Tag: political philosophy

Phone it in Friday XXXII: Pat Buchanan’s Legacy

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It’s a true Phone it in Friday today, as this post is (slightly) late, and I’m going to keep it brief due to time constraints.

Patrick J. Buchanan, the great writer and political analyst, officially retired from his decades-long career in journalism a few weeks ago.  His influence in conservative politics is hard to overstate.  Even though he spent much of his career since the 1990s as the alternative paleoconservative voice in an increasingly interventionist and neoliberal Republican Party, that disciplined commitment to his values and the original vision of the American Founding made him one of the most impactful political figures of our time.

I wrote more extensively about Buchanan’s legacy in a piece for American Patriot Radio entitled “Pat Buchanan’s America” back in 2017, in the early months of the Trump administration.  Trump, in many ways, was the political apotheosis of Buchanan’s views on trade, immigration, and the culture wars.  Put more simply:  no Buchanan, no Trump.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Considering Secession

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It seems as though I post about “the s-word”—secession—about once a year (2019, 2020, 2021), and always on Saturdays (two of those posts are behind paywalls for a reason; it’s amazing how charging a buck for something on the Internet is the best way to ensure no one ever sees it).

The recent, abysmal midterm elections got me thinking about the topic again, but what really got the juices flowing was this map my brother forwarded to me:

Secession Sentiment

The map comes from this post at Bright Line Watch, an organization that—so far as I can tell—gauges how the health of “our democracy,” to use the parlance the Left loves so well (it’s pedantic to point out, but we’re a constitutionally-limited federal representative republic with democratic mechanisms—at least, we used to be—not a democracy).  Like most such outfits, I suspect they are institutionally Leftist, but in this case, I don’t think ideology infects their numbers.

Note that 66% of Republicans in the South support secession into a new regional union, spanning from Texas to Virginia (I’d say let’s stop at the border between South and North Carolina, but that’s just me), as do 50% of Independents.  Only 20% of Democrats do, but that makes sense—they’d probably not much like being in a Southern Union dominated by conservatives.

I do think it’s a tad far-fetched to think that 66% of Southern Republicans pine for secession.  Most Republicans I know are still flag-waving Boomer types who worship Abraham Lincoln (what I was until just a few years ago).

Still, (allegedly) 44% of Southerners supporting the idea of breaking out into a thirteen-State union (the old Confederate States of America, plus Oklahoma and Kentucky) is ridiculously high.  It only takes a dedicated minority of 20% to shape policy and push change at a societal level (thus the concepts of the “Silent Majority” versus the “Noisy Minority”), so 44% is more than double that threshold.

Does it mean anything?  Is America headed for The Civil War II?

Disclaimer: I do not want or advocate for a violent revolution; I am merely exploring an issue of growing interest in our fractured political times.  The restoration of true federalism is the preferable answer, but barring that, a peaceful separation of the States could—not necessarily is—another possible outcome that prevents widespread violence and continued tyranny at the national level.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Martha’s Migrant Crisis

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Apologies for the delayed post this morning, readers.  After a particularly grueling (but productive!) week and around three hours of sleep, I wasn’t prepared to write a post Friday night, and instead dozed off on the couch watching a Spanish-language horror movie.  —TPP

The big news this week is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sent a few dozen illegal immigrants to an upscale island vacation destination on the taxpayers’ dime.  Normally, I’d see this move as what these things usually are:  another example of scofflaws getting rewarded while the law-abiding foot the bill.

But these are not normal times, and the cost to Florida taxpayers was well worth the message sent:  if you progressive elites like illegal migrants so much—often at the expense, in terms of treasure and blood, of the naturalized and native-born citizens you’re sworn to protect—then surely they won’t mind a few dozen border hoppers lounging around Barack Obama’s palatial estate.

