Something in the wind, part 3 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. Getting what you wish for.

Part Three of this series is brought to you by Giogia Meloni and Clarence Thomas.

Meloni and Thomas.¹

Thomas?

Yes, we'll explain down below, sooner or later.

In the first two parts of this three part series, I've looked at the election of Giorgia Meloni and the reasons for her rise. In the last episode, we tried to sum up the source of her popularity, and how that relates to a now, semi-fawning, American far right.  Italy has now gone down this path.  Others, now more than ever, are urging the United States to do the same.

Which bring up the dread Law of Unintended Consequences.

All of us probably heard our mothers, or somebody, give us the warning "Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!"  Probably, few stop to realize that this warning was delivered by non-other than Aesop as far back as 260BC.  His sage advice has hung around for a good reason.  The danger of getting something more than you asked for, in terms of secondary effects, is always pretty high.  Nobody tends to think much about that, however.

Far right admirers of Meloni, or Orban for that matter, are disgusted with the "woke" drift of American progressivism and goals that it has, some of which have been quite successful, which seem to offer promise to countering that.  These folks, in many instances, are horrified by progressive efforts that seek to remodel every institution of society and even our basic natures, if they can, and they likely really cannot, which doesn't mean that they can't do a lot of damage in the effort.

But others, and indeed most, of the Americans who are on the Trump train are on it only for one or two reasons.  Some are there for economic reasons, upset by the export of American jobs overseas for decades and a rising tide of immigrants.  Others are horrified by the seeming triumph of the woke and the redefinition of marriage.  Probably most have a vague sense that this ain't the way things ought to be.²

And I agree.

This ain't the way things ought to be.

But, I'm a dreaded intellectual Catholic, the very sort of people that the founders of this Great Nation abhorred and dreaded, and which many in the culture still do. 

Some feel that this era has passed, and such distinctions no longer matter, but I wonder, and I'm not the only one.  Ross Douthat, regarding current American Conservatism, has posted the following on his Twitter account within the last few days.

Current American conservatism: a low-church nondenominational Protestant mass movement trying to exert influence via intellectual Catholics strategically placed inside hollowed-out/secularized institutions of high-church denominational Protestantism.

If you dig deeper into this, you'll find that folks like Douthat, and Catholic intellectual circles, are concerned that ultimately they are there to be used, but when the time comes, they'll be dumped.

Now this may be surprising in an era when the real intellectuals on the Supreme Court, for example, are all Catholics.  All of them.  And its no surprise that this is the case.  By their training, both in their Catechism, and in their profession, they have to be, and were probably always inclined in that direction.  It used to be, however, that this was also true of others of different backgrounds, and while saying it is definitely dangerous, as it can be so easily misunderstood, it's still true of observant Jewish individuals, such as the recently departed Justice Ginsberg, which is part of the reason she was so widely, and justifiably, admired.  

It's getting pretty hard, however, to find serious intellects of the same type who are coming out of what's become of mainstream American conservatism.  Yes, they are there, to be sure.  Mitch McConnell is one, no matter what you think of him.  He's a Baptist. John Hickenlooper is a Quaker. Ben Sasse is a Presbyterian who was once a Lutheran.  And I don't mean to suggest a person has to be Catholic, or even religious, to be a heavyweight intellect by any means.

Rather, what I'm suggesting is this.

A lot of those in the Trump populist right are basically adherents to a sort of intellectualism lite, and often participants in the American Civil Religion, which claims Protestant Christianity as its foundation, but which advances it in a very lenient fashion, omitting, in its current form, darned near all of the New Testament list of behaviors between male and female, and indeed between male and male, and female and female, of a certain category, that were listed as sinful.³

So again, if we're turning the clock back, as Chesterton says we can, who will be comfortable with that and who won't?

Let's get back to voting and what you get, in the end.

In the German elections of the early 1930s, some people really did want to elect a radical racist party into power that would kill the Jews and hopefully, in their line of thinking, punish the French and wipe out the Bosheveks whereever they could be found.

But most voters who went to the polls probably didn't really have sending their sons to freeze to death at Stalingrad or being asked to put a bullet into a rabbi's head, or crush the skull of a Jewish infant in with a rifle butt, in mind at the time.

Observant German Lutherans, over half the county's religious community, didn't imagine that they'd have to fight off an attempt to consolidate them into a state approved variant of their faith.  German Catholics didn't imagine they'd be hiding impaired children from thinly disguised euthanasia programs.

Italians, in the 1920s, didn't imagine, for that matter, that some twenty years later they'd be sending their sons to fight one of the best armies in the world in North Africa, and others to fight the Red Army in the East.

Benito Mussolini.  He was the authority.  All you would have to do to verify this would have been to ask him. . .

Oh, I know, some will read this (among the few who do) and dismiss it as wild hyperbole.  And, for that matter, I'm not saying that anyone is going to be freezing in a few years on the Volga.

What I am saying is that a lot of right wing populist truly talk the talk, but don't really walk the walk, and probably don't want to either.

I'm also saying it's hard, when you go shopping for really radical political movements, to buy just part of the pie.  I.e, it's hard to say "I'll have a think slice of immigration reform please" and not get "here's your populist pie, including a complete set of family values you aren't following. . . "

Which takes us back to Clarence Thomas and more particularly his dissent in Dobbs.

Now, the Dobbs decision is 213 pages long in the original reporter, and we can't expect everyone to have read it.  I haven't read it all, either. But Dobbs, we know, got the abortion topic right.  Roe v. Wade, as most constitutional scholars long ago admitted, just made stuff up that wasn't in the Constitution, and it had long prior become completely unworkable.  Dobbs just sent things back to the states, where they belonged in the first place.

The Dobbs majority was quick to point out, in the text, that it was in no way shape or form seeking to expand the holding in Dobbs beyond the opinion itself, and it in particular it was no threat to Obergefell.

Well, baloney.

That's the same thing Justice Kennedy said in Obergefell. At the time that decision was handed down, the Court indicated it wouldn't expand into anything else, and those advancing the cause that prevailed in Obergefell likewise promised they had nothing else on the agenda.  Obergefell was, as noted, in our opinion on it at the time, a judicial coup, one preceding the attempted January 6, 2021, coup, and one basically fed into the other.

Kennedy was wrong in his declaration, and those 

I write separately to emphasize a second, more fundamental reason why there is no abortion guarantee lurking in the Due Process Clause. Considerable historical evidence indicates that “due process of law” merely required executive and judicial actors to comply with legislative enactments and the common law when depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. See, e.g., Johnson v. United States, 576 U. S. 591, 623 (2015) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). Other sources, by contrast, suggest that “due process of law” prohibited legislatures “from authorizing the deprivation of a person’s life, liberty, or property without providing him the customary procedures to which freemen were entitled by the old law of England.” United States v. Vaello Madero, 596 U. S. ___, ____ (2022) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (internal quotation marks omitted). Either way, the Due Process Clause at most guarantees process. It does not, as the Court’s substantive due process cases suppose, “forbi[d] the government to infringe certain ‘fundamental’ liberty interests at all, no matter what process is provided.” Reno v. Flores, 507 U. S. 292, 302 (1993); see also, e.g., Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U. S. 115, 125 (1992).

