One more example of how Ronald Reagan made the United States worse.

I have a thread up about reassessing Reagan, whom conservatives worship (they also tend to worship Theodore Roosevelt, oddly, who was a radical liberal, but anyway).

I've never been particularly certain on my views on Reagan, as I've noted here before.  I am a conservative, but something about Reagan has made me long uncomfortable.  In part, it might frankly just be because he was an actor, and I find actors to be fake.  I never bought off on his persona, I guess.  

I've noted here several times that Ronald Reagan started the process that gave us Donald Trump.

The Guardian just ran an article on the psychology of our political times, starting off with this:

Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump, and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up. Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics.

Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world.

I'm not sure what I think of The Guardian either, which is a British left wing newspaper working hard to break into the US market.  But this article has some interesting points, starting with this generalization:

People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.

Interesting.  And:

Trump exemplifies extrinsic values. From the tower bearing his name in gold letters to his gross overstatements of his wealth; from his endless ranting about “winners” and “losers” to his reported habit of cheating at golf; from his extreme objectification of women, including his own daughter, to his obsession with the size of his hands; from his rejection of public service, human rights and environmental protection to his extreme dissatisfaction and fury, undiminished even when he was president of the United States, Trump, perhaps more than any other public figure in recent history, is a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values.

That is in part what has made the "left behinds" fanatic devotion to Trump so hard for me to grasp.  People declaring themselves average patriotic, Christian, middle class, Americans are fanatic in their devotion to somebody who expresses none of those values whatsoever.  This is so much the case, that extreme efforts have to be taken to project those onto Trump.

But here's where it gets really interesting: 

We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the cues and responses we receive from other people and the prevailing mores of our society. They are also moulded by the political environment we inhabit. If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalise and internalise it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values. This, in turn, permits an even crueller and more grasping political system to develop.

If, by contrast, people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterised by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end. This process is known as policy feedback, or the “‘values ratchet”. The values ratchet operates at the societal and the individual level: a strong set of extrinsic values often develops as a result of insecurity and unfulfilled needs. These extrinsic values then generate further insecurity and unfulfilled needs.

I think there's a lot more that can be analyzed as to these statements, but at an elemental level, there's a large measure of truth to them.  Norwegians today are a kindly, non-threatening group.  That reflects a lot of things, but one of them is the Christianization of the country in the Middle Ages.  That took them from a brutal society where murdering your own children was accepted, to what we have today.

Continuing on with The Guardian; 

Ever since Ronald Reagan came to power, on a platform that ensured society became sharply divided into “winners” and “losers”, and ever more people, lacking public provision, were allowed to fall through the cracks, US politics has become fertile soil for extrinsic values. As Democratic presidents, following Reagan, embraced most of the principles of neoliberalism, the ratchet was scarcely reversed. The appeal to extrinsic values by the Democrats, Labour and other once-progressive parties is always self-defeating. Research shows that the further towards the extrinsic end of the spectrum people travel, the more likely they are to vote for a rightwing party.

That' is absolutely the case.

Most voters, and most conservatives alive today, don't recall the country before Reagan.  They don't even recall that George Bush, who urged a "kinder, gentler, conservatism" in the race he won for the Oval Office, ran against Reagan in the 1980 GOP contest.

Reagan had a charming smile and a personal "oh shucks" type of presentation.  He was running against a widely personally admired man, Jimmy Carter, whose policies had failed.  He was also running at a time at which the country was desperate on inflation, and trying to figure out what had happened in the 1960s, and how the Vietnam War had gone so wrong.  Hard hat Americans were losing their jobs to Japanese manufacturing. Southerners were grasping to figure out what had happened to the Old South.

It wasn't a really good time in the country.

From the election of 1912 all the way through the election of 1980, the county had been on a much different path. The three-way race of 1912 saw a Progressive (Roosevelt) dragging along a conservative (Taft) against another somewhat Progressive (Wilson).  Progressivism, which first really started to come into its own during Theodore Roosevelt's administration, was on the rise and in fact became ingrained in American politics.  The Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations really didn't change that, but the Franklin Roosevelt administration very much did, ramping it up enormously.  The setting on the dial that Roosevelt put the country on was only turned down a couple of notches post-war, and the difference between post-war Republican Administrations and Democratic ones was slight in regard to these issues for the most part, at least until Lyndon Johnson, who tried to set the dial back up.  Nixon may have set the dial back down, but by modern Republican standards, Richard Nixon was a liberal RINO.

Reagan started to pull the dial off the settings, much of it in a budget fashion.  The mentally disturbed were set out on the streets as state's lost funding from the Federal Government for them.  Support for education at the Federal level, a major feature of the World War Two/Cold War Federal governments, started to evaporate.

With this, a sort of fend for yourself individualism came in.  The promise is that everything would improve, and everyone's lives with it.  And because Reagan did tackle inflation, and he did face down the Soviet Union (which of course is more or less unrelated), things did improve.

But that's stopped.

The left deserves much of the blame as well, as it got goofy, frankly, and started to take on a universalism approach that doesn't appeal to hardly anyone, and which in fact is detrimental to the country.

But Reagan took us down a path that involved hating the government, and incorporated the disaffected into the party to be used, but not really supported.  Lots of people ended up being left behind.

There were signs.  His political career had been launched by his A Time For Choosing speech in favor of Barry Goldwater, who was in some ways an earlier version of the Anti Republican, Republican.  As Governor of California, he had been a proponent of tax cuts, and he cut the number of individuals in California's mental institutions.

But all that is forty years ago.  Hating the government has become institutionalized on the right, along with a belief that all those in government service are enemies of the people.  A Lord of the Flies type of view towards economics has been accepted.  The ignored are angry  An acceptance of politicians whose personal lives don't reflect their professed Christianity is now fully accepted, particularly by a public that claims to want to turn back the clock, but doesn't recall what the prior clock settings were.

Changing this requires an change on an existential level.  There's no reason to believe that any current Republican, save perhaps for Christie and Romeny, could affect the start of it.

The moment the fatal wounds were afflicted.

How did we end up with two ancient, disliked men being advanced by their parties?

Well, we ended up here as the Democrats quit believing in democracy, favoring rule by the courts, until the courts decided they believed in democracy, and because both parties lied to their rank and file, working class, constituents for a period of fifty years.

We've dealt with this before.

However, it can nearly be determined with precision.

The date of the wounds were:

• January 22, 1973

That's the date the United States Supreme Court issued the Roe v. Wade decision, replacing its judgment for that of state legislatures. As the dissent noted:

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

And Democrats concluded they didn't really need to persuade voters anymore, the Courts would impose a new liberal regime on the besotted and benighted public without their participation.

And:

• July 17, 1980.

That's the date that the GOP nominated Ronald Reagan for President. Reagan would go on to use the Southern Strategy to draw in Southern (and Rust Belt) Democrats who had lied to as the post World War Two economic prosperity collapsed. Thing is, the GOP didn't really listen to their concerns, just as the Democrats had quit doing. 

Seven years in which we went from two functioning political parties and put them on the path to being pure machines, breaking what they claimed to serve.

