will not be like the English king. Presidents will be elected every four years; kings rule for life. Presidents can be impeached; their vetoes can be overturned; their treaties and ministerial nominations are subject to the advice and consent of the senate. And, crucially, “The [president] has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the [king] is the supreme head and governor of the national church!”
Central to all these arguments is the essential point that a king is invited to consider himself inherently superior to his subjects—more fit by divine right to rule—whereas a president must prove himself on the basis of merit in the eyes of his fellow men. At issue is nothing less than the most fundamental question of our nation: are men created equal, or are some born with a greater right to govern themselves than others?
So, Hamilton concludes, “What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.” Nothing could be further from the truth, in other words, than to call the president a “stand-in king.” By design, in spirit, and according to their own direct protestations, that was the last thing the founders intended.
What Are They After?
Anyone who wants to cast the presidency as a makeshift monarchy should thus be subject to the most careful scrutiny imaginable. Why, we are entitled to ask, do the staff at the Economist think it would be salutary for Joe Biden to occupy the role of “father figure” and de facto monarch? Why does Biden himself seem eager to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-history-and-meaning-of-court-packing" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-history-and-meaning-of-court-packing&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF9ZuCntufvZJsdyao5GEu3ZALEvw">pack</a> the Supreme Court with judges of his own choosing—and why does he seem to think he can do so without broad bipartisan consensus? Why, for that matter, do so many of his supporters want to turn our carefully calibrated republic into something approximating <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-the-electoral-college-was-created" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-the-electoral-college-was-created&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNElPdM2lv5Eiz_d6tzDikrFmA3uRQ">mob rule</a>—which, as sure as night follows day, will give way to kingship in the end?
The answer to all these questions is older than the Roman republic or the Athenian democracy. It is as old as government itself: power. That enticing ability to make others serve at your pleasure, against which the entire system of American government was designed to protect. “Power tends to corrupt,” <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/214" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/214&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH3oVMmhd9updOhgNOPhJfs0SWJBw">wrote</a> Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton in 1887, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Already in states like California, where one-party rule and COVID hysteria have turned governors like Gavin Newsom into de facto monarchs, we are seeing the shameless ugliness that <a href="https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1333906492596994048?s=20" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1333906492596994048?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHC5kOZ74bdI0a3kSKO291Oe_qBFw">deforms</a> <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/small-business/ca-restaurant-owner-mocks-gov-newsom-french-laundry-banner-calls-restrictions-sheer-insanity" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.foxbusiness.com/small-business/ca-restaurant-owner-mocks-gov-newsom-french-laundry-banner-calls-restrictions-sheer-insanity&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHGoLfIHQtQ-qarz88WzqxyrBCplQ">men</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/SpencerKlavan/status/1333799010251939844?s=20" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/SpencerKlavan/status/1333799010251939844?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGLsgsoKYCyXLIWjRj7zX7ZYlHy8w">women</a> who can issue command after command without accountability. The face of kingship is the face of a man dining out on fine French cuisine while his people languish in locked rooms after 10pm and eke out a living on the dole. The face of kingship is as God said it would be in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%208&amp;version=NIV" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search%3D1%2520Samuel%25208%26version%3DNIV&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGJHkZsVgBKL8Vn1AjdmGTJe4n4aw">1 Samuel 8</a>: given enough time, they will drive your sons before them like horses to pull their chariots, will steal the best of your land and leave you hungry, will laugh out of sheer arrogance while you starve.
That is why the president is not a stand-in king. And neither is Gavin Newsom, though he may act like one. The American spirit is battered but not broken, and though this year has been a nightmare in many respects, it is imperative that we not submit. The kings of this world <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%202&amp;version=NIV" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search%3DPsalm%25202%26version%3DNIV&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607018323414000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFLWvlXu8yWmESMfA32-PuPO0JxRA">rise up</a> and band together against God and his anointed—will we stand against them and be free?
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="http://youngheretics.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://youngheretics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221983000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGOa-5uhWZB1tdZYdyHUUZsncs64g">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHeqHRcOHKxbcUv9rlirlA80vgVhw">Claremont Review of</a> Books and <a href="https://americanmind.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGaeulj7VbgJQ5dk6HibW2hrbAtiA">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/spencerklavan" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/spencerklavan&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEEeT2VvJ36dSMfrqxX2KlMm0OSrg">@SpencerKlavan</a>.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