As I have previously explained, “substantive due process” is an oxymoron that “lack[s] any basis in the Constitution.” Johnson, 576 U. S., at 607–608 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); see also, e.g., Vaello Madero, 596 U. S., at ___ (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (“[T]ext and history provide little support for modern substantive due process doctrine”). “The notion that a constitutional provision that guarantees only ‘process’ before a person is deprived of life, liberty, or property could define the substance of those rights strains credulity for even the most casual user of words.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 811 (2010) (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); see also United States v. Carlton, 512 U. S. 26, 40 (1994) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). The resolution of this case is thus straightforward. Because the Due Process Clause does not secure any substantive rights, it does not secure a right to abortion. 

The Court today declines to disturb substantive due process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine’s application in other, specific contexts. Cases like Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965) (right of married persons to obtain contraceptives)*; Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003) (right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts); and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015) (right to same-sex marriage), are not at issue. The Court’s abortion cases are unique, see ante, at 31–32, 66, 71–72, and no party has asked us to decide “whether our entire Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence must be preserved or revised,” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 813 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). Thus, I agree that “[n]othing in [the Court’s] opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Ante, at 66.

For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 7), we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents, Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 9). After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated. For example, we could consider whether any of the rights announced in this Court’s substantive due process cases are “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Amdt.  14, §1; see McDonald, 561 U. S., at 806 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). To answer that question, we would need to decide important antecedent questions, including whether the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects any rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution and, if so, how to identify those rights. See id., at 854. That said, even if the Clause does protect unenumerated rights, the Court conclusively demonstrates that abortion is not one of them under any plausible interpretive approach. See ante, at 15, n. 22. 

You get the point.⁴ 

So here's the deal.  Thomas would strike down an entire series of substantive due process cases.  And indeed, his logic on this is infallible.  He's correct.⁵

And that's why I wonder, quite frankly, if rank and file populists have thought this out.

Once you board the logic train, you have to go where it goes.  It's like going on a transcontinental railroad trip. 

Once you board the logic train, you have to go where it takes you and you can't get off early.  It's like going on a transcontinental railroad trip.  You buy your ticket, and you can't pretend the train doesn't run all the way across the country and just stops, and turns around, in Denver.  You'll go through Denver. . . but the train will keep going.

The string of cases that Thomas mentions are in fact in peril now, and they likely also ought to be.  But Thomas didn't mention Loving v. Virginia.  Now, I think Loving v. Virginia can still be defended, and it undoubtedly can be on Natural Law grounds.

Loving v. Virginia was, you will recall, the case that determined that states couldn't ban interracial marriages.

Now most people, and certainly any decent people, would find that concept horrific.  Of course states can't ban interracial marriages. But they did, in some instances, up until that time.  It was Loving v. Virginia that struck that down.  Not too many people want to go back to that.

As critics of Dobbs have mentioned, as the state's can and have litigated in all of the areas that Thomas mentions, it's odd, sort of, that he omitted this one.  Well maybe not.  There's another way to address this case too, but it's still worth noting that this is the one area that would personally impact Thomas in a very direct way, and which is contrary to his personal worldview.

At the Wyoming State Bar convention, this came up during a speech by a constitutional scholar who also publishes in the Tribune. At some point during the speech, I don't know where, Harriet Hageman left the room, and she was apparently pretty disgruntled with what the speaker was saying, although I don't know that it was this. An email that circulated among Wyoming State Bar members later claimed that Hageman "heckled" the speaker, and the speaker perceived it that way, although many people disagreed with that characterization.  If nothing else, this all goes to show how uncomfortable people on the far populist right are with where this all leads.

The backdoor out of this is, as noted, Natural Law, but most populist really don't want to go there either.  

Natural Law has come up in American law repeatedly over the centuries, although now it is official eschewed. At one time it was not.  We've dealt with both of those themes here before, with the most interesting example of it being the case The Antelope, which we've written about at least twice.  That was the case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that slavery was contrary to the natural law, but allowable under the law of the United States as countries could legislate contrary to the natural law, to wit:

That it is contrary to the law of nature will scarcely be denied. That every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor is generally admitted, and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits and appropriate them against his will seems to be the necessary result of this admission. But from the earliest times, war has existed, and war confers rights in which all have acquiesced. Among the most enlightened nations of antiquity, one of these was that the victor might enslave the vanquished. This, which was the usage of all, could not be pronounced repugnant to the law of nations, which is certainly to be tried by the test of general usage. That which has received the assent of all must be the law of all. 

Slavery, then, has its origin in force; but as the world has agreed that it is a legitimate result of force, the state of things which is thus produced by general consent cannot be pronounced unlawful. 

Throughout Christendom, this harsh rule has been exploded, and war is no longer considered as giving a right to enslave captives. But this triumph of humanity has not been universal. The parties to the modern law of nations do not propagate their principles by force, and Africa has not yet adopted them. Throughout the whole extent of that immense continent, so far as we know its history, it is still the law of nations that prisoners are slaves. Can those who have themselves renounced this law be permitted to participate in its effects by purchasing the beings who are its victims? 

Now, if somebody is wondering how this gets us out of this mess, it doesn't.  Under the holding in The Antelope, outlawing anything not mentioned in the Constitution, no matter how shocking, would be okay.

But following this, on more than one occasion, the Court referenced Natural Law in order to support a decision. At least as recently as the 1980s, the Court found that laws addressing homosexual conduction were allowable, as homosexuality was contrary to the Natural Law.  A Wyoming jurist found that laws banning adoption by homosexual couples were allowable for the same reason, and more recently than that.

Now, some are going to find that really shocking as well, but once again, if we're on the populist train, this is where that goes, and frankly most of those on the hard populist right, are okay with this.  I.e., that would cure the Loving v. Virginia problem, as banning marriage between heterosexual couples based on race is contrary to the Natural Law.

But the ancient law of humanity also tried to make sure that the same impulses that gave rise to marriage assured them.  Hence, the creation of the Common Law's common law marriage.  How many on the Trump train want to return to the days of the Heart Balm Statutes?

My guess is not many, and certainly not Trump himself, who is a serial polygamist.  

Now, I'm not here to judge people's morals by any means.  But this is a topic worth considering.  In the current political world we live in, we have a Senator who is divorced and remarried and at least one extremely right wing politician entering the legislature has a wife who was married before as well.  You can be guaranteed that some of those now running have openly lived lives involving cohabitation outside of marriage, as it is so common.  Are people really comfortable with a return to the old law on all of this?

