To Rescue a Nation

The oligarchy that annihilated or perverted the American Republic’s institutions rules not simply to secure privileged access to wealth. It is equally, if not principally preoccupied with crushing the way of life of whoever are not its members or clients—of ourselves. That is why it rules as a hostile occupying power. Having replaced the distinction between public and private with that between ins and outs, our oligarchy, like all others, exercises power through all manner of connected corporations and individuals—in business, education, the media, etc.

Each and every part of this oligarchy oppresses us and stands in the way of our re-establishing the republican way of life among those who wish to live it. Each and every part is our enemy. Treating each and every one, and their leading individuals, as the enemies they are, shielding ourselves from their power as we re-establish self-rule, is what rescuing and refounding America is about. Like any other way of life based on self-rule, ours can be re-founded only by the people themselves. Today there is no shortage of will to defy the oligarchy at every point at which it impinges. Americans know that resistance and affirmation are effective in proportion to the numbers that practice it jointly. Throughout this diverse country, the spirit of resistance ferments, and manifests itself in small scale spontaneous actions, lawsuits, and in state legislatures. Some governors, notably Florida’s DeSantis, have protected their people to some extent and above all have proved that opposition to the oligarchs is neither lonely, looney, nor hopeless.

But because the oligarchy poses problems nationwide and can bring its whole force to bear against challenges at any point, fighting it effectively requires marshaling the bulk of republicans, nationwide, for common action.

Great article, and thanks for posting.

Republican Americans’ success in the aforementioned defensive battles should convince the oligarchy to limit its absolute power to the people who want to live under it.

If only. One of the foundational premises of all authoritarian movements from Mohammed to Marx is that there must be no escape from them, that all the world must be stuffed into a single mold. It is for this reason that even secession can be only a temporary solution. It is literally, in Alexander Rüstow's formulation, Freedom vs. Domination.

Freedom always starts as it has this cycle, from a position of disadvantage, since toleration of other opinions must include those of the enemies of freedom itself, the intolerant and dictatorial. That means the freedom of the few to deny freedom to others, as we are currently preached to by the heirs of Max Horkheimer and the proponents of Critical Theory. Reason only acts as a medium of mediation where both sides accept it; where they do not only force remains.

It's a bleak view to be sure. It's what Jefferson meant by the Tree of Liberty. Not long now, I think.

Codevilla spends the majority of the first part of this essay claiming that any movement to re-found the country will require a single great leader presumably with a single great unifying message.

However, later in the piece he says this:

"Maximum latitude for each and minimum interference with the other should be the guidelines. Affording maximum autonomy to each is essential to ensure peace among people who identify with civilizations at odds with each other."

America was founded by various groups of religious dissidents and then economic opportunists. As America grew in territory from the Louisiana Purchase to the spoils of the Mexican-American War there was more and more room for these disparate groups to explore, exploit, and grow into. These disparate groups could all be successful without stepping on each others' toes.

But now almost every acre has been purchased and is accounted for. Now it is about these disparate groups trying to gain market share by taking away from those groups they now despise and see as competition and enemies.

And this goes tenfold for the intellectual space.

How is a great leader with a unifying principal to make headway if we continue to value autonomy among a people that no longer has room to grow and nothing to gain, but to take it from a rival?

Trump stayed away from the social issues. He stayed away from libertarian orthodoxy and even some core conservative talking points. He had a message which rang true with lots of non-ideological Americans, but it was a message that everyone had to agree with. For example, you can't have a border if some states decide to let immigrants in either by foot, boat, or plane. You can't have sanity in the sciences if some "professionals" refuse to call men men, women women, and gender dysphoric people crazy.

The idea that liberals in Boston will allow ranchers in Montana to kill wolves without sikking the Feds on them is ludicrous. And why should we sit by while liberal women in Boston are allowed to murder their unborn?

Obama has seeded his children throughout the country. There are Somalians in Maine and Minnesota of all places. How the heck did we allow that? And how will we be able to create our own autonomous spaces without kicking some of these folks to the curb? Or are we going to be naive and claim that deep down every Somalian and Salvadoran is a Burkean conservative at heart?

America will be reclaimed, but it will not be by some charismatic cosmopolitan leader crying out "Autonomy for thee and me". It will be by some brutal figure who rises from the ruins and demands that everyone who wants America to rise again must believe in the myth that was America, and believe it not as a myth but as the God's honest truth.

Paul Bunyan lived. He had a Blue Ox called babe. He was twenty feet tall and could hack down a hundred trees with a single swipe of his ax.

If you don't believe that then you're a traitor and must leave or be hanged.

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