Getting a New Name

 

John Daniel Davidson is an editor at The Federalist. In a recent article he declared that he and other traditionalist authoritarians should stop calling themselves conservatives. If I were a conservative, I would agree and be happy to see them go.

Davidson claims that western civilization is dying, and is time for people of the right sort to take over the government and forcefully fix things. He sees no point in conservatives favoring the traditional family of a married man and wife raising their children if too many people prefer to live in other arrangements. He sees no value in freedom of religion if too many people disagree with his notions about religion. He warns that unless action is taken, pretty soon those who do not share his opinions will be numerous enough to start persecuting those who do.

He blames the technological changes of the last fifty years for the rise of moral relativism in the country (go figure) and objects to free markets, profit seeking technology outfits, and the people who favor them. He argues that to prevent “an implosion of Western civilization” it will be necessary to use government power to whip those capitalists and technologists into line.

In specifics he proposes to break up large technology companies, cut funding for universities, end no-fault divorce, subsidize (the right sort of) families with young children, outlaw abortions with no exceptions, arrest parents who take their children to events such as drag queen shows that he dislikes and charge them with child abuse, throw doctors who perform sex change surgeries or procedures in prison, and first fire and then prosecute teachers who expose students to sexually explicit material. It is a war, he says, and the warriors of righteousness “need not shy away from making these arguments because they betray some cherished libertarian fantasy about free markets and small governments.” As this list shows it is not only free markets that bother him. It is freedom itself.

I think he is right to stop calling himself a conservative. Conservatism in this country has usually meant something that to varying degrees of consistency has taken the principles of the Declaration of Independence seriously. His ideas have little common with the conservatism of people such as Reagan and Goldwater or that of many other conservatives now who generally like the idea of freedom and are often willing to mind their own business and let others mind theirs. (I can imagine Goldwater in particular telling the Davidsons of the country to go to hell.)

Of course Davidson and his people will need a name for themselves now that they no longer wish to be called conservatives. There is an obvious one, for both historical and ideological reasons. They should call themselves falangists. It fits.

Alex Jones and Steve Bannon

 

Suppose someone in the media said that Democrats and their flacks in the traditional media almost gleefully used the murders at Sandy Hook to push a political agenda. Or suppose that someone said that the Democrats and their public relations people in the media exploited grieving parents of some of the victims to make political points by waving the bloody shirt, and that some of the parents were willing to be so exploited. Neither of these things would be defamation of the parents or anyone else (especially since both were true).

Then suppose that someone said without evidence that the murders were the result of a plot by the government, and the deranged murderer was put up to his crimes by federal agents provocateur. While that claim might be annoying to government officials and offensive to their friends in the media, it would not be defamation of the parents of the victims. It would just be another wacky conspiracy theory.

But suppose someone said to a large audience across the nation that the murders never happened, that the government staged fake murders for political reasons, and the parents of the victims were really actors aiding in the deception. That would be libelous, because it falsely accuses private citizens of participating in a fraud and a monstrous one at that. That is what Alex Jones did, and a judgment of libel was justified.

The amounts awarded were not. They were off by orders of magnitude. The amount of tangible harm Jones’s libel did to the parents was fairly small. They were rightly offended, but hurting people’s feelings is not the same as inflicting serious damage. Their careers were not destroyed. Their property was not harmed, and any possible damage to their reputations with the public was quickly repaired. Some parents said they were bothered and even harassed by obnoxious losers who believed the murders were a hoax, but it would be difficult to tie that activity directly to Jones.

It is likely the real reason for the huge judgments against Jones is not what he did but rather what he is. What he is is surely bad enough. He is a lying, disgusting demagogue and scoundrel. The things he said about the murders in Connecticut were the indecent and indefensible work of a vulgar lowlife. But nasty, even vile, people have the same civil rights as decent ones, and his penalty should have been based on his deeds rather than his character. Besides as a practical matter, smaller awards might have been fairly easily collectible, while Jones may try through bankruptcy to avoid paying quickly or even at all on the gigantic ones.

Steve Bannon was sentenced to a few months in jail this week for contempt of congress for refusing to honor a subpoena to testify in front of the January 6^th committee of the house. Conservatives have pointed out that Democrat Eric Holder was not convicted or even prosecuted after he was found in contempt of congress a few years ago. While it is probably true that the DOJ Holder ran was unlikely to prosecute its boss for anything, and the DOJ Garland runs was happy and eager to prosecute Bannon for anything, this is not a clear case of a “two tiered” system of justice, one for Democrats and another for Republicans. Holder was a serving official in the executive branch and eligible to claim executive privilege, whether properly or as part of a cover up. Bannon had no such legal cover. Holder did cooperate in some ways with the committee investigating him. For a long time Bannon did not. Still he eventually did offer to testify, and one might have thought that offer would have made the citation for contempt moot. It seems unlikely that a Democrat behaving the same way would have been tried and very unlikely that he or she would have been sentenced to prison. (This conjecture may be tested next year when Republicans are running the investigations in congress.) I have no use for Bannon, but a person has to wonder if in this case his politics hurt him more than his conduct.