Well, sincere Catholics, like me, might be. But this is a Protestant nation.  Here in town, there's a huge Protestant church that I think is "non-denominational" (I'm not completely certain).  Somebody I know who attends it is on their third marriage.  In the American Civil Religion, that seemingly doesn't cause problems, and I don't doubt that person's sincerity in attending.  But in American law, prior to the post World War Two Supreme Court trip that Justice Thomas complained, of, it would have.

Do people have this in mind?

Looking around, I really doubt it.  People seem to believe that the Constitution applies only to other people, not to themselves, or worse yet, they have a false belief about what the history of our laws and the Constitutional law really is.  In reality, at one time marriage was solely the province of the states, and they could allow or ban whatever they chose.  Restricting firearm carrying was pretty common, and the concept of "open carry" around town nonexistent.  Prohibiting members of certain races from certain neighborhoods through restrictive covenants completely allowable and in fact the norm.  The only way around that is the Natural Law, but the Natural Law brings in concerns that most Americans aren't really prepared to deal with, even remotely.

And if you are dabbling with concepts of Natural Law, you sooner or later are going to stray into concepts of Subsidiarity and the like.  Those concepts make most Americans squirm in their seats, at least if they aren't of the left.  Vest the economy entirely downwards, accept a lower standard of living for the middle class and the wealthy in favor of vesting the economy in families and elevating the poor.  Nobody too rich, and nobody too wealthy.  An economy that favors sustainability forever over one that does not.

Chesterton would have been comfortable with all of that.

Jefferson might have been.

Giorgia Meloni is probably comfortable with all of that.

Most Americans now. . . definately not.

Footnotes:

1.  Okay, Meloni's photo here, taken from a Reel, is unfair.  She's an effective speaker and clearly highly intelligent, as is Thomas.  This illustrates, however, how Italian politics isn't American politics, gushing from Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene aside.  Meloni is an intellectual, if perhaps a somewhat scary one, compared to Cruz and Greene, and Thomas is definately an intellectual.  Greene and Cruz certainly dont' seem to be, and frankly some or perhaps a lot of their positions wouldn't square with either Meloni's or Thomas'

Added to that, Meloni is a politician in a  unique Italian environment where things are done, said, or portrayed that definately would never be here.

2.  This is the source, I think, of the lot of election discontent.

It's also the source of a lot of election denialism. The thought is that "people can't have really voted for Biden, as people can't really be for. . . ".  In another form, which isn't the same, its "votes for Biden can't count, as what he stands for is vile, and therefore. . . "

Almost lost in all of this is the fact that Trump lost the popular vote twice.  His first election was only legitimate, and it was legitimate, due to the artifact of the electoral college.  Of course, this causes people to unthinkingly babble "we aren't a democracy" (we are) "but a republic".  I've addressed that elsewhere, but using that as an argument shows that the person advancing a point is largley ignorant of what they're trying to advance.

3.  It might be worth noting here that fully 1/3d of American Evangelical Protestants believe the United States Constitution, which never mentions God, was inspired by God.  The newly appointed interim Wyoming Secretary of State has publicly taken this position in his campaign material.

For reasons that are partially addresssed in this essay, that's a fairly startling and scary proposition.  Traditional Christianity holds that inspired texts cease with the end of the Apostolic Age, at which point there were no more general revalations.

4. It should be noted, and will be later in the text, that even if Thomas' logic is correct on the cases he mentions, he's only commenting in regard to procedural due process. For that reason, his comments have been read to probably mean more than they should be.

I'll address Loving v. Virginia below, but Griswald v. Connecticut is another such example.  Even if Thomas' criticism of the case in a procedural due process context are correct, it doesn't address Federal Supremacy might mean that the Federal Government has completlely dominated the field here to the detriment of indivdual states through the laws pertaining to pharmacueticals.

5.  But see footnote 4.

Prior Related Threads:

Something in the wind, part 1 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

Something in the wind, part 2 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

Saturday, October 3, 1942. The Rocket Age

In a remarkable scientific achievement, but one which came in the context of war, and one which would foreshadow a terror that was introduced during World War Two and has remained ever since, a German V2 rocket became the first man-made object launched into space.

The horrific weapon would not enter into service until September 1944, two years later.

President Roosevelt ordered a freeze on wages, rents and farm prices under authority granted him the day prior.

The British raided the German occupied Channel Island of Sark.

The Hollywood Canteen opened.

Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth serve food to soldiers at the Hollywood Canteen in 1942, the year that it opened.

Tuesday, October 3, 1922. Aftermaths

 Somewhere on the East Coast, a "conduit" was being built.

Construction at the time still involved a lot of horse power in the literal sense, something that was rapidly changing.

And with that change would come to an end one more daily association of men with animals, making us the poorer for it.

The Convention of Madanya began with representatives of the Allied Powers meeting with Turkish representatives in order to negotiate an end to the Chanak Crisis.  The Allied Powers were frankly impaired, as the British government was not willing to fight over the issues the crisis presented without the support of the Dominions, and they didn't have it. The French were not willing to fight either, and the Greek government had collapsed.

On the same day, Metropolitan Gregory of Kydonies, age 58, together with other priests, were executed by the Turks.

The Irish Free State offered an amnesty to its armed opponents who voluntarily surrendered their arms before October 15.

Following that date, the Irish Free State, something that had come about due to civilian use of arms, unless a person buys the claim that those civilians were under arms from a legitimate, if unrecognized, government, would arrest in large numbers Irish Republicans caught with "illegal" arms.  Ever since that time, the Irish government has been hostile to civilian's owning arms, something which is truly ironic in context.

Italian Fascists took over the city of Bolzana and deposed the Mayor, who had been in power since 1895, at which time the city had been in Austria.

Blog Mirror: Lessons From the Badass Muscular Neurobiologist

Probably more than a little to this:

Lessons From the Badass Muscular Neurobiologist

Probably the real takeaway is this.  Modern life is deeply unnatural.

Friday, October 2, 1942. The Queen Mary accidentally sinks the HMS Curacoa.

Today in World War II History—October 2, 1942: Off Northern Ireland, troopship HMT Queen Mary (carrying US 29th Infantry Division to Britain) collides with light cruiser HMS Curacoa, cutting it in half.

Sarah Sundin's entry for the day. She notes, further, that over 300 British sailors lost their lives due to the collision.

Also on this day, the British captured Antsirabe in Madagascar.

In the US, the Stabilization Act came into law, which allowed the President to issue executive orders fixing wages and salaries.  President Roosevelt would do just that the following day, fixing the same as of September 15, 1942.

Edouard Herriot, a former French Prime Minister, and a member of the French Radical Party, was arrested on accusations that he was plotting against the Vichy government.

The U-512 was sunk off of Cayenne by a USAAF B-18.  This event isn't particularly noteworthy, really, save for the fact that its the second example we've given here of wartime use of the forgotten B-18.

Monday, September 10, 1922. UW "kidnapping"

The Soviet Union introduced universal male conscription, starting at age 20.

The Reserve Officers Association was formed in the US.  Originally an organization made up of reserve officers who had served in World War One, it's now an association that includes reservists of all ranks.