U.S. President Trump’s State Visit To UK – Day One

The Kingship and the Presidency

2020 Election

Federalist Papers

Monarchy

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 convinced many of his opponents that something was fundamentally wrong with any system that could have produced such an outcome. For years, Democrats and Never Trumpers have been seeking to pinpoint the exact location of what they consider a national dysfunction. At a structural level, nothing has come under more scrutiny of this kind than the Electoral College.
A refresher: the College is the device whereby American presidents are chosen. It’s not a direct vote—i.e., the candidate with 51% of all individual votes doesn’t automatically win. The technical term for such a procedure is a “plebiscite.” The framers of the American Constitution considered, but rejected, plebiscitary government.
Instead, the voters in each individual state vote for “electors”: these are individuals holding no other federal public office, each of whom casts one vote for president. Every state gets the same number of electors as congressmen—so two for the two senators that every state gets, plus a variable number depending on a number of factors (population foremost among them) for the number of representatives.
In the original design and defense of the Constitution, these electors were considered genuine representatives whom the people would choose to deliberate on their behalf. Today, except in extreme cases, almost no one expects electors to vote against the candidate who got the most votes in their state. This phenomenon—the “faithless elector”—is at this point largely the last-ditch fever dream of people dissatisfied with the results of the national vote. (Sorry to disappoint anybody who’s banking on that option today.)
To put it another way: people don’t vote for electors anymore so much as they vote for the presidential candidate who will receive their states’ electoral votes. But that still means—as we have been reminded often these past four years—that the person who loses the popular vote can win the presidency. Trump did that in 2016.
And this is the outcome that many Democrats can no longer accept. Even in 2020, Trump’s sternest critics are appalled at how close you can come to winning the Electoral College after losing the popular vote. From <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1325552771467251712?s=20" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1325552771467251712?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGOXGElrSUt26jDJcVGxALOelRk0g">Bernie Sanders</a>, to <a href="https://twitter.com/marwilliamson/status/1328306585244938240?s=20" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/marwilliamson/status/1328306585244938240?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHRFNaUN0juPOj9HczUvxHGmFrZMg">Marianne Williamson</a>, to <a href="https://t.co/dG0qdItC5x?amp=1">The Washington Post</a>, to any number of <a href="https://www.highlandernews.org/75519/it-is-time-to-abolish-the-electoral-college-and-adopt-the-national-popular-vote/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.highlandernews.org/75519/it-is-time-to-abolish-the-electoral-college-and-adopt-the-national-popular-vote/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFBS0Tzb82vyr2iAN7QJb-M3EjCqQ">amateur</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ziwe/status/1325119848117129217?s=20" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/ziwe/status/1325119848117129217?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEgEwoLHIaQ0FTlLIoMjaOZtsDOdA">commentators</a>, calls to abolish the Electoral College abound.
Chiefly, the argument against the system is that it gives undue weight to the concerns of rural states with small populations but a large number of electors. This leads to claims that it threatens or undermines “democracy”—by which people usually mean, as The Washington Post said, that “it’s time to let the majority rule.”
At the more progressive extremes of the Left, you’ll also hear concerns that the College is “<a href="https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1327797970931105792?s=20" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1327797970931105792?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEE2_VV6dwl5hTh6pJpSk7OK_mGDg">racist</a>”—either because it mutes the importance of urban centers, where many black people live, or because slaves, when they were held, only counted as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of representation.
What people might not know is, we’ve been over all this before. The most serious challenge to the Electoral College came not in 2020 but in 1970, when a constitutional amendment passed the House and looked poised to pass the Senate. Recall, by the way, that an amendment is what it would take to change the College: it’s written into <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/article-ii/clauses/350" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/article-ii/clauses/350&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH6ybQRq1OvRjnFM5NDpaZeqON_yA">Article II, Section 1</a> of the Constitution, so abolishing it isn’t a matter of a mere executive order or even the most well-worded of op-eds. Still, 50 years ago, it looked like an amendment was in the cards.
