Month: June 2018

TBT: American Values, American Nationalism

The Portly Politico14 Comments

Each Thursday, I’ll be digging through the Portly Politico Archives to bring you classic content from the old Blogger site.  This week’s essay re-launched the blog back in 2016.  Two years later, I still believe that our nation is built on ideas, rather than links of common blood, though I have to come to believe, too, that our borders are crucial, and that the Anglo-Saxon traditions of rule of law are essential to the maintenance of our republic.  While those traditions derived from a particular people—the English—they are inherently universalist in nature, and with the right cultural, religious, and moral framework, can be adopted by any people that will accept them.

That universality does require certain pre-conditions.  As I point out to my students, it took 561 years from the Magna Carta in 1215 to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the development of ideals of liberty and rule of law from a feudal arrangement to a universal declaration of individual rights occurred within the framework of English culture.

That’s why, for example, unchecked levels of immigration, both legal and illegal, undermine the delicate social and historical fabric of our nation.  It takes time for people to assimilate to these ideals, and some ethnic and cultural groups do so more quickly than others (for example, Jamaicans and East Indians in Britain were model assimiliationists, while Pakistani Muslims still struggle to assimilate—or even choose actively not to do so—into British culture and society).  But, ultimately, I do believe the ideational notion of American nationalism holds true in general—but we probably shouldn’t keep trying to plant modern democratic-republics in the Middle East (more on that another time).

Without further ado, here is 2016’s “American Values, American Nationalism“:

I’ve been teaching American history and government for six years (and continuously since 2011).  Part of my regular teaching duties includes US Government, a standard survey course that covers the Constitution, federalism, the three branches of the federal government, and other topics of interest.  It’s a simple, semester-long course that, while not terribly novel, is absolutely essential.

Before we even read the Preamble to the Constitution, though, I introduce the students to the idea of America.  This lesson plan is not a unique creation; it comes from the textbook Government By the People by David Magleby and Paul Light, which I used to use for the course (I don’t know Magleby and Light’s political leanings, but the book is a fairly straightforward and useful primer on the mechanics of US government).  I follow the authors’ course by starting with what they call the “Five Core Values” of America, which are as follows:

1.) Individualism

2.) Popular Sovereignty

3.) Equality of Opportunity

4.) Freedom of Religion

5.) Economic Liberty

Why do I start each semester in this fashion?  I’ve found that many Americans—and not just teenagers and young adults—aren’t exactly sure what makes American special.  Sure, many can point to our military dominance and our economic clout, but during a time when both appear to be losing ground to other nations, we can’t solely make our case on those grounds.

Others might point to our superior educational system, our extensive infrastructure, or our superior health.  The United States certainly is blessed with these qualities, but study after study shows that we’re falling behind the rest of the world academically, and everyday experience (especially here in South Carolina) demonstrates that our roads are crumbling.  And don’t get me started on the mess that is the Affordable Care Act.

So if we can’t rest our claims for American greatness on these grounds—or, if we can only hope to do so temporarily—what really does make the United States special?  Is American exceptionalism only truly relatively, as President Obama implied in April 2009 when he proclaimed, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism”?

The answer—as you’ve probably guessed—are the very values listed above, the values enshrined in our founding documents, in our political culture, and in our hearts.  The powerful but fragile legacy of liberty handed down from English common law, these values still energize the United States.

What makes the United States unique, too, is that these values form the basis of our sense of nationhood.  No other nation—at least, not prior to the declaration of the United States in 1776—can claim a similar basis.

The term “nation” itself refers to a specific tribal or ethnic affiliation based on common blood, and usually linked to a specific (if often ill-defined) bit of soil.  The nation-states of modern Europe followed this course; for example, French kings over centuries gradually created a “French” national identity, one that slowly subsumed other ethnic and regional identities (Normans, Burgundians, etc.), into a single, (largely Parisian) French culture and nation.

The United States, on the other hand, is not a nation built on ties of blood and soil (although we do owe a huge debt of gratitude to the heritage of Anglo-Saxon political culture for our institutions), but, rather, founded on ideas, ideas that anyone can adopt.