For conservatives out there concerned about the cost of these illegal immigrant vacation junkets, think of it as part of the State of Florida‘s advertising budget:  instead of spending money warning people to look out for cyclists or some other wasteful public service announcement, Floridians are getting a major return on their advertising dollars.  The speed with which the Martha’s Vineyarders (Vineyardians?) expelled the dusky hordes from their sleepy progressive utopia is an object lesson in how little elites really believe anything they say.  It’s also a pretty effective way of highlighting, on a small scale, what border towns experience every day, and to a far greater magnitude.

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TBT^2: Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus

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The Virus is like a bad movie series that just refuses to die.  There was a controversial but impactful first release that everyone was talking about, even if they didn’t see it.  Then there was the lackluster sequel, which still enjoyed some popular support, even though ticket sales were down.

Now it feels like we’re on the tired third film, which is a watered-down, ineffectual finale (one hopes) to a premise that is played out.  Sure, critics love it, but audiences are tired of its antics.

What still seems to make it into the script of every one of these films is the part where the government bureaucrats lock everything down and release a bunch of ghosts into Manhattan (uh, wait, what?).  Meanwhile, we all kind of sit by and twiddle our thumbs and put our masks on dutifully.

What happened to the band of merry wastrels who tossed tea into Boston Harbor, rather than comply with an odious monopolization of the tea trade?  Or the plucky scofflaws who made it impossible to enforce the Stamp Act?  I’d rather disguise myself as an Indian (feather, not dot) and caffeinate the water supply than put a mask on again (but that would be cultural appropriation, of course).

In short, why don’t we get a backbone, instead of cowering behind masks and locking ourselves indoors?  We’re literally cowering before an invisible enemy with a 99%+ survival rate.

Well, liberty is never easy.  Better to stay inside watching movies and disconnecting from reality, eh?

With that, here is 29 July 2021’s “TBT: Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus“:

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TBT: Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus

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Earlier this week I was having a conversation with someone on Milo’s rollicking Telegram chat, in which we were trying to figure out the name of a short story involving people living in underground cells, communicating only via the Internet.  I had a feeling I had written about it before, but could not remember the name of the story.

Turns out it was E.M. Forster’s novella “The Machine Stops,” originally published in 1909, and I wrote about it in this catch-all post from the early days of The Age of The Virus (so early, in fact, I was not capitalizing the first “the” in that moniker, which I have texted so much, my last phone auto-predicted “The Age of The Virus”).  I compared the story to Kipling’s “The Mother Hive”–a story that apparently is assigned regularly in India, because pageviews for it always seem to coincide with large numbers of site visitors from the subcontinent.

But I digress.  The story sounded eerily like what our elites asked us to do during The Age of The Virus:  stay home, get fat, consume mindless entertainment, and don’t socialize.  Granted, some of us could go outside and plant gardens (I still got fat, though), but the messaging was not “become more self-sufficient so we can mitigate disaster” but “buy more stuff and don’t do anything fun.”  It was depressing to me how many people embraced this line of reasoning, turning government-mandated sloth into some kind of perverted virtue.

I appreciated the break that The Age of The Virus afforded us, but it came with the severe curtailment of liberty—and Americans ate it up!  Instead of people boldly throwing ravers and partying down, laughing at our elites, we instead retreated into our hovels, shuddering in the dark.  When I did through a big Halloween bash, it was a massive success—because, I suppose, people had finally had it.

I guess that’s the silver lining.  With that, here’s 3 April 2020’s “Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus” (perhaps the longest title of any blog post ever):

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The Last Day of Freedom?

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Here we are, 19 January 2021—the last day of basking in liberty before Biden the Usurper assumes the throne.  For all his personal foibles and occasional missed opportunities (while acknowledging, of course, his many achievements), President Trump at least fought to ensure that Americans could enjoy freedom and opportunity.  Under progressive rule, no such guarantees exist.

But rather than look about gloomily at what is to come, I’d like to offer some words of exhortation.  Times will not be easy for conservatives and Christians over the next four years, but I’m trying to embrace this new progressive era with some cautious, small-scale optimism.