Showings of Force

 

In September the FBI arrested an anti-abortion protester named Mark Houck in his home. Houck and his wife claim the arrest was made in an early morning raid by over a dozen heavily armed men pointing AR type rifles at them and scaring their children. The FBI partially denies the claim, saying that there were fewer agents than the Houcks claim and that the agents’ behavior was “professional”. Its statement does not say how many armed agents were present or how they were armed. It is difficult to say which story, if either, is accurate, but it seems likely that there were more than a handful of agents present and that some of them were well armed. The offense Houck is charged with is shoving a man he was arguing with at a protest last year. Local officials did not prosecute him.

In another case that has made the news recently, there is no question about the behavior of the FBI. It was a raid. A group of agents armed with rifles went to the home of an anti-abortion protester named Paul Vaughn early one morning as he was getting ready to take his kids to school and arrested him. Vaughn’s wife filmed some of the raid with her phone, and the video has been shown on the news on TV. The offense Vaughn is charged with is participating in a sit-in at an abortion clinic in Tennessee.

One has to wonder why the men were arrested in the way they were. It seems fairly clear that neither of them was much of a flight risk. Nothing has been said or published indicating that there were reasons to think they might have been dangerous. Yet in each case there was a big show of force. (As a point for comparison, the FBI’s web site and other sources mention only four agents present staking out the Biograph Theater and taking down John Dillinger. There may have been more, but only four were named.) One should ask why. In the absence of any obvious pragmatic reason for it and given the unpopularity of the opinions of people such as Houck and Vaughn with the present government, it is reasonable to guess that the purpose was to send a message to intimidate others with the same unpopular opinions. If not, officials should tell us why not. If so, the actions were wrong and a violation of the principles of a free society, which should worry people irrespective of what they think of abortion. After all, who knows what opinions might become unpopular with this or some future administration later? It could even be some of mine.

Renaming Army Bases

 

There has been a surprising amount of controversy over the government’s plan to rename army posts now named after confedrate officers. I think the renaming is a good idea. The men the forts are named after now committed treason against the United States. Those who were serving officers in the U.S. army broke their oath to the republic to join a rebellion to protect the institution of slavery. They do not deserve to be honored by the army they abandoned and fought against. (I have heard some people joke, though, that an exception might be made for Fort Bragg, since Braxton Bragg was so incompetent that he did more to aid the Union cause than any other general in the war except Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas.) It is better for the forts to be named after people who served the U.S. army honorably and well.

The naming commission has published a list of the eight people after whom the nine forts will be named - with Fort Bragg not being not named after any person but to be called Fort Liberty. None of the choices is a bad one, and some of the of the selections such as Eisenhower and the men and woman who won the Congressional Medal of Honor are very good. If, as the commission’s FAQ indicates, the commission was operating under at least implicit quotas for race and sex, it at least found worthy if not always optimal choices to fill them.

With only nine bases to rename, many good nominees were left out including two obvious ones. There should have been a couple of bases named for Audie Murphy and Alvin York. That would have been better, but what was done is not bad. At at least the traitors will be gone.

National Conservatism

 

If someone wants to learn about the beliefs of the national conservatives, it turns out to be easy to do so. There is a web site with a manifesto of their principles, signed by a large number of people, including several well known and prominent conservatives. It is worth reading. The “national” is made clear in the preamble: ”We emphasize idea of the nation because we see a world of independent nations – each pursuing its own national interests and upholding national traditions that are its own – as the only general alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.”

The first enumerated principle is national independence: “Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance.” The second expands on this idea with a rejection of globalism and supernational organizations and a condemnation of both authoritarian imperialism and “liberal imperialism”.

The third is basically a proposal for shifting power from the executive and judicial branches to the legislative branch and the states. The fourth is a call to end the separation of church and state and equal treatment for various religions: “When a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.” The fifth is an affirmation of the notion of the rule of law.

The sixth is a plan for government control of the economy so that economic policy will “serve the general welfare of the nation” and a condemnation of disloyal multi-national corporations. The seventh is a call for more government funding of scientific and technological research but not at universities “unless they rededicate themselves to the national interest”.

The eighth declares the traditional family is “the source of society’s virtues and deserves grater support from public policy”. It criticizes the “unconstrained individualism” of childless people, and “radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life”. Number nine is a plan for restrictive policies on immigration which may include a moratorium on all immigration. The last item is a condemnation of racial discrimination.

It is not happenstance that the outfit that put this document together is called the Edmund Burke Foundation. Leftists have Rousseau. Liberals and libertarians have Paine, and traditionalist conservatives have Burke. This is a very traditionalistic document. It rejects not only the left but also the liberal, enlightenment notions of liberty, personal autonomy, and individual rights. It has a lot in common with the ideologies of the historical continental European right. As such it is not only un-American, but in terms of the ideals of Americanism explicitly anti-American. One may agree with some of the things some of those who signed the manifesto say some of the time, but by signing it they have shown that are not on the side of freedom and should not be trusted too far by those who are.