We believe, further, that these ideals are universal, and are not, ultimately, specific to our place and time.  Sure, some countries might lack the institutional stability and political culture to sustain a constitutional republic like ours, but, ultimately, we believe that any people, anywhere in the world, can come to adopt our American values.

The concept of American nationhood, therefore, is flexible and adaptive to many contexts, but is ultimately grounded in firm absolutes.  Often these values butt up against one another, or there is disagreement about their importance.  When, for example, does the will of the individual become so out-sized that it threatens, say, popular sovereignty, or freedom of religion?

The Constitution was designed to adjudicate these disputes fairly and transparently—with a Supreme Court acting in good faith and in accord with the Constitution—to protect individual rights from the tyranny of the majority, and to protect the majority from the tyranny of minority special interest groups.

In this regard, perhaps, American nationalism has faltered.  The consistent undermining of our carefully balanced constitutional order—the centralization of federal power, the aggrandizement of the executive and judiciary, the delegation of legislative powers to the federal bureaucracy, the equivocation of Congress—has served to damage our national identity and our national values, turning the five core values above into distorted perversions of their proper forms.

To wit:

1.) Individualism—the protection of the individual’s rights—has become a grotesque, licentious individualism without any consequences, one that expects the state to pick up the tab for bad decisions, which can no longer be deemed “bad.”  Alternatively, actual constitutional rights are trampled upon in the name of exorcising “hate speech.”

2.) Popular sovereignty—authority flowing upward from the people—has been flipped on its head, becoming, instead, a top-down sovereignty of the enlightened technocrats and un-elected government bureaucrats.

3.) Equality of opportunity—an equality that recognizes that everyone is different but enjoys the same legal and constitutional safeguards to fail and to succeed—morphs into equality of outcome, a radical form of egalitarianism that brought us the worst excesses of the French and the Russian Revolutions, and ultimately breeds authoritarianism and demagoguery.

4.) Freedom of religion—the most important of our constitutional rights, as it rests both at the foundation of our republic and of our very souls, the freedom of conscious itself–now becomes a vague “freedom of worship,” which is really no freedom at all.  Religious observation is to be a strictly private affair, one (impossibly) divorced from our public lives.

5.) Economic liberty—the freedom to spend and earn our money as we please, with a token amount paid in taxes to support the infrastructure we all use and to maintain the military and police that protect our freedoms abroad and domestically–becomes excessive economic regulation, with many potential economic opportunities simply regulated out of existence.  Rather than laws forming in response to new technologies or ideas, regulations are crafted to protect existing firms and well-connected special interests.

With such a distorted view of our national values and our rights—stemming, in many cases, from ignorance of them—many Americans find it difficult to articulate what exactly it means to be an American.  In this light, problems like illegal (and, in some cases, excessive legal) immigration take on a whole new tenor:  how can we expect foreign migrants to adopt our values—to become part of the American nation—if we ourselves cannot articulate what American nationhood and values are?

The solution starts with proper education and a realignment of our thought toward the proper definitions and forms of our values.  As Margaret Thatcher said, “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”  Understanding our national philosophy—our “Five Core American Values”—will allow us to rediscover our exceptional nationhood.

Pizza Paving Potholes

The Portly Politico5 Comments

I love pizza and politics, and writing about both runs in the family.  So while looking for South Carolina’s primary election results this morning at thestate.com, I was intrigued to find the following headline:  “Tired of potholes? Domino’s Pizza helps pay for road repair. How to nominate Columbia.”

The State‘s article links to Domino’s Pizza’s Paving for Pizza program (how’s that alliteration?).  Here’s the gist of it:  nominate your town using your zip code, and Domino’s might pitch in some dough (tee hee) to fill its potholes.  They’ve already done it in several cities around the United States, from California to Texas to Delaware.

Every South Carolinian knows that one of our major issues is the poor state of our roads.  Indeed, last year the legislature passed a gas tax hike, the first phase of which kicked in at the beginning of 2018.  That tax will raise the tax by $0.02/gallon each year for six years, ultimately topping out at $0.12/gallon by 2023.

It also introduced increased fees for registering vehicles from out-of-state, and raised registration fees for hybrid and electric vehicles (which put more miles on roads using fewer gallons of gas, meaning hybrid and electric owners pay less in gas taxes—ergo, the State wants to get their cut from those drivers, too).