Blog Mirror: After New Hampshire

One of the blogs linked in on our sidebar is City Father, the blog of a Catholic Priest in New York.  It's always worth reading.

He's made some comments on the recent GOP primary results which are similar to those I've been making, but his most recent one is much more blunt.  A sample:

No one should really have been surprised by this. If the moneyed, zombie Reaganite elite that used to run the party - the rich who undoubtedly believe the country is theirs to rule by right - still believed the party was theirs and that their un-rich, taken-for-granted constituents whom they have for decades brought off with culture-war sloganeering were still in their pockets, then they were likely the only ones who still believed one of their own could be imposed upon their increasingly left-behind and increasingly angry-about-it constituents.

I wouldn't put it quite that way, but he's spot on about the "taken for granted constituents".  Indeed, for years I've been saying this about both parties, and while not noted in his post, many of the MAGA Republicans are actually disaffected Southern Democrats and Rust Belt Democrats brought into the GOP over a forty-year period, starting with Reagan's Southern Strategy.

Reagan was treated for years as if he was some sort of a saint.  He came to define conservatism.  Whatever he was, however, he unleashed the "Tea Party" forces that became the MAGA ones, and they are now the GOP.  The old GOP isn't coming back.  No new conservative party has yet emerged (one will). The Democratic Party, for its part, has ossified into the left wing, 1970s, version of itself and can't get out of it. Hubris has allowed this all to be vested into two, ancient, men.  Donald Trump, as he increasingly evidences the onset of dementia, is going to win the general election.  Reagan, and the Democrats having become the Supreme Court fan club, up until recently, post 1973, are to blame for that.

Can't win for losing. Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action.

For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.

At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. See, e.g., 4 App. in No. 21–707, at 1725– 1726, 1741; Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, at 10. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) “[W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows,” and the prohibition against racial discrimination is “levelled at the thing,not the name.” Cummings v. Missouri, 4 Wall. 277, 325 (1867). A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.

The judgments of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and of the District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina are reversed.

It is so ordered.

After a series of decisions on cases which liberal pundits were in self afflicted angst about in which the Court didn't realize their fears, the Court finally did realize one and struck down affirmative action admission into universities, something it warned it would do 25 years ago.

The reason is simple. Race based admission is clearly violative of US law and the equal protection clause. That was always known, with the Court allowing this exception in order to attempt to redress prior racism.  As noted, it had already stated there was a day when this would end.  The Court had been signalling that it would do this for years.

Indeed, while not the main point in this entry, it can't help be noted that when the Court preserves a policy like this one, which it did last week with the also race based Indian Child Welfare Act, liberals are pretty much mute on it.  There are no howls of protest from anyone, but no accolades either.  Political liberals received two (expected, in reality) victories from the Court in two weeks that they'd been all in a lather regarding. They seemed almost disappointed to have nothing to complain about, until this case, which gave them one.

Predictably, the left/Democrats reacted as if this is a disaster.  It isn't.  Joe Biden instantly reacted.  Michele Obama, who has a much better basis to react, also made a statement, pointing out that she was a beneficiary of the policy, which she was.  That's fine, but that doesn't mean that the policy needed to be preserved in perpetuity.

At some point, it's worth noting, these policies become unfair in and of themselves.  Not instantly, but over time, when they've redressed what they were designed to.  The question is when, and where.  A good argument could be made, for example, that as for the nation's traditionally largest minority, African Americans, this policy had run its course.  In regard to Native Americans?  Not so much.

Critics will point out that poverty and all the ills that accompany it still afflict African Americans at disproportionate levels, and that's true. The question then becomes why these policies, which have helped, don't seem to be able to bridge the final gap.  A whole series of uncomfortable issues are then raised, which the right and the left will turn a blind eye to. For one thing, immigration disproportionately hurts African Americans, which they are well aware of.  Social programs that accidentally encouraged the break-up of families and single parenthood hit blacks first, and then spread to whites, helping to accidentally severely damage American family structures and cause poverty.  Due to the Civil Rights movement, African Americans became a Democratic base, which was in turn abandoned by the Democrats much like Hard Hat Democrats were, leaving them politically disenfranchised.  Black membership in the GOP has only recently increased (although it notably has), as the black middle class and traditionally socially conservative black community has migrated towards it, but that migration was severely hindered by the legacy of Reagan's Southern Strategy, which brought Southern (and Rust Belt) Democrats into the party and with it populism and closeted racism.

While the left will howl in agony on this decision, it won't really do anything that isn't solidly grounded in the 1960s, and 70s, and for that matter probably moribund, about the ongoing systemic problems.  Pundits who are in favor of institutionalizing every child during the day will come out mad, but they won't dare suggest that immigrants take African American entry level jobs.  Nobody is going to suggest taking a second look at social programs that encourage women of all races to marry the government and fathers to abandon their offspring, something that Tip O'Neill, a Democrat, noted in regard to the African American family before it spread to the white family.  The usual suspects will have the usual solutions and the usual complaints, all of which aren't working to push a determinative solution to this set of problems.

Hardly noted, yet, we should note here, is that this decision, just like Obergefell and Heller, will have a longer reach than people now seem to note.  If college affirmative action is illegal, then similar race based programs (save for ones involving Native Americans, who are subject to the Indian Commerce Clause) are as well. And maybe so are gender based ones, including ones that take into account the ever expanding phony categories of genders that progressive add to every day.  In other words, if programs that favor minority admission into university are invalid, probably Federal Government policies that favor women owned companies over others are as well.

Indeed, they should be.

Societies have an obligation to work towards equality before the law, and before society, for all.  But the essence of working on a problem is solving it.  The subject policy was successful for a long time, but this institutionalized favoritism was no longer working to a large degree, and for that matter, in some instances, impacting others simply because of their race.  It's not 1963, 1973, or 1983 any longer.  New thoughts on old problems should be applied.

Some of those new thoughts, frankly, should be to what extent must we continue to have a 1883 view of the country as if it has vast unpopulated domains to settle that it needs to import to fill.  Another might be, however, that American society really has fundamentally changed on race even within the last 20 years.  While racism remains, and the Obama and Trump eras seem to have boiled it back up, for different reasons, a lot of street level racism really is gone.  For one thing, seeing multiracial couples with multiracial children no longer causes anyone to bat an eye anymore, and that wasn't true as recently as 20 years ago.  We may be a lot further down this road than anyone suspects.

The End of the Reformation I. Christian Nationalism becomes a local debate. . .

even though, I'd wager, most people don't actually know what it means.

Indeed, I don't think author Stubson actually does.

Luther at Erfurt. Father of the Reformation, and in many ways the father of the modern world, ironically on both the left, and the right.

Local attorney, expert pianist, and occasional op ed writer Susan Stubson wrote an op ed for the New York Times on the topic of her faith, her political party, and Christian Nationalism.  She is, as noted, a Wyomingite.

Stubson, I'd also note, is part of a political family.  Perhaps for that reason she can do what some even more frequent writers. . . namely me, cannot really, which is to sail into troubled waters under her own flag.  It may be cowardice on my part, but I really don't feel that I can.  I’m blunt to people who know me, but I'm not a politician and, as I recently noted here, while I once toyed with the idea, my time is past.  I still have to make a living, however. 