The man who gets the most credit for turning that around is Michael Uhlmann, who was then a congressional staffer for the Republicans and would go on to a long career in law and teaching. Uhlmann prepared a <a href="https://americanmind.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/M.-Uhlmann_The-Electoral-College.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/M.-Uhlmann_The-Electoral-College.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGhNydo0GCQ5Du9pANCZwsZy7Oxow">lengthy brief</a> for the Senate Judiciary Committee explaining in precise terms why abolishing the College would be a disaster. It’s remarkable that we’re revisiting the question now, since every one of Uhlmann’s arguments is still perfectly sound. In truth, hardly anything of consequence has changed since we hashed this all out at length in ’70.
Keeping the Mobs at Bay
The first thing to acknowledge is that choosing an appropriate number of representatives is one of the most delicate and difficult tasks in republican statecraft. There’s no magic formula: it takes prudence and discernment. The authors of the Federalist Papers, in which all American procedures of this nature are explained and defended, <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed55.asp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed55.asp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGVVpD8r5lKSre49jeHkCrhJxWA0g">observed</a> that “no political problem is less susceptible of a precise solution” than the problem of who gets how many votes.
It’s not just a question of population: it’s a question of political corruption, social dynamics, and their effects on reason. Get too few people involved, and you leave them open to bribery or influence from vested interests. Get too many involved, and you end up with an unruly mob.
And if populism and demagoguery are what we’re worried about these days, then unruly mobs ought to be a major concern: big crowds tend to elevate the kinds of leaders who are good at rousing and motivating big crowds. Think Mussolini, or <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-history-and-meaning-of-court-packing" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-history-and-meaning-of-court-packing&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGmnIp3KwZR4BIaj3N9buUuJvJesg">Gaius Gracchus</a>, or Maximilien Robespierre: not exactly the sort of person we want at the helm in this tense moment.
No argument for the Electoral College is more germane than this one. But none is more unpalatable either. For many people, it now smacks of elitism to argue that public sentiment is fickle and needs to be channeled by virtuous representatives.
This colossally misses the point: the concern about direct democracy isn’t about the character of the voters. It’s about the sheer effect of numbers. The Founding Fathers <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed55.asp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed55.asp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGVVpD8r5lKSre49jeHkCrhJxWA0g">argued</a> not that the unwashed masses were fundamentally stupid, but that even “had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”
In other words, the tendencies of crowds in and of themselves lead naturally to chaos and instability: mobs bring out the worst in people, no matter how enlightened and decent the people in the mob. Crowds can be intimidated into conformity, swayed to impulsive action, and goaded or tempted into acting against the better judgment of the individuals involved. It’s simply part of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE6r-ByeXxXRjsIah7dLeZYTOcbog">how people work</a> when they get into large groups and pressurized situations. We’ve seen it play out on our city streets over the past few months.
Given that this is so, another argument for doing away with the College—that it would break the two-party system and encourage viable third parties—is actually a point against abolishment rather than for it. In the chaos of a multi-party election, the candidate whose head will rise above the waters will be the loudest, the angriest, the most uncompromising and therefore eye-catching one. If you think it was a shame that we elected a Reality TV mogul for president, you may want to think twice before creating the conditions under which only a made-for-TV pundit can win attention and votes.
By and large, arguments for abolishing the College are framed in high-flown terms of the people’s right to be heard. And no American would deny that the people have such a right. The question is, are the people to be granted exactly their whims at all times, or are those whims to be filtered and interpreted by the representatives and structures of the government that the founders put in place?
The Washington Post editorial board writes, “we believe that Mr. Trump’s election was a sad event for the nation; his reelection would have been a calamity.” For the sake of argument, let us grant the worst that can be said of Trump voters: they are racist, homophobic Nazis who want to beat and scare minorities into submission. Let us concede all that, obviously false though it is. Still: there are 73 million of these despicable bigots in this country. Are the Bernie Sanderses and Elizabeth Warrens of the world really ready to turn the American people into one massive voting bloc and set them loose on the government in the aggregate?
In point of fact it is the Democrats who view “the people” as ethically deplorable and yet somehow, incongruently, want them granted direct access to the presidency. Republicans, by contrast, view America as a fundamentally decent place with generally quite commendable people—who nevertheless, like all people, need to be guarded against the worst impulses of their nature through carefully calibrated constitutional systems.