(Remember, South Carolina drivers, you can save your receipts from the gas pump starting this year—2018—and deduct what you paid in gas taxes from your SC income tax when you file for FY2018.  It has to be gas purchased in South Carolina—of course—and the receipt has to show the number of gallons purchased.  Hold on to those bad boys!)

So, what does this have to do with pizza?  Domino’s—like many companies in South Carolina and throughout the nation—needs good roads to deliver its gooey pies safely and efficiently.  Bad roads, littered with potholes, negatively impact Domino’s business, incurring expensive tire replacement and vehicle repair bills (and preventing your mushroom-and-pepperoni pizza from arriving in thirty minutes or less).

As such, Domino’s has a vested interest in seeing that roads are repaired.  Rather than lobbying for more roads funding or pushing for a gas tax, though, Domino’s decided to act directly in its economic interest—that is, to have better roads—and has committed to helping communities fill their potholes.

This kind of public-private partnership is innovative (and good marketing—I’m dedicating an entire wall-o-text to Domino’s Pizza!), and it demonstrates that free-market principles can work to the benefit of all parties.  Domino’s and its drivers get safer roads; residents of a “Paving for Pizza” town also enjoy safer roads; State and local governments save on astronomically expensive road repairs (I once heard a Florence County, SC Councilman say that it costs $1 million to repave one mile of road—yikes!); and taxes on gas or property don’t have to increase, which hurts everyone.

Kudos to Domino’s for taking a proactive approach to solving a public problem.

European Disunion

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Back in 2016, I wrote a series of essays on the then-approaching Brexit vote.  Just like the American presidential election that autumn, there was a great deal of misinformation and obfuscation about the “Leave” side—the Leavers were racist and xenophobic; voting “Leave” would cause the world to collapse and the Universe to fold in upon itself; boorish working-class Brits would rebel once they realized they’d lost their sweet European Union bennies.

Even I—a profoundly pro-Brexit advocate—predicted there’d be a long-term economic downturn as a result of voting “Leave” (but I believe liberty is worth far more than material security).

Of course, the Brexit vote was a major blow against supranational tyranny, and a major victory for liberty and national self-interest.  The European Union does not function like the United States and its federal system of semi-sovereign entities; rather, it’s largely ruled and governed by a small cadre of unelected, hyper-progressive, cosmopolitan bureaucrats with little regard for national differences or interests.

It was this philosophical and foundational tack that I sought to take with Brexit.  Brexit was not a policy matter that presented two sets of pros-and-cons, although that was part of the discussion.  Rather, Brexit posed a fundamental question:  does a nation have the right to determine its own national destiny—to act in its own self-interest, as it and its people see fit?  Further, did the European Union provide a framework in which nations could maintain sovereignty while enjoying the benefits of union?

I believe the Brexit vote—and the ongoing discussions about what Brexit will look like—reflected these timeless questions, and though the vote has long-since passed, the topic maintains a perennial quality for those interested in political philosophy.

To that end, I’ll be compiling, re-editing, and otherwise modifying my 2016 Brexit essays into a new eBook, Tyranny Denied:  Reflections on Brexit.  I’ll also be adding some chapters and historical notes.

That book, along with my long-planned eBook on social conservatism, Values Have Consequences, should appear later this summer or autumn—just in time for Christmas.

Republicans Defend and Expand the Franchise

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Today in South Carolina, hundreds of thousands of voters will head to the polls to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primaries.  In the spirit of this time-honored and precious American right, I’d like to explore the Republican Party’s history of defending and expanding the franchise.

Democrats are fond of accusing Republicans of a “war on women” and of attempting to “silence minority voters.”  But a brief glance at the historical record suggests otherwise.

Republicans were key in pushing for the ratification of the 15th Amendment, which granted all men, regardless of race, the right to vote.  Ratified in 1870, the amendment immediately faced resistance in the heavily-Democratic South of the Reconstruction era.  Both white and black Republicans in the South faced persistent repression at the hands of groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Redeemers, who used intimidation and even violence to prevent Republicans from voting.

In response, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Enforcement Acts, which included the Ku Klux Klan Act, in 1870-1871.  These acts made it a federal offense to suppress voters through violence or intimidation, and ensured Republican victories in a number of States in the post-bellum Deep South.