Anyhow, Stubson's NYT piece stated boldly in its caption was:

What Christian Nationalism Has Done to My State and My Faith Is a Sin

That was bound to provoke a reaction, and of course it did.  One of the reactors was the same letter writing dude who earlier tried to take on the Wyoming 41 in the same journal.  While it's digressing, I'll note what I wrote about that letter at the time, in which he stated as follows:

2. Your self-serving statement that lawyers have done more than any other profession makes me nauseous.  Talk to those who have served in the military to protect our constitutional republic, to include making us a free nation.  Talk to those who have served and lost limbs and have many other maladies that they received in battle.  Talk to the families of those who have given their lives for this nation in war.  Then you should reevaluate your arrogant statement about having done more than any other profession.  You should be ashamed.  You will better understand my ire on this issue when you have read my letter.

This time he wrapped himself in the flag less, and was less antagonist towards the lawyer author, stating:

Dear Editor:

It was an interesting article to read about Susan Stubson, Casper Attorney, saying that Christian Nationalists have “hijacked" the Wyoming Republican Party.  She says that they are, “super engaged are real extreme right, and they are gaining.”  

Apparently, Stubson thinks that it is a terrible thing that what she calls “Christian Nationalists” are involved in being “super engaged” in the political process and are “voting.”  This brings up so many points about the hideous bias of her view that it is quite nauseating.  Here are just a couple of points to consider:

- Her statements make it very clear that she does not know what a “Christian" is. If they go to any church, then they must be a Christian.  This is not true.  As a Christian myself, Stubson needs to understand that a true Christian is one who has put his or her (yes, only 2 genders) faith in Jesus Christ for forgiveness of their sin and then proceeds to love their neighbor.  Because Stubson is misguided…for which my letter calls her out…does not mean that I have a lack of love for her.  I just want her to know the error of her thinking so that she might become a true Christian.

- Her statements also show that she does not know what a “Nationalist” is.  This word is used to try to demean people as being crazy reactionaries who seek to have authoritarian or dictatorial control…kind of like the Wyoming Speaker of the House who won’t even allow debate in the House on issues that that matter to the citizens of Wyoming.  After 26 years in the US Air Force, I consider myself a Nationalist.  My country comes first, but not to the detriment of other countries, or to the detriment of any US citizen…regardless of their political beliefs.  If the US is strong, then we seek to protect other countries as we have  in the past, where tyranny has attempted to take hold.  We didn’t cut and run as Biden did with Afghanistan, which resulted in thousands upon thousands of murders by the Taliban using weapons that Biden left for them.

- Based on Stubson's views, I am a danger to her ideologies in Wyoming.  And to that, I say, “Hurrah!”  I wonder if she has ever written a 1736-word op-ed piece for the New York Times to condemn the riots and horrendous destruction by Antifa and BLM?  Has she ever come out against the disgusting protests at the homes of Supreme Court Justices, and even an attempted murder of one of them?  Has she ever condemned Senator Schumer for his inflammatory comments that he made on the steps of the Supreme Court against Justices in telling them that they would, “…pay the price,” for exercising their judicial responsibilities?  Stubson has been silent on these issues.

When I repeated my commissioning oath to become a US Air Force officer, I always remember that I had to swear to, “protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” 

As a member of the Air Force officer corps, we knew how to defend our country against foreign enemies.  But a domestic enemy was a subject with which we were never clear about how to defend against them. 

The words of Stubson about what she calls, “Christian Nationalists,” like it is a 4-letter word, contributes to inciting those of the violent left against Christians and Nationalists. 

She sets it forth in such a way that indicates that anyone who would fall into the category of what she considers to be Christian and/or Nationalist should not have a voice and they need to be stopped cold in their tracks by any means possible.

As a so-called lawyer, she should be ashamed.  While she uses her free speech right of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution to defame a specific group, she wants to remove our free speech rights. 

But I would have to say that is a great thing about the United States.  Susan Stubson has every right to be wrong.

Sincerely,

__________________, Pinedale

Colonel, USAF, Retired

Pretty freaking insulting nonetheless.

While it's not my main point here (I'll get to that) wrapping yourself up in the flag as you were in the service is wearing really think on me.  Last time, I commented on this extensively, and I'll add that and some additional comments down below in the item foot noted here.¹

Anyhow, what did Stubson say, and was it even on Christian Nationalism?

Christian Nationalism is really hard to define.  It's almost more of one of those I know it when I see it type of deals.  We've tried to define it here before.  In its more intellectual areas, it seems to be sort of self defined as National Conservatism, whose manifesto states:

National Conservatism: A Statement Of Principles

A world of independent nations is the only alternative to universalist ideologies seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

JUNE 15, 2022

12:01 AM

THE EDMUND BURKE FOUNDATION

NOTE: The following statement was drafted by Will Chamberlain, Christopher DeMuth, Rod Dreher, Yoram Hazony, Daniel McCarthy, Joshua Mitchell, N.S. Lyons, John O’Sullivan, and R.R. Reno on behalf of the Edmund Burke Foundation. The statement reflects a distinctly Western point of view. However, we look forward to future discourse and collaboration with movements akin to our own in India, Japan, and other non-Western nations. Signatories’ institutional affiliations are included for identification purposes only, and do not imply an endorsement on the part of any institution other than the Edmund Burke Foundation.   

We are citizens of Western nations who have watched with alarm as the traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties underpinning life in the countries we love have been progressively undermined and overthrown.

We see the tradition of independent, self-governed nations as the foundation for restoring a proper public orientation toward patriotism and courage, honor and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice. We are conservatives because we see such virtues as essential to sustaining our civilization. We see such a restoration as the prerequisite for recovering and maintaining our freedom, security, and prosperity.

We emphasize the 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 genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

Drawing on this heritage, we therefore affirm the following principles:

1. National Independence. We wish to see a world of independent nations. Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance. Each has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people. We endorse a policy of rearmament by independent self-governing nations and of defensive alliances whose purpose is to deter imperialist aggression.

2. Rejection of Imperialism and Globalism. We support a system of free cooperation and competition among nation-states, working together through trade treaties, defensive alliances, and other common projects that respect the independence of their members. But we oppose transferring the authority of elected governments to transnational or supranational bodies—a trend that pretends to high moral legitimacy even as it weakens representative government, sows public alienation and distrust, and strengthens the influence of autocratic regimes. Accordingly, we reject imperialism in its various contemporary forms: We condemn the imperialism of China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers. But we also oppose the liberal imperialism of the last generation, which sought to gain power, influence, and wealth by dominating other nations and trying to remake them in its own image.

3. National Government. The independent nation-state is instituted to establish a more perfect union among the diverse communities, parties, and regions of a given nation, to provide for their common defense and justice among them, and to secure the general welfare and the blessings of liberty for this time and for future generations. We believe in a strong but limited state, subject to constitutional restraints and a division of powers. We recommend a drastic reduction in the scope of the administrative state and the policy-making judiciary that displace legislatures representing the full range of a nation’s interests and values. We recommend the federalist principle, which prescribes a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom. However, in those states or subdivisions in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.