The Dam Against the Flood
The Electoral College is the best such system that exists. It is imprecise, as its crafters knew it would be—as every such system is. It has some amusing results, like the fact that voters in Wyoming have four times the influence of voters in California. But the consequence of all this is not suppression or racism: it is compromise and diversity.
This was one of Uhlmann’s strongest arguments back in 1970. “So successful has the electoral college been,” he wrote, “that most Americans are inclined to forget that they are, in one or more senses, members of a minority—geographic, ethnic, religious, social, or economic.” And since “a minority which fails to align itself with other minorities” will be in great political trouble, the Electoral College “not only encourages such alliances, but virtually requires them. It builds moderate majorities while protecting the interest of all minorities that are willing to compromise.”
This observation was actually borne out by the results of our most recent election, in which centrists of every race and sexuality <a href="https://forward.com/opinion/457887/the-real-lesson-of-the-election-people-of-color-are-not-a-monolith-and/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://forward.com/opinion/457887/the-real-lesson-of-the-election-people-of-color-are-not-a-monolith-and/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH4eBXvOrvSZP6u2lW0MvvzDhjkAQ">banded together</a> against woke extremism in a new Republican coalition. Far from representing the failures of the Electoral College as a racist institution, Donald Trump actually represents the triumph of it as a uniter of Americans from all regions and walks of life. That union—that complex, messy, strange assembly of weirdos we call America—is being reinvigorated in real time by the realities of our political system, even while all our elites protest to the contrary.
Uhlmann goes on to argue that a national plebiscite would invite electoral fraud on a massive scale. Suffice it to say that if mobs are something we should be worried about in 2020, election integrity is something we should be absolutely losing sleep over. These days, no matter how many fake ballots you shovel into the polling stations, you can only win one state’s worth of electoral votes. Imagine the temptation to corruption when every new pallet brings you closer, not just to winning Georgia or Arizona, but to going home with all the marbles.
In the end, as Uhlmann <a href="https://americanmind.org/memo/as-the-electoral-college-goes-so-goes-the-constitution/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/memo/as-the-electoral-college-goes-so-goes-the-constitution/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFB3CieBC3VVlsOhxWf0CUmV1Jmtg">noted</a> in 2000 after a photo-finish competition between Bush and Gore, the logic of the Electoral College is the logic of the country itself. Electors are given to states in exactly the same numbers, and for exactly the same reasons, as congressional delegates. In the simplest possible terms, those reasons are the ones <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed57.asp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed57.asp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEYm_WYcRsUIAl0zNGUWk6OKpGIMg">described</a> in the Federalist: that “The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”
The Electoral College is a carefully crafted instrument for doing just that: finding virtuous leaders who will lead in the best interests of the people, and keeping both people and leaders as free from corruption as possible. It’s a tremendously subtle and multi-layered task, one for which only a method as ingenious as the Electoral College is suited. The idea of abolishing that method because it has some observable idiosyncrasies is the most ham-fisted and extreme solution possible to a set of problems which require, if anything, only minor tinkering.
Maybe we should take stock of how many electors each state has. Maybe we should add or subtract a few here or there. But tossing the whole process out would be like taking a sledgehammer to a dam because it’s showing signs of the usual wear and tear. Cracks there may have been in the dam, but you’re not going to like it when the water it was holding back comes gushing through. It’s a good thing the same founders who put the dam there in the first place, also made it nigh-on impossible for thoughtless political celebrities to get their hands on the sledgehammer.
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="http://youngheretics.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://youngheretics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221983000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGOa-5uhWZB1tdZYdyHUUZsncs64g">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHeqHRcOHKxbcUv9rlirlA80vgVhw">Claremont Review of</a> Books and <a href="https://americanmind.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGaeulj7VbgJQ5dk6HibW2hrbAtiA">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/spencerklavan" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/spencerklavan&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1605727221984000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEEeT2VvJ36dSMfrqxX2KlMm0OSrg">@SpencerKlavan</a>.