Lithuania introduced the Lita as its currency, replacing German currency it had been used.

1922 10 Lita banknote.

A now passed UW tradition was practiced.

Best Posts of the Week of September 25, 2022.

The best post of September 22, 2022.

It's not just here. The Italian Election and the further rise of the hard right.

Something in the wind, part 1 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

Hubris and Strange Coincidence.

Something in the wind, part 2 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

Lex Anteinternet: Iced coffee.

The 2022 Election Part XII. The General Election Race, Edition 1.

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition, Part Seven

Wednesday, September 30, 1942 U.S. rations footgear, Canada conscripts at age 19.

Today in World War II History—September 30, 1942: US begins rationing men’s rubber boots and work shoes. Canada begins draft for men 19 and older (men 21-24 are already subject to draft).

So notes Sarah Sundin on her blog.  

Conscription was controversial in general in Canada. At this point in the war, conscripts could not be sent overseas unless they volunteered to do so, although a high percentage did volunteer.

Sundin also noted that high scoring German fighter pilot, Hans-Joachim Marseille, was killed bailing out of his Me109 on this day.  His engine had caught on fire, and he hit the horizontal stabilizer upon bailing out. Most of Marseille's victories had been over North Africa.  

Marseilles was a high scoring, but largely unstudied, German pilot.  He was noted for being unorthodox in his flying and his personality.

Canada closed Hastings Park Assembly Center, a temporary staging center for the internment of Japanese Canadians, as it was no longer needed, internment now being in full swing.

Hitler delivered a speech in the Berlin Sportpalast in which he promised that the Jews would be exterminated, rather than the "Aryan peoples".  Nobody was, of course, attempting to exterminate the Aryan peoples, to the extent that such a category even exists.  The speech was long and mocking, and oddly made reference to specific figures, like Gen. MacArthur.

The Germans were, at this point, in trouble, and at the higher reaches of their government, they knew it.  Hitler had been sacking generals on the Eastern Front, the Afrika Korps was back on the defensive, and the British were raiding by air nightly.  New weapons were being put into Allied production, which Hitler derisively mentioned, but which indicates that the knowledge that the Germans were losing the technology and production war was starting to set in.

On the same day, Germany and Turkey signed a trade agreement.

Saturday, September 30, 1922. Camp Bragg becomes a Fort.

Greek Orthodox priests in the city of Kydoniae (Ayvalik) were taken into custody by the Turks while waiting, following the recommendation of their bishop, for evacuation The Turks would murder then three days later.

On the same day, Sotiros Krokidas became the interim Greek Prime Minister.

The Yankees took the American League Pennant, defeating the Boston Red Sox.

Camp Bragg, North Carolina, was redesignated as Fort Bragg, thereby indicating its permanent status.

Lex Anteinternet: Iced coffee.

A rerun, just because I like it.

Lex Anteinternet: Iced coffee.: 

Iced coffee.

So you went to look at cattle and poured yourself a cup of coffee, and then left the unfinished travel cup in your pickup. . .

Lex Anteinternet: National Coffee Day.

Lex Anteinternet: National Coffee Day.: 

National Coffee Day.

Today, dear reader, is National Coffee Day.

Truly.  How would we get buy without it?

Blog Mirror: September 29, – National Coffee Day and History of Coffee

 

September 29, – National Coffee Day and History of Coffee

Something in the wind, part 2 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

Giorgia Meloni not sounding like Donald Trump.  In a sort of "make Italy great again" speech she calls for uniting the country, governing for all Italians, and doesn't sound like some sort of cheap badly done rendition of Goodfellas.  Indeed, her articulate nature comes across, even if you don't grasp Italian, in comparison to Trump's nearly complete lack of it.¹ Her victory message is certainly different, but the proof, of course, is in the cannolis, not in the menu presentation.

Does the election of Giorgia Meloni tell us something about what's going on in the US right now?

I think it does, or at least did, and therefore explains in part how we got to where we now are.

More than that, does it tell us what isn't going on, and what Trump's backer's might get, or rather the country, if we keep going down this road?

It probably does.

First, we'll note, her victory has already been heralded in parts of the English-speaking world as a non-fascist victory for true conservatism.

At the same time, the American usual suspects, probably none of which actually would be comfortable with Meloni's actual world view, rolled into congratulate her:

Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz under fire for celebrating Italian far-right victory

Italian politician Giorgia Meloni’s party traces its roots to the Second World War-era fascist movement founded by Benito Mussolini

All of this tells us a few things.

The first is that the FdI's rebranding of itself as a non-neo fascist party is taking root successfully, but it remains challenged.  The party certainly had its roots there, and its symbol is made up of flames from Mussolini's grave, after all. But maybe it has reengineered itself as a right wing populist party that's no longer an anti-democratic fascist one.

Secondly, the English-speaking right is switching its attention from Viktor Mihály Orbán to Meloni, and maybe that's a good thing, if the FdI is no longer fascist and is democratic.

Of course, at the same time, the populist American right remains basically captive to a large degree to Donald Trump and his acolytes.

Finally, it really shows us what the populist Trumpite wing of the GOP, which anymore we might as well just call the GOP, is, and isn't.

So, what is Meloni's platform?

Well, I'm not Italian and I hadn't heard of the FdI until just the other day, or if I had, I hadn't paid all that much attention to it.  Italy has had more than one neo Fascist party over the years.  But it's easy to find videos of her giving really fiery speeches.  A lot of those have been condensed into snippets, but if the full speech is listed to, they go in directions that you don't really expect.  As far as I can tell, and I may be way off, the FdI, under Meloni, is hugely and unapologetically traditionalist and right wing populist, by it retains some syndicalist economic views.  It also has dabbled, to some surprising extent, in social legislation which would be regarded as left wing in the United States, as trying to pass a bill regarding child care for working mothers.

So what caused more Italians to vote for it than any other party?

Probably that traditionalism, which is grounded in a sort of philosophy of nature, or new essentialism, or even a combination of classical Western thought and evolutionary biology.  It appears, at least in its Italian form, to be of deeper thought than that of the normal American version.  Indeed, American conservative intellectualism is of a much different type, and really hasn't evolved in any concrete form since Buckley's day.

What it might simply boil down to is what we've already mentioned.  The FdI and Meloni are enormously anti-Woke and aren't apologetic about it in the least.  They are also very nationalist in the "Italy for Italians" sense of things. And all that instinctively appeals, all around the globe, to people who aren't keen on being as multicultural as progressives assure them they should be and who, deep down, don't believe that a species that is male and female and has had marriage as its central fundamental societal element needs to now change that view.

It's a huge reaction to 1968 and the things 1968 foisted upon Western Society.

It's also, we might note, a reaction to the 1970s and the Greed is Good ethos that a triumphant capitalism brought in everywhere in the 1980s and 1990s.  That part of Meloni's public platform seems missed.  Meloni, however, has attacked modern globalism, and therefore that part of capitalism, pretty openly as well.