4. God and Public Religion. No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred. The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where 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. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.

5. The Rule of Law. We believe in the rule of law. By this we mean that citizens and foreigners alike, and both the government and the people, must accept and abide by the laws of the nation. In America, this means accepting and living in accordance with the Constitution of 1787, the amendments to it, duly enacted statutory law, and the great common law inheritance. All agree that the repair and improvement of national legal traditions and institutions is at times necessary. But necessary change must take place through the law. This is how we preserve our national traditions and our nation itself. Rioting, looting, and other unacceptable public disorder should be swiftly put to an end.

6. Free Enterprise. We believe that an economy based on private property and free enterprise is best suited to promoting the prosperity of the nation and accords with traditions of individual liberty that are central to the Anglo-American political tradition. We reject the socialist principle, which supposes that the economic activity of the nation can be conducted in accordance with a rational plan dictated by the state. But the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation. Today, globalized markets allow hostile foreign powers to despoil America and other countries of their manufacturing capacity, weakening them economically and dividing them internally. At the same time, trans-national corporations showing little loyalty to any nation damage public life by censoring political speech, flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and pornography, and promoting obsessive, destructive personal habits. A prudent national economic policy should promote free enterprise, but it must also mitigate threats to the national interest, aggressively pursue economic independence from hostile powers, nurture industries crucial for national defense, and restore and upgrade manufacturing capabilities critical to the public welfare. Crony capitalism, the selective promotion of corporate profit-making by organs of state power, should be energetically exposed and opposed.

7. Public Research. At a time when China is rapidly overtaking America and the Western nations in fields crucial for security and defense, a Cold War-type program modeled on DARPA, the “moon-shot,” and SDI is needed to focus large-scale public resources on scientific and technological research with military applications, on restoring and upgrading national manufacturing capacity, and on education in the physical sciences and engineering. On the other hand, we recognize that most universities are at this point partisan and globalist in orientation and vehemently opposed to nationalist and conservative ideas. Such institutions do not deserve taxpayer support unless they rededicate themselves to the national interest. Education policy should serve manifest national needs.

8. Family and Children. We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization. The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life and child-raising are priorities of the highest order.

9. Immigration. Immigration has made immense contributions to the strength and prosperity of Western nations. But today’s penchant for uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration has become a source of weakness and instability, not strength and dynamism, threatening internal dissension and ultimately dissolution of the political community. We note that Western nations have benefited from both liberal and restrictive immigration policies at various times. We call for much more restrictive policies until these countries summon the wit to establish more balanced, productive, and assimilationist policies. Restrictive policies may sometimes include a moratorium on immigration.

10. Race. We believe that all men are created in the image of God and that public policy should reflect that fact. No person’s worth or loyalties can be judged by the shape of his features, the color of his skin, or the results of a lab test. The history of racialist ideology and oppression and its ongoing consequences require us to emphasize this truth. We condemn the use of state and private institutions to discriminate and divide us against one another on the basis of race. The cultural sympathies encouraged by a decent nationalism offer a sound basis for conciliation and unity among diverse communities. The nationalism we espouse respects, and indeed combines, the unique needs of particular minority communities and the common good of the nation as a whole.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that most of the local populists who conceive of themselves of adhering to Roosevelt's 1912 cry "We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord" would probably agree with the manifesto and not really put hardly any thought into it.

So what did Stubson say?

We've linked her article in up above.  Here's what she started off with:

CASPER, Wyo. — I first saw it while working the rope line at a monster-truck rally during the 2016 campaign by my husband, Tim, for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat. As Tim and I and our boys made our way down the line, shaking hands and passing out campaign material, a burly man wearing a “God bless America” T-shirt and a cross around his neck said something like, “He’s got my vote if he keeps those [epithet] out of office,” using a racial slur. What followed was an uncomfortable master class in racism and xenophobia as the man decanted the reasons our country is going down the tubes. God bless America.

I now understand the ugliness I heard was part of a current of Christian nationalism fomenting beneath the surface. It had been there all the time. The rope line rant was a mission statement for the disaffected, the overlooked, the frightened. It was also an expression of solidarity with a candidate like Donald Trump who gave a name to a perceived enemy: people who do not look like us or share our beliefs. Immigrants are taking our guns. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. You are not safe in your home. Religious freedom is on the gallows. Vote for me.

I know what she is talking about, as that was 2016 and in the Obama era of politics.  To my enormous surprise, the election of Barack Obama brought out racism in the country at a level that I thought long past.   A lot of the visceral reaction to President Obama was because he was black.

I don't think that has anything to do with Christian Nationalism, however.  That's rather deep old fashion racial prejudice, and frankly it reflects what Ronald Reagan did to the Republican Party, something that Republican Conservatives like the Stubson have still never really acknowledged. Reagan wasn't a racist, but he invited them into the party by courting disaffected Southern Dixiecrat's and Rust Belt Democrats.  Modern populism has a lot of the thin thinking, bad beer consuming, football watching Rust Belt culture that was Democratic in it.  Indeed, it's brought actual Rust Belt Republicans, former Democrats, at least demographically, directly into the party everywhere.  Jeanette Ward is a Rocky Mountain Republican, but a Rust Belt one.

Here's something that I’m going out on a limb on next:

The messages worked. And in large part, it’s my faith community — white, rural and conservative — that got them there. I am a white conservative woman in rural America. Raised Catholic, I found that my faith deepened after I married and joined an evangelical church. As my faith grew, so did Tim’s political career in the Wyoming Legislature. (He served in the House from 2008 to 2017.) I’ve straddled both worlds, faith and politics, my entire adult life. Often there was very little daylight between the two, one informing the other.

If Susan wants to avoid Christian Nationalism, she ought to come back to the Catholic Church.  Evangelical Christianity has always been more racially divided than the Universal (Catholic) Church.  I don't know how many black African pastors Evangelical Church's in Wyoming have, but they are a presence in Catholic ones, along with Vietnamese, Filipino and Hispanic pastors.  People being what they are, individual churches and diocese have never been perfect, but it's always been a hallmark of being a Catholic in Wyoming that you were going to Mass with the businessmen, the ranchers, and the sheepherders. . . all at the same time.

Indeed, well into the 20th Century "main line" Protestant Churches were associated with the Republican Party here, as they were everywhere else, and Democrats stood a good chance of being Catholic.  There were certainly exceptions, and after the Clinton era the Democratic Party just died here.  The point is that the fusion of secular interests with religion has long been a feature of American Protestantism in a way it has not been with Catholicism.

Anyhow.

I'm not going to quote the entire article.  But I'd note where she picks back up.

What’s changed is the rise of Christian nationalism — the belief, as recently described by the Georgetown University professor and author Paul D. Miller, that “America is a ‘Christian nation’ and that the government should keep it that way.” Gone are the days when a lawmaker might be circumspect about using his or her faith as a vehicle to garner votes. It’s been a drastic and destructive departure from the boring, substantive lawmaking to which I was accustomed. Christian nationalists have hijacked both my Republican Party and my faith community by blurring the lines between church and government and in the process rebranding our state’s identity.