For one, I think the whole sordid election fraud, as well as the bipartisan effort to impeach President Trump for—if we’re honest about it—discouraging violence and encouraging peaceful protest—has confirmed for many of us that the elites of both parties are against us.  As such, effecting change at the national level seems increasingly futile.

That might sound discouraging, but consider it from another angle:  if we can’t make much of a dent at the national level, then why waste the energy?  Instead, let’s focus our efforts locally.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Spirit of 1776

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Disclaimer:  I do not endorse violence as a means to achieving political ends in normal circumstances.  That said, I reject the claim that “violence never solves anything.”  The vast annals of human history suggest the opposite is largely the case—violence has been the resort—sometimes final, sometimes not—to resolve any number of problems.  Our entire political system rests on the implicit use of violent force towards upholding the common good—and protecting those unable to protect themselves.  Jesus Christ died—quite violently!—for our sins, offering us ultimate salvation forever.

Further, our entire nation is founded on a last-resort to violence to secure American liberty:  the American Revolution.  Brave men pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honors to secure liberty and to defend their rights.  Over 4000 did make the ultimate sacrifice—and many, many more since then—to win and secure our freedom.  Sometimes some turbulence is necessary—as the Left has told us all of last year as BLM destroyed cities—to secure liberty.

That’s an uncomfortable concept—I don’t necessarily like it, and I am sad to see it has come to that—but it’s the foundation of our Republic.  I sincerely pray for reconciliation and healing, as did John Dickinson prior to the American Revolution, but I am not optimistic given Democratic control of the organs of power.  The storming of the Capitol will be used as a pretext—it already is—to oppress and imprison conservatives.  At such a point, the remaining options begin to vanish.

I am not calling for or advocating violence in any form—but I’m afraid it’s coming nevertheless.  Please pray with me for reconciliation—true reconciliation, not the dictator’s peace of bending the knee to Leftist insanity—and prepare for troubled times ahead.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Mainstreaming of Secession

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The American experiment in self-government is at perhaps its lowest ebb since the 1850s, a decade whose division and partisan rancor rival our own.  That decade’s statesmen’s failures to address sectional tensions—and, ultimately, to reconcile two fundamentally incompatible views of the world—resulted in the secession of eleven States that no longer believed the national government was acting in accordance with the Constitution.

It brings me no joy to make such a grim assessment, nor to contemplate what comes next as a result, but it is a necessary task.  My sincerest wish is that our great Union remain intact, and that we see some restoration of constitutionalism.  An increase in States’ rights and federalism—greater sovereignty at the State level and less power at the federal level—would go a very long way in resolving at least some of our national issues.

Unfortunately, I and others are increasingly drawing the conclusion that such a restoration is, at best, extremely unlikely and, at worst, impossible in an age of totalizing progressivism.  When even Rush Limbaugh is musing about secession (H/T to photog at Orion’s Cold Fire) and a George Mason law professor is writing seriously on the subject, we can no longer laugh off the notion.  Secession may be the future.

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Where the Right Goes From Here

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Lest I be cast as a “doomer”—one who has given up on President Trump’s noble attempt to win the re-election that is rightfully is—it seems likely that our ruling elites will assure Biden wins the presidency.  I still believe that Trump is the rightful victor; that the election was stolen from him; and that the evidence of widespread voter fraud is compelling enough to throw, at the very least, the election to the House of Representatives.

Remember, we live in a world that still argues that John F. Kennedy’s campaign did not manipulate vote totals in Cook County, Illinois to flip the State away from Nixon in 1960, thereby assuring Kennedy’s victory.  What we saw in 2020 was the Cook County strategy writ large.  We should fight that manipulation to ensure the integrity of future elections, but I fear the damage is done.

Again, I hold out hope that Trump will be vindicated and that justice will be served.  Nevertheless, as conservatives, we should adopt the distinctly conservative course of preparing for what comes next.  Even if our dream scenario comes to fruition, it only buys conservatives time.  Either way, we’ve got to consider seriously where we’re going, and our place in a society that increasingly rejects us and our interests.

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