These themes all appeared in the far right before.  Mussolini's original fascism was actually extremely radical in a left wing sense, reflecting a radicalism he'd grown up with, and his original membership in the Socialist Party.  The Italian Fascist, however, combined some really left wing concepts with some extreme right wing ones, which was common to early fascist movements in many, but not all, places that it took root, that being one of the things that has made fascism so difficult to define.  Because it did that, however, it also appealed to societal voters in the countries where it took root, who would adopt some of its views while blinding their eyes to others, and indeed blinding their eyes to the most radical elements of it.

Indeed, that's what made and still makes fascism really dangerous.  We can see it in this example, maybe, and we can now see it in the U.S.

Indeed, we'll turn to the U.S. here, with this entry by some conservative journalist:

He’s Still the One
Sohrab Ahmari & Matthew Schmitz

Republican voters face a clear choice in the 2024 presidential cycle. Those who think the conservative movement has the solutions to the nation’s crises should vote for a conventional GOP candidate. But those who believe the conservative movement is part of the problem should support Donald Trump.

Only Trump defied the deep state empowered by his Republican predecessors. Only Trump has broken from the disastrous foreign policy championed by the conservative movement. Only Trump has taken on the mania for free trade and outsourcing. No other figure of the right has shown the same willingness to break with his own side’s orthodoxies.

We've noted it here before, but we'll start with this and add in the Meloni element.

What's causing this hard right turn?

Well, in the U.S. and in Italy it's a feeling by rank and file, working people, that their politicians have completely abandoned them and their concerns combined with a reaction to modifying millennia old, and DNA rooted, institutions.  That's pretty much it.  The FdI promises to do something about that. American Conservatives have promised to do something about that since at least 1976, if not earlier, failed to do so, and even basically lied, in some instances, about their devotion to really doing so.  They've started to do something, and ironically it's really Mitch McConnell, through his Supreme Court appointments, whose really started to change the social aspect of this around, in part.

The part where this isn't true had to do with unchecked illegal immigration.  Trump, once again, did do something about that.  Progressives and many others hated what he did, but he did do something, and that made him the first President since Teddy Kennedy's immigration reforms altered what had been in place to do so.

Economically, Trump had a good three-year run until COVID-19 came by plane, most likely, and ran through the country killing people and destroying the economy.  Trump never acted like an economic conservative, however, and the GOP was pretty comfortable spending money like sailors on a three-day shore leave.  As, by and large, people are happy with a good economy, it didn't really matter.  

A person is free to view this anyway they wish, but Trump's far right policies, which appealed to many rank and file Republicans of the far right, and appealed to rust belt Democrats who came into the GOP, were nativist, traditional WASPish, and very socially conservative.  To a very large degree, if they had been advanced by a more conventional politician, that individual would have been regarded as a huge success.

They were not advanced, however, by a conventional politician, but by Trump.  It can be doubted, quite frankly, the extent to which Trump believed in any of the things he advocated for, or believes in anything at all other than himself, whom he appears to believe in obsessively.  Trump is not an admirable man.

Trump may simply have picked up, as a salesman, on what his demographic wanted to buy.  If he had done nothing more than that, he could not be criticized for it.  Indeed, politicians of all stripes do that and in a democratic system, they must.  There's no reason to believe, for example, that Harriet Hageman really thinks the election was stolen.  Her base believes that, and so she must.  It's an irony of the democratic system that really effective advocates of certain positions, truly believed by a politician's base, might find no real sympathy with the politician themselves.  Indeed, that's why we find advocates of traditional family values caught up in sex scandals of all sorts, or advocates of law and order involved in crime. 

Selling to your base, we note, is probably also why we find Kyrsten Sinema a Democrat looking out for monied interests.  For that matter, it also may very well explain why politicians in certain regions seem to take positions that are contrary to their educations and backgrounds.  They likely don't believe what they're saying, they believe they need to say it.

All of that is how democracy actually works, in part, but only in part.

Trump departed with that, however, in a truly fascistic sense.  Appearing to believe principally in himself, he created a personality cult, some of which adopted the worst beliefs and inclinations of his supporters.  And he became his movement, which is what Mussolini became, for example, to Italian fascism.  His supporters still believe in him, but he believes in himself more.  He essentially advances the concept that he, and only he, can save the nation against forces which are illegitimate.

And that is the core of fascism. FWIW, it's the core of Communism, too.

We said there may be lessons here.  If so, what would they be?

The principal ones are the ones that Trump learned before he ever took office, and what Mitch McConnell, for all his differences with Trump, also knows.  1968 is over and much of what it brought has been ruinous.  People look back instinctively to core societal traditional values and do not want change forced on them from above, or at all.

But what is also there is that there's a major society wide rejection of the consumerist economic revolution. People everywhere are wealthier than they used to be, but they are also more tied to their occupations than ever, and they don't want to be.

And people look at their countries and communities differently than capitalist do, and they don't want to look at them differently. They don't really want ever expanding this and that, and they often would just as soon have things be as they once were, rather than where they seem to be going.

All of those things can be advanced democratically.  Meloni claims that she will now do that.

We'll see.

But this raises another question, particularly for American populists.  Are you really wishing to buy the entire package?

Footnotes:

1.  Meloni has a very direct and highly pithy form of delivery.  In contempoary American politics it would be nearly impossible to find an analogy, in part because she very clearly means what she says.  An interesting contrast would be to Trumpite Harriet Hageman, who is articulate enough, but who lacks the element of sincreity that Meloni obivously has.  Perhaps only Liz Cheney, whose delivery is different, is comparable.

Trump's style nearly defies description, but it's odd and sort of oddly childish, as if he's delivering a rambling address to himself, or to a group in a children's club.  That he's gained a wide following is surprsing in part for that fact, as people generally don't like being talked down to.  He doesn't come across as consdesencing, but as not too bright.  Interestingly one realy diehard fan of his that I spoke to some time ago, who couldn't imagine anyone not admiring him, related that "he speaks like us".  Of note, that person was of a highly blue collar background from the East, which gives some creedance to the theory that New York politicians of recent years have learned their speaking style from dealing with East Coast mobsters.

Prior Threads in this Series:

Something in the wind, part 1 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

Prior Related Threads:

It's not just here. The Italian Election and the further rise of the hard right.

Tuesday, September 29, 1942. The British launch Operation Braganza, and the Japanese try again in Oregon.

The British launched Operation Braganza with the goal of capturing the ground around Deir el Munassib in Egypt.  It would fail.

The Japanese tried again with a second submarine launched seaplane bombing mission against the forest in Oregon, hoping to set them on fire. They did not.

The great comedic actress Madeline Kahn was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

Lahn was born to Bernard and Freda Wolfson, who divorced when she was two.  Her mother later married Hiller Kahn who adopted her.  Her mother had wanted to be an actress and for a time pursued that goal.  Kahn graduated in 1964 with a degree in speech therapy from Hofra University and began purusing an actiing career herself soon after.