Wyoming is a “you do you” state. When it’s a blinding snowstorm, the tractor’s in a ditch and we need a neighbor with a winch, our differences disappear. We don’t care what you look like or who you love. Keep a clean fence line and show up during calving season, and we’re good.

But new sheriffs in town are very much up in their neighbor’s beeswax. Legislation they have proposed seems intent on stripping us of our autonomy and our ability to make decisions for ourselves, all in the name of morality, the definition of which is unclear.

All that is very true.  When the movie Wind River used the line of "This isn't the land of waiting for back up. This is the land of you're on your own.", it was very true.

Stubson next makes this comment.

Rural states are particularly vulnerable to the promise of Christian nationalism. In Wyoming, we are white (more than 92 percent) and love God (71 percent identified as Christian in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center) and Mr. Trump (seven in 10 voters picked him in 2020).

Hmmm, here's where I think Stubson goes off the rails, because I don't think what we're seeing in the populist camp is Christian Nationalism.  Maybe that is, however, because I'm an Apostolic Christian, which looks outward towards something larger than the nation to start with, and which was also historically oppressed by the Protestant culture, and frankly is still held in contempt by it.²

Tell people you are a Catholic, even though we are the original Christian religion, and pretty soon some Protestant will tell you that you are not a Christian, and frankly even doubt a little that you are a real American.  And in Wyoming, you'll be in a religions' minority in a state which, in actuality, is the least observant tin terms of religion in the United States, something that Stubson didn't address in her comments.  This isn't new here, either.  With a high transient population, and a lot of unattached men laborers who work miles from any city, Wyoming has always been only loosely religious.  Being a member of a really adherent faith group probably by default meant that 1) you were a  Catholic, 2) you were Orthodox or 3) you were Mormon, all three of which are overall minorities in the state, although Mormon's are a majority in some communities in the southwest.

Nonetheless, up through the 1970s the "main line" Protestant churches remained the churches of wealth, and this was very much the case up until after World War Two, which was true for much of the United States as well.  Simply being a Catholic in Wyoming limited your economic possibilities until after the war.

Wyoming is overwhelmingly white, although what that means in Wyoming is a little confusing.  I doubt actually that he figure is anywhere near 92% in reality.  In part, that's because long time Hispanic (Catholic again) communities in Wyoming probably self identify as white, even though they certainly aren't WASPs  Most of the local politicians who cite religion are undoubtedly Protestants, although one is a California Hispanic.  The state has a large Native American population that is probably undercounted in statistics such as this.  Half of the state's population at any one time, at least, is transient and from somewhere else.  I'd guess that probably 70% of most of the state is "white", but no more than that.  Probably less.

My own place of work is probably a good example.  No matter how people might identify, ethnic minorities are strongly represented.

I do agree with what she next states.

The result is bad church and bad law. “God, guns and Trump” is an omnipresent bumper sticker here, the new trinity. The evangelical church has proved to be a supplicating audience for the Christian nationalist roadshow. Indeed, it is unclear to me many Sundays whether we are hearing a sermon or a stump speech.

As an Apostolic Christian, I find the phrase "God, guns and Trump" absolutely abhorrent.  I'd be less offended by "guns and Trump", even though I don't think the Second Amendment and support for Trump in an existential sense are linked, but to link in God strikes me as approaching blasphemy, and it is emblematic of a major problem.

Skipping way ahead:

Yet fear (and loathing for Ms. Cheney, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump and dared to call him “unfit for office”) led to a record voter turnout in the August primary. The Trumpist candidate, Harriet Hageman, trounced Ms. Cheney. Almost half of the Wyoming House members were new. At least one-third of them align with the Freedom Caucus, a noisy group unafraid to manipulate Scripture for political gain under a banner of preserving a godly nation.

The impact of this new breed of lawmakers has been swift. Wyomingites got a very real preview this past legislative session of the hazards of one-size-fits-all nationalized policies that ignore the nuances of our state. ‌Last year, maternity wards closed in two sparsely populated communities, further expanding our maternity desert. Yet in debating a bill to provide some relief to new moms by extending Medicaid’s postpartum coverage, a freshman member of the State House, Jeanette Ward, invoked a brutally narrow view of the Bible. “Cain commented to God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” she said. “The obvious answer is no. No, I am not my brother’s keeper. But just don’t kill him.”

This confusing ‌mash-up‌ of Scripture (Ms. Ward got it wrong: The answer is yes, I am my brother’s keeper) is emblematic of a Christian nationalist who weaponizes God’s word to promote the agenda du jour. We should expect candidates who identify as followers of Christ to model some concern for other people.

Okay, sound familiar? 

If you read the entries here, it should, as I made this same observation at the time.

Stubson notes:

I am adrift in this unnamed sea, untethered from both my faith community and my political party as I try to reconcile evangelicals’ repeated endorsements of candidates who thumb their noses at the least of us. Christians are called to serve God, not a political party, to put our faith in a higher power, not in human beings. We’re taught not to bow to false idols. Yet idolatry is increasingly prominent and our foundational principles — humility, kindness and compassion — in short supply.

The answer here is obvious.

Susan, come home to the Church.

“It was a great day!” one of our pastors proclaimed on social media last year when Mr. Trump came to town to campaign against Ms. Cheney. Though many agreed with him, some of his pastoral colleagues grieved, traumatized by the hard right turn in their congregations.

Yup. and again. . . .  

She concluded.

This is the state I cannot quit. I rely on those gritty and courageous leaders who hold tight to our rural values. They are the Davids in the fight against the Philistines. They are our brother’s keeper.

So I'll go from here.

I don't think what we're seeing in Wyoming is actually Christian Nationalism.  Like it, hate it, or fear it, it's actually too intellectually deep for what Stubson is observing.

What she's actually observing is something that's been in the American culture for a long time. The Midwestern lower middle class WASPs and Southern WASP cultures, but just imported here. It's always been  here, but the state's insistence on never taking a second look at its economy has reinforced it.

Which is not to dismiss it.

The interesting thing about it is that the rage it is expressing, and it is rage, is in reaction to the same thing that Christian Nationalism is reacting to, which is the forced radical liberalization of the culture. A development decade in the making, but which finally really burst out in the open with Obergefell.  Ironically this comes out of the very same WASP culture, and its' interesting to note that this trend exists most strongly in the world where 1) the Reformation succeeded, or 2) the secular Reformation of the ideals of the French Revolution succeeded.

Their ultimate problem, at the end of the day, was the rejection of a greater existential reality.  Catholicism and Orthodoxy, like the more conservative branches of Judaism, and Islam, hold that there's something greater than us and that we in turn fit within that greater reality's organization.  We may be the greatest of the creatures, but we're still a creature, and as a creature, have what is set within us. We don't get to define it.