Fifty years after the ratification of the 15th Amendment, Republicans once again pushed to expand this franchise, this time through the longsuffering women’s suffrage movement.  The Republican-controlled government of Wyoming first extended the right to vote to women in all elections in 1869, and a number of States—mostly in the Old West—followed suit, but Democratic recalcitrance had stalled further efforts towards women’s suffrage in other States.

While progressive Democratic President Woodrow Wilson reluctantly came to support women’s suffrage as a wartime measure—after initially opposing giving women the right to vote—the major push for women’s suffrage was a Republican one.  The vote over ratification came down to a single Tennessee State legislator, Harry T. Burn, who cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of ratification—making Tennessee the required 36th State to ratify and, therefore, amend the Constitution—after his mother wrote to admonish him to “Hurray and vote for suffrage.  Don’t forget to be a good boy.”  The son dutifully complied, and women all over the nation gained the right to vote.

Democrats deride sensible voter ID laws and other attempts to clean up elections as insidious attempts to suppress minority voters, while steadfastly ignoring their own checkered past of overt, often violent, suppression.

Fortunately, the Republican Party has consistently stood firm against such suppression, expanding and protecting the franchise for millions more Americans.

America Should Expand into Space

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Retired U.S. Navy Captain Jerry Hendrix has a piece up at National Review Online entitled “Space: The New Strategic Heartland” in which he urges Congress and the Department of Defense to establish a “Space Force” and to get serious about space exploration and colonization.  It’s an excellent read, and makes some compelling points about why space is, truly, the final frontier.

Captain Hendrix bases his analysis in “heartland theory,” developed in 1904 by British geographer Halford Mackinder.  114 years ago, Mackinder argued that the “heartland” of future geostrategic conflict was Eurasia.  Decades later, as Hendrix explains, former President Richard Nixon wrote that the Middle East and Africa—with their vast mineral resources—would hold the key to determining the victor in the Cold War (influence in these regions, Nixon argued, would determine whether capitalism or communism would prevail).

Now, Hendrix makes the case that space is the new “heartland,” and makes some intriguing points to that effect.  Anyone who has followed the career and writings of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will be familiar with these arguments; indeed, a decade ago I wrote a rough draft of a paper arguing for lunar colonization on similar grounds.

To summarize, they are as follows:

  • China and Russian are looking to disrupt America’s dominance in communications, entertainment, and strategic defense, which we enjoy because of our preeminence in space—think of how disruptive it would be to lose communications or military satellites, which the Chinese are already targeting.
  • Automated construction and manufacturing in space provide the capability to build and launch deep-space rockets more cheaply (the gravity of the moon is one-sixth that of Earth’s), allowing for more cost-effective space exploration.
  • The free market will—and already has!—get more involved in space exploration.  There are meteorites with more gold than has ever been mined on Earth.  Consider, too, China’s dominance of rare-earth metals, which are abundantly available in the space, particularly the asteroid belt.

If space is going to remain a competitive domain, the United States will have to take the lead.  I shudder to think of a Chinese controlled-moon, for example.  I know it sounds batty, but do you really want the Chinese constructing a lunar death laser?  They have the manpower and disregard for human life to do it.

There is room, too, for a conservative approach to space exploration, and we shouldn’t reflexively recoil at government involvement in this regard, so long as it’s done the right way.  Just like the Homestead Act of 1862 (Gingrich actually proposed a “Homestead Act” for the moon!) or the role of the federal government in leasing lands for railroad companies, Congress can provide the framework for space exploration and colonization that would allow the free-market and private enterprise to kick in and work their magic.

What we should avoid is a bureaucracy that is so obsessed with “safety” and “diversity” that our space program is stillborn in its terrestrial cradle.  Fortunately, there is a way forward, and Newt Gingrich delivers again.

Shortly after winning the South Carolina Republican presidential primary in 2012, Gingrich gave a speech in Florida in which he promised that, by the end of his second term as President (sigh… if only), we’d have a colony on the moon.  When he gave this speech, I began hooping like a silver-backed gorilla—and immediately donated $100 from my meager 2012 salary to his campaign.  He was widely derided for this position, but John F. Kennedy made a similarly bold claim in his young presidency—and, sure enough, by 1969, we had a man on the moon.