Kahn in 1964.

Starting with roles on Broadway, she broke into film in 1968 and by 1972 was in the major motion picture, What's Up Doc?, which I've never seen.  The following year, she was in Paper Moon, which is a great film, for which she secured an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.  She was in a series of notable roles after that.  In the 1990s she was in the television series Cosby, which was hugely respected, but which is now probably un-airable due to the later revelations about Bill Cosby.  She died in 1999 of ovarian cancer at age 57.

Hubris and Strange Coincidence.

There is, I'd note, no proof that Donald J. Trump is a Russian agent.

Nonetheless, two days after the Russians (we suspect) blew a hole in their own gas pipeline to Germany for no rational reason, our former President, who is now in trouble for all the classified information he packed home to his golf resort dwellings, come out with this steaming pile of pooh.

What the crap?

And what hubris.

"I will head up group???"

You have to be joking.

What idiot would want the same man who betrayed Afghanistan into Taliban hands and made twenty years of American, and Allied, effort there meaningless to head up a delegation to try to sort out the war between Ukraine and Russia, a war we might note which Trump buddy Putin is losing badly.¹ 

What would his solution be?  Russia takes half of Ukraine, 3/4s of Poland, and a slice of Lithuania to go?

Only a diehard Trump loyalist seriously would believe that Russia would not have raped Ukraine if Trump were President, although you can surely believe that the United States would have done nothing whatsoever to stop it.  Nothing.  The war would be over, alright, with Ukraine in Russian hands and a followup guerilla war in Ukraine going on right now.  Biden's leadership on this topic at least has been monumental.

And why does this come out now?

That's the odd thing.

As noted, there's no evidence that Trump is a Russian agent.

There's reason to suspect he's a Russian asset, probably unknowingly.

But it's sure easy to have suspicions, if, for no other reasons, his own actions, which is in fact probably the only reason, which is why it probably also isn't true.

Anyway you look at it, this offer is beyond absurd.

Footnotes:

1. After posting this, I actually saw a recycled Twitter, or maybe Truth (sic) Social tweet in which somebody cheered "this is how a real President acts".

Not a really good President.

Also, according to the Washington Post, Tucker Carson suggested, which is different from actually stated, that the US may have sabotaged the pipeline.  I'm not going to link into the original Carson broadcast as I can't stand him, but if Carson suggested that, I find it difficult in the extreme to believe that he believes that's possible. At this point, anyone still listening to him, really ought to stop.

Nord Stream Sabotage

So this occurred:¹

Danish defense video of gas venting to the atmosphere from severed Nord Stream pipeline.

September 28, 2022

Two undersea explosions occurred on the idled Nord Stream pipeline.  

Accomplishing an underwater strike such as this would require some expertise to pull off and there are suspicions, not yet proven, that Russia itself did it.  Ukraine has claimed just that. The hard thing to figure out, however, is what the goal of such an attack would be.

But why?

This assumes, of course, that the Russians did it, in which case, they sabotaged their own pipeline.

The Nord Stream pipeline refers to two natural gas pipelines, now both severed, that run under the Baltic from Russia to Germany, supplying gas to the latter.  Nord Stream 1 is owned by Nord Stream AG, whose majority interest owner is the Russian state gas company Gazprom.  Nord Stream two is planned to be operated by Nord Stream 2 AG, which would be wholly owned by Gazprom.  If the Russians damaged it, they severed what amounted to a stream of revenue. . . save for it being shut down right now due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Wars don't last forever, and logic would presume that the Russians would want to open the spigots back up after the fighting is over.  Now, they can't.  Or they can't until it's repaired.  And now it might never be.  Liking burning the boats, right now they can't go back, and neither can Germany.  The Germans are going to have to get gas somewhere else.

Well, they've already started to, but they'll have to further look for it. They actually have to do it.

So why?

Well, right now, it's pretty darned hard to figure out why the Russians actually do anything whatsoever.  They seem to be on a rampaging ride of ineptitude and incompetence.  Their army, once presumed to be one of the best in the world, has been proven inept, with thin depth, in Ukraine.  They have been outfought and outmaneuvered right and left by a smaller power.  They're calling on reserves that they must not really have, as they're sending men who have only a year of service right into combat.  They're actually bringing back blocking units to keep their army from retreating.  Their equipment, which I was never impressed with, has been proven to be junk.

And rather than attempt to declare victory and go home, or negotiate a sane face-saving peace, they're doubling down and annexing territory they may very well have no ability to hold on it, while at home men are voting with their feet.  

Nothing they've done has worked, and everything that Russian military pundits have called for has failed or is failing.

What good could blowing up your own pipeline serve?

Is it a warning to Germany that they could make things worse, that's supposed to cow the BDR into a greater level of neutrality?  Is it a signal to Europe that they'd better take Russia seriously or Russia will take its ball and go home?  

If so, that isn't working.

Is it a false flag operation designed to provide an excuse for harsher actions against Ukraine?  If so, it's not believable that Ukraine could have severed an undersea pipeline in the Baltic, and it doesn't seem like Russia can be any harsher on Ukraine than it already is trying to be.

Is it to provide an excuse for expanding the war west, under the pretext that the Poles or the Germans did it?  If so, there's no reason to believe that the Russians can do any better against the Poles than they already are against Ukraine, and they definitely can't do better against Germany, let alone NATO at large.

Or is it just for interior consumption in a country that's sending men into combat without training for a cause that rank and file Russians aren't seemingly that keen on?

Footnotes:

1. This entry was started before Donald J. Trump posted his absolutely incredibly hubristic comment that he would serve as negotiator due to this event.

Trump will be lucky if he doesn't end up serving time.  That he's suggest acting as a mediator is, well, simply beyond belief.

Blog Mirror: Office Hours: Arggh! How are you coping with stress?

 

Office Hours: Arggh! How are you coping with stress?

Monday, September 28, 1942. Broadcasting for Servicemen Overseas: 1942

 

Broadcasting for Servicemen Overseas: 1942

Blog Mirror: Libya from Rommel to Quadaffi

 

Libya from Rommel to Quadaffi

Robert Reich On Self Made Billionaires.

 Robert Reich On Self Made Billionaires.

Reich often frustrates me on economic issues, as he creeps up on great Distributist revelations, and then, like most "progressive" economists, runs away from them as fast as he can, making him in essence just part of the corporate capitalist economic mob. There's really very little difference between them and right wing conservative economist other than the issue of exactly how much we should tax the rich.

Anyhow, he does make interesting economic points.  Here's one I've often wondered about.

Something in the wind, part 1 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

 

Meloni says she's not a fascist, and compares her party to the British Tories, the Israeli Likud, and the GOP.   The American GOP aside, which is in turmoil and which we'll discuss a little in round two of this fascinating series, the FdI, whatever it is, definitely isn't the British Conservative Party or the Israeli Likud.

Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.

G.K. Chesterton, in Heretics

This quote, but not in its full length, is getting a lot of traction right now as it shows up, in Italian, being quoted by Giorgina Meloni, in a truncated form, which takes from the following:

Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.