US-POLITICS-VOTE-TRUMP-PROTEST

Why The Electoral College Was Created

Democrats

Electoral College

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died this year, Democrats — foremost among them progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — advocated expanding the size of the Supreme Court. The point was to counterbalance what became a 6-3 conservative majority after President Trump’s appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed.
This is an idea called “court-packing.” It’s been floated before, but never really put into practice in its most extreme form. The size of the Supreme Court hasn’t been altered at all since 1869, and before then it was changed only by one or two judges at a time.
Americans are wary of court packing <a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/10/07/supreme-cort-packing-poll">when polled</a>, in part because of its huge and in some cases uncertain potential consequences. It’s a bit like tinkering under the hood of America’s republic: if you’re going to start moving essential parts of our constitutional machinery around, people want assurance that you know what you’re doing. When elected representatives start proposing a full-engine retool, their constituents often start asking just how carefully they’ve thought this thing through.
Now, the Supreme Court’s size is not set in stone by any law. The <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/full-text">Constitution</a> gives the president the right to nominate judges, but it tasks Congress with determining the size and shape of our Supreme Court. They did this for the first time in 1789 with the <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&amp;doc=12&amp;page=transcript">Federal Judiciary Act</a>, which created the Court and set the number of Justices at six. That number was reduced and raised several times throughout the 1800s until finally, not long after the Civil War, it was set at nine by the <a href="https://www.fjc.gov/history/timeline/circuit-judges-act">Judiciary Act of 1869</a>.
For a long time afterward, no one touched that number — and for good reason. Playing tug-of-war with the Court had by that point become a way for presidents to expand their power and influence. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Judiciary-Act-of-1801">In 1801</a>, President John Adams and the Federalists in congress had taken a parting shot at their successors, Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans, by hastily stuffing the courts full of appointees and then reducing the number of Supreme Court judges from six to five. It was a last-ditch effort to keep Jefferson from leaving his mark on the country, and of course it was futile: under the Jefferson Administration, Congress saw Adams and raised him, first <a href="https://www.fjc.gov/history/legislation/landmark-legislation-judiciary-act-1802">returning</a> the number of judges to six and then <a href="https://www.fjc.gov/history/legislation/landmark-legislation-seventh-circuit">raising it to seven</a> in 1807.
Once that game got going, the potential for abuse and escalation became apparent — especially as sectarian tension tightened and finally snapped into outright Civil War. <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2013/07/the-first-court-packing-plan/">Two new Justices</a> were added in 1837 under Andrew Jackson, and a 10th during the War itself, until finally congress fixed the thing at nine once peace settled in. It’s not hard to imagine that this would have been a relief: the War, after all, had driven home how miserably violent and bitter contests over the structure and character of the country can become.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans lay dead at one another’s hands after an unresolvable conflict over, among other things, the power of the president relative to the states. Fixing the rules of the Court in place gave a measure of stability to that question going forward: at least now, everyone knew what the rules were. As in sports, so in politics: if everyone believes the game is fair, the losing side is more ready to take its licks and fight another day. Keeping presidents from helping themselves to more judges was one way to calm everybody down about the stakes of presidential elections.
No one disturbed that new peace until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. Frustrated with his inability to get progressive New Deal legislation past the Court, Roosevelt proposed the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-fdr-lost-his-brief-war-on-the-supreme-court-2">Judicial Procedures Reform Bill</a>, which would have let him add as many as six new Justices — one for every sitting member of the Court over the age of 70 years and 6 months. This was court-packing in its most essential form. It failed, although Roosevelt eventually got his progressive Court through the usual means of appointing new judges when old ones died.
Joe Biden has resisted saying whether he wants the Court packed — his actual words were that the people “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html">don’t deserve</a>” to know his views on the issue until he reveals them in office. He then said that he’d establish a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/us/politics/what-is-court-packing.html?auth=login-email&amp;login=email">commission </a>to make “recommendations on how to reform the court system, because it’s out of whack.” It’s an idea that’s found favor with far-Left senators such as Elizabeth Warren, but <a href="https://americanmind.org/features/what-comes-next/judicial-carnage/">conservative</a> <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/biden-harris-radical-scheme-pack-supreme-court-opinion-1537920">scholars</a> have expressed extreme concern that what this amounts to is a radical court-packing scheme beyond Roosevelt’s wildest dreams.
The Warnings of History
What the history of court-packing shows is that efforts to change the shape of the Court feed and express the very worst impulses of American leadership: they represent the extremes of arrogance and partisanship. In the case of Roosevelt, court-packing reflected the perceived excesses of Progressivism: here was a president unwilling to let a little thing like the fabric of the Constitution or the will of the benighted people get in the way of his righteous vision for a perfect future.