That's been discussed here in many threads, and it explains in the case of the Apostolic Religions and Judaism the strong attachment to science.  The "reformed" branches of Christianity, and for that matter the more liberal reformed branches of Judaism, lack those guide rails as they took them down.  When Luther started that process, he didn't mean to dismantle them as to Faith, but it happened pretty quickly, at first with any number of reformers declaring that they knew what the Faith was and rejecting what came before.

It was inevitable that ultimately that process would be self consuming.  The Protestant churches started dismantling themselves some time ago, most notably with the sticky topics of sex, which they made concessions on in some instances nearly immediately.  Luther through he'd discovered the Church was wrong on some things regarding the Bible and almost immediately thereafter discovered women, and that his vows could be booted on that topic, for instance.

Starting at some point, perhaps as early ago as the beginning of the prior century, the WASP culture in the US began to fatigue.  It was always the wealthiest section of the population.  Having eons earlier rejected Rome, it ultimately began to reject Canterbury, and anything else inconvenient. The wealthier its members are, the more likely this is true.  At the lower ends, it simply weakened things to where today, for many Protestants, the clear prohibitions on sex outside of marriage, remarriage and the like just don't exist. There are Protestant church goes who have been married multiple times, or who attend weekly with their "partners" who are not married at all.

That sort of faith is emblematic, in some ways, of where we are.  It's all internal, just like my definition of myself.  I'm okay as I'm not a sinner as I say so.  And if some want to say that they're girls if they're boys, well who is to stop them?

A recent editorial on something else I read stated, and here I agree with it, that at some point you know that things are just flat out wrong, and that's where we are now.  The remaining Protestant faithful know that something is wrong and are strongly reacting.  Those in the WASP rejection camp know it too and keep grasping, just like an alcoholic who hasn't had enough, for anything consumable.  That's' why we simultaneously see an explosion of ridiculous made up gender categories, with new labels weekly, at the same time we see both Christian Nationalism and populist who cite to their religion.

That's also why people like Stubson are baffled.  Many of those, indeed a very large number of  them, on the populist right will cite religion while at the same time seemingly not grasping it.  The religion of the populist right is a right wing conservative variant of the American Civil Religion. That explains why the same people can worship a political leader who is a serial polygamist or have local leaders who have been accused of icky behavior.  It explains why, as Stubson has noted, that some of them can quote sections of the Bible, but also hold the poor and needy in disregard.

But that's not actually Christian Nationalism.  That's populist right wing American politics of the Southern variety. Southern populism would be a better name for it.  And that it had arrived was clear with the campaign of Foster Freiss.

That doesn't say anything for or against Christian Nationalism.  That'll have to wait for another thread.  But we should make no mistake. When Ronald Reagan adopted the Southern Strategy, it helped lead to this point.  This is what was going to occur, at least to some extent.  Of course, it took the urban WASPs getting really wealthy first, at which point we learn that when a large section of the population becomes well off in real terms, its mind doesn't turn to higher thoughts, but the lowest of them.

Footnotes:

1. We earlier stated:

First, let me note that I looked this individual up, and he's a retired Colonel in the USAF.  A report on his career provides:

He is still fond of many of his UW instructors. After graduation, Steve received commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. He served as a contracting officer through his 26-year career, had 13 moves throughout the U.S. and spent about a third of his assignments in Europe. He also earned his master’s from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

A contracting officer for 26 years.

He ain't Audie Murphy.

Audie Murphy, then a lieutenant, wearing his awards.  All of these, it might be noted, are real combat awards.

They also serve who sit and work on contracts, but that's not exactly facing down the Red Coats at Bunker Hill, now is it?  Nor is it manning a cross road in the Ardennes, firiing your M1 Garand at the Red Chinese in Korea, or going on patrol in Vietnam.

It's service, but it points out something about the U.S. military that most people don't really like to consider, that being that the era when most servicemen filled a role like that portrayed in The Sands of Iwo Jima was so long ago that, well, it wasn't even the case in the era depicted by The Sands of Iwo Jima.

I might as well point it out here.  Do I think my six years of being an artilleryman during the Cold War are more significant and valuable service than 27 years of being an Air Force contracts officer?

Well. . . quite frankly I very well might.

It was, in a real sense, more military.

So, do I still feel that way.

Yep, more than ever.

What does the Air Force say about this position:

SECURING WHAT WE NEED

In order for our Airmen to complete their missions successfully, they need dependable, high-quality equipment at the right place and the right time. Responsible for securing and skillfully negotiating the sale of these necessities, Contracting Officers help ensure command units are well stocked with everything they need. Whether it’s planning, evaluating or awarding, these experts manage contracts for commodities, services and construction to properly oversee the contracting process every step of the way.

And:

QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY

• MINIMUM EDUCATION

  • Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, math or engineering
  • Degree must include a minimum of 24 semester credit hours of study in any of the following: accounting, business, law, contracts, purchasing economics, industrial management, marketing, quantitative method and organization and management

• QUALIFICATIONS

  • Knowledge of contracting process fundamentals, federal acquisition and contracting directives and publications, budgeting and funding procedures and contract pricing
  • Completion of the Mission Ready Contracting Officer course
  • Completion of Officer Training School (OTS), Air Force Academy (AFA) or Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC)
  • Must be between the ages of 18 and 39

And at this point, I'll probably make everyone mad.

One of the things about the modern military has been the massive growth of non combat jobs.  Even during the Second World War, most American servicemen didn't fight, weren't going to fight, and were not at risk of dying in combat whatsoever.

Any conscripted serviceman of any kinds deserves a measure of our respect simply for doing something they didn't want to do, because their country asked them to.  That doesn't make them a hero, however.  And opting for a military career, as a career, has always been a solid career decision that a lot of people have made over the years, but that's what it is, taking it no further than that.  Most service jobs in the U.S. Military frankly aren't all that risky, and they haven't been since some point prior to World War Two.  Back in the day when Doonsbury was still funny, there was a classic instance of the cartoon when an outraged Vietnam vet calls into to complain about somebody being hosted on the radio, and it turns out they both spent the war in their domains smoking weed and listening to Jimi Hendrix.  An exaggeration, but only so much.

Combat vets, and veterans who have served in combat arms are, in my mind, a different deal.  Searching out contract details in an air-conditioned office is one thing, getting shelled or potentially getting shelled is quite another.  If your job could just as easily be done by a civilian, you ought to really rethink claiming special status.

2. The line that Anti Catholisim is the last acceptalbe prejudice in the United States is more than a little true.  It's not only accepted, but it's almost mandatory in some quarter, both from the right and the left.

Related Threads:

Confusing politics with religion.

Left, Right, and Changing Lanes. The Evolution of the American Political Parties. Part 2, the Democratic Party.

 

The "People's President", and the first President of the Democratic Party.  Populist Andrew Jackson.

The History of the Democratic Party

It would seem we should turn to the Democrats next, but having taken up populism, we will deal with it now.

Or no, we won't.

Oh, yes we will, as the Democrats were the country's original populist party.

Populism has had a long history in American politics, and often been influential, but it's rarely been strong enough in modern times to actually control the country.  Typically, in fact, one of the major parties will take the most popular and palatable of populist ideas, adopt them, and leave independent populist movements to die.  This wasn't always so, however.