I was surprised to find Meloni quote Chesterton, as I don't think of Chesterton as being a fan of, or useful to, fascists. But perhaps this puts us on the uncomfortable slope where Falangist slide into a certain type of conservatism and trying to define the difficult differences between the Mediterranean post World War Two far right, and Hungarian one, and the American one.

Italian and Spanish fascists were corporatists or syndicalists, which is a hard concept to explain to Americans.  They didn't eliminate free enterprise but rather controlled it, with a concept that everything was subordinated to the good of the state which was supposed to work for the good of the people.  By the people, it usually meant only the nation in the ethnic sense.  In other words, Italian fascists might make common cause with, let's say, Spanish fascists, but that didn't mean that they thought of themselves as the same by any means. The Italian fascists worried principally about ethnic Italians only, which of course ultimately lead to an attempt to expand the Italian empire at the expense of non Italians.  Spain's Franco era (Franco was not a fascist, or a Carlist) pretty much started off that way right from the onset, i.e,. Spain's empire was for the Spanish, not for Moroccans.

Falangist are a subset of fascist, with some distinct beliefs. Their basic core tenants were set out in the Twenty Six Points they issued, which stated the following:

NATION - UNITY - EMPIRE 

1. We believe in the supreme reality of Spain. The strengthening, elevating, and magnifying of  this reality is the urgent collective goal of all Spaniards. Individual, group, and class interests must inexorably give way in order to achieve this goal. 

2. Spain has a single destiny in the world. Every conspiracy against this common unity is repulsive. Any kind of separatism is a crime which we shall not pardon. The existing Constitution, to the degree that it encourages disintegration, weakens this common destiny of Spain. Therefore we demand its annulment in a thundering voice. 

3. We have the determination to build an Empire. We affirm that Spain's historic fulfilment lies in Empire. We claim for Spain a pre-eminent position in Europe. We can tolerate neither international isolation nor foreign interference. As regards the countries of Hispanic America, we favour unification of their culture, economic interests and power. Spain will continue to act as the spiritual axis of the Hispanic world as a sign of her pre-eminence in worldwide enterprises. 

4. Our armed forces- on land, sea, and in the air- must be kept trained and sufficiently large to assure to Spain at all times its complete independence and a status in the world that befits it. We shall bestow upon our Armed Forces of land, sea, and air all the dignity they merit, and we shall cause their military conception of life to infuse every aspect of Spanish life. 

5. Spain shall once more seek her glory and her wealth on the sea lanes. Spain must aspire to become a great maritime power, for reasons of both defence and commerce. We demand for the fatherland equal status with others in maritime power and aerial routes. 

STATE - INDIVIDUAL - LIBERTY 

6. Our State will be a totalitarian instrument to defend the integrity of the fatherland. All Spaniards will participate in this through their various family, municipal, and syndical roles. There shall be no participation in it by political parties. We shall implacably abolish the system of political parties and all of their consequences- inorganic suffrage, representation of clashing groups, and a Parliament of the type that is all too well known. 

7. Human dignity, integrity, and freedom are eternal, intangible values. But one is not really free unless he is a part of a strong and free nation. No one will be permitted to use his freedom against the nation, which is the bulwark of the fatherland's freedom. Rigorous discipline will prevent any attempt to envenom and disunite the Spanish people or to incite them against the destiny of the fatherland. 

8. The National-Syndicalist State will permit all kinds of private initiative that are compatible with the collective interest, and it will also protect and encourage the profitable ones. 

ECONOMY - LABOUR - CLASS STRUGGLE 

9. Our conception of Spain in the economic realm is that of a gigantic syndicate of producers. We shall organise Spanish society corporatively through a system of vertical syndicates for the various field of production, all working toward national economic unity. 

10. We repudiate the capitalistic system which shows no understanding of the needs of the people, dehumanises private property, and causes workers to be lumped together in a shapeless, miserable mass of people who are filled with desperation. Our spiritual and national conception of life also repudiates Marxism. We shall redirect the impetuousness of those working classes who today are led astray by Marxism, and we shall seek to bring them into direct participation in fulfilling the great task of the national state. 

11. The National-Syndicalist State will not cruelly stand apart from man's economic struggles, nor watch impassively while the strongest class dominates the weakest. Our regime will eliminate the very roots of class struggle, because all who work together in production shall comprise one single organic entity. We reject and we shall prevent at all costs selfish interests from abusing others, and we shall halt anarchy in the field of labour relations. 

12. The first duty of wealth- and our State shall so affirm- is to better the conditions of the people. It is intolerable that enormous masses of people should live wretchedly while a small number enjoy all kinds of luxuries. 

13. The State will recognise private property as a legitimate means for achieving individual, family, and social goals, and will protect it against the abuses of large-scale finance capital, speculators, and money lenders. 

14. We shall support the trend toward nationalisation of banking services and, through a system of Corporations, the great public utilities. 

15. All Spaniards have the right to work. Public agencies must of necessity provide support for those who find themselves in desperate straits. As we proceed toward a totally new structure, we shall maintain and strengthen all the advantages that existing social legislation gives to workers. 

16. Unless they are disabled, all Spaniards have the duty to work. The National-Syndicalist State will not give the slightest consideration to those who fail to perform some useful function and who try to live as drones at the expense of the labour of the majority of people. 

LAND 

17. We must, at all costs, raise the standard of living in the countryside, which is Spain's permanent source of food. To this end, we demand agreement that will bring to culmination without further delay the economic and social reforms of the agricultural sector. 

18. Our program of economic reforms will enrich agricultural production by means of the following: 

By assuring a minimum remuneration to all agricultural producers.

By demanding that there be restored to the countryside, in order to provide it with an adequate endowment, a portion of that which the rural population is paying to the cities for intellectual and commercial services.

By organising a truly national system of agricultural credit which will lend money to farmers at low interest against the guarantee of their property and crops, and redeem them from usury and local tyrants. 

By spreading education with respect to better methods of farming and sheep raising. 

By ordering the rational utilisation of lands in accordance with their suitability and with marketing possibilities. 

By adjusting tariff policy in such a way as to protect agriculture and the livestock industry. 

By accelerating reclamation projects. By rationalising the units of cultivation, so as to eliminate wasted latifundia and uneconomic, miniscule plots. 

19. Our program of social reforms in the field of agriculture will be achieved: 

By redistributing arable land in such a way as to revive family farms and give energetic encouragement to the syndicalisation of farm labourers. 

By redeeming from misery those masses of people who presently are barely eking out a living on sterile land, and by transferring such people to new and arable lands. 

20. We shall undertake a relentless campaign of reforestation and livestock breeding, and we shall punish severely those who resist it. We shall support the compulsory, temporary mobilisation of all Spanish youth for this historic goal of rebuilding the national commonwealth. 

21. The State may expropriate without indemnity lands of those owners who either acquired them or exploited them illegally.

