Michael Anton has published an outstanding essay at Claremont’s American Mind — his best, I think, since his influential “Flight 93 Election” piece back in 2016.
The essay begins with a discussion of the mainstream-media narrative surrounding mass shootings, and of the collaboration of the pseudoconservative pundits he calls the “Vichycons” in support of that narrative. But this is just a preamble to the most important part of the essay: a piercing analysis of the great battering-ram the Left is using to break the ramparts of the traditional American nation.
This is how the script goes: target a complex system that has been in place for centuries or longer; impose a new agenda in conflict with natural limits; stress that system beyond the breaking point; blame the inevitable reactions less on actual, individual bad actors than on an entire ecosystem of bad people; punish those bad people as a class; impose mass “reeducation” and “training” via ham-fisted propaganda; intensify the stresses on the system even further.
The beatings will continue until morale improves. But morale never improves and so the beatings never cease. The beaters know this, and relish it.
I’m not going to post further excerpts here; you must go and read the whole thing. We have all understood for some time now that this is the strategy we are up against, but I think you have never seen it all laid out with such clarity and force. Read it, and share it.
The essay is here.
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Something I thought about while reading Anton’s essay: why are there no Vichy liberals? I mean sure you have individuals like Thomas Friedman, EJ Dionne, and others who criticize the radicalism of the Democratic party, but it doesn’t seem like they’re heavily excoriated in turn by progressives as much as just ignored. You don’t have the sort of argument there that exists within the conservative ranks, nothing like the Thrilla in Manilla debate that is coming up in a few weeks or so between David French and Sohrib Ahmari. This makes me think of something I pondered in a book of the Hungarian-American historian John Lukacs (a great man who died recently) not so long ago, that liberalism is simply exhausted, it has nothing more to accomplish. So many of the debates within the Left have to do with techne (Medicare for all, unlimited abortion on demand, drag queens in libraries), whereas conservatives are more apt to appeal to much more deeply spiritual, national elements within peoples.
Just as an aside Malcolm, here is an interesting article on Cape Cod and sharks: https://www.wsj.com/articles/cape-cods-new-normal-sharks-are-everywhere-11566034200 . Although isn’t the chance of a shark attack ultimately quite remote?
…you have never seen [the strategy] all laid out with such clarity and force.
Do you think it’s a strategy rather than a happenstance combination of bad policy and opportunistic behavior after the fact? I’m far to your right, but I doubt immigration policy has been designed and enforced predominately by people who are trying to provoke an overreaction so they can crush reactionaries.
And as corollary, the supreme court libs reliably vote as a block, peeling off a conservative as needed.
Public life/public service tends to be a liberal/progressive thing: what are you going to do for us? What are you going to give me?
The private sphere is where conservatism reigns, and where you will find the Vichy libs. Notice all the libs who are personally frugal; careful about where they live and go to school; who they associate with; etc etc.
Hi Jason,
I don’t think liberalism can ever see itself as exhausted. As I’ve written before, it is in the nature of leftism, which is always based on grievance, to be fractal. See, for example, this post from 2014, or this excerpt from a post in 2016:
As Feynman said in a different context: there’s plenty of room at the bottom.
Moreover, if “progressivism” is correctly understood as a religion of salvation, its aims must always be at an infinite distance — just as God in Heaven stands in an infinite relation to Man here below. There’s no way you’re going to exhaust that.
As for sharks, they are sighted off our beaches every day now. (Some years ago Congress decided to protect seals, and so the seal population here increased by orders of magnitude. This in turn created a gigantic buffet for sharks, who have come here from all over.) Yes, the chances of being attacked are remote, but it’s still keeping a lot of people out of the water. Fortunately we also have our spring-fed, sandy-bottomed “kettle” ponds to swim in…
chedolf,
Far to my right? I wouldn’t have said there was a whole lot of room over there…
Your question invokes “Hanlon’s Razor“. I’m perfectly willing to concede that malice may be mixed with stupidity here, but I do think we are dealing, in many quarters at least, with a consciously implemented plan.
Yes, Mr. Anton’s essay is well done. Now, what has he done this week to prepare for the Fall Session of Congress? When the Red Flag laws pass(and they will) is he prepped? How much ammo? How many firearms? How often does he and his ilk at Hillsdale train and practice?
I have been around The Mr. Antons of the USA since I was walking the pavement for Barry Goldwater when I was not even old enough to vote. They are educated, glib, arrogant, condescending(just like his boss, Mr. Arnn) and will talk your ears off if you let them. But, that’s all they know how to do. When these perfumed princes from the Salons of Hillsdale graduate from Gunsite or Thunder Ranch, get back to me. Then I will take you elitists seriously.
Dweezil,
One Zappa fan to another:
I don’t know Michael Anton personally, beyond some brief email exchanges, so I have no idea whether he owns firearms, is experienced in the use of them, or what he would do with them in the event of civil war. (I don’t suppose you know either.) I do know that he thinks clearly and writes well.
As for being an elitist, which you seem to be calling me, I suppose I am — in that I respect excellence (in all its forms), and believe that excellence, being superior to mediocrity, is what sets the upper bound of what any civilization can accomplish. It is not a thing to apologize for.
Mr. Malcolm: My comment was not directed at you. I have a deep, abiding mistrust of the Elitist Dead Elephants and RINOS who reside in the Salons of Hillsdale, especially the His Most Arrogantness, Dr. Arnn.
When this fraud was in charge at Claremont Men’s College in Pomona, CA, he organized seminars featuring other East Coast Republican Brahmins such as Jack Kemp and his ilk to tell us desperate, fighting Californians how stupid we were to be protesting the then-invasion of Illegals from Mexico and Central America. He was subsequently run out-of-town by the then hard-nosed, realistic Republican establishment. The rest is history.
I should have been more to the point in that the time for talking is over. Either Arnn, Anton and the rest of their ilk will be on the Tumbrel Carts, or plebian ex-Peace Officers like myself will be liquidated. There is no high ground here. The Left wants us all dead. End of story.
Dweezil,
You can only expect so much. I should say that I think what Hillsdale is doing — teaching the intellectual and philosophical foundations of the American experiment in government, and seeking to imbue its students with both an understanding of, and a sense of the vital necessity of, civic virtue and the responsibility of citizenry and national stewardship — is good, and important.
We shall just have to see about tumbrels. My own feeling is that the crisis will fall upon America in the summer of 2025.