Since then, Gingrich has remained a strong supporter of space exploration.  Indeed, he’s written on the topic twice recently, and I would encourage readers to explore his ideas further (I should note that I am heartened to see so many writers suddenly taking an interest in space exploration again).

1.) “A Glimpse of America’s Future in Space in 2024” (22 April 2018):  http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/04/22/newt-gingrich-glimpse-america-s-future-in-space-in-2024.html

2.) “Entrepreneurs will change space exploration (31 May 2018):  https://good-politic.com/newt-gingrich-entrepreneurs-will-change-space-exploration/2614/

The economy is swinging again, American patriotism is back in style, and President Trump is a bold reformer who dreams and acts big (league).  America is perfectly poised to build upon our already substantial lead in space exploration, and frontiers are our specialty.

Let’s go to Mars!  Let’s build a colony on the moon!  Let’s mine asteroids!

4.8% Economic Growth?!

The Portly Politico24 Comments

Remember when President Obama, in Carter-esque fashion, gravely warned the American people that 2% annual GDP growth was the new normal?

The parallels between Obama and Carter’s doom-and-gloom economic forecasts–and between Reagan and Trump’s pro-American optimism–once again come to the fore with the latest predictions from the Atlanta Fed.

A piece at Breitbart notes that annualized GDP growth for the second quarter of 2018 is a whopping 4.8%.  And that’s despite threats of a trade war.

Maybe the scare over tariffs is premature, or the United States is in a position to benefit from playing some hardball on trade.  Free trade is not an unalloyed good, though it is certainly beneficial, and tariffs are not unequivocally bad.

Mostly, though, it seems that the tax cuts are working.  America is getting its economic groove back.  Trump is making America great again by getting government out of the way and letting business thrive.

Frederick’s Pens

The Portly Politico3 Comments

My buddy Frederick Ingram over at http://www.corporatehistory.international writes about Lamy’s “Safari” pens in his latest post. Any creative type—or those that like to keep color-coded journals and schedules—understands the importance of a good pen. As someone who just tends to use whatever cheap pen I find sitting around, those times that I’ve been fortunate to use a precision-crafted writing utensil have been heavenly.

An interesting video about the manufacturing of these pens accompanies the post. It’s truly a testament to ingenuity—and to the prosperity enjoyed in the West today–that such a product exists, and that so much engineering goes into making something as simple as a fountain pen.

fridrix's avatarCorporate History International

Lamy makes a brightly colored plastic fountain pen called the Safari and I love mine. My favorite has an italic nib so I can imitate the sensuous sweeping strokes of Renaissance masters. I even have an optic yellow model I filled with (Japanese) fluorescent ink to use as a highlighter.

Though they’re fun and lightweight, lots of serious German precision and beaucoup robotics goes into each one, as this unprecedented factory footage reveals. The plant itself is a Bauhaus masterpiece; form follows function. Confession: I never knew how the company name was pronounced, which is rather lame of me I suppose.

Historians, contemplate the application of high tech to the somewhat anachronistic fountain pen, which is actually only a century and a half old. These latest iterations don’t leak, write smoother than anything else, and can give your signature a hipster cred that is hard to duplicate with a mass-market…

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New Summer, New Site

The Portly Politico8 Comments

In summer 2016, I relaunched the old Portly Politico blog, and put myself on a rigorous schedule, posting three times a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—at 6:30 AM.  It was, for me, a daunting task, but the more I wrote, the more lucid and easily the words flowed.

It was a great experience, but with the school year starting, I fell behind, and never really did much with the site.  All that effort seemed wasted, even if I got a few good essays out of it.  Even in the wake the historic 2016 election, I couldn’t muster the time or energy to write regularly.

But now it’s time for new beginnings.  Henceforth, I’ll be posting new content here on WordPress, and I’ll use the old Blogger site as an archive.  All the great content you read in 2016 will still be available there, and all my sweet new content will appear here.

As such, I’d encourage you to take a moment to subscribe afresh to receive each post as I write them.

Thanks, and welcome to the new Portly Politico.

Regards,

TPP