22. It will be the primary goal of the National-Syndicalist State to rebuild the communal patrimonies of the towns. 

NATIONAL EDUCATION - RELIGION 

23. It shall be the essential mission of the State to attain by means of rigorous disciplining of education a strong, united national spirit, and to instil in the souls of future generations a sense of rejoicing and pride in the fatherland. 

All men shall receive pre-military training to prepare them for the honour of being enlisted in the National and Popular Army of Spain. 

24. Cultural life shall be organised so that no talent will be undeveloped because of insufficient economic means. All who merit it shall be assured ready access to a higher education. 

25. Our Movement incorporates the Catholic meaning- of glorious tradition, and especially in Spain- of national reconstruction. The Church and the State will co-ordinate their respective powers so as to permit no interference or activity that may impair the dignity of the State or national integrity. 

NATIONAL REVOLUTION 

26. The Falange Espanola Tradicionalista y de las JONS demands a new order, as set forth in the foregoing principles. In the face of the resistance from the present order, it calls for a revolution to implant this new order. Its method of procedure will be direct, bold, and combative. Life signifies the art and science of warfare (milicia) and must be lived with a spirit that is purified by service and sacrifice. 

As can be seen, in the Spanish example, religion was mentioned, but suppressed as subordinate to the overall goals of the state.

Italian fascism did not even go that far, but regarded, oddly enough, the Church as a sometimes intellectual ally in that Italian fascism, while radical in many ways, argued for a return to cultural traditionalism, even though it did not regard that as supporting a religious state.  Essentially, to a relatively small degree, Italian fascism regarded some of the Church's emphasis as traveling on a somewhat intersecting road.

That's not the point of this article here, however, but it serves to point out that while something is going on in the entire Western World right now, it's not really the same every place it pops up.  Consider again the clip we had of Meloni from the other day.

That's one of the most Un-American speeches you can imagine, although a lot of Americans wouldn't realize it.  Not that Meloni would deliver an American speech, she's Italian, but she's not only complaining of the post 1968 liberal changes to the accepted culture, which she is, she's blaming it principally on consumerism.  

This view isn't completely unheard of in the United States.  People will take shots at consumerism, but it's usually people on the left that do it, and they don't link it to feminism and the LBGQT movement like Meloni is.  Not usually.  About the closest I've ever heard of that is the essay that somebody wrote some time ago, I've forgotten who, that homosexuals were regarded as the prefect citizens by liberal elites, as they consumed, but didn't reproduce, and lacked the messy personal nature that the 98% of those with normal inclination have.  That approaches this statement, but it doesn't go anywhere near as far as Meloni did.

Meloni is definitely tapping into something here, however, in that what she's espousing is the concept that post 68 liberalism is at war with human nature, and she's not wholly incorrect in that either.  That's also what partially, but only partially, given rise to populism in the United States.  The part of her speech here that doesn't deal with economics would find a sympathetic ear in some parts of the far right.

Indeed, it finds a sympathetic, if surprised, ear from some who are in the Chestertonian camp, or more appropriately at his stammtisch.  One twitter commentator, for example, noted upon hearing this that in his view he wasn't saying anything that was fascistic, but rather a string of things in line with Catholic social teaching, with which he approved.  This definitely isn't the case for the American Trumpist wing of the GOP.

Is she therefore not a fascist, but rather somebody who would be more comfortable with Chesteron and Belloc?

Frankly, we really don't know.  She hasn't been in power, yet, and her party hasn't been, either.  What may distinguish it is its willingness to act democratically.  That, in the end, has tended to be the defining matter distinguishing very far right political parties from fascist ones, even if the former does not really meet the overall fascist definition.  The Falangist and Italian fascist were hostile to democracy, there's no two ways about it.  Is the modern FdI?  We don't know yet.

For the same reason, we can't say if the FdI is in favor of Illiberal democracy.  Progressives could look at this and immediately say that of course it is, but it's really not that simple at all The FdI may be very far right, without being favoring Illiberal democracy.  Favoring political progressivism and having a liberal democracy are not the same thing, even though progressives seem to feel it is.

At the end of the day, Meloni may end up being a flash in the pan.  As Italy is a parliamentary democracy, her party, while gathering the most votes, only has about 25% of them. The center left party has nearly as many.  The remaining 25%, more or less, of votes she needs from other Italian right wing parties do not all come, by any means, from ones that have the same outlook.

But this will prove interesting.

All over Europe, this trend has been occurring.  Just last week, the Sweden Democrats, which have neo-Nazi roots, became the second-largest governing partner in the Swedish government.  It's a very hard right nationalistic party.  We've already discussed Viktor Orban's Hungarian government and it's espousing of Illiberal Democracy.  Poland's largest party is the Law and Justice Party, which is a right wing populist party.  Slovakia's largest party is the right wing populist Ordinary People and Independents Party.  And France, of course, has the National Rally Party which threatened to take office during the last French election and which is the second-largest party in the government, only slightly behind that of the largest party.

Then we have the current GOP.

Perhaps the real distinguishing thing about the current Trump wing of the GOP, which is the dominant branch right now, is that these other parties, which are not all the same, are at least pretty open about their views, which they can be as they're in a parliamentary system.  In the case of the Trumpist, the views remain partially camouflaged.  And the other major factor right now is that these European parties save for one, Orban's, all seem to be comfortable with full democracy, although I'd certainly hold the question open for the Sweden Democrats on that query as its history would suggest that it wouldn't be, if it were in power.

So, once again, what's that tell us?

It's hard to say, but as noted earlier on this blog, it seems to be an upset with the results of the post 1968 liberalization of the Western World.  People feel it's taken from them and forced them into things they don't agree with and don't want to be. And to at least some extent, they feel that it's brought about a culture that's at war with natural culture.

In short, people feel what Meloni expressed:

Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.

All of that were things that conservative parties already held, however. They weren't, however, very successful at doing anything about their views in a massive way. All of these groups promise to.

And maybe they actually would. . . but in the American case, what does that actually mean and do people really know what they're suggesting? We'll look at that next.

Sunday, September 27, 1942. The heroism of Douglas Munro.

Today in World War II History—September 27, 1942: During the withdrawal from Matanikau on Guadalcanal, Signalman 1C Douglas Munro uses his Higgins Boat to shield Marines at the cost of his life;.

So notes Sarah Sundin on her blog. 

Douglas Munro.

Munro had dropped out of college to enter the Coast Guard in 1939 as he saw the threat of war looming, doing so as its primary mission was saving lives.  He's been born to a Canadian mother and American father, in Canada, but his father had relocated the family to the United States as a child.  Munro was very slight of build, as the photograph above shows, and had to eat heavily to meet the Coast Guard enlistment weight.

Sundin also notes that today saw the last performance by Glenn Miller before he entered the service.  At the time he was making $15,000 to $20,000 per week, which seems like a lot now, but which was the equivalent of $250,000 to $333,000 per week in today's' dollars, a vast sum indeed.