In our own day court-packing looks, if anything, like an even more disastrous prospect than it was in 1937. The instability entailed in leaving an enormous center of power up for grabs to any president who chooses threatens to intensify our now-raging civil feud.
In the past, at least, those congressmen who did change the number of Justices on the Court set a fixed number. Everyone knew what that number was, and even if it changed it would change to another definite, reliable amount. But even that was too volatile: the minute presidents realized they could get Congress to open those doors, they started squabbling over the Court like dogs over a bone.
What was so galling about Roosevelt’s plan compared with all that went before it was the open-endedness of it: who knew just how far he was eventually hoping to go in bending the Court to his whims? “Up to six” new judges for now — but what would stop him from adding more if he didn’t get his way the first time around? Now we have a man who proposes not even to tell us what, exactly, his plans for the Court are — just that he thinks it’s “out of whack” and needs fixing under his administration.
If the danger of such proposals increases during times of great civic strain, then there could hardly be a worse time to pack the courts. We are as close to one another’s throats now as we have ever been, with the exception of those terrible bloody years in the 1860s. Back then, we learned the hard way to keep the ground on which our regime is built as stable as possible. Now, when even Supreme Court confirmation hearings have become extravagant show trials, when rioters and looters take to the street at a moment’s provocation, can there be little doubt that making open-ended proposals to transform the Court is about as safe as playing basketball with a hunk of napalm?
The Founding Fathers themselves were supremely wary of this kind of practice. Alexander Hamilton, in his <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.asp">defense</a> of the Constitution’s judicial system, wrote that:
<blockquote>The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post-facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.</blockquote>
In other words, if the Court is going to be restrained within the bounds of the Constitution, it has to be kept as impartial, as free from political attachments, and as true to its commission as can be. The consequence of court-packing is likely to be just the opposite of this: it will invite each new president to wield limitless power over an army of Judges uniquely loyal to him. It will turn the courts — the one place in America where every citizen is meant to stand on a shared bedrock of truth and justice — into one more puppet of the Oval Office.
What’s at Stake
History tells us that once the courts fall under the sway of radicals, there is hardly a limit to how bad it can get. In Ancient Rome, historians like Appian and Plutarch looked back on their own era of politicized court reform as the beginning of the end for a dying republic. When Gaius Gracchus, a fiery young reformer, led a popular uprising to power in Rome after the death of his brother, one of his major policy initiatives was to take the power of judging court cases away from the senators, who were the highest political class, and give it to the equites (the “knights”) who were intermediate between the senate and the people.
This looked like a populist reform — the senate had admittedly become corrupt, and Gracchus’ proposal had the appearance of something that would increase transparency and accountability. In point of fact, though, Appian <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Appian/Civil_Wars/1*.html">writes </a>that the knights “became addicted to bribe-taking, and when they too had tasted these enormous gains, they indulged in them even more basely and immoderately than the senators had done.”
The reason for this is obvious: at moments of deep-seated mistrust and political instability, making drastic changes to the structure of power turns fellow citizens into competitors for political favor. Gracchus, like Biden, claimed he could put the courts into the hands of the people. But, like Biden, he was really proposing to take control of the law himself.
A century of bloodshed and civil war followed Gracchus’s irresponsible measures. We are fooling ourselves if we think we are better suited to pack the courts now than Rome was then. Plenty of bipartisan analysts think a saner proposal would be just the opposite of court-packing: a <a href="https://keepnine.org/">constitutional amendment</a> to keep the Court at nine members. That is the kind of thing that amendments are intended for: reflecting the lessons learned from abuses of the American system over time.
We are lucky that the wisdom of our founders made it impossible for a president to meddle in the structure of the courts without the consent of Congress. We are even luckier that the providence of God seems to have kept Congress out of complete Democrat control this election cycle. If Biden does go through with a court-packing plan, it will be up to the people’s representatives to stave off disaster and defend the Constitution against malformation. There is nothing partisan about this — the same principles would hold good if a Republican were proposing the same thing, and responsible Democrat congresspeople should be pressed to recognize that. It is a fight worth having and — by the grace of God — it can still be won.
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="https://claremontinstituteorg-my.sharepoint.com/personal/sklavan_claremont_org/Documents/YoungHeretics.com">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/">Claremont Review of Books</a> and <a href="https://claremontinstituteorg-my.sharepoint.com/personal/sklavan_claremont_org/Documents/americanmind.org">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/SpencerKlavan?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">@SpencerKlavan</a>.

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