Populism first really began to strongly rise in the United States in the 1820s.  Prior to that time there had been populists, but if you look at the early history of the country, politics tended to be controlled by elites.  Populism brought the era of temporary and loose political parties in the US to an end, however, in 1828 with the formation of the Democratic Party.

The Democrats were formed as a populist party to boost the election of populist war hero, Andrew Jackson.  Jackson was the "People's President", and had a platform of opposition to institutions, opposition to the Second Bank of the United States, and hostility and opposition to the United States Supreme Court.  He'd have a home, quite frankly, in the modern Republican Party.

The Democrats remained the country's populist party for up until the late 19th Century. During that entire time they were opposed to the American System as they were opposed to a government role in the economy. They were also strongly regional in character, as they opposed a strong central government.  They were vested in racism in the South due to an ill-defined cultural conservatism of a certain unthinking sort that was supported by their member's economic self interests.  They got the country into the Civil War, and they were the prime movers in the Mexican War.

They were, quite frankly, hardly recognizable in contemporary terms.

Starting in the 1890s, the Democrats found themselves besieged from within and without by a strong left wing populist insurgency, something a right wing populist party found surprising.  The populist grew in strength, from the left, to such an existent that the People's Party, a left wing Populist Party began to seriously challenge it, and frankly also began to challenge the liberal party, the Republican Party.  While members of the Populist Party crossed back and forth into the Democratic Party, and were often members of both parties simultaneously, it was the Republicans who effectively reacted first, heading leftwards with stronger liberalism in the form of Progressivism.  For a time, in fact, it looked like the GOP might effectively gut Populism.

Instead, the Taft Roosevelt split gave the Democrats an opening, and the adopted elements of Progressivism and Populism in order to propel a Southern Democrat via Princeton, Woodrow Wilson, into the White House.

That event was a foundational shift for the Democrats.  

Prior to it occurring, the party had built its base in the North, to the extent it had one, largely on patronage through immigrant communities.  This political move had nothing to do with the real politics of the party, and was a pure, if effective, power strategy.  Republicans played it too, but much less effectively, being quite frankly a more moralizing party and one that had a stronger business base in the North.  In the North, the Democrats operated through patronage.  If you were Irish and wanted a job, the police department probably had one, or the fire department, but you had to be a Democrat to get it.  The system was corrupt by modern standards, but very widely tolerated at the time.

Going into the Wilson administration, therefore, the Party dominated the South due to populism, although the party in the South was controlled by landed elites which excluded, ironically enough, all of the poorer whites that it could.  It pretty much completely excluded blacks, who were almost all Republicans, if they could vote, which was rarely.  In the North, the Democrats had bodies of immigrants and their immediate descendants, largely Catholic, who shared next to nothing in common with the Southern party.  In the West, where it had inroads, it was with farmers who appreciated the party's anti bank and cheap lending policies.  Wilson won, however, as he opposed entry into World War One, which the Roosevelt wing of the GOP favored, and his campaign had co-opted the more popular Progressive Republican policies.

The Wilson Administration was selectively liberal on things, as long as it didn't involve helping blacks, but the move fundamentally altered the Democratic Party.  During the eight years of the Wilson Administration, the Republican Party fought a civil war on the left and then collapsed when Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919.  Progressives in that time frame started moving out of the Republican Party, with quite a few joining the newly Progressive Democrats in the North.  The Republicans regained control of the White House after Wilson, but with a new, Conservative, outlook.  Democrats remained Progressive in the North.  When the Great Depression hit, they retook the White House with the most Liberal administration in American history.

The direction that Wilson had put the party on became increasingly fixed during FDR's Administration.  The second Roosevelt not only picked up progressive policies first proposed by his cousin, but went far beyond them with an administration that had an Imperial Presidency of a previously unimagined extent.  Roosevelt not only brought liberals into the party in the main, but also radicals on its periphery, turning a blind eye to socialist and even communists at lower levels.  He also took up almost ignoring the party in the South, which didn't appreciate the liberalism for the most part, but which did appreciate assistance to farmers in the still largely agricultural and agrarian South.  The direction was noted, causing the Southern reaction expressed in I'll Take My Stand, and there was opposition from Southern Democrats, but it did not cause the party to officially split, largely due to racial reasons.  The Southern Democrats, conservative and populist for the most party, had nowhere else to go.  That encouraged the growing nationwide Democratic Party to ignore them.

The death of Franklin Roosevelt caused the liberal tide to retreat a bit, but Harry Truman, a Missourian, surprisingly didn't go back as far as he could have.  Not anywhere near as liberal as Franklin Roosevelt, he nonetheless took domestic steps that Roosevelt never did.  Truman desegregated the military and then started to dismantle Southern segregation, something that could not have been anticipated and which the South was not prepared for.

Starting in the 50s, the Southern Democratic Party put more and more distance between itself and the main party, which did the same.  The post-war Democratic Party remained a center left party, but as with the GOP, it moved generally towards the center during the early Cold War except on matters of civil rights, in which it now joined with the Republican Party in championing.    Southern Democrats began threatening to bolt, and occasionally did, although they did not bolt to the GOP where they were not welcome.

They were not welcome there, that is, until Ronald Reagan's "Southern Strategy" brought them in.

Before that, however, the events of the 60s brought an end to the post-war Democratic Party.

The seeds for dissolution had been long planted, as shown above.  During the New Deal, the Democratic Party's leadership in the north was decidedly left of center, while the leadership in the South was solidly populist in base and conservative in leadership.  When Truman took the party into the left center in the main with its policy, reaching down into the South with desegregation, elements of the party began to bolt, but most it remained.  But in the 60s, with rising liberalism in the young, the stress was too high.

The post-war Democrats had supported foreign intervention in the name of anti communism, and had taken the US into the Korean War, a host of Caribbean and Central American interventions, and then into Vietnam.  But as the populace grew weary of the war and the young began to oppose it, it was the northern Democratic Party in which the fight broke out, with it breaking out in full in the 1968 Democratic Convention. There, ethnic conservative "hard hat" Democrats, backed by the Chicago police, battled left wing protesters.  Unable to see a way forward, Johnson pulled out of the Presidential race, and ceded the Democratic race to McGovern, who came from the left. The party never went back.

Post 1968 the party really became something else.  It jettisoned the Democratic South, although it took years for the process to be completed, and really was only after the Republicans courted them.  It retained an ethnic component, but it increasingly ignored it during the 70s.  Essentially, it became the party of the WASPish elite, essentially becoming the difficult, embarrassing cousin to the Country Club Republicans.  It's stayed there ever since.

That process too took years to complete, but as it did, entire sections of the post 1932 Democratic coalition evaporated away, with some of it still evaporating.  The Democratic Party remains the largest party in the US by far, but it's in deep trouble even if it doesn't recognize it fully.  Catholic Democrats, once a large component of the party in the North, left the party for the GOP or to become independents when their consciences couldn't tolerate left wing positions on abortion and gender issues.  This included large ethnic components, some of which had weakened simply due to time, such as the Irish Democrats", but the process is being experienced now with Hispanic Democrats, and even with African Americans.  In the rural West the party simply died.

So, over time, what has it meant to be a Democrat?  Well, the following:

• From 1828 until the 1912, a very long period of time, it was a populist part, but one that essentially went from being purely populist to being populist in stance, but controlled in the South by economic elites who not only controlled the party, but were often opposed to the interest of rank and file Southerners.  It was populist economically consistently.
• From 1912 until 1932, it was a left wing progressive party in the main, but with a Southern populist wing that was conservative/populist.
• From 1932 to 1945 it was an even more left wing progressive party which continued to retain a Southern conservative/populist wing.
• From 1945 until 1963, it was a center/left party that retained a disgruntled Southern conservative/populist wing.
• From 1963 until 1968 it was an emerging left wing party, that went fully left wing in 1968 and which remains there.

Last prior edition:

Left, Right, and Changing Lanes. The Evolution of the American Political Parties. Part 1, the Republican Party.

Looking to 1953

There's a really interesting, and scary, article on Salon right now which consists of an interview of Joe Walsh.

For those who don't recall him, Walsh was a Republican who ran against Trump.  He'd been a Tea Party Republican who was an early defector in opposition to Trump and, apparently, has remained there.  Indeed, he was associated with Trump allies before he bolted to sound a warning against Trump, which he's still trying to sound.

The reason I note this is that the article, while it definitely has its flaws, is insightful and, for anyone reading this blog, probably a little familiar.  A lot of what he's warning about has been addressed here.

Walsh's main point, and its a good one, is that Trump populists have an existential view of the world that's fundamentally such that it's become unapologetically anti-democratic. Therefore, those who have the view that once Trumpites learn what really occurred in regard to the November 2020 election, i.e., it wasn't stolen, or what really occurred on January 6, i.e. it was an insurrection, that they will change their mind and oppose Trump are simply wrong.  The reason for that is that their Weltanschauung is such that Trumpites view their opponents as existentially illegitimate.

That's a really scary point, but its correct in large measure.  And he's correct on how we got there. . . in part, and also, not in part.

Walsh takes the view that going back to the Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan, without every mentioning Reagan, the GOP adopted, or rather co-opted, this view, for its own purposes.  That's' partially correct.  And he's definitely correct when he notes that the Trumpites know that they were completely ignored in their concerns by generations of American politicians, left and right.  And like we've said, by voting for Trump in 2016 they were voting to throw in the match and burn the system down.  Like we also said at that time and since, if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic candidate in 2016 (and frankly, maybe 2020)  he would be President now.  Sanders appealed to the exact same base.  

And as we've also noted, by choosing Uber Establishment Hilary Clinton, the Democrats blew it.

What we've noted, but what the article doesn't, is that the roots of this go back further than the 1976 election.  They go back at least to the 1960s when fundamental long established aspects of western culture came under surfaced attacks from the left.  Animosity in some part of the left to western culture had existed for almost all of the 20th Century, but they had not been able to emerge into mainstream political and cultural discourse until after World War Two.  Part of that attack came in other ways right after the war, and we've been dealing with another in our series on an attack on the culture that came from another quarter.  As we have noted before, the war did something that set things up in some fashion for what occurred in the 60s.  But it was the massive introduction of new wealth, combined with an expansion of the economy, combined with the Vietnam War that really exploded into a left wing eruption in the culture by the fateful year of 1968.  The article misses that.

The hard hat reaction to 1968 existed in that very year.  But the elite drift to the left, which had been going on since the 1950s, really accelerated at that time and the left, using the courts, started gaining ground in the 1970s to force cultural changes up on the country through litigation, not through the ballot box, where the ballot box would not suffice, or seem to suffice.  As also noted here before, such decisions really do not tend to really fix an issue in the public's mind immediately, and sometimes not at all.  Combined with that, in the 1970s, the American economy began to fundamentally change with nothing done to stop it. Both Democrats and Republicans winked at manufacturing jobs, particularly low tech manufacturing jobs, going overseas, confident in the view that what this would undoubtedly mean is the arrival of high paying replacement jobs that everyone wanted.

Walsh puts this in terms of "1953", more or less arguing that populist Republicans seek to return the country to its status, economically certainly, but culturally also, that it had in 1953.  His analysis is sophisticated in some sense, and not in others.  In one way he gets it correct that contrary to what the press asserts, outward racism isn't part of it, but at the same time the sense that the "perfect" world of 1953 was a white one.

More accurately, of course, the United States of 1953 had a white protestant culture.  The Catholic Ghetto was still very much a thing in 1953 and Catholics were attending university for the first time.  And the big advancements in civil rights for African Americans were very much part of the story of the 1950s, although that may be part of it too, as almost all Americans look back on that as a success.  1953 was during the era in which American industry dominated the world without question, although 53 is an odd choice as the Korean War, which was not actually a popular one, was ongoing.  Having said that, the Vietnam War was yet to occur.

1953 was the year in which Playboy magazine premiered and the assault on the traditional family really, therefore, began in earnest.  It was also, however, during an era in which most men, including men with no college degree, could support a family without anyone else in it making an outside income.  That era has very much passed.

Of course, the irony of an idealized pass is both that it never actually matches the reality of  the past or the current lives of those who advocate for it.  Many in the populist camp look back on this prior era strongly romantically, however, and Walsh is correct. The desire is to return the culture to something like that era.

A desire to return to past standard, or even some of them, is not in and of itself anti-democratic or illegitimate.  Globally, strongly conservative, and not just populist, movements often have varying elements of that as a goal. Certainly the American conservative movement, at least weakly, had that as a goal to some extent for some time.  The problem becomes when the mindset of some with such goals reduces them both to myth, and strongly endorses a conspiratorial view of their opponents.  Liberals, in taking to the courts, were not engaging in conspiracies, although there were always some extreme left wingers who acted somewhat hidden goals that they were advancing incrementally.  The problem that the left, and the larger society right and left, now has is that its overarchingly difficult for those outside of the populist right to grasp that many in that section of the electorate have convinced themselves that what was done was completely illegitimate and that those who took those positions are illegitimate as well.

With that view, the Trumpites, and they vary enormously in loyalty and world view, go from being somewhat predisposed to believe that the left would resort to stealing an election all the way to believing that views outside of their own are so fundamentally flawed as to be irrelevant.  The big problem is the question of to what degree do the latter makeup the GOP today.  Seemingly, in some quarters at least, they're driving the party.

Given that, as noted in the article, the hope that the sun will come out, people will look around, and return to their democratic senses, as seems to be the hope in the left and center, may well be a forlorn hope for at least the time being.  What's the way out of a danger for democracy if this is the point we've reached?

Ironically, the answer may be in part the same way we got here.  In spite of the whining and crying about them, the current Supreme Court seems intent on dismantling "progress" by judicial decree, and leaving that, whatever that is, up to the state legislatures and Congress.  If distrusts of the parties and the government started with the courts, which it did to some extent, maybe this will start to restore it.  The problem still is, however, that it took us around fifty years to get to this point.  Getting back. . . well there may not be fifty years to do it.

And even if there is, are there enough on the right and left from whom democracy is the first principal, to get there?